Surfing in the USSR
Solzhenitsyn and the Surfer
Inside Outside USSR
Surfing in the USSR – Pecan Street Press
ALAN NAFZGER’s Surfing in the USSR
Lubbock ● Austin ● Fort Worth
Surfing in the USSR is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Copyright © 2016 Alan Nafzger
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ISBN: 9781071452479
Surfing in the USSR
INSIDE OUTSIDE USSR
Solzhenitsyn and the Surfer
Written by Alan Nafzger
EXT. SOVIET BEACHES – 1972 – DAY
TITLE CREDITS BEGIN
The camera visits several beaches – Jurmala (Latvia), Nida (Lithuania), Vityazevo and Tuapse (Krasnodar Krai), Novyi Svit (Crimea), Russky Island (Primorsky Krai), Lanzheron (Odessa, Ukraine). Neptune (Novorossiysk) is host to tens of thousands of jelly fish. A motor boat cruises by the beach at Lytkarino (southeast of Moscow) and it creates a wake perhaps 8 inches. Soviet factory workers on vacation. At each beach there are children in ankle high waves. Teens are running on the sand and playing volleyball. But there are no surfers and the sky is overcast.
TITLE CREDITS END
EXT. Calle 70 – HAVANA CUBA – 1972.
We cut away from the boring Soviet beaches to a real break on a sunny Caribbean beach. The bathing suits of the locals have changed. There are three CUBAN SURFERS ripping it up and shown inside a tube. It is a sudden change of scenery.
Two Russian couples, each with one teenage son, are on the beach. The two boys are anxiously watching the Cuban surfers. The two fathers are also watching. The two mothers are simply sunning themselves and reading. Everyone is slightly burned by the sun.
Surfing in the USSR
The one of the two boys is BRIAN MORENOV (12) is fascinated. Brian’s friend is Dennis Kozlov (12). Life in Moscow hasn’t prepared him for this. Andrei (35), Brain’s father and KGB archivist, is there on the beach with another KGB employee.
Surfing in the USSR
BRIAN
Russia has no waves.
DENNIS
Not even our utopian Soviet Union can produce a surfable wave?
BRIAN
No surf in the Baltic or The Black Sea and certainly not the Sea of Azolve.
DENNIS
We do manage to produce an abundance of jelly fish.
The boys listen to their fathers talk.
OTHER FATHER
You oversee the largest KGB library in Moscow.
Andrea looks left and right on the beach to make sure they aren’t being overheard.
Andrei
Yes, the vault of Western decadence.
OTHER FATHER
What do you know about this surfing?
Andrei
Funny you should ask. I’ve looked into the matter. Cuba has about 15 surfers and a population of 8.7 million.
OTHER FATHER
So three of them are here.
Andrei
My boy wants to surf, but I have my fears about it. The boards aren’t illegal, per se, but the Cuban government is sensitive about any flotation devices that could aid would-be defectors.
OTHER FATHER
And there was that 1968 report that the CIA tried to bring in surveillance equipment disguised as surfboards in a fake surfing contest.
Andrei seems to have learned something.
Andrei
I wasn’t aware. Interesting.
A Cuban surfer exits the water and walks past them on the beach. This conversation is in Spanish. Dennis translates into Russian.
Andrei
Excuse me. Can you help me with some questions?
SURFER
Yes. I’m happy to help you. You are Russians?
Andrei
Yes.
SURFER
Welcome to Cuba, the workers paradise.
Andrei
Tell me what you can about surfing, please.
SURFER
Well, this is Calle 70. It is easy to find; it breaks right in front of your Russian embassy.
Everyone turns from the surf to look at the distinctive building.
SURFER
It is the best place in all of Cuba to surf.
Andrei
You don’t need to travel around to other beaches?
SURFER
This is enough for me. And one problem is travel because sometimes in Cuba, even if you have the money to go, they won’t let you.
Surfing in the USSR
Andrei
My boy is interested in surfing.
SURFER
This is not exactly a beginner’s beach. This spot is very dangerous to teach people.
(half beat)
If we could maybe move to the eastern side of the city with sandy beaches it would be different. Or if one of you can afford a car, I could say, ‘O.K., put the surfboards on the roof and we’ll go.’
Andrei
What about surfboards?
SURFER
Well we don’t have any shops here in Cuba so it’s extremely difficult to get boards.
Andrei
I can imagine.
SURFER
There’s a lot of waiting for visitors to bring boards.
Andrei
So what do you do?
SURFER
Most surfers have to use plywood most often ripped from discarded school desks, the long sort where three students sit. And they are coated in…
The surfer looks left and right.
SURFER
… black-market resin. And you nail a makeshift wood fin to the bottom and attach a length of clothesline for a leash.
Andrei
And you did that?
SURFER
No some friends that come from Mexico have left this board. It was made in Los Angeles California.
Solzhenitsyn and the Surfer
Andrei
Really. It is very nice.
Surfing in the USSR
SURFER
It is the most valuable thing you can imagine. But, every year more and more people are coming and leaving or selling us stuff here. But even wax, for example, can be a big problem getting.
Surfing in the USSR
Andrei
Wax?
Surfing in the USSR
SURFER
You can drip candle wax on the deck for grip, but that can be really hard on your chest and skin. It is best to get a special wax from the United States.
Solzhenitsyn and the Surfer
Andrei
I see.
Surfing in the USSR
SURFER
I know Cuba isn’t the only place on the planet where it’s hard to get surf stuff.
Solzhenitsyn and the Surfer & Solzhenitsyn and the Surfer
Andrei
How did you learn to surf?
SURFER
Well, without access to information like films or surf magazines, we fight over a single page, surfers in Cuba must make their own progress on a separate path from the rest of the world.
Long beat. The surfer again looks left and then right.
Solzhenitsyn and the Surfer
SURFER
Listen, I know a guy here in Havana making boards from old refrigerator insulation. You want to buy a surfboard?
Brian hopes perhaps his father will take the bite. Brain’s father shakes his head.
Andrei
Okay, thanks for your time.
The surfer walks off the beach toward some homes.
The two other surfers exit the water quickly.
SURFERS
Shark! Shark!
Solzhenitsyn and the Surfer
And a large shark fin is seen in the water very near the shore. Brain jumps up and runs to the sea. He stops in inches of water. The big shark swims only feet from him. Brian is unafraid and 100% curious. Denis also runs to view the shark but stops several feet back.
The surfers don’t watch the shark but run off the beach.
Solzhenitsyn and the Surfer
The shark swims only feet from the shore. The two boys follow the shark 100 yards down the beach until the fin disappears.
EXT. MOSCOW AIRPORT – DAY
It is snowing and everything is iced over. The two couples, with sons, disembark the plane and walk into the blizzard. After a week or two in the Cuban sun, they are hit in the face with cold sleet. Everyone is a life long Muscovite and expects it and they “weather” it well, but Brain is destroyed by the sudden cold. We can see that he hates it.
INT. Solzhenitsyn’s Apartment – DAY
Solzhenitsyn (51) is an old man from a decade in prison and cancer treatments. He sits and broods. Solzhenitsyn’s personal life is in disarray. Natalya Reshetovskaya (50) is packing and leaving their apartment. Men from Reshetovskaya’s family are moving her piano out of the apartment. She is crying.
There is a literary friend sitting with Solzhenitsyn in the front room.
Solzhenitsyn
(to Reshetovskaya)
I remember you played Chopin’s 14th Etude for me.
(to the literary friend)
When we first met. You called my your Sanya.
Reshetovskaya
Well, you aren’t my Sanya anymore.
Solzhenitsyn
Nor are you my Natasha.
Reshetovskaya
(sarcastic)
A pity.
Solzhenitsyn
I see how egotistical your love still is. Do you really imagine our future as an uninterrupted life together? The accumulation of furniture, in this cozy apartment, with regular visits from guests, evenings at the theatre?
Reshetovskaya
And I must sacrifice all for your literary career?
Solzhenitsyn
I’ve had a small triumph; you can’t be happy for that?
Reshetovskaya
You changed! Acclaimed and surrounded by admirers…
(to the literary friend)
…he became a serial adulterer and with young women.
Solzhenitsyn scoffs.
Reshetovskaya
(to the literary friend)
Do you know what he told me? ‘You’ve helped me to create one novel. Permit me to allow her to help me create another.’
Solzhenitsyn
(to the literary friend)
I tried to appeal to her shared interest in my literary career.
(half beat)
Please understand me. I have to describe lots of women in my work. You don’t expect me to find my heroines at the dinner table, do you?
Reshetovskaya
(to the literary friend)
Ironically, he did. He “found” Natalya Svetlova on top of our dinner table and broke it.
Cut to the dinning room table. We see one of the legs has been broken and repaired.
Reshetovskaya
(to the literary friend)
He is 50; she is 28
Solzhenitsyn
And a brilliant mathematician.
Reshetovskaya
You are having a child with this woman!
Solzhenitsyn
(to the literary friend)
You know in Kazakhstan, I contracted cancer. After several relapses, I was cured, though I believed the treatments had left me sterile. Well, obviously I was not.
literary friend
(to Solzhenitsyn)
So, she became pregnant?
The piano is moved out of the apartment. Reshetovskaya, tears in her eyes, gathers just a few more things. Reshetovskaya is about to make her exit but the pregnant Natalya Svetlova arrives at the apartment. She runs to Solzhenitsyn.
Svetlova
(to Solzhenitsyn)
I beg you to remain married I will raise our child alone. Ms. Reshetovskaya is too old to make a new life and should not be abandoned.
Reshetovskaya is ready to make her exit.
Solzhenitsyn
Where are you going?
Reshetovskaya
The train station, Mr. Tolstoy.
This is a reference to “Anna Karenina” and Tolstoy’s rejected and distraught wife, Sofiya.
As Reshetovskaya leaves, Svetlova blocks her exit and falls to her knees.
Svetlova
Please don’t go. Stay married.
Reshetovskaya
Get out of the way.
Svetlova
If you refuse, then please forgive me for taking your husband away.
Reshetovskaya
You are pregnant and I don’t want to walk through you.
Svetlova moves to sit by Solzhenitsyn.
Solzhenitsyn
(to the literary friend)
Maybe it’s a boy.
literary friend
(to Solzhenitsyn)
Where is she going?
Solzhenitsyn
The train station, maybe?
literary friend
(to Solzhenitsyn)
She won’t, well she?
Solzhenitsyn shrugs. Svetlova gets up nervously and walks to the kitchen and begins a survey of all the stove, and refrigerator. She opens all the cabinets.
Solzhenitsyn
(to the literary friend)
We were doomed from the beginning. In our first 16 years of marriage, we were only together one year. Our few meetings were always charged with frustrated love. As many prisoners did, I urged her to divorce me so she could find comfort with another man.
literary friend
And she did?
Solzhenitsyn
Of course she did.
Solzhenitsyn & the Surfer
Many consider surfing to be a sport of freedom. The former USSR, as a country, was kind of the opposite of freedom. So would you have ever imagined that there was surfing in the Soviet Union? Well, there was (and still is). The first known Russian surfer was Nikolai Petrovich Popov. He was born in the USSR and surfed his first wave in Crimea in 1966. This is his story.
Surfing in Moscow – 1960s
Nikolai Petrovich Popov was a student at the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University and captain of the alpine skiing team. How did he even know about surfing?
Back in the 1960s when Nikolai was studying at the University, he read a book by Jack London, The Cruise of the Snark. The protagonist of the story managed to travel across the South Pacific and visit Hawaii. Nikolai was impressed so much with London’s description of riding waves that he was determined to give it a try. Even though at that time he had no opportunities and in the USSR, hardly anyone knew about surfing.
At the time, the USSR’s borders were closed and the Iron Curtain was imposed to prevent not so much the invasions, but the escapes. And the same applied for information. The country was totally controlled by the government. But Nikolai had landed a job working as a journalist in the Soviet news agency Novosti that had affiliated offices around the world.
“The only sources of information about surfing at that time were American magazines, which I managed to get through friends and colleagues who worked abroad,” he told me. “The magazines were old and shabby, obviously, I was the last one in a long line to read them. Thanks to them, I got an idea of how to do everything.”
So Nikolai decided to pursue his dream of riding waves. He learned about boards from those American magazines and asked his friends from the Department of Oceanology to help him find a suitable place for surfing. “They said that the best place to catch waves was in Crimea,” he said. “After some calculations, they pointed to a specific point. It turned out to be Cape Tarkhankut, thanks to the shape of the bay and the steepness of the coast. There was a big chance to catch a wave.”
Nikolai and his friend Vladimir Prozorovsky working on their first board. Photo courtesy Nikolai Petrovich Popov
In the summer of 1966, Nikolai Popov and his friend Vladimir Prozorovsky got together for a surf expedition to the Crimea on the Black Sea, southeast of Ukraine. “At that time buying a surfboard wasn’t an option so we decided to shape it by ourselves. I found foam plates 15 centimeters thick and of a suitable length. We loaded them on top of the car and departed to Crimea. Upon arrival at Cape Tarkhankut, my friend Vova and our wives, Nadya and Nina, stopped in a small hut on the coast. In the backyard, we glued three plates with epoxy and shaped the board using knives and saws. Then we wrapped it in fiberglass, again smeared with epoxy. The fin we made out of plywood.”
“Crimea has good opportunities for surfing,” Nikolai continued, “but swell doesn’t come often. We spent four days waiting for the waves, being so excited that we could hardly sleep or eat. Finally, on the morning of the fifth day, Vova heard the sound of breaking waves. He jumped out of bed, woke me up and we ran down to the shore. The waves were really good, so we paddled out. We had one board for two of us so we were riding in turns. The board we made turned out to be very strong, we did a good job. And we were really lucky to have surfable conditions for the next three weeks, up to the end of our vacation.”
Originally posted 2022-01-18 10:16:15.
