Soviet Camaraderie

Wednesday I went to a historical conference commemorating the 65th anniversary of the battle for Moscow. I was supposed to give a speech on something like "American Historical Memory of WWII." The whole idea made me a little nervous for a couple reasons:

1. Lots of old soldiers, loyal Soviets, angry pensioners. These are people who may not be so receptive to American perspective on WWII, no matter how much I qualify it by saying it's not my own personal perspective.
2. Speaking to crowds is not my forte, especially in Russian.

More than this, I had no idea what the conference was going to be like, aside from the fact that it was in Mikhailov, a town 60 kms west of Ryazan with about 100,000 people, whose only claim to fame is that it was one of the places the Germans were stopped. As it turned out, the conference was basically my university's History Department plus the old soldiers and, according to the schedule, my section of the conference was on WWII general history. Unfortunately, I was transferred to the "Battle of Moscow Memorial" Section, the section I feared most of all.

In all actuality there was nothing to fear. The conference was rather poorly organized, in that they scheduled 15 speeches in 2.5 hours, meaning each speech was supposed to be 10 minutes or less. Obviously, this didn't happen. Also, at the sections no one was well known enough to attract any interest. So the only people there were the speakers, who were just waiting for their turn to talk. My favorite moment was when the toothless 80 year-old former soldier, carefully watching the time on his cell phone, exclaimed, "Excuse me! Everyone has 10 minutes and you've just passed the 11th!" My speech went over well, in part because it was on a very different subject than the other presentations. Also, I did it in 8 minutes.