Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia (2 page)

What fond memories of the night before! The table was crowded with Aunt Nina’s creations: Piping hot borscht (the venerable Slavic soup made of beets) usually with dollops of sour cream to make it creamy, potato pancakes stacked in towers, tender stewed chicken drowning in some addictive red sauce, and vegetables pickled to perfection. Serving dishes inhabited every open piece of real estate. And the night was crowded with Russian proverbs—which I am convinced Sergei’s family members were authoring on the spot.

“David, it is bad luck to only have one shot.”

“David, you know what they say in Russia? A horse can’t walk on three legs. He must have a fourth.”

“David, in Russia, even numbers like eight are bad luck. We must go to nine.”

Nights around the dining room table don’t end. In Soviet times this was sacred ground, a hiding place where it was safe to smile and laugh and talk openly. And traditions don’t die easily in this country. Why should they, when they’re this merry and liberating? More vodka means more stories, which mean more laughter, which mean more vodka, which brings us to the morning.

I am guzzling water, peering sheepishly over the rim of the glass at Aunt Nina and Sergei, my friend and colleague. They are vertical, staring down at the patient with a combination of bewilderment (vodka is rarely
this
damaging around here) and hope (if my hangover progresses to the next stage, it will be messy for all involved).

It’s 9:30 a.m., and Sergei and I have a meeting in an hour, so I promise to shower promptly.

“Dvadtsat minoot [20 minutes]?”

I’m begging for mercy.

“Bystro [Go quickly]!” Nina says, clapping her hands twice for emphasis.

I limp into the shower, turn on the faucet, and let the stream of water serve as a masseuse for my aching head. Beyond therapy, hangover showers serve another purpose in life, and that’s reflection. And here in Aunt Nina’s shower, I can’t stop thinking about how my experience of the past twelve hours has been so . . .
Russian
.

My morning nurse is the embodiment of the Russian babushka, or grandmother—the term really applies to any older Russian woman. A word of caution: When you say “babushka” out loud, put the emphasis on the first syllable—“BAH-boosh-kah.” (By comparison, a “bah-BOOSH-ka”—an English-language invention that doesn’t exist in Russian—is a scarf. And calling a tough old woman a scarf doesn’t get you far around here).

If Russia had a mascot, it could well be a babushka. In paintings or photos that capture Russia, you may have seen older women, selling fruit along the road, wearing babushkas (yes, this time, scarves). That’s one rendition of the babushka. There is also the urban babushka, like Aunt Nina. She lives in the western Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, in the apartment she and her late husband were assigned to during Soviet times. Rural, urban, or otherwise, babushkas are known to be strong and self-sufficient. Many lost their men years ago to hard work or alcoholism, in many cases both. They are the engine and spirit of Russia’s older generation, and in some ways of the whole country.

Aunt Nina has boundless energy, can talk for hours about literature, loves to cook, and gives tough love. She lectured me and Sergei for drinking too much, then talked soused Sergei to sleep (I needed no help), and then rushed in the morning to deliver me water and sympathy.

Of course, all the warmth and love I felt during this visit was within the confines of a family’s home, which brings up an important point: On first impression Russians are generally
not
friendly people.

It’s the first thing international visitors notice: The streets are filled with nervous, blank faces. In public many Russians don’t seem to acknowledge that other humans are sharing their space. They are indifferent if, say, you want to squeeze past on a crowded sidewalk. They avoid eye contact as if they might get a disease from it. (A not-unrelated point: Russians who visit the United States are equally perplexed by Americans, and their obsession with smiling at people they’ve never met.)

You come to understand these tendencies. In Soviet times being in public was risky. If you accidentally spoke to a stranger who was under suspicion from the government, or told a joke about Stalin, or appeared too friendly with a foreigner, it could mean interrogation or in extreme cases worse—a journey to a Siberian prison camp. Many Russians developed coldness in public as defense, suppressing thoughts and feelings, not letting their true selves escape. And while the risks of putting yourself out there are far less severe in today’s Russia, remnants of that behavior remain. During three years living in Moscow, my wife, Rose, and I slowly adjusted to this. If someone slipped on the ice or was otherwise in need of help, strangers would often just walk by pretending not to notice. Why risk getting involved, especially if the police were being called? Rose and I would be the only people coming to someone’s aid, doing all we could with limited Russian-language skills. A British diplomat friend once saw two teenage girls hit by a speeding car as they were running across a street. One of the girls was decapitated. The driver just sped from the scene. Our friend stopped his car, called an ambulance, and ran to the other girl, who was screaming uncontrollably next to her friend’s body. All the while, cars passed and pedestrians walked by as if nothing was out of order.

While seemingly cold and vacant to strangers on the outside, many Russians are beautiful and generous on the inside. Their public disengagement can be shocking, but they are some of the warmest people on earth. Once they get to know you and invite you into their homes, many Russians will freely share their stories, traditions, and food. When you enter a home, two things happen: You are offered a pair of slippers—polite encouragement to take off your shoes and make yourself comfortable—then you are offered tea or vodka. I spent many days hoping for tea and getting vodka. Whatever is in the glass or on the plate, however, there is no higher honor in Russia than to be welcomed to a family’s table and treated as one of their own, which was the case in Aunt Nina’s apartment.

As the shower slowly melts the hangover, I am feeling grateful. To be in Russia. To be on a journey with a Russian colleague who became my dearest friend in the country, Sergei Sotnikov. He has brought me to Nizhny Novgorod to spend time with his family. We are a few days into a five-week trip aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway. It’s the journey on which I hope you will join me in this book.

I am on this trip to see Russia, to experience it, to satisfy my curiosity and to answer enduring questions. My wife and I were Midwestern children of the eighties: She hails from northwestern Ohio, and I grew up in Pittsburgh. We were both raised by college professors who explained world events as best they could. Rose vividly remembers watching the Berlin Wall crumble on her family’s first color television, rabbit ears protruding in her living room, as her father told her what was unfolding—“This is the beginning of democracy spreading to the Soviet Union.” I was given the same expectation. So were millions of Americans.

Democracy
has
come to countries that were prisoners of the Soviets—Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic—and to countries that were actually annexed by the Soviet Union, like Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. But elsewhere in the former Soviet space—and especially in Russia itself—not so. And if you are like me and Rose, raised to believe in the so-called “end of history,” taught to expect democratic change to sweep the former Soviet Union and then move beyond, the course of history has been a surprise.

Rose and I moved to Russia in 2009. I was taking over as the Moscow bureau chief for NPR News, and Rose was giving up a successful career in public policy to relocate temporarily for her husband (making no secret of her expectation that he’d spend the better part of his life repaying her). We were eager to understand where Russia was going. The home of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, ballet dancers and supermodels, Russia is more than a cultural epicenter. It has a massive economy, holding much of the world’s oil and natural gas. It remains a country with influence, and when given a motive can easily threaten the strategic interests of the United States.

Most worrisome is the nation’s leader, Vladimir Putin, recently reelected after serving two terms between 2000 and 2008. Forced out by term limits, he handed the reins to a protégé—Dmitri Medvedev—but after a few years was ready to take his job back. Putin is accustomed to Russians showering him with love and affection. But there have been hints that that may be changing. Russians, mostly in Moscow, took to the streets by the thousands in 2011, chanting anti-Putin slogans and calling for a new leader. Some have grown tired of a man who once said that protesters taking to the streets without a permit deserved to be “clubbed in the head.” But Putin withstood that outburst of opposition and seems, as of this writing, as securely in power as ever.

Russian scholars and writers have long spoken of their country’s confounding nature, how it takes wild turns and goes through periods of upheaval but always seems to return to a cruel, dysfunctional resting place. The novelist Nikolai Gogol once compared the country to an out-of-control troika—a traditional Russian carriage pulled by three harnessed horses—intimating that it could crash and burn at any moment. “Russia, where are you flying?” he asked in his novel,
Dead Souls
. “Answer me . . . there is no answer.” The contemporary Russian novelist Mikhail Shishkin said recently that Gogol’s metaphor is as applicable as ever. Shishkin just updated the mode of transport. “Now Gogol would compare Russia with a metro train, which travels from one end of a tunnel to the other—from order dictatorship to anarchy-democracy, and back again. This is its route. And you don’t go anywhere else on this train.”

But come with me on a train ride, and let’s see where it goes. Maybe we won’t answer the largest questions about Russia definitively. But we’ll try as best we can, and along the way, meet people who will make us laugh, reveal their pain, and teach us about a country that plays a big role in the world and is important to understand. In this book—along this ride—I will interject snippets of analysis, insights from historians and fellow journalists, and observations I made during my time in the country. But mostly this book will be a journey and an adventure, a wild ride on one of the world’s epic train routes, 6,000 miles from Moscow to far East Asia, taking us into the heart of a country and into the lives of its people. From all the Russians we meet, we’ll make connections and learn whatever we can.

S
CHOLARS IMMERSED
in Russian studies have written innumerable, groundbreaking books about life, history, and politics. Spending a few years living and working in the country keeps me squarely in their shadows. But during that time I watched Russia closely with fresh eyes and innocent curiosity. With its cruel leaders, history of tragedy, harsh weather and boisterous personalities, Russian life can play out almost like a stage drama. And I always like to think of myself as a quiet character, sharing the stage and taking in the surroundings. It’s an approach I have used as much as possible in my on-air storytelling at NPR. In 2009 the United States seemed to be at an inflection point: The economy was in shambles, just as a historic political moment arrived. Americans had just voted for their first black president. During the first three months of 2009, I hit the road in an SUV, equipped with a recorder and notebook, fueled by caffeine and gas-station food. I traveled from northern Michigan to Florida, then from New York to San Francisco, mostly just listening as people shared their personal struggles and hopes for their families and communities. None of my reporting would have deserved a “breaking news” headline on cable news, but I learned a great deal about America in a difficult and defining moment.

This was on my mind in December 2011, as Rose and I began what would be our first trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway. (This book brings you along on our second.) I was wrapping up my tenure in Moscow for NPR, and my editors and I believed the train trip might offer me one wild, romantic way to take our listeners to an unfamiliar place and provide clues about Russia’s journey as a country. By turns, the train trip was in-your-face, unpredictable, grueling, loud, poetic, humorous, and deflating—all of which could describe Russia itself. The conversations I had along the way opened a window on a culture long shrouded in mystery and misunderstood by the West. My fellow passengers talked to me about the wounded soul of their once-great nation, baring their anger about Russia’s present and their fear about what the future would bring. They taught me how years of hardship—under czarist, Communist, and capitalist rule—had taken their toll on Russia’s people and made their mark on everything from Russian folklore and traditions to politics and family life.

T
WO DECADES AGO,
when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Western media focused heavily on the promise of capitalism and democracy. Today the glue holding the country together seems to be eroding. As I traversed Russia in a train, I couldn’t help but feel I was traveling on the only concrete thing holding this nation together. For years Russians
had
an identity, shaped in all ways by Soviet culture. But modern Russia seems to be living in a void: a place where the powerful and connected can rake in eye-popping amounts of money, where a $275,000 bottle of champagne is on the menu at a Moscow hotel thirty miles from impoverished villages, where ordinary families go about their daily lives hoping to survive, unable to dream of any higher purpose.

That feeling of emptiness has many Russians turning to the past for answers and guidance. To live in Soviet times often meant not being able to define your own future. You could not travel, determine how much money you made, or decide where you lived. But many people had stable jobs, quality education, and a sense of pride that their country was respected in the world. Today the social safety net from Soviet times is gone, and Russians are not confident that anything has replaced it. The reality is harsh: Russia seems to stand for little besides wealth at the top, corruption, an uneven playing field, and the repression of civil rights. Russians today are free to travel and free to express their views in public, but the Soviet Union has been replaced by a system eerily similar in some ways—featuring the same repression and inequality that existed before, only without the Communist ideology that at least put food on the table.