Sunbathing in Siberia (8 page)

Nataliya Petrovna, by contrast, is not so physical. She is short and round and not capable of climbing any mountains let alone fighting bears. Unlike Boris, Nataliya Petrovna is very sociable and likes to dress to impress at one of her many dinner parties. When she has guests over, she always makes an effort to look good, by arranging her hair into curls and by wearing dresses. She is as mild mannered as Boris, but flies into a rage if there are hunting things left around for people to trip over. Nataliya Petrovna likes everything put in its proper place and despises dirty things. She also likes to joke around. When Boris telephones from some distant mountain she pretends she is having a great time without him and tells him not to return. After such phone calls, she pines over him and berates herself for having said silly things.

When she is not looking after her grandson Semka, or playing the piano, she is cooking. Her speciality is
golubtsi
. This is meat wrapped in cabbage leaves that must be boiled in an inch of water for an hour and thirty minutes. Nataliya Petrovna knows all there is to know about preparing meat dishes. It is her job to cut up all the meat Boris brings home. When he brings back the limbs of deer Nataliya Petrovna spends many of the evenings after cleaning them – chopping bits, mincing bits in her electric mincer, bagging it, sealing it and storing it away in one of the three freezers. They have a normal fridge-freezer in the kitchen. When this freezer is full she then uses the other much larger freezers in the cupboard next to the bathroom. They are rarely short of good cuts of meat. With the mincemeat Nataliya Petrovna usually makes
pelmeni
and
manti
(both similar to ravioli). She makes so much
pelmeni
that she very often gives whole bags of it away to friends.

After the collapse of the USSR, and the suicides of several of their friends, Boris brought back so much meat that Nataliya Petrovna made enough
pelmeni
to spread around and keep some of her friends alive. When they were short of something essential Nataliya Petrovna had only to make a call to someone to make a trade in
pelmeni
. It was their primary bargaining tool at a time when money was worthless. If Boris hadn't the skills to hunt, I'm not sure what would have happened to everyone. It's possible Nastya might never have survived. When I sat down with Nastya and her mother and questioned them about the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nataliya Petrovna said: ‘I have never been poor, but neither have I ever been rich. No matter who came into power and regardless of communist or capitalist rule, life went on as normal. Not one president, with all the promises they made ever really changed anything.'

Even so, I got the sense that both Nastya's parents missed the earlier part of their lives even though they had lived under Soviet rule. Nataliya Petrovna had been alive no longer than three years when Stalin died, and so grew up under Khrushchev's thaw. Premier Nikita Khrushchev famously denounced Stalin's policies, released millions of Soviet political prisoners from the Gulags and attempted to fully reverse repression and censorship by what became later known as de-Stalinisation. Even with the rise of Brezhnev, who set to work on reversing Khrushchev's reforms, many of the cultural reforms proved irreversible. Khrushchev's policy changes made it possible for the likes of the Shurik movies to be made. Played by Aleksandr Demyanenko, Shurik, with his bleached-blond hair and thick-rimmed glasses, became a recurrent character in slapstick comedies of the 1960s and early 1970s. His movies, which epitomise the sixties in Russia, are still shown regularly today. In fact, during my first month in Russia, I saw them all, more than once.

With the sounds of the sixties coming from the TV, and the typical view of Soviet residential blocks from the window I sometimes felt as though we were still living in the Khrushchev period. This sense of being lost in the past was broken every evening by a neighbour, who would pull up at the foot of the building in his souped-up sports car playing Vangelis' ‘Conquest of Paradise' as loud as his speakers would allow. Which was quite appropriate as that song was recorded just after the fall of the USSR.

The Red Army Strikes

Russian bread was something else I had to get used to. There were few of the factory-made thick, medium or thin sliced loaves that come in plastic wrappers. Instead loaves of bread come in various irregular shapes; they never last more than three days and always taste very good. The size of the loaf we bought depended on how many people were at home at the time, as waste is sorely frowned on. To play safe Nastya and I normally bought a miniature unsliced loaf every day. During meal times everyone got a slice of bread, even if the meal was meat and potatoes or fish pie. Though they weren't exactly slices as I had known them, more like one-third-of-a-slice, the same size you would use for egg and soldiers. At first I thought that this was ritual behavior, leftover from times of hardship but in actual fact Russians are just really fond of eating bread with everything. They eat it with chicken, they eat it with rice, with any and every dish you really wouldn't think of accompanying with bread, they have a slice or two. When I was on the first flight to Russia, there had been a soldier of bread, wrapped in plastic alongside the meal. At first I thought that they were being stingy, but later, when I got settled in the apartment, I understood it was normal practice.

One evening, while eating meatballs and home-made mashed potato with the obligatory slice of bread, Nataliya Petrovna told me the story of her grandfathers. Following the October Revolution of 1917, Nataliya Petrovna's paternal grandfather, Fyodor Rosov – who was a geologist and a man of means – fled Russia with his brother Ivan. According to her story, neither man had any particular political ideology but as they were both accustomed to a decent standard of living they feared assassination by the Red Army. People from wealthy backgrounds were being slaughtered left right and centre, so the only option for them was to leave. They fled via the Black Sea for Turkey, made their way to Tunisia, and eventually settled in France. I later did some research on this subject and found that their exile from Russia had been documented in one of Moscow's museums, Marina Tsvetaeva. According to the museum, Ivan, brother to Fyodor Rozov, studied law at Yekaterinburg University and was mobilised into the white army in 1918 where he graduated to Midshipman in the Black Sea Fleet. He later settled in Reims where he worked as a driver and in 1953 became a priest and founded the Church of the Assumption of Oni in 1954.

Little is known about Fyodor. What we do know is that when Fyodor fled for Turkey with his brother, he left behind a pregnant wife, Marina Rosova, Nataliya Petrovna's grandmother. Apparently Marina (who was pregnant with Nataliya Petrovna's father at the time, the unborn son of a ‘white deserter'), was so beautiful that the Red Army couldn't bring themselves to kill her, as was their custom when they came across the wives of ‘traitors of Russia'. She later married Anton Karbovski, a high-ranking Cheka (secret policeman) of the NKVD (The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs). He was so in love with Marina that, against regulation, he located all documents that gave evidence of her original marriage and destroyed them, so she would not be exterminated during any of the purges. Marina gave birth to Pyotr Karbovski, who grew up to become loyal to the communist party, and the NKVD. When Pyotr came of age he was contacted by his biological father, through his Aunt in St Petersburg. Pyotr, being a devout communist, reported all of these letters to the NKVD who said that if he never replied to Fyodor, he could continue life exactly as he had already. In those times, when one applied for work, a questionnaire had to be filled out that asked if you had relatives abroad. Pyotr had always stated that he hadn't and under the advice of the NKVD continued to do so even though his natural father was alive and well in France.

In 1941, Pyotr was studying engineering at the University of Yekaterinburg when war broke out. He volunteered for the war effort and was sent by train to Moscow. However he never made it to Moscow. Halfway through the journey the train stopped for supplies and Pyotr got off to beg some hot water somewhere nearby. The train then departed leaving him behind. This was classed as treachery. As punishment he was sent to the front line as part of the strafnoi battalion. His job was a suicide mission: advance, advance, advance and never turn back. The NKVD he had so devoutly admired were now fifty paces behind him all the way, with machine guns at his back. Pyotr was not expected to survive, but was saved by the severely cold winter of 1941. He got frostbitten on several of his toes. Once these were amputated he was classed as an invalid and sent back to Yekaterinburg, where he continued his studies in university and met his future wife, Iraida Furtaeva (Ira). Nine years later Iraida gave birth to a daughter, Nataliya Petrovna Karbovskaya, my mother-in-law.

Aeroflot Flight SU0241. April 16
th
2011.
Moscow – London

After a long and tearful goodbye I was once again alone and lonely on a plane full of Russians. Before my adventure I had made plans for one trip, and one trip only, as if I was going on some holiday that also included a wedding. The fact was that the wedding had been my own, and as a married man I had to get my head out of the clouds and think seriously about where life was heading and what I needed to do.

As the plane ascended into the sky, and I looked down on Moscow, it became clear that I had not only married a woman, but an entire country. My life, as I had known it, would never be the same again, which was both a good and a bad thing. There were countless things I would miss in the UK: people, places, foods and so on but it was too late to turn back the clock. I didn't want to anyway. I was now half-Welsh, half-Russian. Nastya would be waiting for me as she had done ever since Paris. It broke my heart to think of the way she had cried in Moscow. To think of all the nights we would have to spend apart; but it couldn't be helped. My visa had expired. And although I hated the thought of it, I had to go back to go forward.

After hoovering up the contents of my inflight meal, and washing it all down with weak aeroplane coffee, I reclined my seat and relaxed. I loathed leaving Nastya behind but at the same time I was relieved to be back in control of myself again. I couldn't wait to get back to the UK and tell my friends all I'd seen, and I'd seen a lot. It felt like such relief to be on my own, to be moving away from Russia, which was no surprise considering what had happened the night before.

Moscow, Fridge Magnets, and Tactical Nuclear Weapons

We arrived in the early morning at Moscow Domededovo Airport, which is south and some considerable distance away from Moscow. To get to the city we bundled ourselves into the back of a minivan along with several other travellers. This is quite normal – taxis are expensive and buses can take a long time to wait for, a bus-taxi cross is the cheaper option because it can carry about ten people, and it runs much faster than the bus service. We were dropped off at the nearest Moscow metro station an hour later. Before we caught the metro to our hostel, I wanted to stand in the street and smoke a cigarette, a Russian cigarette. I wanted to capture the moment, and there is no better way I know of than to stand still and smoke. Moscow looked practically European compared to Krasnoyarsk. The roads were already busy with people on their way to work and the sun was shining against the office blocks; it made me feel like I was back in Paris for a moment.

When we reached our hostel some three hours later, we were both shattered, having travelled through the night, so we bunked down and fell fast asleep. When we awoke it was early evening. The opportunity to see the Tsaritsyno palace had passed us by. There was only enough time left to do some souvenir shopping and have a bite to eat. Moscow is different from Krasnoyarsk in that there are thousands of restaurants of good quality and kiosks in the streets that sell Western style foods. I will never forget that first slice of pizza after a month in Siberia. It was heaven. We didn't stop there however, after several slices of pizza we went to a Turkish restaurant and ate ourselves silly. Our hostel and the restaurant were both on Yamskogo Polya Street near the Belorusskaya train station. We had chosen to stay at that hostel precisely because it was so near to it. The shuttle train to Sheremetyevo Airport would leave from there the following morning.

As the evening was descending quickly, we decided to walk to Belorusskaya to make sure we knew the fastest route and because it was likely there would be shops that sold tourist pap. We needed to buy a fridge magnet for my mum and some Soviet chocolate for my dad. To get to the station, we first had to ascend some concrete steps that lead to Leningradsky Avenue. This road is raised as it has to pass over the Moskva-Smolenskaya Railway line. When we reached Leningradsky there were hundreds of people gathered there. They were waiting for something and obviously had knowledge that we didn't, so we waited with them. A fleet of orange street-cleaning vehicles came and began washing the road. They were only cleaning the stretch of road that was visible to us. There must have been twenty of them. They took it in turns to run in relays and it took about half an hour to wash just a 200-metre stretch, as the road was nine lanes wide. During this time militia came. Not the normal street militia, but highly decorated officers. Many of them walked along the edge of the pavement and took up positions by the side of the road as a preventative measure to stop people stepping out. They didn't have to say anything as people naturally backed away from them.

When the road was clean, and the militia were in place, we watched in silence as tanks came screaming through, hundreds of them, with soldiers popping up slightly through the turrets. These were followed by a range of military vehicles including mobile surface-to-air rocket launchers, each equipped with no fewer than sixteen barrels. When at least a hundred heavy-armoured tanks, rocket launchers and various killing machines had sped by, we asked a Muscovite what it was all about. We were told that the killing machines we had seen were just a practice run for Victory Day, which is held on May 9
th
. This display of military might is to celebrate the day Nazi Germany surrendered to the Soviet Union and its allies in 1945. Having seen some footage of Moscow's military parades before I came to Russia I knew that something was missing. There was no way any kind of military display, even on a practice run, would finish with tanks. I knew something much bigger was coming. The militia and throngs of people prevented me from getting a decent view of the road so I urged Nastya to follow me past Belorusskaya station to the junction where Leningradsky Avenue meets Leningradsky Prospekt. All the vehicles we had seen so far had not travelled the length of the avenue and so I deduced that they must have come from the road next to it. I was right.