Frank Thoms - Behind the Red Veil: An American Inside Gorbachevs Russia

Past Praise for Frank Thoms

For Listening is Learning: Conversations Between 20th and 21st Century Teachers (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019)

The best way to learn is from others who have been there before you. This book is filled with the kind of wisdom available when veteran teachers and young teachers share ideas in conversation. It is an extraordinary collection of wise suggestions any teacher will want to inhale.

Susan Page, author of Why Talking is Not Enough

Listening is Learning offers all of us who strive to become better teachers, valuable insight, inspiration, and the reminder that teaching is a collaborative process. Frank Thoms excellent book illustrates just how much we have to learn from the hard-earned wisdom of other teachers, and how the pursuit of teaching excellence never ends. A valuable book for anyone in the classroom.

Dinty W. Moore, author of Crafting the Personal Essay

For Exciting Classrooms: Practical Information to Ensure Student Success (Roman & Littlefield, 2015)

Chock full of practical ideas deployed with reverence for kids and good humor!

Sam Intrator, Professor of Education, Smith College, Head, Smith College Campus School

I have very much appreciated Franks book. Its so important, truly a labor of love, mindfulness, and attentive care. I hope it gets all the audience it deserves.

Anne Wheelock, author of Crossing the Tracks

For Teaching That Matters: Engaging Minds, Improving Schools (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015)

I feel your energy and commitment and can also hear your voice, literally, as I read. Your book feels like a personal conversation rather than a broadcast. Perhaps that is why you were such a good teacher!

Ron Stegall, International Education Advisor

Frank Thoms creates a high contrast picture between engaged, active, deeper, and relevant learning to the more prevalent type of passive, second hand, and fast-coverage approaches. Frank addresses educators who are reluctant to vary off the path of least resistance and risk-averse roads. He asks them to find engaging ways for students to process the world and take ownership of their own learning. Isnt that what it is supposed to be all about?

Ralph Caouette, National Art Education Association: Foundation Trustee and Research Commissioner

Teaching That Matters is a delightful concoction of philosophical and psychological reflections and provocations on the art of teaching. Creative teachers will find Frank Thomss book highly engaging and his practical teaching recommendations enormously useful.

Paul Reville, Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration, Harvard Graduate School of Education; former secretary of education Commonwealth of Massachusetts

BEHIND THE RED VEIL

Copyright 2020 Frank Thoms

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Published by SparkPress, a BookSparks imprint,
A division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC

Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 85007

www.gosparkpress.com

Published 2020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-68463-055-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-68463-056-1 (e-bk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020905897

Formatting by Kiran Spees

All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

In loving memory of Elvira Nikolaevna Gnes,
Irina Nikolaevna Grigorieva,
and
Raisa Vladimirovna Murachik,
of Leningrad School N 185

I thought it was If a body catch a body, I said. Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobodys aroundnobody big, I meanexcept me. And Im standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliffI mean if theyre running and they dont look where theyre going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. Thats all Id do all day. Id just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know its crazy, but thats the only thing Id really like to be. I know its crazy.

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1951), 101

After school, Thoms will walk to his hotel room on the Nevsky Prospekt with a small tape recorder pressed against his cheek. He refuses to forget a smile, a tear, or an important confrontation with Soviet life. He gathers impressions of the Soviet Union like a real-life Holden Caulfield, the consummate social satirist. Nothing seems to escape his discerning eye. By watching and interacting, Thoms believes he is helping civilization from going over the cliffa teacher in the rye.

Keith Sharon, Teacher in the Rye Works Wonders with Gum: NH Man Faces Sticky Problems in Soviet Schools, Manchester Union Leader, January 21, 1987

Bizarro by Wayno and Piraro
copyright 2018 Bizarro Studios

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Winston Churchill, radio broadcast, October 1939

I grew up in a world of mechanical toys with backs and bottoms and tiny metal tabs that invited prying. Some were wind-ups that whirred and buzzed in unpredictable directions. Others stood still, playing tin drums or running strings around pulleys. Most were made in Japan. I played with them, took them apart, and reassembled them.

Typewriters fascinated me, though I observed more than I actually typed. I tinkered with the open back of my black Remington Standard. When my finger pushed a circular metal-rimmed key, I watched its linked mechanical arm bring upper- and-lower-case letters to the paper on the black roller; its position determined which letter struck the paper. I tried a black-and-red ribbon and enjoyed the chance to choose a color.

I would peer through the narrow hardboard slits at the back of my Motorola table radio. I applied gentle pressure to the on-switch until it clicked to see the orange glow alight in vacuum tubes bringing in the sound. I was part of its creation.

The front had a dark-brown-glazed, plastic Venetian design; hidden openings let out the sound. Late at night, I would spin the right-hand knob, sliding its red-line dial at the top behind clear plastic. Stations having static slid by until I came to WROW 590 AM in Albany or WTRY 980 AM in Troy, broadcasting from New York over the Taconic Ridge. No presets, nothing automatic, and no worries except Mom, who might discover my late-night listening to The Inner Sanctum or The Jack Benny Show. The radio was mine and sat in its special place on the shelf by my pillow. And I discovered Radio Moscow, fascinated more by where it broadcasted from than with its content, which made little sense to me.

The Motorola was my private ticket to life beyond my family and the small inn where I grew up. Mr. I. A. Moto, Japanese Investigator let me taste Asian ingenuity; The Inner Sanctum scared the hell out of me; and Fibber Magee, Bob Hope, Fred Allen, and Amos n Andy made me laugh and laugh.

Perhaps it was my childhood curiosity with mechanical things that provided tabs for my mind to pry beneath the obvious, particularly when it came to the secrets of Russian and Soviet history and culture.