Looking for Larisa of Moscow 60 years on
In the run-up to the ongoing Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Qingdao, Shandong province, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Russian international affairs committee jointly organized a think tank forum on Sino-Russian cooperation on May 29 in Beijing.
As a senior adviser to the Sino-Russian Committee of Friendship, Peace and Development and a co-organizer of the forum, I felt honored to attend the event and deliver an address on behalf of the committee. Apart from exchanging ideas and suggestions on cultural issues with SCO Secretary-General Rashid Alimov (of Tajikistan) before the forum, I also met with many new and old friends who care about and participate in China-Russia friendship and exchanges.
The Sino-Russian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination is experiencing its best time in history. Led by the two heads of state and thanks to their personal efforts, Sino-Russian relations have reached a new high, in which people-to-people exchanges have played an indispensable role.
Sino-Russian friendship at the non-governmental level is not only an important goal of bilateral ties but also the basis of it. In particular, recent years have seen a new wave of people-to-people exchanges between the two countries. And on the basis of traditional friendship programs, Beijing and Moscow have also built new platforms for people-to-people exchanges and shaped a nongovernmental cooperation model, injecting vital impetus into bilateral ties.
Linked by nature and a long history
China and Russia are friendly neighbors linked by mountains and rivers, and the friendship between the two peoples has a long history. Just one day after the People’s Republic of China was founded on Oct 1, 1949, the Soviet Union became the first state to recognize and establish diplomatic relations with it. And on Oct 5, 1949, the PRC established its first government-led but unofficial diplomatic organization — the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association.
To celebrate the third anniversary of its establishment, the SSFA made changes in the Sino-Soviet Friendship magazine to add China’s political, economic and cultural development, as well as its cultural relics, local conditions and customs to the content. The magazine was first issued with the Sino-Soviet Friendship newspaper on Oct 5, 1952, and the translated Russian version of the newspaper was circulated in the Soviet Union.
Correspondingly, the Soviet Union planned to publish a magazine on Soviet-Chinese friendship to introduce Chinese readers to the Soviet Union’s economic construction, natural resources, geography, history, and people and their customs. Since the readers of the conceived publication would be from both countries, the Soviet side invited Chinese experts to Moscow to jointly run the Soviet-China Friendship magazine.
In the winter of 1957, my father Li Zhuang, then an editorial member of and senior journalist with the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, was sent to Moscow as a senior Chinese adviser to help the Soviet journalists publish the magazine, which was launched on New Year’s Day in 1958.
As expected my father and his Chinese colleagues forged a deep friendship with their Soviet counterparts during their stay in the Soviet Union.
In the summer of 1958, my mother visited my father in Moscow. I was just 7 years old then, but I have a lot of memories from my stay in Moscow. Sino-Soviet relations were very friendly at the time, although only a few Chinese could work in or visit the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union treated Chinese people with courtesy on both official and unofficial occasions. I visited many places in the Soviet Union together with my parents, such as the Red Square, Gorky Park and Moscow University, which left a beautiful impression on me. What I remember the most, though, was the time we spent on a collective farm on the outskirts of Moscow, not least because I heard the Russian song Evening on the outskirts of Moscow, which many of us are familiar with, albeit in the daytime.
While my father interviewed the farm’s chairman, I played with his daughter Larisa. We could not understand each other’s language, but that did not stop us two little girls from different countries and cultures from playing together and forming a bond in a short time. A cameraman from the Soviet-China Friendship magazine took some pictures of Larisa and me. And even though 60 years have passed, I have treasured those photographs as a witness to Sino-Soviet people-to-people exchanges and friendship.
Every time I flip through my family’s photo albums, I think of my Muscovite friend from my childhood. Unfortunately, my parents didn’t note down the name of either the collective farm or Larisa’s father. All I remember is that she and I were of the same age.
In 1992, shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I had a chance to visit Vladivostok via Suifenhe in Heilongjiang province, but since the city in Russia’s Far East is thousands of kilometers away from Moscow, I couldn’t enquire about Larisa. But in 2009 when I led a Chinese news and publication delegation to Russia, I tried my best to revisit the places in Moscow which my parents had taken me to half a century ago.
Still hopeful of meeting my friend from the farm
Later, I was appointed a senior adviser to the SinoRussian Committee of Friendship, Peace and Development, and invited to attend and participate in a series of SinoRussian official and unofficial activities, which have helped me carry forward the ChinaRussian friendship mission.
On Dec 22, 2015, I was invited to attend a book launch ceremony jointly sponsored by Changjiang Daily and the Russian embassy in China and unveiled the two new books together with Russian Ambassador to China Andrey Denisov. In an interview with the Changjiang Daily, I mentioned my Soviet friend from 1958, saying I would love to meet her. The newspaper carried a feature titled “Looking for Larisa 57 years ago”.
At the reception hosted by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and SinoRussian Committee of Friendship, Peace and Development to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Russia-China Friendship Association, I got to know some officials from the association. While talking with the officials, I realized the Russian association had done a lot of work to deepen friendship and mutual understanding between the peoples of the two countries.
Narrating the story of that fateful day on the collective farm in Moscow, I told the officials that I am still hopeful of meeting Larisa. Our meeting 60 years later would be an ideal footnote to Sino-Russian friendship at the non-governmental level. And thanks to the RCFA, which early this year began helping me look for Larisa, I believe I can meet with Larisa in Moscow or Beijing and take China-Russia friendship forward.
We firmly believe the road of friendly exchanges between China and Russia will grow increasingly wider, and Chinese and Russian people will continue to enjoy their friendship from generation to generation.