As a US presidential candidate spent the honeymoon in the USSR

Photo: Facebook US Senator Bernie Sanders

In 1988, the mayor of the American city of Burlington, Bernie Sanders, arrived in Yaroslavl as part of the search for sister cities. The trip coincided with the honeymoon of Sanders. “Believe me, it was a very strange honeymoon,” the current presidential candidate of America wrote almost 10 years after that trip. However, in Yaroslavl he was still warmly supported, and the delegations from there Sanders still personally receive in Vermont. About the adventures of Bernie Sanders in Yaroslavl tells the author of The Wall Street Journal Paul Sonne.

In 1988, the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Bernie Sanders arrived in Soviet Yaroslavl with his newly made wife, Jane. Then, in the midst of the Gorbachev era, politicians from all over the world went to the USSR, and twin cities in the West were selected to all the more or less well-known Russian cities.

Yaroslavl, with its 600 thousands of residents, preserved royal architecture, churches and vibrant cultural life was, as residents of the city recall, an enviable “bride”. Proposals to become sister came from a variety of places. So Bernie Sanders' business trip to the USSR was originally connected with the program of sister cities. Already later, Sanders and his lover decided to get married in order to combine a business trip and a honeymoon.

The meeting was held in the traditional Russian style. For example, the guests spent the last evening in the rest house of the employees of the oil refinery, lawyer Howard Siver, who worked on the agreement on sister cities, recalls. There, after a traditional bathhouse with brooms, the meeting participants sat down at the table opposite each other and learned “what several vodka toasts can do to a person in a row,” Siver recalls.

Bernie Sanders spoke more restrained: “Believe me, it was a very strange honeymoon,” he wrote in his memoirs in 1997 year.

Anyway, Yaroslavl and Burlington became sister cities and over the following years hundreds of Yaroslavl and Burlington visited each other’s cities. Several people got married, and one Yaroslavl even opened a pizzeria in Burlington. The first Soviet delegation of three in Burlington Sanders was entertaining personally. And some exchange programs have survived to this day, despite the difficulties in Russian-American relations.

For example, in 2013, already Senator Sanders again personally received the next Russian delegation in Vermont. There he met the 37-year-old owner of the analytical startup Vladimir Khryashchev. Senator Sanders asked him if the average Russian family could buy a computer. And Khryashchev told him that his entourage knows about American politics, mainly from the “House of Cards” series, which was shown on Channel One, and he is sure that you can get into the White House only if you have huge fortunes and secret agents of influence.

Despite the fact that the population of Yaroslavl in 14 is more than the population of Burlington, the cities have much in common, according to the author of The Wall Street Journal. As an example, he cites the election in Yaroslavl in 2012, the opposition mayor, who is now being tried in Russia for bribery. In addition, in both cities is quite cold. “Our cities are cold, but with hot hearts,” the president of the Yaroslavl Society of Russian-American Friendship Irina Novikova agrees with the author.

Novikova said she recently filled out an official letter of public support for Sanders in the presidential election, but she wondered if this would harm him in light of the current state of Russian-American relations. Which is quite prudent, because Sanders’s American opponents really use his 1988 journey of the year in Yaroslavl against him. So, the ex-candidate for senators, Republican Lindsay Graham, hinting at Sanders’s socialist views, joked that he “went to the Soviet Union on a honeymoon, and it seems he never returned.”