NEW YORK — Clifford Rosenthal, executive director of National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, will take a trip back into his earlier life when he travels later this month to Russia to participate in a credit union meeting there.
Before getting involved with community development and credit unions, Rosenthal studied Russian history at the graduate level at Columbia University, specializing in pre-revolutionary history. He can read Russian fluently but admits that time may have undermined his ability to speak it. The trip to the Eastern European Technical Congress, to be held in Moscow over September 10-12, will be Rosenthal's third trip to Russia.
According to WOCCU, the Technical Congress, which it is co-sponsoring with the Russian Credit Union League, has two objectives: building relations among national associations of participating countries and featuring first-class presentations on technical requirements for credit union growth.
The meeting will also cover topics such as financial management and planning, collections, internal controls, market analysis and product pricing and savings mobilization, WOCCU said. Participants will also be able to network with credit union leaders from Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Lithuania and Uzbekistan.
Rosenthal said his trip will also include traveling to St. Petersburg and meeting with credit union leaders there.
Rosenthal said he made his first trip to Russia, then the Soviet Union, in 1969, attached to a German student group and then returned for the second time soon after the Soviet Union had fallen and while Boris Yeltsin was President.
"It was an incredible difference in atmosphere," Rosenthal said, describing the Soviet Union of the first trip as "basic" and "austere." "It had none of the color and advertising that we took for granted in the West," Rosenthal said. This was in sharp contrast to his trip later when he found not only the sorts of stores in Moscow that one would expect to see in Paris, but also elderly women begging and drunkards asleep on the sidewalks.
"I look forward to seeing how things have changed since the last time," Rosenthal said.
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