We were fortunately able to taste some of the culture of this vast country. Cossacks danced with legs akimbo; the lights of Moscow painted pictures before our eyes and stories of repression and purges were retold. It is hard to imagine that over 50 million people were displaced, imprisoned or eradicated under the Stalin era. Families would simply disappear as if they had never existed, they became ghost like. Such stories were told to us on our tour by people who had lived through the Stalin era. We were fortunate to have at our lunch table one day a gentleman called Yullie who shared his thoughts about the old and new Russia. He shared the story of the imprisonment of his father for five years as a result of an story he told to his work colleagues. The story goes like this:
A man walks into a hospital and asks to see an ear and eye doctor. The doctor replies that they only have nose and throat doctors, there are no ear and eye doctors here. The doctor asks the man what seems to be the problem and why does he specifically need an ear and eye doctor. The man replies, 'Well doctor, my ears are hearing one thing, but my eyes are seeing totally different things.'
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