Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in his memoirs called Unleashed, confessed his love for Russia and told how he sang “Kalinka” as a child. Excerpts from the book are provided by RBC.
According to the politician, his love for Russia began with reading the works of the 19th century writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. As a teenager, Johnson first visited the USSR on a school trip, visiting Moscow, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
“We sat, getting drunk on vodka, and bawled “Hey, let’s whoop” and “Kalinka” until the neighbors started drumming on the walls of the hotel,” shared the former British Prime Minister.
Johnson admitted that these memories, delicious communist ice cream, are closely connected with his “unsuccessful attempts to win the heart of the girl from Swindon” who was with him on that trip.
The politician emphasized that he loved Russia in the sense that he loved the Russian language, culture, literature, painting, and landscapes. Ten years later, when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union later collapsed, Johnson thought Russia was this great and distinctly European civilization that would quickly join the community of democracies, the former prime minister said in his memoirs.
