Visitor enchanted by soviets

ORONO – Janet Bilyk of Orono saw the Soviet Union from a different perspective when she visited there during post-coup days in September. She got sick her first day there and spent much of her two-week stay visiting a hospital, but she sampled a degree of Soviet hospitality that makes her want to return.

The August coup was over. Mikhail Gorbachev was back in Moscow. Soviet citizens, with thoughts more on the swiftly approaching winter, didn’t talk much about the incident, Bilyk said.

The failed coup didn’t change Soviet life all that much, Bilyk said. The lines were still long at poorly stocked grocery stores. Some people were reluctant to have their pictures taken for fear of retribution.

Despite some squalid conditions, the draw of the country and its people is strong for Bilyk, whose husband, Mark, has relatives in the Ukraine. Soviets are a passionate people, filled with life and hope for the future, she said.

The mother of two, Bilyk said she was struck by how women’s lives there changed when they married. They go from chic careerists before marriage to dowdy, aged housewives after marriage. Soviet women are sentenced, it seems, to childbearing as soon as they tie the knot because of the lack of birth control, according to Bilyk.

Bilyk traveled to the Soviet Union with 11 other people from Maine as part of a peace project called the Maine-Komi State Bridge, a subsidiary of the national US-USSR Bridges for Peace program. Thirty-nine Maine people have visited the northwest republic of Komi since the project began in 1989. Thirty-four Komi citizens have visited Maine so far with more expected next spring.

The Maine group included Francis Schumann, a retired surgeon from Machias, and others from Farmington, Augusta, Damariscotta, Pittston and Brunswick. Most members of the group flew to what was the Leningrad the second week of their stay.

Bilyk, a nurse, took a two-day train ride to Leningrad after healing from an illness caused when her eardrums almost ruptured during a flight from America to Moscow. With a 103 degree fever and severly infected ears, she flwe with the group to Syktyvkar the capital of the Komi republic, before succumbing to the pain. She visited a local hospital almost daily for nearly two weeks for treatments that were painful but that worked, she said.

The importance of Americans to the Soviets was apparent when she became sick, Bilyk said. She was whisked to a top ear, nose and throat specialist in Syktyvkar. She visited the specialist in the hospital every morning, accompanied by an interpreter. The clinic room resembled “something out of the 1920s” Bilyk said.

The treatments were painful. A white solution was sprayed up her nostril. It stung. She later learned from an American doctor that it probably was diluted cocaine which has an anti-inflammatory effect.

She said her doctor was compassionate which helped ease the pain.

While she recuperated, they took in the sights on days that lasted from 6:30 a.m. to midnight.

“I had my own experience,” said Bilyk.

Last spring Bilyk opened her Orono home to Vladimir Ushakov, the mayor of Ezva in Komi. Ushakov and his wife, Nini, took excellent care of Bilyk during her illness, she said, by opening their apartment to her and making her comfortable. She was accompanied by the mayor’s son, Feodor, on her trip to Leningrad. She became emotional in Leningrad when she tried to explain to Feodor the attachment she felt for him, his wife and daughter and for Olga, the mayor’s 21-year-old married daughter.

Feodor mistook her emotion for pity. “He said, `Don’t feel sorry for me. I am happy.”‘ Bilyk recalled.

She returned home with many gifts, mementos and memories. The best park is feeling she helped break down barriers between two cultures and contributed to world peace for her son, her daughter and their children, Bilyk said.