Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia (12 page)

Six.

6
•
NINA

R
OSE AND
I had a rule in Russia: Never ask why.

Asking why in daily life (
Why
do train-ticket agents’ microphones never work?
Why
don’t the authorities do something about those fatal icicle incidents in Moscow?
Why
can’t I order some of the butter you
told
me you have in your kitchen?) gets frustrating. And
why
would you want that?

In the daily humdrum of life here, it’s advisable to avoid the question and move on or your blood will remain at a boil (sailboats, seashells . . .).

We left Rybinsk, caught a two-hour ride into Yaroslavl, and are arriving at the central train station to resume our eastward journey. There is a line outside the main doors. We wait in it for five minutes and eventually make our way inside the station, to the front of the line, where it becomes clear what created the line in the first place: an upright metal detector and bag scanner that appeared to be out of use the other night when Sergei and I whizzed through. But now, even though no security officer appears anywhere in view, people have formed a line and are approaching the security area, placing purses, backpacks, luggage, wallets, belts, and jewelry on the conveyor belt, walking through the metal detector, retrieving their belongings on the other side, getting themselves organized, and moving on. All of this takes time.

I am generally a fan of these devices, willing to sacrifice time and convenience for safety. But not a single police officer or railway employee or
vokzal
staff member is manning this security post. It strikes me that perhaps there is someone hidden in an office somewhere monitoring the passenger entry point by remote video. But this hypothesis is blown up by the fact that more than half the people passing through this security checkpoint are setting off the alarm at the metal detector—and nobody is emerging from some obscured monitoring station to stop them. The scene is annoying and comical. Someone passes:
Bleep, bleep
. Next person passes:
Bleep, bleep
. I pass through:
Bleep, bleep
. Now I would literally offer myself up for a pat-down, were anyone around to perform it. But so it goes. One by one, people wait in line in the cold, arrive at security, go through the motions dutifully, all for no apparent reason, all with a headache-inducing soundtrack:
Bleep, bleep
.

Okey, I’ll do it just this one time.
Why
?

Rose and I always figured that things like this were remnants of Soviet bureaucracy, with layers of institutions and agencies that don’t communicate with one another. In this case there is likely a domestic security agency responsible for maintaining security checkpoints at many if not all of the country’s train stations. After the recent acts of terrorism in the country, the Kremlin has promised beefed-up security at transportation hubs. But then there is the staffing, which may fall to another institution that never got the memo about providing personnel to actually monitor the results of these security checks.

Yet, just as mind-boggling as the scene here is the fact that everyone—Sergei and myself included—is simply going through the process without questioning it, walking through the line, sending baggage along the conveyor belt. This would get Rose worked up. “Why is this thing here?” I remember her once saying, as we waited in a useless security line at a train station. “I’m not doing it. I’m not.” She then walked around the security checkpoint, ducked under a rope and stood on the other side with a satisfied smile. I am more of a wimp about these things and fully expected Rose to get tackled by a Russian security official. It’s a risk Rose nodded to when she told me she would probably get into a lot more trouble if she was fluent in Russian and could engage more easily in “why” debates with authorities.

“I’d probably be arrested in this country if I knew the language,” she once told me.

I laughed. Nervously. “That’s not funny, dear.”

But Rose had a point. In the United States, when things don’t make sense, we ask questions. Rose has been furious at taxicabs in Washington, D.C. We and our friends have been overcharged and hit with imaginary fees, our female friends have been verbally abused by male drivers, and the city’s taxi system was for a long time an unregulated free-for-all. Rose began an online campaign to drum up support for change, and she attended city council meetings to make her case. Things have changed, slowly. Recently NPR moved to a new building in Washington. And one of our beloved colleagues on the facilities staff was not offered a job in our new digs and was about to be unemployed. I banded together with several other journalists, and we met with one of our top executives, pleading that the man should be treated better and given his job in the new building. It happened.

Not everyone is a fighter. But there is a sense at home that if something seems unfair in life, there are places to turn—at work, or in a community. Maybe you won’t get your way. Maybe a boss will tell you to shut up, and you’ll be in the uncomfortable position of having to listen to him or her, for fear of losing your job. Our system is far from perfect, and people are mistreated. But the overall spirit, the sense of possibility, the sense that you can raise your voice and have a chance to bring change, is something that exists at home, but not so much in Russia. And I wanted to understand—yes—why.

A
ROUND THE TIME
of my first train trip, in late 2011, the largest antigovernment protests since the Soviet collapse were taking place in Moscow. Thousands of Russians filled the streets, expressing their fury over a flawed election and demanding an end to Vladimir Putin’s rule. Putin, a tough-talking leader beloved by many for his bravado—a man who happily went shirtless to show off his muscles on Russian television—long enjoyed broad support in his country. But in Moscow, Russians were on the streets, voicing opposition to his anticipated return as the nation’s president.

I remember the enthusiasm well. I boarded a creaky Soviet-era trolleybus and traveled to one protest with Russians of all ages—students carrying protest banners, pensioners chatting with one another about how big the crowd might be. Yet for all the anger and passion, no one in the crowd could explain what they actually wanted. Putin gone? Sure. Then again there was no viable opposition leader, no one proven to replace him. Stay on the streets and fight until the government is gone, as in Egypt and Libya? No, people said they feared chaos like that. The protests allowed Russians to use muscles they were rarely allowed to flex during Soviet times and in the period since, and it felt good. And yet Russians there had trouble communicating what they were fighting for. Translating anger and frustration into action, and a message, was unfamiliar territory. And the lack of a message was one reason the fight never really caught on elsewhere in Russia. I recall heading off to the east on that first train trip, finding many Russians perplexed by what was unfolding in Moscow and feeling little desire to become part of it.

In reality the December 2011 protests were a political statement by Russia’s urban elite, Moscow dwellers with white-collar jobs who largely benefited from Putin’s economic policies but who grew tired of his political heavy-handedness and war on civil liberties. “The demonstrators were the relatively privileged in economic and social status, not the economically disaffected and disadvantaged,” wrote Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy in their 2013 book
Mr. Putin
. It would be foolish to dismiss what happened on the streets of Moscow. Two of the most respected economists who follow Russia, Sergei Guriev and Aleh Tsyvinski, have written that “sufficient prosperity has arrived, calling forth a middle class solid enough to demand government accountability, the rule of law and a genuine fight against corruption.” They believe that in Russia “the political mobilization of the middle class will eventually lead to democratization.” And yet there was an inherent contradiction in the fact that the very people enjoying the most economic success under Putin were those taking to the streets. That made this movement in 2011 incomparable to revolutions elsewhere in the world, driven by economic hardship. What about the
other
Russia—“popular Russia,” as Tucker at Princeton called it—the people, the masses elsewhere in the country? Without an investment from them, it’s hard to imagine a revolution bringing fundamental, long-lasting change. And they have never been part of a political movement. The novelist Mikhail Shishkin also holds a view of “two Russias.” In the nineteenth century, aside from the educated city dwellers, Russia had “millions and millions strong” living in the provinces—“poor, uneducated, slowly drinking themselves to death and mentally still residing in the Middle Ages.” That’s a harsh and unfair characterization today. And it’s worth mentioning that Moscow may be a wealthier and more educated place—but we found far more warmth, generosity, and personality everywhere else in the country. Still, the division that has always been there, the feeling of two countries—rich and urban versus rural and poor—still exists.

H
AVING SET OFF
the alarm at the security checkpoint—and avoided any further scrutiny—Sergei and I are boarding an overnight train to Nizhny Novgorod, where we will spend two nights with Sergei’s family, at Aunt Nina’s place. I am excited to meet more of his family, to get a better sense of his roots. Thus far I just know Sergei’s wife and son in Moscow and his dad in Ukraine. Tania, his wife, is a tough woman who works, often overnight shifts, at a sock factory. She is, as Sergei likes to say, his true “boss”—a view on marriage he and I share. Sergei’s son, Anton, is an eager young man, twenty-four years old, who attended medical school in Moscow. He often slept on the couch in NPR’s office to make his early classes or overnight shifts at the hospital in Moscow, avoiding his two-hour commute from the city out to his parents’ house in the suburbs. Anton has arrived at a risky time in his life. He is in between medical school and residency, a moment when the Russian government could intervene and demand he perform his mandatory year of military service, a requirement for all young men. This could mean awful things—perhaps an assignment to the volatile North Caucasus, where Russian militiamen are often targeted by Islamist radicals. Whenever Sergei speaks of Anton, he always tries to stay optimistic, hoping that a residency program accepts him and the authorities delay his service to allow him to complete his medical training.

Sergei and I are climbing aboard our next train, and I am bracing myself for my first experience with third class. To control cost, Sergei and I decided to go under this option for most of the remainder of the trip.

Third-class cars are arranged more like open dormitory rooms. There is a narrow aisle that passes through areas that each sleep six people. In each area, to the right, there is a table with two seats that becomes a bed, or berth. There is a second berth above. To the left there is a table with two benches, perpendicular to the window. The two benches double as berths, and there is a berth above each of them. If Russians can seem selfish, heartless, and disinterested in public, they are often warm and considerate in intimate quarters like this.

The unspoken ground rules are not unlike those in second class: If you have one of the upper berths by the window, it’s entirely okay to spend time sitting on one of the lower berths—call it a communal couch. If someone in a lower berth is sleeping and you need to climb to your upper berth, it’s fine that you may need to step on your neighbor’s bed—perhaps his or her feet or legs—to reach yours. The difference is, in third class there’s a larger audience to see whatever you’re doing—like trying to elevate. At the edge of the lower berths there is a small metal stepladder designed, in theory, to assist upper-berthers. But the ladder is at the end of the lower berth, next to the aisle, which fully exposes you to the spectators. I prefer moving away from the aisle, closer to the window, to leap up, attracting somewhat less attention. The best method I’ve found is to put your two feet on the side edges of each of the lower berths (desperately avoiding stepping on the occupants), then put your elbows on the two upper berths, using all the forearm and shoulder strength you can muster to lift your body up. While thus elevated, you thrust your buttocks onto your berth. Next challenge: avoiding slamming your head into the roof of the train in midthrust. Ducking your head can avoid a collision, but ducking while thrusting can be more than the mind—and body—can handle, and often you lose focus and tumble to the floor, which amuses other passengers. Fear of this embarrassment can be consuming, worse than fear of hangovers and frostbite, which in Russia says a lot.

It’s all about finding a comfort zone aboard a train, so you can begin to appreciate the poetry of the experience. My first evening aboard a Russian train, Sergei, Rose, and I ventured to the dining car. American dance music from the 1980s blared from an old television. We sat in a booth, and a server ambled over and presented a voluminous menu—fourteen pages describing some delicious dishes.

I ordered stewed chicken with vegetables. The server shook her head.

“Nyet.”

Pork loin?

“Nyet.”

Finally I asked her what she
did
have.

“Borscht yest [Borscht we have].”

I finally confronted the reality: Menus around here are for show. About the only hot item they had was borscht, that ubiquitous and timeless Russian dish. I like homemade borscht. I just don’t always trust it coming from a Russian train kitchen. Pacing my train car, hungry, led me to stop and say hello to my neighbors, travelers in the compartment next to mine. One of them was Zhanna Rutskaya, an effervescent forty-five-year-old woman who worked as a hotel receptionist and was returning home from seeing family in Belarus. I greeted her with a smile and a
spasibo
—thank you—for inviting me in. Zhanna greeted me with a link of Belarusian sausage, using it like a baton to wave me into the seat beside her. Then came the jar of homemade horseradish-and-mayonnaise, a concoction that I was instructed to spread onto toast and devour. Whether this strikes you as appetizing or not, trust me: It beats the borscht in the dining car. The only unpleasant development was realizing how little I had to offer Zhanna in return. Food sharing is a Trans-Siberian Railway tradition for which I was embarrassingly unprepared. Here was Zhanna, bringing out sausage, delicately prepared at her family’s home in Belarus, the meat pushed into its casing by Zhanna’s relatives. Her mother used an old family recipe to mix the horseradish and mayonnaise, sealing it in a jar, surely expecting Zhanna to share it with a worthy fellow passenger. All this warmth and generosity, and what was I able to gin up in my compartment? Luna bars. She was patient with the newcomer, politely declining my American snack but saying nothing more.