Moscow, When the Red Star Burned Out and the Bethlehem Star Glowed Anew
Posted: Sunday, October 26, 2008
by Jean Purcell
OpineBooks.com
Not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany, my husband and I were in Moscow. I was glad to go along while he had meetings inside and outside the capital of Russia. Moscow had been the capital also of the now-fallen Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR.
Of course it was exciting to anticipate what a newly-free Moscow would look and feel like, having got out from under a cruel Red Star regime. The Red Star had made sense to many of the revolution of the early 20th century. It had dominated the formation of a "new Russia" and its satellites as they grew to form the USSR.
When we reached Moscow as the USSR was still collapsing, a free press with options for objectivity, freedom of worship, and the start-up of small businesses were events working to return Russia to former and new freedoms. Citizens no longer had to spout the Communist Party line under fear of exclusion, punishment, or prison.
As our days in Moscow went by, I noticed everywhere we went across its center that the city was dusty and flower-less, as if still in a state of shock. Yet, we talked with excited and positive people who were learning to live self-reliantly and wanting to enjoy a democratic government. No one knew if such freedoms would be allowed to hold, but we met so many who hoped they would.
We visited the center where Russian Jews went to be processed for emigration, at their own requests, to Israel. Having been persecuted horribly, Jews could finally leave in higher numbers.
Many large trucks bumped loudly along the streets of Moscow every day and all day. There were about ten of them for every one car. The cars were almost all identical, made for a ruling government that had sought to kill all differences, except for the leaders and their friends.
We saw a couple of the famous Zil limousines that once transported key officials of the fallen regime. For over 50 years those luxury cars reminded people on the streets of the government's fist of power over them.
We had some humorous moments with a couple that worked with my husband's organization in hardship places. But before the anecdotes, the wife told me of the courtyard of their apartment, as we drove through the gates. "See those little huts inside the columns? Those were for the watchers' under the Communist regime. Every person's movements to and from here were watched and recorded."
In their kitchen, she told me the refrigerator story of several weeks before.
"I went in to buy the refrigerator, and my belly was sticking out to there," she gestured toward her still-pregnant middle. "I speak Russian well enough, so no problem there. The problem was getting the refrigerator here. When I finished paying for it, the sales man said, 'We don't deliver. You have to pick it up.'
"I told him I had no car and even if I did it would be too small. 'Look at me!' I said to him, pointing to my stomach.
"He said, 'No problem, then. We take it outside, and you wait.'
"'Oh, you will take the refrigerator for the delivery now?' I asked.
" 'No,' he told me, 'You wait for anyone to come.'
"I went outside, they pushed the refrigerator behind me, and I stood with it and waited. I wondered what would be next. Then, after about 15 minutes, up pulls a large truck and a man is yelling to see if I need help.
"I said, 'Ya, ya,' and these men hopped down, loaded the refrigerator in the back, and opened the passenger front door for me. I rode home in the middle of these two men, repeating the address of our apartment. They got me here and brought the refrigerator up in the elevator."
She said she gave them rubles in an amount they seemed to appreciate.
For all of us during that visit, a major problem was gasoline. An office driver told us, "I spend more than half my time and petrol driving all over the city to find any station that has petrol that day."
Before we left Moscow, a young tour guide took us to the square of St. Basil's Cathedral. While there, the guide nodded his head toward the nearby Kremlin. He seemed a bit agitated, and then mentioned Lenin's tomb, housed there: "If you want to go there, you will need another guide. I will not take visitors there." His face wore an expression of disgust when he spoke of it.
The young man, even at his age, had known the harshness of Lenin's so-called utopia, imposed "for the masses." Under it, masses and more---multitudes---had suffered eventually. We had no interest in visiting Lenin's tomb, anyway, and continued on, witnessing a boisterous wedding party in a nearby parking area.
Not long after we returned to Geneva, where we were living, we saw the Russian ambassador at a reception. He expressed dismay over our having visited Moscow when we did, and not earlier.
"There used to be flowers and beautiful streets," he said. He was not Russian, but from Georgia, but the ambassadors had been left in place, regardless of former national identity.
I believe that what he said was true. I also believed that the beautiful flowers had unequally counter-balanced an entire nation made listless. Most Russians, before the Wall fell, had nowhere near the initiative their grandparents had had, living free of the Red Star.
When the Wall came down, the depth of the weaknesses of the Red Star system began to be exposed. Many people were waking up for the first time. Many might soon dream of planting their own flowers one day, from their own earned resources.
About that time, I learned that the former Red Star countries have long histories of Christian faith.
Later, back in Geneva, I met a young Russian woman in a private home there. Her life had been changed by the new freedom of religion. She said that a man had approached her and her friends in a Moscow park during a lunch break one day. He had tracts with the good news of Jesus Christ. Her friends refused to accept any of those tracts, but she did.
She wanted to know more and soon met Russian Christians. She accepted faith in Christ and that led her to Geneva, where she had begun to work for a family and to learn French and English.
"I want to go back to Moscow," she told me. "I feel torn being here because I want to tell more of my people about Jesus Christ."
We knew that she would be able to tell them freely, upon her return home. No Red Star philosophy and rule, no large government cars, could intimidate her any more. The Wall was down, its pieces scattered or bull-dozed away.
Before we left Moscow, we saw street hawkers selling old Soviet stuff, including flags with the bright Red Star of the failed regime. Some sold faded military caps, also emblazoned with that Red Star.
That Red Star has diminished as a symbol of any real power, but it has not disappeared. Moscow and other USSR cities learned, painfully, how repressive its rule can become, ever so slowly.
The good report is that many whom we met in Moscow expressed their desire to use every freedom they were then enjoying. They admitted that their great-grandparents had known such freedom, albeit imperfectly enjoyed.
During all the changes, people like the young woman in Geneva, longing to return home to Moscow, know that there is a freedom that no person or government can take away: it is the freedom of Christ. No earthly system can overcome that freedom.
Jesus said, "if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:36-NKJV), for Jesus said this was what He came to do:
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me,
Because the LORD has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound (Isaiah 61:1-NKJV; Luke 4: 18, 19).
Jesus removed the greatest wall of all, the Wall of Separation between any person of any nation...and God. Spiritual rebirths by faith in Him happen every day in Moscow, the countries of the failed USSR, other Red Star countries like China, and countries all over the world. May Christians everywhere not lose heart, and may we continue to pray for others to come into the peace, joy, and freedom of rebirth in Christ!
The true Son of God, born under the eternal Bethlehem Star, speaks to our times as He spoke to Nicodemus and to every generation, nation, and language since:
"Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3: 7,8-NKJV).
NKJV-New King James Version of the Bible
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