ALL-SCHOOL/COMMUNITY READS

An exciting, high interest read, with an accessible reading level and lots of educational value, that make it great for an all-school or community read.

CROSS-CURRICULUM TIE-INS

• Social Studies: Supplement your units on the Cold War with this unique window into the lives of spies, diplomats, and their families.
• ELA: The story draws inspiration from works of classic literature including Treasure Island, Eugene Onegin, and The Master and Margarita.
• Music: The story highlights the power of music — from rock to classical — to fight repression and feed the human spirit.

THEMES

Back in the USSR covers the following themes:
Secrecy Trust Censorship Friendship Freedom

PRE-READING

Share this video of the author introducing Back in the USSR and talking about his life growing up in U.S. embassies inspired the story.

Ask Readers:

• What do you know about the Cold War?
• What do you know about The Beatles?
• What do you think will happen in the book?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS & ACTIVITIES

This guide contains lots of questions and activities, as well as lists of terms and names, to help structure discussions with your readers. They are grouped by theme.

Discussion Questions

CHARACTERS & RELATIONSHIPS

1. Harrison says, “I carried my Walkman with me overseas and across continents.” Is there something you carry with you wherever you go? What is it, and why?
2. Harrison’s daydreams provide him with companionship, distraction, and warnings. How can our imaginations help us make important choices in our daily lives? Do you think it’s possible to be too creative or too imaginative?
3. Harrison says his parents unintentionally named him after a Beatle, reversing the first and last names. Prudence was named after a song, but on purpose. How do you think their names affected them growing up? Do you think names are important? Has your name impacted your personality or life?
4. Harrison and Max come up with a secret way to communicate with each other over the phone, even when someone else may be eavesdropping. Do you have secret ways of communicating with friends? Can you think of other ways they could have communicated? What limitations did they have to work under?
5. Harrison’s parents have to keep secrets from him due to the nature of their work. He keeps secrets from them as well, and from Prudence. “How do you feel when people are keeping secrets from you? What do you do about it? How do you stay friends?” Would you work in a job that requires you to keep secrets?
6. Prudence represents the West to her Soviet classmates, but strives to maintain her own identity. She has parents of different racial backgrounds. To paraphrase Max, what boxes do people try to put her in? How do different parts of her identity affect her perspective and choices?
7. Harrison says, “All families have secrets. Some more than others.” He and Prudence have to make choices about how much and what to share with their parents, and each other. Sometimes it feels like you have to keep a secret instead of sharing it for someone else’s best interest, and sometimes for your own. How do you decide when and what to tell?
8. Gospodin is a KGB officer, but Harrison decides to trust him anyway. Why? Under what conditions would you trust someone you’ve been told not to? What are the risks and dangers?
9. After the Solicitor blames Yoko Ono, the wife of John Lennon and an artist in her own right, for the breakup of The Beatles, Prudence defends her. She tells Harrison, “What’s great about Yoko is she never asked for anyone’s approval. She never apologized for being different.” Is there a person you admire for standing up to criticism?
10. When Harrison enters the hotel suite where Gospodin lives, he tries to infer things about him from the furnishings and objects he sees. Look around your room at home. What might someone infer about you?

MUSIC & CULTURE

1. How much did you know about The Beatles before reading this book? Has it changed your impression of the band or their music?
2. In the Soviet Union and other communist countries of the 20th century, rock music was restricted or outright banned by the government. What impact do you think that had on its meaning and value to fans?
3. Nations, governments, and communities, both large and small, make choices about the music and art they encourage or discourage. Can you think of examples? How do they express these choices? What do their choices say about them?
4. Music today is easy to find. You can listen to anything, anywhere. That wasn’t always so. What happens to music when it’s scarce? What happens to it when it’s everywhere? Does it become less important or more?
5. Harrison says, “I’d never thought twice about dubbing music, copying albums, making mix tapes. Here, the simple act took on significance, and urgency.” What do various characters in the book say about the power of music? As a source of inspiration, and danger?
6. Can you think of a song that has personal meaning for you, but also reflects something about the world around you? What would happen if the government banned the song, so people couldn’t listen to it any longer?
7. The incident at the Bolshoi Theatre revolves around the works of two vastly different but iconic artists, one a 20th-century British rock band and the other a 19th-century Russian poet. In what ways do you think the Beatles and Alexander Pushkin might have reflected their respective cultures? How were they similar as national symbols, and how were they different?

HISTORY & SOCIAL STUDIES

1. What did you know about the Soviet Union and the Cold War before reading this book? Did you look things up while reading? Did the story or characters change what you thought about them?
2. Harrison’s father, Roy George, isn’t what he appears to be. Harrison doesn’t realize this until later in the story, and other employees at the U.S. Embassy aren’t aware either. Why would a government agency want to keep secrets from its own personnel? What are the advantages and disadvantages of a policy like that?
3. The Oxford American Dictionary defines revolution as “a forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system.” For Harrison, a revolution is something that happened long ago, either in the United States or Russia. Soviet Communists, on the other hand, also to the “Revolution” as an ongoing social process they hoped would lead to an ideal society. And a member of the underground tells Harrison and Prudence, “Our revolution is music.” Why do you think there are different meanings? What does the word mean to you?

STORY

1. Tatyana Nevskaya and Aleksey Gospodin often seem locked in a never-ending battle that began long ago. How might their story have happened differently in another time and place?
2. The story of Tatyana Nevskaya and Aleksey Gospodin echoes the one in Pushkin’s great poem, Eugene Onegin, making it quintessentially Russian. Find out more about the poem. How are the two stories similar, and how are they different?
3. At the end, Harrison imagines what might ultimately happen to Gospodin and Nevskaya. Do you agree with him? What do you think will happen to them? Harrison and Prudence decide to give the special copy of the White Album not to anyone who sought to find it, but to the Artist. Why do you think they did that? Would you have given it to someone different?

Activities

LISTENING

1. Listen to the song “Back in the USSR” by The Beatles. What is it about? What is the tone of the lyrics? What does it say about the Soviet Union? What does it say about The Beatles?
2. Listen to the Beatles song “Revolution.” What was John Lennon’s perspective on revolution? Why do you think he felt that way? Compare the single version with the version on the White Album. How do their different musical styles affect the meaning? Then listen to “Revolution 9” on the White Album. What does it have to do with revolution, and why do you think the Beatles called it that?
3. The German rock band Scorpions released a song in 1991 called “Wind of Change,” which immediately came to represent the aspirations of millions of people on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Listen to the song. Reflect on the lyrics and the tone. What was happening in the Soviet Union and Europe at the time? Why do you think the song held such power for so many people? Can you think of other songs that have captured moments in history? How does “Wind of Change” compare to “Back in the USSR”? (The band now plays a version of the song with altered lyrics about the war in Ukraine.)
4. BONUS ACTIVITY: Listen to the eight-episode podcast “Wind of Change,” which investigates the possibility that the CIA was involved in producing the Scorpions song. After hearing the evidence and theories presented, what do you believe? Why do you think governments would want to use popular culture in their efforts to influence other countries?
5. Listen to the author's interview on the Cold War Conversations podcast. What aspects of Harrison's life do you recognize from Back in the USSR? What were some of the challenges growing up for the author? How was it like and unlike the way you've grown up?

READING

1. We usually think of revolutions as seeking radical change in the realms of economics or politics. But some see it as even more fundamental. Music critic Ian MacDonald called the cultural change ushered in by The Beatles in the 1960s a “revolution in the head.” And the Czech activist (and later president) Vaclav Havel argued that the totalitarianism of Communist states demanded an “existential revolution.” Read excerpts from MacDonald’s introduction to his book and Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless.” What did they mean? How are their arguments similar and different? Why is music so important to both perspectives?
2. Read the companion to Back in the USSR, “The Double White Dossier.” Do you feel differently about any of the characters after hearing their stories?

SECRET COMMUNICATIONS

1. Harrison and Max employ a method of studio recording used by The Beatles and other bands called “backmasking.” Try it yourself! Come up with a secret message. Record it, play it backwards for a partner, and see if they can decipher it by listening. (Most likely, they won't be able to.) Then have your partner record your recording, play that backwards, and see if they can understand it now.
2. Choose a favorite musical artist, singer, or band. Use clues in their music to create directions to a secret location and a password for entry into a secret clubhouse, like the Cavern in the story.
3. The plain, pure-white sleeve design for the Beatles' White Album was thought to be revolutionary by some. Others thought it was just boring. What do you think? What can it mean for the story? Design an alternate record sleeve yourself for an album you like, and give it a personal or symbolic meaning.
4. Real-life spies were constantly engaged in cat and mouse games during the Cold War in capitals like Washington, D.C., Moscow, Vienna, and London. They used all kinds of gadgets (both high-tech and low-tech) and clandestine methods to exchange secret messages and deliver information. Research some of their gardgets and methods. Choose one, and write up a plan you could undertake in your own neighborhood.

Key Terms

Fiction can shed light on history in a unique way, differently from textbooks and other works of nonfiction, but also valuable. Think about the Terms, Places, People, and works of Music & Literature on the next few pages. Divide readers into small groups and assign each group a topics from each category. Their task: explain how each topic is important to the story, and how the story sheds light on the topic in a new or special way.

1. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, Soviet Union)
2. Bolshevik Revolution
3. Communist Party
4. Central Committee & Politburo
5. Committee for State Security (KGB)
6. Melodiya
7. Matryoshka doll
8. Soviet Socialist Realism
9. The Gulag
10. The Iron Curtain
11. The Thaw
12. Pravda
13. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
14. U.S. Department of State (Secretary of State, Foreign Service, Embassies, Ambassadors)
15. U.S. Information Agency (USIA)
16. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
17. Walkman
18. LP records
19. Tape cassettes

Notable Places

1. Moscow
2. Gorky Park
3. Lenin Hills
4. Lubyanka Prison
5. The Kremlin
6. Red Square
7. Lenin’s Tomb
8. The Arbat
9. Bolshoi Theater
10. Spaso House
11. Leningrad
12. Kazakhstan
13. Siberia
14. The Cavern Club
15. Abbey Road Studios

Notable People

1. The Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr)
2. Alexander Pushkin
3. Tchaikovsky
4. Karl Marx
5. Vladimir Lenin
6. Nikita Khrushchev
7. Leonid Brezhnev

Music & Literature

(Each of these works is referenced in Back in the USSR or inspired it in some way.)

1. The Beatles (AKA "The White Album")
2. Eugene Onegin (novel in verse by Pushkin)
3. Eugene Onegin (opera by Tchaikovsky)
4. Player Piano (Kurt Vonnegut)
5. The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
6. Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)

THE AIRPORT

Jet planes screamed down the runway, thumping and skidding. An electric guitar twanged. Drums rolled to a crescendo. 

I carried my Walkman with me overseas and across continents, but in truth, I didn’t need it. I heard the songs in my head. Here in the enemy capital, they'd keep me sane. My passport would keep me safe. And my daydreams, they’d keep me company.

My breath condensed on the glass as I watched through the terminal window. It made no difference to the view. Moscow winter painted the sky a dull bronze, wrapped the hangars in a dull beige, and coated the tarmac in a dull powder.

Inside, the arrival gate smelled like stale bread. It was standing room only by the time I got there, and the lucky people sitting in the cracked plastic seats stared into space out of dead eyes. The militsiya weren’t letting anyone through customs.

We’d been waiting an hour or more when it happened. A shift in the air, a buzz, a vibration. It dislodged the haze from my mind. I turned. The crowd parted, and she appeared.

She snapped orders in Russian at the underlings who swarmed around her as they tried to keep up. You could have mistaken her for nobility, if we hadn’t been in a communist state. She radiated power and purpose, from the way she moved right down to the point of her nose and the angle of her cheeks.

She was utterly beautiful, like no one I’d ever seen.

Straight, dark hair fell to her neck. A long coat swept behind her. She glided like her feet didn’t touch the ground, and she wore a smirk that said she belonged to a different world.

I belonged to a different world too — a boarding school in Connecticut, the Charles Froate Hall Academy. About as different a world as there was from the Soviet Union. But I was back in the USSR, just arrived from New York via Frankfurt on one of those screaming, skidding Aeroflot jets.

The mystery woman glanced my way. She did it casually, and gave no outward hint she noticed me, but I’ll never forget what I saw in her eyes. Dreams took shape in their depths. Visions flashed. They lasted a moment, then were gone.

She floated forward. A soldier with a red star on his olive jacket snapped to attention. He scurried to open a swinging panel to give her passage, and she disappeared.

I couldn’t tear my gaze from the spot. Her aura lingered, and I stood there, hoping, maybe, she’d come back.

Instead, a voice crackled over the loudspeaker. All the machinery of Sheremetyevo International Airport swung into action. The customs booths filled up with officers, the plastic seats emptied, and the masses lined up before I could move from my window.

Somehow, the beat of my pulse overpowered the fog in my brain. All I knew was that I had to catch another glimpse.

I’d gone through the customs ritual before, so I knew what had to be done. I slipped around the back of the crowd to the far side, where the booth said “Диплома́ты.” Diplomats.

I’d evaded the proletariat. Now I faced the bureaucracy and its glacial cogs.

I slid my passport under triple-paned glass. The Soviet officer took his time. He studied the document, cocked an eyebrow, stamped a page, triple-stamped another. I was only a teenager. He didn’t want to harass me. He wanted to get out of his booth, go home to his wife.

He held my passport up, jammed a finger at it, and spoke, finally, in stilted English. 

“This is you?”

I tried to approximate my sleepy expression in the photo — it was easy — and nodded.

“Age?”

“Fourteen.”

“Purpose of travel?” 

For a boy carrying a diplomatic passport, it should’ve been obvious. I wanted to say, Well, it’s not for pleasure, I can tell you that much.

“Visiting my parents. At the U.S. Embassy.”

As he scribbled, cocked, and stamped, I bounced on my toes, trying to see past customs. Partitions blocked the way. I swiveled to face the thick lines I’d skirted.

One consisted of foreigners, non-diplomats, marked by bright clothing against a dominant palette of glum. Soon they’d be taken under wing by Intourist, the state travel agency, whose guides would follow them everywhere. The guides did double duty as spies, monitoring visitors and reporting their movements to state security. Everyone knew it. Nobody blamed them. It was their job.

Soviet citizens made up the rest. Customs officers with gloved hands pulled at straps and tugged at zippers. They rifled through carry-ons, extracted underwear, examined rolled-up socks, all in search of smuggled Deutsche Marks or other contraband. One guard confiscated a paper bag full of cigarette packs. Another drew an LP record out of a briefcase like a rabbit from a hat and scratched a key across the shiny black surface. Its owners looked on numbly.

Meanwhile, my bags would go untouched. 

It was a privilege, but it wasn’t only that. It was a separation for Western diplomats that pervaded every aspect of our life in Moscow, beginning right here. They wanted to keep us in a cocoon from the moment we entered the country to the moment we left. We could go every day with little or no contact with ordinary Russians. We lived in designated buildings, worked in guarded compounds, and socialized in our own tight-knit diplomatic communities. 

Cracks in the barriers could open, and Westerners could widen them. But it meant taking risks. For the Russians. And for us.

I didn’t like risks. All I wanted for my winter break was to be left alone.

The officer grunted, and I turned back. He slid my passport through the glass, flaunting a toothy grin. I snatched it off the counter and shuffled off. If I hurried, maybe, I could catch her. 

Before I’d gone three steps, a voice echoed in my head. My father’s.

Flip through the pages. Every time. Make sure every stamp has the right date. Make sure they give you back your passport, not someone else’s. Remember, they’re always watching, waiting for you to slip up. You have to pay attention to every detail.

The thought of losing my diplomatic passport, my little shield, paralyzed me. I stopped. Flipped through the pages, checked every stamp.

And lost my advantage. The masses started to reconvene on this side of customs, moving slower than molasses toward the baggage claim. I pushed through. 

In New York and Frankfurt, Instamatics snapped away as happy travelers reunited with friends and family. Not here. No photos at Sheremetyevo. It was absolutely forbidden, the absence of flashes leaving the atmosphere eerily subdued.

I stood on my toes again, craned my neck in every direction. She was gone.

Instead, a stocky man with a bushy mustache stood in my path, squinting at me. He was the spitting image of Josef Stalin, the dictator who had ruled the USSR with an iron fist. But he carried a sign, and it had a name on it.

My name. 

Harrison George. 

Yes, my parents had named me after a Beatle. Inadvertently, apparently. And backward. Stalin didn’t seem amused. 

Next to him lay a canvas duffle bag with airline tags. I recognized it as mine.

I didn’t recognize him.

“I’m Harrison.”

“Ah. Mister Harrison. Your parents, they are, ah, detained. They send regrets. I am driver from Embassy. Sasha.”

The way he said the word detained sounded slightly ominous. And the fact that I couldn’t see his mouth under his mustache unnerved me.

I peered around him, still hoping to see her somewhere beyond. He misinterpreted.

“Nothing wrong, Mister Harrison. They are working late, is all. Come, I have bag. Davai. We go for car.”

He lifted my duffle, and I followed him past the baggage carousel as it spit suitcases out of a metal turret like an armored tank.

Nothing wrong. A warning bell rang inside my head in a moment of lucidity — or paranoia. I had no way to know who this man really was. 

Maybe the likeness to a former Soviet dictator was no coincidence. Maybe the KGB recruited for that. Maybe my parents were somewhere else in the airport, checking their watches, inquiring after me.

I saw myself thrown into the trunk of a dark sedan, bound and gagged, bruised against the spare tire as my “driver” weaved and swerved through the chaos of Moscow traffic, before I was dumped into a basement deep inside the infamous Lubyanka Prison, left there for hours with the taste of rope in my mouth, mesmerized by the swinging back and forth of a light on the ceiling, until finally placed before a line of faceless men who hissed unintelligible interrogatories at me.

I’d seen Lubyanka Prison before from a car window and scoffed at the dreaded KGB headquarters, thinking myself bold, confident I had nothing to fear from its imposing facade. I was the son of U.S. diplomats. What could they do to me?

Now, following this stranger who carried my bag, I asked myself that question again. What could they do?

I thought I’d been safe. I’d laughed. Who’d be laughing now?