Congratulations on publication of your memoir, Married in Moscow: A Red-Hot Memoir in Cold War Times. We’ll get into it momentarily but first, please tell us about yourselves.
Thank you, Wayne. We had so much fun writing our memoir. Try writing with your spouse if you really want to test your marriage.
In August of 1979, we met in Moscow. Jim was hired by the British Embassy and Joann by the American Embassy. We were new teachers at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, the Soviet Union. We’ve lived and worked in four countries ranging from A to Z: America (USA), London, England (UK), Moscow, Russia (back in the USSR), and Zimbabwe (Africa). We now live in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.
JIM: Ironically, Joann lived about 10 miles away from me when she taught in London at an American School. I was born in Wimbledon. My interests run the gamut from geography to avant-garde electronic music and tennis. These interests appear in our Moscow story. With a PhD in education, I taught every grade from Kindergarten to College. I moved to technology but still in education.
JOANN: Born in Santa Monica, California, I taught biology and other sciences in the US and overseas. Later in life, I transitioned to medicine and research where I wrote academic articles about disasters and weapons of mass destruction. When I entered the strange world of biotech, it inspired me to write novels about the underlying crimes of genetic design. I love taking photographs. You will see quite a few in our story.
You’ve certainly led quite the life! Let’s dive into Married in Moscow. Can you give us an overview?
This brief overview is from the back cover of our book:
“On a hot August day at a Moscow airport, a mad Englishman arrives in a heavy sheepskin coat—carrying his guitar. A California wild child, who doesn’t follow rules, takes illegal photos and travels to areas “closed to foreigners”. Both are new teachers at the Anglo-American School in Moscow in 1979. And both have a lot to learn. They tell their story in two different voices.”
You write that Jim, a “mad Englishman,” and Joann, a “California wild child,” were teachers at the Anglo-American School in Moscow. Was that the first time you met?
We first met in Moscow in the summer of 1979 at an American Embassy tour of the Moscow Metro. We were the only two people who showed up.
JIM: I told Joann that I made wristwatches go backward and break. She must think it’s a bit odd. I am always on guard that I might recite Monty Python sketches or do the “silly walks” sketch.
JOANN: No, it was not love at first sight. And no, I would never date another teacher, especially one I would be working with. The American Embassy “social coordinator” was the modern-day equivalent of a dating app. I was single and new to Moscow, so she gave my telephone number to a few single men at the embassy. Really!
You were in Moscow from 1979 to 1981, which of course was a historic time for Russia. The Cold War was continuing. Tell us about what you witnessed then.
The world around us was rapidly changing. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and the US and UK boycotted the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. Our summer jobs with NBC ferrying film crews around disappeared. The US Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran brought Joann and a bus full of kids—the sons and daughters of diplomats and royalty—perilously close to the Iranian border.
The book is filled with photos and images. In a nutshell, what are they?
During the pandemic, Jim digitized hundreds of Joann’s slides that she had hidden away for over forty years. Some of the best are the photos in our book. Another hidden treasure was buried in a large poster tube—twenty Soviet communist propaganda and satire posters from the 1970s and early 1980s. We restored and framed our collection. Forty of our rare photographs, propaganda posters, and Russian dissident art, help bring our story to life in Moscow, Russia, and the Soviet Union.
We traveled throughout the Soviet Union but not always with each other. Jim took the Trans-Siberian railway to Lake Baikal with three women. Joann traveled with thirty middle school kids in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. We traveled together in the Baltics, Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), and Kiev (Kyiv) Ukraine, where we fell in love.
You write that “living in the Soviet Union during the Cold War did not come without risk.” What were the risks?
The average Russian was suspicious of foreigners for good reasons. Soviet propaganda created their image of the West. A Russian‘s career prospects plummet if you are seen being friendly with foreigners.
Navigating the streets of Moscow using an outdated CIA map while reading Cyrillic road signs was always a challenge. Remember, there were no cell phones with GPS with a friendly voice to guide you. Instead, you had the chance to be stopped by “friendly” traffic cops wanting ballpoint pens and cigarettes.
We were frequently followed. Our apartments were monitored and bugged. You always knew a visit when you found a cigarette butt in the toilet. There was Kompromat, a young man tried to compromise Joann in Kiev (Kyiv). In my case I got ladies making evening calls. Always with perfect English from Russian high school, they would invite me to meet them.
Jim plans a trip around the world during the Summer of 1980. But as we try to board the steamship bound for Japan all hell breaks loose when Joann is arrested and detained in a forbidden city, a Far East seaport. Just imagine what is going on in our minds while feisty Joann is videotaped, frog-marched, and locked in a tiny room with one wooden chair. In the meantime, Jim is adamant and refuses to board the steamship. Telephone calls are going back and forth between the Soviet authorities and the American Embassy and British Embassy. And the clock is ticking.
And yet, you had fun. Can you elaborate?
In Moscow, we could attend dinners, parties, and diplomatic receptions almost every night with our friends—the teachers, diplomats, and correspondents, mostly from Western countries. Friday nights, we’d have drinks with the Australian Ambassador, move on for card games at the Canadian Embassy, and late night at the Marine House Bar in the American Embassy, where dancing and all sorts of things going on.
And then there was the night eight of us teachers piled into a van for an evening of skating in Gorky Park. On most winter nights, the flooded, sprawling frozen trails were well-lit. But as it happened, it was the coldest night of the year and all lights had been turned off.
JIM: And we played broomball. It’s not played anywhere else in the world only by us crazy foreigners in Moscow. Imagine a frozen tennis court with two hockey goals. You hit a kid’s wiffle ball with short Russian brooms wrapped in tape. You have some protective hockey helmets, and knee and elbow pads. Unfortunately, with only trainers (tennis shoes) your movement on the ice looks like the famous scene from Bambi. Scoring goals is secondary to the taking out of opponents. It is a contact sport that some teams take very seriously.
At the season’s end Broomball Ball I was a DJ with Joann as my trusty assistant. I had a great idea. I should start the dancing with a brief twenty seconds of the Russian National Anthem that segued into Anita Ward’s Ring My Bell. It certainly made an impact on the ambassador’s Russian staff. They lodged a diplomatic complaint. The lesson I learned is that I would never be good diplomatic material!
This certainly sounds like it was interesting: You hosted the iconic Bob Hope at your school. Give us a taste of that visit please.
In March of 1980, U.S. Ambassador Watson invited Bob Hope to Moscow.
JIM: My kindergarten class is sitting up front in the school auditorium to hear our special guest, Bob Hope. After a short speech, Mr. Hope asks if anyone has questions. My five-year-olds need no further encouragement, a forest of hands goes up. I doubt any of them know who this famous person is, and Bob has no idea what a can of worms he has opened. He picks one of my kids who asks, “How big is your garage?” I will bet money on Bob Hope, a world-class entertainer, not expecting that question. I could see Bob groping for a laugh line and failing so he replied meekly “It’s pretty big.” Despite the rest of my little darlings hopping up and down to ask further questions, Bob is once bitten twice shy. He looks to ask a couple of more questions from the older students.
JOANN: Bob and Dolores Hope entertained a few hundred of us Americans in the Ambassador’s ballroom. Bob’s ad-libs, traditional jokes, and Dolores singing and dancing, more than delivered. But Jim only merits cocktails with London-born Bob at the British Embassy.
You write that “we want to share with [readers] our understanding of the suppression of dissidents, journalists, and political prisoners.” Tell us more.
We were lucky to have an American teacher friend who taught Russian at the Anglo-American School. She introduced us to Russian dissidents, artists, and refuseniks—some became our close friends. Alexander “Sasha” Kalugin, an artist who didn’t conform to the dictates of “Socialist Realism”, lived a hard life. He was often locked up in mental institutions and denied access to art supplies. Just imagine being locked up for what you create in your art. Jim bought him art supplies in Finland while Joann smuggled his artwork to America.
In today’s world of Russian political dissidents, Alexei Navalny, Putin’s brave nemesis, stands out as a hero. Putin’s thugs poisoned him with Novichok and repeatedly tried to kill him. Sadly, Navalny died last year in an Arctic penal colony.
The Kremlin allows no dissent. Putin feels even more emboldened, he believes he’s untouchable. For so many years, he’s kept an iron grip on Russia. That’s the way dictators work. He does whatever he wants, whenever he wants. And today in Russia, people are arrested and detained for as little as laying flowers at impromptu memorials.
The message is clear, toe the line or otherwise bad things might happen to you. You can be assassinated by gunshot as you walk across a Moscow bridge, or they will find other ways to kill you. Putin has a long reach and has eliminated people overseas. Maybe a chemical nerve agent, like Novichok, or biological poisons like ricin-tipped umbrellas. Or physical means like window falls, torture, or repeated beatings that will eventually lead to your demise. And then there is Putin’s personal favorite, “Vlad’s tea” laced with radioactive polonium. It not only kills you, but it also makes you glow.
Can you tell us about the imprisoned American teacher from the Anglo-American School of Moscow and other Americans who were released from Russian prisons?
In 2023, American Marc Fogel, a history teacher for nine years at the Anglo-American School (AAS), made the biggest mistake of his life and was sentenced to fourteen years in a Russian penal colony. In 2023, he was detained for smuggling medical marijuana in his luggage at a Moscow airport. In 2021, the Anglo-American School in Moscow became a charter school. Marc Fogel did not have diplomatic immunity, as we did. Teachers were no longer under the American Embassy’s protective umbrella. Cannabis offenses like Marc Fogel’s would barely raise an eyebrow in the U.S. today. Americans forget that there are countries where those products are illegal.
We do worry about the unfortunate plight of detained and incarcerated individuals. Using “prisoners” as pawns in a geopolitical struggle is a dangerous game that Putin is playing to get what he wants. Touted as a show of “good faith” by Putin, Mark Fogel was released on February 11, 2025. He was exchanged for Alexander Vinnik, an alleged cybercriminal who ran a multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency exchange, that apparently did business with drug dealers and identity thieves. Brittney Griner, charged with smuggling cannabis vapes, was exchanged for a convicted Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, the “Merchant of Death”.
It’s a high-priced swap when vape pens and medical marijuana are traded for combat weapons and cybercrime criminals.
Does the book have relevance today, with the Russia of Vladimir Putin?
JIM: Putin and I are only two years apart in age. In 1979 he was climbing up the KGB ladder. He learned to ruthlessly eliminate rivals and enemies as part of his KGB training. He lived through the failing economy of the Soviet Empire and its chaotic end. Russians of his age had a worldview shaped only by Communist propaganda and state-owned media outlets. Most Russian people today rely on state-run television for their news just as they did in the old Soviet system. Russians were told the West was to blame for the fall and ensuing chaos in Russia. Putin wants to regain some of the Soviet Empire, such as his military invasion of Ukraine. The KGB and his goal was and is to destroy Western democracy. The USSR in 1979-81 was only a few years from collapse in 1989. A person is shaped by the events they live through. Everything Putin does now in 2025 has echoes of the Soviet playbook. He has the same motivations.
And, yes, you married in Moscow! Tell us about your wedding.
JOANN: In the Fall of 1980, we had a little problem. Jim told friends, a British correspondent and his Jordanian wife, about our dilemma. They had a friend who was the Orthodox emissary of the Antioch Church. At the time, under the separation of church and state, religious wedding ceremonies were not legally valid. But their friend, the orthodox priest, told them his church had been granted diplomatic status as a hold-over from Czarist times.
The priest usually conducted services in Russian, Arabic, and Greek but he also spoke French and English. He had an English translation of the official Orthodox wedding ceremony, printed in America, but he had never used it. But he’d be happy to try it out.
So here we were on a Friday, set up to get married on Sunday in the Antioch Orthodox church in Moscow. With neither of us particularly religious—me, a lapsed Roman Catholic from Los Angeles, and Jim, a lapsed Anglican from London—neither of us felt conflicted. All preparations were a whirlwind of ad hoc efforts by friends, from flowers to food to finding the way to the church. Their spontaneity and generosity meant there was little Jim and I actually had to do, it all just seemed to happen without us. We were merely actors in this story of a most unusual wedding.
But the question is, were we legally married in the eyes of the Soviets?
Joann, you were already an author, of the novels Tiger, Tiger and Designer Baby. What inspired you to write this now?
JOANN: The pandemic and retirement brought plenty of cloistered days to muse about our time in Moscow. I wrote a short story, Married in Moscow, published in the 2020 Rhode Island Author Anthology. It evolved into our book-length memoir.
Finally, are there any more books in the making?
“In and Out of Africa”
Editor’s note: The Meads live in East Greenwich. This interview was conducted by email.
