Introduction
In
the spring of 1978 I traveled to what was then the Soviet
Union along with 29 other Virginia Tech engineering
juniors and a faculty advisor. We spent two weeks
touring Leningrad, Moscow,
Riga, and Tallin where we
visited universities, factories, and museums. The
trip was sponsored by the College of Engineering and
supported by funds provided to the College by a $12
million bequest from John Lee Pratt, an Virginia
industrialist who died in 1975. In preparation for the
trip, we were required to take a course in Russian where
we learned some basic phrases ("where is the
bathroom?") and received an overview of Soviet
history and culture.
We traveled from Blacksburg, Virginia to Leningrad via New York and Helsinki. This was my first trip outside the United States, and it was very memorable. One of the students, Doug Burton, kept a diary of the trip that was reproduced by the College of Engineering in a report concerning the Pratt Expenditures. Excerpts from his diary are presented below along with some of my photographs and images from the trip.
