Torshin, a former administrator of the massive Artek summer camp on the Black Sea in Ukraine, is visiting the United States to research camps in the hopes of reversing their dramatic decline since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
On Friday he met with staff members of the Meriden YMCA to learn about its Mountain Mist Outdoor Day Camp.
Torshin didn't have a good understanding of what a day camp was, he told YMCA Executive Director John Benigni though his wife and translator, Galina Torshin.
The few day camps that operate in Russia tend to be hosted inside schools in dense urban areas, and don't have much to offer children, he said.
The staff of the YMCA. At 110 W. Main St., showed Torshin pictures and described the marketing, funding and operation of the camp, and later took him on a tour.
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The local YMCA's membership and marketing director, Joan Goodman, told Torshin about the nonprofit organization and tried to explain its mission of not only serving its members but bettering its community.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, 6,000 state-supported summer camps suddenly found themselves for-profit institutions, Torshin said, and many of them have failed since then.
The numerous factories and state-run companies around the country were once required to operate summer camps for the children of their workers, but those rules disappeared with the collapse of communism, and the newly-privatized corporations found it easier to sell off the camps for development.
Today there are only about 2,000 summer camps left in Russia, and Torshin is working on a book about American summer camps in the hopes that the last of the Russian camps can adopt some of their practices and survive.
But an apples-to-apples comparison may not be possible, he said. Torshin's wife, Galina, explained that Russia's mostly urban youth are not really interested in roughing it. The couple was surprised while touring another camp in the state to see a cabin with bunk beds. In Russia, bunk beds are prohibited as unsafe, she said, and letting children stay in tents would never be allowed.
Vladamir Torshin ran one of Artek's 10 sub-camps for almost 10 years, he said. Altogether, the camp houses 4,000 students in large apartment buildings fronting the Black Sea. Artek was founded in 1920 and has its own hospital, dining halls, movie theater and 7,000-seat sports stadium, At one time, it had a school. The camp now functions only in the summer, however.
Tuition for a 21-day stay at the camp used to be covered by the government, but now parents have to pay up to $2,000.
The nicest camp features luxury accommodations with Italian furniture, Torshin said, but there are less expensive camps with a slightly more rustic feel.
Artek is not in danger of failing, he said, and it remains popular with children.
Benigni joked that it sounded like a place he'd like to take a vacation.
"There used to be a lot of (communist) politics and ideology," Torshin said, "but there have always been useful, interesting, fun activities for children."
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