September 01, 2009

Moscow to Vladivostok

I have always wanted to cross my country from one end to the other—all of its nine thousand kilometers and seven time zones. I finally boarded the Moscow-Vladivostok train and for the entire trip I found myself thinking of those who came before me, those who had made this journey by sleigh, in horse-drawn carts, on horseback or on foot, in irons. It took six days and seven nights, and in the end it was not only a journey through space,

but through time.

From Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod

At 9:25 pm on odd-numbered days of the calendar, a train to Vladivostok departs from Moscow’s Yaroslavl Station. The photographer and I bought sleeping car tickets. The travel time was six days and seven nights, and my leg had been bothering me after a recent injury, so it would have been difficult to handle the jostling in a couchette or a third-class platzkart car. The flagship train of the Russian Railroads, designated as Train No. 1, rockets toward the Pacific Ocean across a distance of 9,250 kilometers. The cars are painted the white, blue and red of the national tricolor and the word Rossiya is emblazoned over its windows.

Until Vladimir, the night outside our window is pierced with lights. It is an old, densely settled land, and the groves of trees that come into view now and again disappear quickly. The train rocks gently. Suburban stations zoom by. This is still the realm of Muscovites’ dachas.

Lying on my side, I dream of the rivers that await and whisper their names like an incantation: Vyatka, Kama, Tobol, Irtysh, Ob, Tom, Chulym, Yenisey, Selenga, Zeya, Bureya, Amur, Khor, Ussuri...

From Nizhny Novgorod to Kirov

In the morning of the first day, we head for the restaurant car, where we meet the manager, Lendrik. He is a typical Armenian with a nose like an eagle’s beak and eyes like black olives. Yet he is originally from Georgia, from the city of Abasturman.

“It used to be a world-class resort. There was a sanatorium on every mountain peak. Just breathing the air could cure TB. But there is nothing left now. No one needs it. Had I not left, I would have drunk myself to death or become a drug addict, like all the other guys of my generation. We moved to Saratov, and our kids started school. At first, other kids were hostile toward them, but later they became friends. It’s easier for kids, of course. Grown-ups don’t have it so well, right? My father died two years ago. My mother has only recently been able to go back to Georgia, to visit her friends.”

Lendrik had a major surgery and almost died. Some friends helped him get this job in a restaurant car.

“I’ve tried lots of jobs. Now I feed people.”

“You have a strange name.”

“When I was born, my father was doing his military service somewhere in Russia. He made up a name by putting together the first letters in his army buddies’ names. All his friends were of different nationalities. Everybody lived in peace back then.”

“Did you sell your house in Georgia?”

“Are you kidding? I could never sell my house. It’s where my ancestors are buried.”

“What kind of work did you do before?”

“I’ve been a lot of things. In Abasturman I drove a truck, then a bus. In Saratov I did construction. We had to start up our life from scratch. I don’t wish it on anyone.”

He sits at a table piled high with bills and looks at us with his sorrowful, Armenian eyes. Lendrik is 50. We are the same age.

I catch myself thinking that the 1990s had just flown by and, living in Moscow, I hardly even noticed the decade. All I can do is joke:

“I thought you were named for Land Rover.”*

“I don’t even know the names of my father’s buddies. It was so long ago. I’ll be a grandfather myself soon. Next to that kind of joy, everything else is just nonsense. I can’t wait. What about you? Do you want to be a grandfather?”

From Kirov to Balezino

You can strike up an acquaintance in the tambour1 or just walking through the wagons. Olga, a nurse from Kirov, is traveling with her small daughter to Ussuriysk, to visit her sister, who is married to a man in Primorye Territory.

“All the way from Vyatka?”

“From Kirov. We only call our local train the Vyatka.”2

There is apprehension in her eyes. She has not made up her mind yet whether she should be engaging in a casual conversation with a stranger.

I introduce myself. Suddenly, she starts telling me her life story.

“I’m a cardiology nurse at the Russian Railroads hospital.”

“Where is your daughter’s father?”

She answers steadily, looking me straight in the eye:

“He’s a long-haul trucker. He wanted a break from us. And we from him.”

”Have you ever been to Ussuriysk?”

“Never. It’s my first time.”

She is young and beautiful, and she is going very far. It doesn’t seem to be just an ordinary visit. Is she running away from her husband? Did their daddy decide to take a long break from them or did he merely go fishing with the guys? Olga’s parents are dead.

“Is this a reconnaissance trip then, to Ussuriysk?”

“Something like that.”

“Would you like to move there?”

“There is plenty of work in Kirov right now. But if I find happiness there, I could consider moving.”

“Are you earning enough?”

“We manage.”

From Balezino to Perm

The Martian landscape out the window is completely overgrown with giant hogweed. In Stalin’s era, some luminary at the Academy of Agriculture introduced it as cattle feed. Although quite fleshy, the hogweed turned out to be poisonous. The invading weed is spreading aggressively, occupying all the uncultivated patches and abandoned fields, spreading its flowering tentacles further and further out from Central Russia. It has by now crossed the Vyatka. Its plantations penetrate forests and besiege poor, scattered villages. No one bothers to fight it, living alongside it with a “Let It Grow” philosophy. Back around Moscow, there are fields of fireweed, which tends to resist the poisonous interloper, but it’s not a fair fight.

The woods become thicker, the deciduous trees mixed with firs. Ponds glisten in the sun. The water is overgrown with grass, with narrow pathways cut by ducklings and slightly wider ones by their parents.

Track walkers’ houses are built of railroad ties and stand next to the tracks at regular intervals. They are painted white and blue, the colors of the railroad, and they are like milestones marking the entire route to Vladivostok. Each house has a single window. A stack of firewood nearby. A thin, sheet metal chimney, like on a samovar.

Slightly larger houses gather together in hamlets. They seem to have been built after World War II. At the time, no one built large houses. Money was tight and, besides, it was not permitted. Under socialism, everyone had to live equally modestly. Chained dogs bark at the passing express. Neat rows of potatoes are planted in small plots behind barbed wire fences. If houses are of brick and not wood, and if they are served by a decent road, it means that a city is approaching. These are dachas, not rural homes. They were built recently, for real money. But, strangely enough, their plots also have rows of potatoes, probably planted by retirees, the dacha owners’ parents, who seem unable to abandon old ways.

From Perm to Yekaterinburg

It is still just the second day, but we’ll be in Perm at 5 p.m. I came here for the first time in 1979, when I was writing my senior thesis on the expansion of Novgorod to the Russian North. Novgorodian Gyuryata Rogovich crossed the Urals on skis in 1098 and came back to report that he had seen a heaven on earth, with huge deer herds, where the lakes and rivers were overflowing with countless flocks of unhunted fowl, where sable was as plentiful as mushrooms. He could not imagine that the Earth extended further still. In the Middle Ages, sable fur was exported to European markets, where it was prized in those countries where previously fox had been the most valuable fur. Sable and marten were ancient Rus’ hard currency. They were why Russia began its gradual eastward expansion.

In the late 14th century, having obtained a letter of protection from Prince Dmitry Donskoy, the monk Stefan of Perm (secular name Stepka Khrap), a friend and associate of St. Sergius of Radonezh, came to this remote land to spread Orthodox Christianity. He traveled in the footsteps of Novgorod raiders, floating down rivers and portaging non-navigable portions. He was captured by the Votyaks, who placed firewood around him and even added a handful of straw. But none could muster the courage to light the fire. The pagans were impressed by the man’s modest appearance and courage in the face of death. He was released and immediately set about smashing pagan altars. He even cut down the sacred birch in Ust-Vym. In its place, he built the first wooden church. He was like Odysseus, who, according to Homer, built his palace around a tree stump, which he used as his nuptial bed. It is doubtful that Odysseus’ palace was very large, and likely neither was the church at Ust-Vym.

On my first trip here, Perm seemed very far away, almost at the edge of the world. In reality, we had a long way to go to reach the edge: five days and six nights.

In 1979, the winter was cruelly cold. Teams had to be sent out in the city to patrol the last stops of the trolleybus lines to collect the drunks. In that kind of weather, falling asleep outside meant never waking up again. The trolleybus tires creaked on snow as hard as sand; their graphite poles provoked yellow-blue sparks from the electric lines.

It is summer now. We stop for 15 minutes at a small station outside Perm. They are selling potato and cabbage pies and bliny stuffed with farmer’s cheese. Old wives and local women making a living, each in their own way.

“How large is this town of yours?”

“Who the hell knows. Buy an egg?”

It’s almost night time. Why would I need an egg before going to bed?

An old man walks down the platform, waving a huge smoked bream.

“Shark! Shark!”

No one wants to buy a shark, either.

I glimpse a signpost alongside a broken-down road. Morozy [“Frosts”] straight ahead, Lugovaya to the left. I will never forget the frosts of 1979.

From Yekaterinburg to Novosibirsk

The first thing that meets the eye in the morning is a house with a slate roof, with the words “For Sale” etched into it. Who is selling it? It’s doubtful any new owner would spend money to paint the sign over. He’ll probably live there until the letters are erased by time and weather. Next to the house are the burned-out shells of three other houses. Fire is the eternal bane of Wooden Russia.

A late Siberian Chronicle contains the following tale. In the 17th century, the warlords of Tobolsk sent a letter to the tsar, complaining about frequent fires plaguing their city and asking for advice. “Some tell us that the cockroach carries cinders from house to house in its ear, and therefore, what is to be done? Should we freeze houses during severe frosts, in order to kill the cockroach, which would be very inconvenient, or is it all a lie perhaps?” The reply came two years later, since that was how long it took messengers to get there and back. The answer was laconic: “It’s a fool’s prerogative to listen to other fools.”

Something tells me that the warlords were no fools. They were just playing the clown and complaining about the damage caused by fires. They very likely got a break on their taxes, which would otherwise have been collected in full despite the disaster. Of course, the Chronicle is silent on this front.

Siberia has always supplied the center with resources, and the factories evacuated there during the war helped the country withstand invasion. Oil has been discovered relatively recently, but it has more than made up for the disappearing sable.

From Novosibirsk to Tom to Taiga to Mariinsk

Ten Poles are traveling in the next car. They bought their tickets in Warsaw, and the agency provided them with a guide, a pretty translator named Natalia. She is from Lvov, a former nurse. After working at a hospital for ten years, she fled to Poland.

“I’ve had it up to here, working for ten dollars a month. Plus, my husband got killed in a car accident. My son is 16 and he lives with his grandparents. I’m taking courses, learning to become a travel manager. I rent a room from a retired couple for $200 a month. Everything is going great so far.”

Retirees from Lodz and Warsaw, a couple of children’s clothes merchants from Gdansk and Miss Zosya, a colorful, chubby literature teacher who proudly calls herself an author on the strength of occasionally writing reviews for a magazine. They move over to make room for me on the bunk. They try to recall Russian words they studied at school.

They are full of disgust when they talk about the past, but they have no rancor toward Russians. We discuss Okudzhava. “Agnyoshka, you and I are tied by common destiny...”* They loved his his songs as much as we did.

“There is renewed interest in the Russian language. It used to be required to learn it in schools, which is why young people shifted to English in the 1990s. Now kids are studying Russian again, but because they want to.”

“Why?”

“It’s a business decision. There are great offers coming from Russia. Everybody wants to make a good living.”

The Poles are headed for Lake Baikal. They will spend ten days cruising it by boat, spend time on Olkhon Island and then travel to a village outside Irkutsk where some of their countrymen settled after being exiled there for taking part in the Kosciusko Rebellion. In 1794, the leader of the people declared himself a generalissimo and fought Russian troops with pikes and scythes. The end was predictable. The survivors walked to Siberia in irons.

“What do you expect that meeting to be like?”

“We have no idea. But it’ll be interesting.”

From Mariinsk to Tayshet

“Is Baikal the deepest lake in the world?” some Dutchmen ask me at the restaurant. I have been asked the same question by Mark, a young English vegetarian compelled by some romantic impulse to cross the continent. He is going to Ulan Bator to visit a friend he met via the internet.

The Dutch were also bitten by romanticism. One of them has a great mustache. Lendrik calls him Budyonny.* Another, his brother, sports the beard of a skipper. He spent his life working as a driver in Canada, recently retired and flew over especially for this trip. Their group contains four more energetic, elderly people.

One points out the window:

“Very cold in winter? Snow, no roads?”

I nod. Foreigners associate Russia primarily with roads, with dangerous travel through darkness and a snowstorm, toward some source of warmth and light. Of course, in Holland one village begins right where the other one ends. But I catch myself thinking: snow, a snowstorm, a road, a coachman dying on the road? Isn’t this our own image from a popular song? Didn’t we create it ourselves? The car rocks, its wheels rattle. How did people get here in horse-drawn carts? Or worse, on foot, in shackles?

The Dutchmen drink beer all day in the restaurant car. Tomorrow they will get off. Irkutsk is a transit point and most foreigners stop here to see Lake Baikal. After spending some time at a hiking station, they go on to Beijing. They call this their “round-the-world” trip. If you consider where they came from to get to Moscow, they are just about right.

From Taishet to Nizhneudinsk

Two compartments away a guy is traveling alone. He looks like he works out. He has mountainous shoulders and biceps like those the Merchant Kalashnikov allegedly had. He has a closely cropped beard and wears a muscle shirt. His hair is bound in a pony tail and a carved black cross, framed in gold, hangs on his chest on a gold chain. As a former archeologist, I note that the cross is based on a 16th century design. We meet and begin to talk. The guy turns out to be Father Sergius from Angarsk, outside Irkutsk. He graduated from the seminary of the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius several years ago. He tells me that he would love to have a parish in Yaroslavl or Rostov, where he has just spent his vacation.

“We’ve only got one saint, St. Innocent of Irkutsk. But there, why, they have bunches of them. And the churches! I would have loved to lead a service at one of them, but I was too shy to ask. I have a letter with me with the bishop’s seal, but I didn’t want to bother them. I didn’t know them. I just kept walking around and looking. It’s so beautiful.”

Father Sergius reflects:

“We need the death penalty. We recently had a service for a woman. She had been raped and murdered, and had left behind two small children. Our city is full of criminals. It is surrounded by camps. My dad was a prison guard until he retired. Angarsk is just 56 years old. We have only two churches. Mine is a reconstructed municipal House of Culture. It’s pretty, though. We have added an onion dome and a cupola.”

I can see why he would want to move to Rostov or Yaroslavl. I have been to Angarsk. Long before the city begins, you see dead forests. The poisonous exhaust from chemical plants floats on the wind. The trees can’t survive in it and dry up. But people survive. In Soviet times, pregnant women were given special transfers to “light work.” For instance, they were moved from a harmful production shop to a desk job.

“Would you like to move?”

“No, I can’t. I have been placed there. They need me. But it is difficult to serve, very difficult.”

He got married early, while still at the seminary.

“I took a woman who had a child, but I was in love. She had another one with me. Then she asked for a divorce. I’m not allowed to get married a second time. Now I go to the gym and work out. An elder once advised me not to rush into a marriage. Now, I’m paying for it. As to becoming a monk, I fear I won’t be able to bear it. A monk should live in a monastery. I don’t believe that a monk should live in the world. There are too many temptations here.”

He seems to be 25 or so.

“Of course I don’t get paid much, but I don’t need much, either. I have put my vestments away in a briefcase. There is no need to show off. I don’t like it. It’s excessive. Our church has too much pride. Too much showy wealth. It is a sin. People can see everything.

“On my way back from the monastery after graduation, I suffered a stroke on the train. But I survived. I work and I don’t complain. Old women took up a collection for my trip, for my vacation. I’m very grateful to them.”

I catch myself having doubts about him. A poor parish priest who works out in a gym, looks like a riot cop and travels in a sleeper? Why do I distrust him? I hold my tongue in embarrassment. The words of Marquis de Custine come to mind: Siberia is “the result of unthinkable suffering, a land populated by criminal villains and valiant heroes, a colony without which the Empire would not have been complete, like a castle without its dungeons.” There is nothing to envy about life in Angarsk, populated by parolees. As though reading my mind, Father Sergius adds:

“It is dangerous to walk around our city at night. I had an incident recently. I brought three of them to the police station, and then I had to go to confession because of it.”

According to contemporary accounts, Lomonosov.* also once tied up three drunken sailors who had assaulted him and delivered them to the police station.

From Nizhneudinsk to Irkutsk

Taking my leave of Father Sergius, I jump out at the next station to stretch my legs, read store signs and buy an ice cream. Translator Natalia runs up to me to show off a fur hat.

“Is it pretty?”

“Stunning.”

“Black fox. Fur is becoming fashionable again. I bought two hats for two hundred dollars. In Warsaw, they go for about three hundred and fifty each. I’m going to sell one and pay for my own, and even make a profit. Don’t you think I’m amazing?”

“Natalia, you’re absolutely amazing.”

We’ve almost become family, like on a submarine at the start of a voyage. But too short a time to have gotten sick of each other. She will get off tomorrow. I look at her hat and I’m happy for her. Everything is going to work out well for her. She will never again have to work for ten dollars a month.

From Irkutsk to Ulan-Ude

We push onward, onward; there is no end in sight. Colors outside the window have changed subtly. There is more dark green. The rivers have changed, too. They flow over boulders, they are shallow, cold and fast. They all empty into Lake Baikal. The lake is flat, its shores are densely packed with hikers’ tents and trash. People vacation, sending soot into the air from their campfires, playing volleyball and fishing. There don’t appear to be any tourist centers.

In 1665-1666, Arch-Priest Avvakum, the first Russian political prisoner to travel the breadth of Siberia on foot, crossed the lake to reach Daury, the final destination of his exile. At the time, he was surprised by the lake. Like Gyuryata Rogovich, he thought it was heaven on earth. Geese and swans swam in it, “like snow.” The lake’s waters were crystal clear. “Sturgeon and taimen are mighty fat. You can’t fry them in a frying pan. Otherwise, everything will be covered in fat.” There were few Russians in the area at the time. Izbas stood side by side with yurts, which outnumbered them.

At the stations, they are still the usual potato pies. Manti* appear in Ulan Ude. I blithely sleep through Slyudyanka, a station where heat-smoked Baikal omul was being sold, and therefore miss an opportunity to taste the fat Baikal fish. The powerful Yenisey has been left far behind. Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk left no impression on me whatsoever, like most of the cities, after all, we pass through them literally in an instant and simply cannot take them in. Well, there are the concrete jungles and sightings of right-hand-drive Japanese cars, but that is all expected.

On the third day, you start counting how much time remains. You also recall something from some foreigner’s travelogue: “Only an insane foreigner would want to spend an entire week on a train, even in a comfortable compartment, if the same distance can be traveled by plane in a day, especially since it is almost the same price.” I’m no foreigner and my sleeping car ticket cost twice as much as flying.

On the other hand, perhaps I am a foreigner. I’m from Moscow, “from the West” as they say here in Siberia. I’ve been to Lake Baikal, Ulan Ude and Chita before, but I pass the places like it was my first time and, like the Japanese visitor in a Russian joke, I stand with my face pressed to the window pane and whisper: “So much land. So few people.” Actually, prior to the Soviet era, there were not many people living out here. Only under the USSR did they start to develop these territories in earnest.

In the mid-1980s, not far from Ulan Ude, a local Buryat historian, who was leading me around the republic, stopped at the foot of some long, flat hill. The soil on it had been plowed and some wilting plants were dying under the hot sun.

“What is this?”

“Corn. Orders from Moscow.”

“But it’s not Khrushchev’s time anymore.”

The historian shrugged.

“Orders are not to be disputed. Do you know how much it costs to plant it here? Back under the tsars, Buryats only herded sheep in the steppes. Now we have been told to plant crops.”

Afterwards, he told me that, when Soviet power was first established here everything was communalized, from chickens to wives. Later, of course, they acknowledged that they had been overzealous, and the chickens and wives were returned.

From Ulan Ude to Chita

The hills begin. They are densely wooded, like tightly-curled hair.

“There were huge fires here,” explains a fellow standing nearby. “Fifteen years ago everything was burned to the ground. Now a new forest has regrown.”

Anticipating a question, he notes: “Two or three weeks from now, all this beauty will be gone. In mid-August, the birch leaves start to yellow.”

It is July now, the height of summer. Bees, dragonflies, horseflies and butterflies flit above the grass. They are in a rush to snatch a moment in the warm sun before the wet and windy fall arrives, before the long, cold winter sets in. Still, it’s great that it’s now summer, I say to myself as we head to a fellow-traveler’s compartment.

The fellow-traveler is an engineer on a shunting locomotive in Kolomna. He moved there from the Trans-Baikal region, from distant Mogocha, which is where he is taking his two boys with free tickets—a perk of his work. The boys have lined up an army of toy soldiers on the floor between the bunks. They battle three Belgian kids traveling to Vladivostok with their parents. They communicate using their hands. Having had enough of the game, a Belgian girl begins to pat a Russian toddler on the head.

Machinist Yegor is optimistic.

“I make 40,000 rubles a month. Is that a lot? It’s enough for me, but I wouldn’t mind making more. The cabin gets as hot as 50°,1 but don’t you dare think of an air conditioner. You’re surrounded by diesel and fuel oil fumes. Electric train engineers work like they are in hell, surrounded by magnets all day. After a shift is done, you could use these guys to light light bulbs. We train drivers don’t have a long life expectancy. We linger on for two or three years in retirement and then into our graves. Some die right at the workplace. We had an incident recently, the guy’s heart just gave out.”

“What is there to like about this job?”

“Who in Moscow would agree to such work? In Kolomna, too, there are few volunteers willing to drive a shunting locomotive, only us out-of-towners. But at least I’ll be able to educate my kids properly. At least I have never walked the tracks, and never will. My mother slaved away her entire life, so I know what it’s like. Anyway, we’ll survive. The main thing is that we got out of Mogocha. We had a saying: ‘There are three rat holes in this world, Mogocha, Kushka and Mary.’ Mogocha is still in Russia. You’ll soon pass it and can admire it then.”

From Mogocha to Birobidzhan

There is nothing special to admire. Mogocha station. We stop for 20 minutes. What can you see in such a short time?

“The Republic of Azerbaijan,” says train manager Sergei, standing behind me. He has a crafty face, closely cropped hair and a gold tooth.

“Why Azerbaijan?”

“They are pretty tough here. They pan for gold.”

Indeed, there are some Caucasian visages on the platform, but they don’t look particularly tough, more like ordinary working stiffs.

I wave goodbye to the engineer and his kids. They are greeted by an older woman in a colorful sun dress. The kids scream with delight.

“God loves Sochi, the Devil loves Mogocha,” the train manager comments, still behind me.

We clamber up the footstep and go to his compartment.

“They say it was a totalitarian regime. I never felt anything like that.”

“Don’t you remember the empty stores stocked only with fake leather boots in size forty-six and moldy bagels?”

“Sure. So what? I never went hungry. I would even bring back caviar from Primorye. We knew how to live. Now, it’s lies everywhere, starting at home. You get up in the morning and everybody starts lying to you, your wife, your kids, everybody. On TV, too. And in the street.”

“So, did you run away from home to the railroad?”

“Why? It’s my job.”

We while away the time, talking as we cross our country and our history.

Most of the people working on this train do not seem to have fully accepted modern reality and think of the past as some sort of lost Golden Age. Either they have forgotten everything or only know socialism from fairy tales.

Conductors, a young couple from Bryansk, make twelve thousand rubles a month.2

“For work like this?”

“Back home, in our city, without proper connections, you can’t make even this much. It’s not easy to get set up in a job. They used to pay better on the railroad. We have two kids, and it’s barely enough for us, there’s nothing left to put anything aside.”

A conductor who laundered and pressed a pair of pants for me, then refused payment, also sighs when the conversation turns to her salary.

Lendrik, who comes to my compartment to share some miracle-working Chinese ointment that relieves the pain in my leg, suddenly says sadly:

“What kind of happiness have I seen in life? Maybe only in childhood.”

He has also not been able to save up for his old age.

Business people—there are some traveling on the train, as well—categorically refuse to talk to me. Their faces express a Gogolian aversion to the scribbling estate.

We are crossing the Trans-Baikal region. It is the most beautiful part of the trip. In the predawn twilight, awakened by the stifling air in the compartment, I see in the rectangle of the window the silhouettes of two dinosaurs. Two hills blocking the light of the rising sun. I press my forehead to the glass. What has brought on this hopeless longing? Is it the vast, uninhabited space? But these uninhabited lands were once populated by former prisoners and escapees, forging a special type of Russian—untouched by serfdom. Where are they, the proud and independent ones, marching like masters over their vast Motherland, as they used to sing in the lyrics of the popular song?

We are crossing Chita region. In the late 1980s, I came here to trace the Decembrists’ routes. In one regional capital, I witnessed the following scene: a kid who had graduated from high school with a gold medal, came to the regional party committee to ask for money for a ticket to Moscow. He wanted to apply to college. The regional party secretary looked at him, shook his hand and signed his papers. When the kid left his office, the secretary shrugged:

“I don’t have the right to keep him here.”

He paused and added:

“Nor do I wish to.”

Grey, poverty-stricken houses fly past the window. Almost all have a damned satellite TV dish. The last penny spent on dreams. The houses have not changed much since Soviet times, except there were no satellite dishes back then. The houses melt in the predawn fog. Our express, painted the three colors of the new Russian flag, rushes past.

From Birobidzhan to Khabarovsk

I have been intrigued by a young couple with a ten-year-old boy. They are polite, hastening to greet everyone first. I tried to ask them some questions, but they didn’t respond. Only at the end of the trip do they suddenly become talkative. The quiet, beautiful young woman turns out to be a prosecutor, and her athletic, blond husband is a judge. They are originally from Kirov and are now living in a small northern town. The head of the family speaks, while his wife smiles pleasantly but generally keeps silent.

“The courts are corrupt everywhere, aren’t they?” I ask, my first question probably not very polite.

The boyish judge immediately flares up.

“This is why I didn’t want to talk before. I was sure you wouldn’t believe us. But we are not corrupt.”

“It’s everywhere. Why are you an exception?”

“I know that corruption exists in Moscow, but not in our town. We don’t own a dacha. We could have built one, but there is no need for it in our town. We don’t own a car, either. I use the one that is provided to me by my office. I have already had an offer to get transferred, but we decided to stay. We chose a small, remote town on purpose. A provincial town is the best place to start a career.”

His impassioned words make a breach in my skepticism. They are crossing the entire country in order to show it to their ten-year-old. We look closely into each other’s eyes. I would love to look into his eyes again in about ten years’ time.

From Khabarovsk to Vladivostok. The City.

We didn’t sleep the final night. Perhaps it was the road that wore us out, or the time difference—seven hours closer to the sun. We got off in Vladivostok, dreaming only of a real bed. But even at the hotel we couldn’t overcome our nervous excitement and fall asleep. I showered and stood by the wide window, which offered a view of Golden Horn Harbor. The city rose up around the harbor, on top of high hills. The ocean carried in fog, through which boats exchanged their harsh calls. Port cranes, tall as giraffes, nodded their heads. The wind carried a seagull past my window. It lazily hung on the air stream as though it was being pulled from one end of the stage to the other by a piece of string. Far below, a wide-nosed tugboat towed an enormous nuclear submarine. The city was getting ready to mark Fleet Day, one of the main holidays here. Later, the sub would be anchored in the harbor, next to some navy ships. Born far from saltwater shores, I could not tear myself away from this spectacle.

Later, I was visited by Sasha Kolesov, chairman of the local chapter of the Pen Club, the guardian of the remnants of Vladivostok’s once rich cultural life. He had revived the literary journal Rubezh [“Border”]. A journal of the same name used to be published in Harbin1 when White émigrés lived there. We got into his car and rode the hills as though they were mighty waves.

There were people everywhere. I hadn’t realized how much I missed human faces, cars and store signs. Especially old buildings. They are as rare here as surviving Harbin émigrés, whose memoirs Kolesov collects and publishes. But they do exist. They are scattered throughout the city center, such as an apartment building built by the commercial firm Kunst & Albers for its employees, with corner balconies shaped like little towers hanging over the first floor. Or a restored Lutheran church dating back to 1908, probably the parish church of the founders of the commercial firm. Or the massive home of the former Eastern Institute. World-renowned professors used to teach here, but now it is one of the buildings of the Far Eastern Technical University. The Main Post Office is the former Postal and Telegraph Agency. Judging by the size of the structure, the postal agency played an important role in these parts early in the last century. The façade of the former Japanese Consulate on China Street is missing its statue of the Goddess Nike, while the gryphons at the entrance, which used to support an awning, no longer have anything to support. The splendid modernist Brynner House is the birthplace of the great American actor Yul Brynner. It was his walk that every male tried to imitate after they left the movie theater, having just seen The Magnificent Seven. My father used to tell me this. A huge house that used to belong to Merchant of the First Guild Babintsev is now the local history museum.

Once, these streets saw the likes of Rear Admiral Petr Voynovich Rimsky-Korsakov, and Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Klavdievich Arseniev, who introduced the world to the Ussuri Region and its local hero, Dersu Uzala, and the manager of the Suifun Lighthouse, Fyodor Yevstafiyevich Cheberyak, who saved the lives of 284 people. You can see the faces of these inhabitants of Vladivostok in old museum photographs. I stare at the diminutive Cheberyak. His right hand rests on a short theatrical column, while his left grabs the handle of his navy dagger. Next to the photograph is a document confirming his receipt of a gold medal, “For Saving Lives.” He has a dashing mustache and the tired look of an old serviceman. I purposefully don’t ask where the Suifun Lighthouse used to be located and who it was that Fyodor Yevstafiyevich saved. It is much more fun to close my eyes and imagine the stormy ocean and the ship being crushed against the rocks. I recount the names of the ships like worry beads. The Varyag and the Koreyets are well-known, but there was also the yacht Storozh, the ice breaker Nadyozhny and the second class cruiser Zhemchug, which took part in the Battle of Tsushima.2

Beyond the museum’s doors, city life roils. Apartment buildings, office towers and shopping malls are being built, occupying the commanding heights on the hills, like an army that has come to a new land to stay. Some are pompous mongrels familiar to every Muscovite, while others are excellent modern buildings. We find refuge from this hodge-podge, made worse by our lack of sleep, by the to and fro of cars and heavy trucks, and by the black SUVs riding on studded tires, by taking cover in a restaurant. The Japanese chef uses his sharp knife to slice parboiled, violet octopus tentacles, fresh, dark-red tuna filets, pink salmon shot through with yellow veins of soft fat, transparent, greenish sea carp, and mackerel, striped like a cat’s forehead. He works carefully and diligently, laying out priceless pieces of sashimi on a hardwood board in order to place them later in a special order on the bottom of a liqueur boat, decorate them with shavings of daikon radish and serve them at our table. Fresh Japanese fish with wasabi mustard and ginger, steamed rice, good conversation and a sip of cold Asahi beer—what else do you need to feel like you are at the center of civilization?

Afterwards we set out for Green Mount, the city’s main automotive market. We walk along the endless skull of the hill, on which are lined up right-hand-drive vehicles. Cars are only a small part of Vladivostok’s vast economy, but they are also the most conspicuous part. Russia consumes these endless kilometers of wheeled merchandise with the same greediness with which we have just devoured the fresh foreign fish. Right-hand-drive cars have long crossed the Urals. Moving in the opposite direction from the poisonous hogweed, they are working to capture a chunk of the market. Wagging tongues have scattered a skillfully started canard across the whole country: that Japanese assembly is of much higher quality than European, even though no one has ever compared them. Vendors give you a rude, challenging stare, as if to say, “Don’t want it? Don’t take it.” They know they will sell everything.

In general, people are extremely rude on the streets of Vladivostok. Drivers drive shamelessly and rudely, and no one obeys traffic rules. Rear admirals and professors from the Eastern Institute have long since died in emigration or were murdered in labor camps. The city’s vast apartment suburbs have been built on old cabbage fields, next to where transit camps used to be located. They are boring and monotonous, like all Soviet construction. Osip Mandelshtam* died somewhere there. Local writers recently put up a monument to him at a park near the Economics and Service University, the only monument to the great poet in this vast country. Vladivostok residents, whose parents were recruited to come here from every corner of the Soviet Empire in the postwar years, walk hastily by. They have no interest in the great poet.

Young people’s faces are no different here than they are in Moscow. They hang out in cafés and promenade along the embankment. They are accustomed to tasty, authentic coffee, and fortunately have never heard of the Soviet era coffee surrogate, the chicory beverage “Kofeiny.”

A Lighthouse at the End of the Earth

On the morning of the following day we set out for Russian Island. I stand by the lighthouse and look at the mouth of the open ocean. To my right lies the Eastern Bosphorus Harbor, to my left is the Golden Horn Harbor. The founders of the city brought with them pompous geographic names, part of their familiar European culture. All pioneers were the same. This is why America is full of Parises and St. Petersburgs. The railroad connected Moscow with the end of the Earth just before the Revolution. The first train crossed the country only in 1916. The trek eastward, which began in the 14th century, ended on the shores of an ocean.

Vladivostok Station was founded in 1860. Settlers came here later by boat or in horse-drawn carts, suffering unimaginable hardships and privations along the way. They built a port city on the hills, without which the Trans-Siberian Railroad would have made no sense. Vladivostok is an extremely important point on the map. It is where Europe shows itself to Asia, America and Australia, and where they in turn show themselves to Europe. Without this port city, our half-empty, endless country would not have been complete, like Moscow without its Kremlin, St. Petersburg without its St. Isaac’s or Novgorod without its St. Sophia’s. No matter how much they complain about us Muscovites, and call us Westerners, we are one people. If only because we are connected by the thread of this railroad. Historical time and geographical space met in a spot called Vladivostok, creating here, seven time zones away from the point
of departure, an energy field that is the same as in
the capital.

To get rid of the city’s force field, I have to be grounded. I sit down on a boulder at the edge of the water and gradually dissolve into the gathering fog, breathing the fresh air mixed with the pungent smell of sea salt and seaweed. I’m certain that this is what the first settlers did, too. Then I watch an approaching ferry. Sasha Kolesov comes over and complains bitterly that there are so many people wishing to visit the island that we simply won’t be able to do it in one day. I’m not at all upset. Russian Island, which seems to be so close that I could reach out and touch it, is already part of the ocean, and that is a completely different story. Suddenly I realize that I will have to come here again. My foot, which hurt the entire trip, no longer bothers me. I walk toward the car almost without a limp. RL

* In Russian, Лендровер (“lendrover”).

1 The tambour is the landing between joined rail cars, the only place smoking is allowed.

2 The city of Kirov was, prior to 1934, known as Vyatka, named after the river that runs through it.

* ”Мы связаны, Агнешка, с тобой одной судьбою.”

* Semyon Budyonny, a famous WWI and revolutionary general who was distinguished by his florid mustache.

* Mikhail Lomonosov, advisor to Catherine the Great and founder of Moscow State University.

* Manti: steamed dumplings common to Central Asia, usually filled with lamb and onion.

1 50° Celsius = 122° degrees Fahrenheit.

2 R12,000 = $400.

1 Harbin, in northeastern China, was the capital of White emigration after the 1917 revolution.

2 1905, when the Russian Navy was decimated by Japan.

* Osip Emiliyevich Mandelshtam: one of Russia’s greatest poets of the 20th century. Consumed by the Soviet Leviathan just short of his 48th birthday in 1938. Perhaps his most famous quote: “Only in Russia is poetry respected—it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?” For a full biography, see Russian Life, Jan/Feb 2006.

September 01, 2009

Moscow to Vladivostok

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