Ex-Soviet Diplomat Meets Top Challenge: 7Th-Graders -- He Finds Students Hard To Reach

PORTLAND - He's mended ties with Fidel Castro, halted arms to Daniel Ortega and rebuffed Manuel Noriega.

But it was only this year that former Soviet ambassador Yuri Pavlov came face to face with the diplomatic challenge of his career: seventh-graders.

Pavlov, 66, the man who translated for Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis, has taken a job at Floyd Light Middle School, teaching English as a second language.

With a $45 monthly pension from Moscow and no plans to return to his homeland in its current political situation, he said he took the job for a simple reason.

He wanted the work.

"I had a choice: teach part time in the university or use my English to help immigrant children," he said. "I went with the children."

Pavlov's journey from the Kremlin to the classroom began in 1991, when he decided 37 years with the government was enough. He cabled Moscow from abroad with news of his retirement.

A month later, the Soviet Union broke apart, and Pavlov watched his pension from the crumbling government dwindle to almost nothing. Like many of his colleagues, he found himself pursuing a second career in American academia.

Pavlov's first job on U.S. soil was at the University of Miami, where he worked as a research associate for the North-South Center. He wrote several articles on Russian foreign relations, as well as a book, "Soviet-Cuban Alliance in 1959-1991."

In 1994, he moved to Portland, where he found the climate similar to his homeland's, and bought a ranch house in a modest neighborhood.

Pavlov worked the college lecture circuit for several years and then landed at Floyd Light Middle School last year, more by accident than by design.

Principal George Martin recalls his first glance at Pavlov's resume.

"I'm thinking, `Here's a man who's been an ambassador, and I'm offering him $9 an hour?' " Martin said. "Of course, I did offer him the job."

Pavlov took it, learning quickly the challenges of working with children and providing a vital link to the area's large immigrant population.

District officials helped Pavlov get a certificate from the state that allowed him to apply for a higher-paying teaching job.

He started in September, joining his wife, Valentina, now an instructional assistant in the district, and his daughter, Marina Smith, who teaches English-as-a-second-language classes at an elementary school.

In his class one recent afternoon, Pavlov stood before the "world history" bulletin board, his students oblivious to the role he had played.

Not so with some of the school's teachers and administrators, who listened, mesmerized, as he gave an insider's look at men and events they'd only read about.

Pavlov described his former boss, Mikhail Gorbachev as "outwardly friendly, but in real fact, not so friendly. Let's put it this way. He wasn't always sincere."

Khrushchev, he said, was impulsive and easy to deal with, although he often got carried away and spoke in long sentences, making translation a challenge.

Outside the classroom, Pavlov continues his research on Russian foreign policy.

For now, he has his hands full with his adolescent charges, who he says can be more trying than Fidel Castro. Because of difficult family situations or cultural barriers, he's having trouble getting through.

"They don't have the desire to learn," he said. "The challenge I am facing is how to awaken that sense of intellectual curiosity."