Chris Matthews: I can’t stop thinking of ‘duck and cover’ drills from my childhood

When I grew up in Philadelphia, we ended each Sunday Mass by praying for the “conversion of Russia.” People my age – 76 – will remember the hope we shared that the then-Soviet Union would change. We didn’t know when or how, but we believed that through God’s intervention, the people of Russia would overthrow their tyrannical government. Even as children, we knew that we — Americans — certainly couldn’t do it ourselves.

The reason: the danger of nuclear war.

On a regular basis, the Sisters of Mercy who taught us at St. Christopher’s up in Somerton drilled us on what could happen if the Russians struck. It was, even in memory now, a traumatic education.

The sisters told us that the warning would come just 15 minutes in advance. To practice, we would hide under our desks and await a frightening flash of light and then an attack from the air. We were to pray, of course, because, if this actually happened, it was the sign of an atomic bomb exploding and we would know that World War III had begun — and with it, the end of the world.

» READ MORE: In Jenkintown, an order of nuns works to get medicine and supplies to Ukraine. The prayers ship free.

Even all these years later, it’s hard to forget all that — the fear of what might happen, the hope in the Russian people who could make the horror go away.

So I wasn’t surprised to hear what President Biden, who grew up just like me, said last month — that Vladimir Putin “can’t remain in power.” He was voicing a hope, a prayer, that the people of Russia themselves will change and overthrow the horrid direction Putin is taking them as Russian troops attack Ukraine.

As Biden made clear later, he was “expressing moral outrage.” He was voicing the hope that the Russian people will rise up and reject Putin’s rule. He was most certainly not talking about our country invading Russia and overthrowing its president and its government. As he clarified, he wasn’t “talking about taking down Putin.”

“It’s hard to forget ... the fear of what might happen, the hope in the Russian people who could make the horror go away.”

Why? Because Joe Biden grew up as I and every other American did of those times: knowing full well that to attack Russia was to start a Third World War. As a child, Biden surely experienced the same drills that I and my classmates at St. Christopher’s endured. He surely remembers the terror of crouching under a desk and praying for safety, praying for atomic bombs to stay far away from the United States.

As we watch the war unfold in Ukraine, and the bravery of the Ukrainian people, I think of Hungary in 1956, when we cheered for the people of Budapest as they challenged Soviet tanks with nothing but cobblestones and Molotov cocktails.

We young Americans, those of us who dove under desks and said prayers to stave off nuclear war, were totally frustrated watching it unfold on our new television sets. We saw the Russians crush the freedom of those courageous people and could do nothing about it.

That same frustration grew again in 1968 when Warsaw Tanks crushed the “Prague Spring” of Alexander Dubcek.

In both those times, Americans knew the good guys from the bad guys, the bully from the victim.

Yet we were held back due to the fear of nuclear war. We couldn’t go racing into those captive nations and free them, because it would lead to an Armageddon.

I remember when the horrible Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died in March 1953. I was in second grade. Sister surprised us by leading us in a prayer.

I clearly recall wondering why. Stalin was the terrifying dictator of the dreaded Soviet Union that held power over Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and all of Eastern Europe. He had grabbed all these countries and held them in Communist captivity just as he had the Russian people themselves. Now, this villain who had loomed over the world was gone. So why did Sister want us to pray?

For those who didn’t grow up in that time, it’s impossible to appreciate the power of that moment, that moment of death and hope, especially for our young souls in that classroom.

Today, almost 70 years later, we live very much in the aftermath of that time, one that our president himself recalls and, as his words of recent weeks tell us, feels so deeply.

Were we praying that Stalin meet his eternal punishment? Out of gratitude that this frightening figure was gone from the earth?

Or was it out of hope that Russia would change?

Chris Matthews is the former host of MSNBC’s “Hardball.” He is working on a biography of Sen. Edward Kennedy for Simon & Schuster.