TRAVEL TALES:Russian heartland by river

The only way to see Russia beyond its major cities is by river cruise. My wife, Tita, and I began ours in St. Petersburg, a collection of 1,000 islands at sea level connected by bridges and steeped in political and literary history, its opulent palaces and lush gardens deserving of the name Versailles by the Sea.

Must-sees include Catherine’s Palace with its 1,000 rooms, formerly the Czar’s Summer Palace, and the State Hermitage Museum, formerly the Winter Palace. After two days’ sightseeing and watching a performance of the “Nutcracker,” we sailed 400 miles to Moscow, a go-go capital flexing its cosmopolitan wings, plastered with advertisements for foreign products, and choked with traffic. There we spent our last two days visiting Red Square, the Kremlin, GUM department store, Tretyakov art gallery, and the Moscow State Circus.

It was in the six days traveling between these two great cities that we most felt we were in Russia. Our 200-passenger ship sailed along rivers and canals, across the two largest lakes in Europe, Onega and Ladoga, up and down 22 locks, and through an otherwise inaccessible landscape of forests studded with small settlements and golden copulas. Lacking TV, phone, fax or newspapers, this was a true getaway vacation.

Each day we docked somewhere new. In Mandrogi we saw what the locals claim to be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s retirement dacha (who knows?). In Khizi Island, there is a half-a-mile walk to the Church of the Transfiguration, made entirely of wood and with 22 timbered domes. In Gortizy, the monastery founded by St. Cyril in the 14th century and where he created the Russian alphabet still stands. Yaroslavl is Russia’s best-known provincial town, and the only one that boasted an Internet cafe. In Uglich, the aptly-named Church of St. Dimitry-on-the-Blood is built over the spot where Ivan the Terrible killed his son in 1581. Onboard ship, our heads spinning with fresh knowledge and the sampling of vodka and caviar, we attended excellent lectures.

One afternoon we sailed over the village square of Kalyazin, where only the tops of trees and the belfry of St. Nicola Cathedral remain above water. Along with 700 other villages, Kalyazin was flooded in the early 1930s by Stalin to build a hydroelectric plant to generate electricity for Moscow. Concrete structures beside the Moscow Canal are topped with statues of Soviet workmen and women, but the canals were actually dug by Gulag prisoners, shovel by shovel until they dropped dead.

The Soviet Union is gone but not forgotten, and whether you hate Stalin or love him (as some older Russians do), you can’t escape his legacy.

The hammer-and-sickle motif appeared on locks and the smoke-stack of our refueling tanker. Lenin’s statue stands in Uglich’s town square. Soviet art adorns the Moscow Metro while memorials to the glorious Soviet victors of World War II are everywhere. Men masquerade as Lenin and Stalin in Red Square. Vendors hawk Red Army badges and memorabilia.

The Russians say you can’t change history, so let this be. For some, the dissolution of the union was a catastrophe: a loss of history, values, security and contact with relatives. There was irony in the name of our ship, Serjei Kirov. A hero of the Revolution, Kirov was so popular that Stalin perceived him as a threat and had him assassinated. The great Bolshevik’s name now lives on as a capitalist pleasure boat.

is a Corona del Mar resident.