Translated material
Russia: Lost and Found
I False pregnancy
January 1993 City of Marks.
When my trips began, the communist regime had just ended. The main goal of President Yeltsin's government was to destroy the sprawling Soviet planned economy. Yeltsin then banned the Communist Party and introduced a “shock therapy” program: price controls were weakened, the exchange rate fluctuated, and a large-scale privatization program began.
In one year, prices increased 26 times. The Russian colonies gained independence, so by that time the old economy had already collapsed. Economic activity halved and inflation increased. The Central Bank continued to print money and issue cheap loans to producers; inflation soon reached 2,000%, and the ruble became completely worthless.
Russia was enveloped in despondency. I tried to find places where people had already begun to build a new Russia, in which life would be good. I thought that I could find them in the Volga region - in Russian territories that in pre-war times were inhabited by a large German minority. In 1988, Gorbachev's government decided to return the territory as compensation to Soviet Germans expelled from it in June 1941 after the Wehrmacht invasion. German Chancellor Kohl had expressed his intention to support this project, and I hoped that the paralysis that had engulfed Russia had not affected this area.
Despite all attempts to dissuade me, I headed to the main city of this historical autonomy of the Volga Germans.
Snow clouds hung over the city. The icy street was empty and there was silence. High fences surrounded the houses, and it was impossible to look into the yard from the street. The door opened quickly and I saw a small curly-haired woman. “Come in, you’re probably cold.”
Natasha spoke English fluently. At that time, people who knew a foreign language well were rare in the provinces. Taking off my coat, I praised her English. “Thank you, but here, because of this, a person begins to be treated with suspicion.”
In a practically empty kitchen, a three-legged ginger cat sat on a wooden block, licking itself.
“You must be hungry, since you lived with Anna,” she said. Natasha had a lively face with an upturned nose and high Slavic cheekbones. At the same time, she was deathly pale. While I was eating, she told me how she ended up in Marx with her husband. “We lived in the Caucasus. When Gorbachev announced a plan to restore German autonomy, we thought that all this would happen here.” She sighed, took a new cigarette and lit the butt of the previous one. “We had just gotten married then. Were dreamers in love. I saw an advertisement in the newspaper. “A beautiful mansion on the banks of the Volga.” I bought it without even looking at it. “It doesn’t matter if he turns out to be not exactly what we want,” we said. “Once the Germans get down to business, we will do everything as we like - we will restore this one, build a new one.”
Everyone warned us. My father just begged me. My cousin Borya, a KGB general, came across all of Russia to convince me: “Don’t do anything stupid, it will never happen!” - he said. Of course, he knew something that we didn't know. But we didn’t want to listen. You see, this was the new life we had been waiting for.”
Natasha sighed and poured us some tea. “Just think: I abandoned my house in the Caucasus for this barracks! There was a garden full of flowers... When we arrived, I asked the driver why he stopped. “We’ve arrived,” he said. "Are you joking!" - I said.
And now we can't leave. Who will buy a house in Marks now? We can't even find work. Igor is a wonderful engineer, he is well versed in computers, but he has not worked for many months. And I’m a journalist, and I have a degree in mathematics, and I know English, but I can’t even get a job as a teacher!”
“How do you live?”
“I have several private students. But mostly we just sell things. We had paintings, crystal, furniture...” Now there was nothing in the house except beds, a table, a few chairs and books.
While Natasha was speaking, a man appeared at the door and stopped, looking at me with disapproval. He was strikingly handsome: olive skin, a neat mustache bordering his mouth and reaching to his chin. Black eyes with dark circles were sad. “Ah, Igor.”
“So why can’t you find a job?” - I asked him.
“Because I’m not local,” he replied. - This is a city of slaves. There are no more educated people here except us,” answering, he looked at Natasha with his piercing eyes.
“I felt sorry for them at first,” he continued. “Then I realized that it’s impossible to do this—you have to treat them critically.” Now I’ll give you an example.” He went to the sink and turned on the tap. “For example, a faucet is a seemingly simple thing. Opens, closes. And our neighbors have no water supply.” I muttered something sympathetic. "I'm sorry, what? I think you said “poor”? – Igor rolled his eyes. - They could have done it for themselves a long time ago - for free. Just guess what? He soaped his hands. “You don’t know, you’re from the West. These “poor” of yours prefer to live the way they live. Yes! They are frightened by the very idea of change - any change. They revel in their backwardness. In the Caucasus, where I come from, people at least pretend to be brave. Siberia - Natasha from Siberia - has its own ideas about courage. But not in Marx. This is where the real Russia is!”
Natasha was amused by this.
“I can’t tell you how lonely it is here. And ugly! You'll ruin your eyes! Listen, when they needed builders to build a new Catholic church, they had to go to Saratov - everyone here had forgotten how to lay bricks evenly!”
Igor's stream of caustic remarks and complaints continued, accompanied by excessively theatrical gestures. He took out a bottle. “In the Caucasus, we wouldn’t even consider it a drink. But now you don’t have to be particularly picky. This is the only thing you can drink calmly. The rest is all diluted.” The bottle containing the 96% strength drink was allegedly of French origin. The couple proceeded to teach me how to drink pure alcohol, diluting it slightly with fruit juice. After several glasses, Igor moved the block closer to the table and looked into my face. “Listen, well, you can tell us,” he said insinuatingly. “Why did you come?” I explained, not for the first time.
“I don’t need this nonsense,” he began to be rude. “Who sent you?”
"In terms of? Nobody!"
“Who did you say you work for?”
"I don't work for anyone."
Natasha sat back in her chair, watching with pleasure as her husband tormented me. He didn't back down.
“Who paid you to come here?”
“It's not quite like that. You see, I..."
“Stop it,” he interrupted, sounding sarcasm. – Here you are sitting in your wonderful London with your cute children and loving husband. And one fine day you suddenly decide to go see how people live in the city of Marks. Do you think I'll believe this? I will not believe".
"I have nothing to do with this".
“Ah, I got it! – Igor interrupted. -You came to see the savages! You will come home and you will talk right and left about your brave journey into the very heart of barbaric Russia.”
“I came because I want to understand.”
"Understand? This woman wants to understand! – Igor yelled, rolling his dark eyes. “When did the West suddenly want to understand Russia?”
“I cannot be responsible for the entire West.”
“Yes, in my opinion, you are not able to answer for yourself.”
“And you, in my opinion, are not able to listen.”
Closer to dawn, I finally got tired of these attacks. I lost my temper. “Listen, it may, of course, be stupid of me to try to write a book about Russia right now. And it was certainly stupid to come here. What about you yourself? I can leave - but you are stuck here. And in general, would anyone send spies into such a hole?” There was a long pause. Then Igor burst into laughter, and Natasha hugged me by the neck and began to kiss me: “Dear, dear, look at me... I’ve been waiting for you for so long,” errors appeared in her speech, her impeccable English was destroyed by alcohol. “You are wonderful, wonderful...” In horror, I broke free and locked myself in the room where Natasha prepared a cot for me.
I lay awake. I was struck by Igor’s accusations that I was either a spy or a thrill-seeker.
How different it was from the time when I had just begun my travels in the last years of the existence of the Soviet state, collecting material for “The Epic of Everyday Life” (1). Then I wanted to know how ordinary people cope with the discovery that they have been deceived all their lives. It often happened that they had never seen people from the West before me. What struck me most about those people was their flexibility and resilience. Where is it now?
The next morning I woke up early to the howling of a cat. I did not sleep well. I was tormented by my own naivety: how could I think that some island of prosperity could appear in this swamp... I unlocked the door and saw a skinny cat about to give birth. I failed to wake up Natasha and Igor. Wrapped in a blanket, I watched the cat give birth. There was a photograph hanging on the wall. She was wearing Natasha in a striped jacket and a hat folded from newspaper with the word “MARCSLAG” written on it. The image was crossed by a strip of barbed wire.
When Natasha and Igor woke up, the cat drama was already over. The cat's convulsions resolved with blood and afterbirth, but there were no kittens. This turned out to be a false pregnancy - just like German autonomy on the Volga.
II Build Heaven or Hell
In the next excerpt from Susan Richards’ book “Russia: Lost and Found,” the same characters, Natasha and Igor, are already in Siberia, four years later, that is, in 1997. There is something in Natasha’s past that haunts her throughout Russia. What is this? Strange guesses arise.
1997 Novosibirsk, Siberia
Ed.: When the project to restore German autonomy failed, Natasha and Igor were stuck in the Volga town of Marx and lived there until 1995 because they could not sell their house. Finally they managed to exchange it for an apartment in nearby Saratov. In the conditions of just begun privatization, with criminalized schemes and not yet developed standards, the sale of this apartment turned out to be an extremely dangerous undertaking. They consoled themselves with the hope of moving to Novosibirsk, where Natasha was from, and where her father was a big boss. But moving did not solve all the problems either. Arriving in Siberia, for the first winter they lived in some kind of basement, which served as a haven for alcoholics and prostitutes. For all their education, they lacked the skills to find work in the new Russia.
Natasha's father celebrated his birthday. Over the years, I have heard a lot about him: a charming man, an excellent builder, a member of the Novosibirsk party elite. Natasha never mentioned her mother, and for some reason this silence did not encourage questions. It was her father who raised her, and she spoke about him with love and pride. Of course, he doted on her too. But I couldn't understand why she ran away from him and all the privileges that came with it. It was much more dangerous to give up such advantages in Russia then than in the West. What made her abandon her first happy marriage, rush back and forth across Russia, changing husbands, and as a result return to her hometown to live in a basement with alcoholics and the dregs of society?
Natasha's father and stepmother lived in an apartment in the city center. We went there by tram. Despite their poverty, Natasha and Igor dressed up in a second-hand store that sold Western clothes.
The door was opened by an energetic man with a wild mane of curly brown hair - the daughter turned out to be the spitting image of her father. He gallantly kissed my hand. The apartment was bright and spacious, but surprisingly simply furnished. I wonder, I thought, was it the inflation of the post-communist years that ate up his savings? Or was the abundance that Natasha depicted in her stories about childhood relative?
He had cancer of the vocal cords, but, nevertheless, he sat me down next to him and throughout the long summer evening he regaled me with jokes and stories, telling them in a whisper. Despite all his efforts and courtesy, the atmosphere was dismal. His wife, much younger than him, a doll with a round painted face and wide hips, prepared a sumptuous holiday dinner. She was silent almost the entire evening and smiled forcedly. “What about me,” her smile seemed to say. She, of course, won over her big boss, but he inevitably turned into a sick old man.
Natasha fussed and babysat her father and me. No wonder she was nervous. While we were still getting dressed to go to the holiday, she brought up a risky topic. All her life her father built military factories (they were visible on the horizon). “One of them was producing nuclear weapons,” she said in a frightened whisper, catching my gaze in the mirror in front of which she was applying makeup to her eyes.
“My sister and I didn’t know anything when we were kids—we thought he was just building houses.” In reality, of course, most of the city's economy and 40% of the economy of the Soviet empire was dependent on the military industry. “I learned about this not from dad, but from Sasha” (that was the name of her first husband). “He didn’t want to tell me - I forced him.” She turned around and looked at me directly. “I loved dad so much. He was my idol - and I felt betrayed. I couldn't forgive him. He belonged to that world, he knew everything about it, but he never told us anything, did not prepare us. How I laughed when people talked about psychotronic weapons! I thought it was just paranoia! This is what they were counting on - that we would consider these to be pipe dreams! And when I recently asked him about this, he said that he knew very well about such factories!” I wanted to ask in more detail, but then Igor interrupted us: it was time to leave. On the tram, Natasha did not look at me, but stood staring out the window, frighteningly pale and silent.
Natasha's anxiety was transmitted to her father. Even now it was noticeable how close they were. When everyone except us went into the kitchen to set the table, he suddenly told me in a hoarse whisper: “We did a bad job,” as if he knew what his daughter was telling me about. At that moment, Natasha appeared from the kitchen with a plate of steaming pilaf. “You were just a builder - it’s not your fault!” - She rushed to defend him. “Well, what’s done is done,” the old man sighed and reached for the top shelf, where his best treat stood - a bottle of Armenian cognac. “We’ll be content with little – the Armenians still love us,” he smiled encouragingly, pouring me some cognac.
The pilaf was great. We ate our fill and sat lounging at the table. The old man turned to me: “I don’t believe in God, nothing will happen to me,” he rasped right in my ear, so that no one else could hear. Even in these words I felt uncertainty. Was he wrong here too? “Let’s drink to peace,” said the old Cold War soldier.
***
Natasha's revelations about her father were caused by the fact that she saw on me the book that they gave me that morning. The book was about psychotronic weapons. I hadn't heard this term before.
Obviously, this is a long-range weapon. It can subtly influence people's thoughts. God, I thought when I heard this, this is it. We are again in uncharted territory among monsters. At home I would just laugh at this. But the man who handed me this book - a scientist - argued that the monsters described in it were not at all fairy tales. There were reasons for the fact that they did not appear in the world I knew: governments kept them well classified. This was the dark side of science, which, in particular, he himself was involved in.
Natasha understood everything perfectly. When she saw this book in my possession, she couldn’t find a place for herself. Her reaction piqued my curiosity. When we returned home from visiting, she went to bed, and I began to read a book.
Psychotronic weapons, I read, are not the fantasy of futurists. It already exists. It is capable of destroying control systems from a great distance. The information it broadcasts can kill armies, and potentially entire nations. It functions by influencing the electromagnetic field around living organisms...
I looked at sleeping Natasha. Did her beloved father, a builder of military factories, build a factory producing psychotronic weapons? Was this the shock that shook her life, made her run manically all over Russia and get rid of antiques, crystal, furniture - everything that was bought with her father’s money?
III Russia: Lost and Found 3: My Dream House
The third passage from Susan Richards' book tells the story of Natasha and Igor's life in Crimea, seven years after the author visited them in Siberia.
2004 Crimea, Sevastopol
For several years I wrote letters to Novosibirsk, but they did not answer me. Natasha and Igor disappeared without a trace. I found them through Anna. She completely unexpectedly received an email from Igor, the contents of which, in Igor’s opinion, should have interested her. “So, are you interested?” - “Ha!”
The couple now lived somewhere in Crimea, on the Black Sea. I asked to stay with them. The departure hall at the Moscow airport was packed with Russians. It seemed to be common practice for them to take family holidays abroad. They leafed through Russian-language glossy magazines “Limousine” and “Property Today”, their children were dressed in brand new tracksuits and listened to iPods. But these lucky ones, reaping the benefits of Moscow's commercial boom, were actually not that rich. These were accountants, drivers, cooks. A trip to Crimea was not expensive, it was not even considered “abroad”. Until 1954, when Khrushchev bequeathed Crimea to his native Ukraine out of generosity, it truly belonged to Russia. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, this did not matter much. Now it has become a phantom pain: it seems that this is part of Russia, but in fact it is another country.
During the flight, I kept trying to imagine what Natasha and Igor had become. Have they joined the flow of the new economy like my fellow travelers? When I last saw them in Siberia, they had already endured many severe trials and acquired some commercial skills. I tried to imagine how they lived in comfort, at sea, as representatives of the middle class, but it was all implausible. Natasha was still hiding from her past and from her mother, who haunted her in her dreams.
Natasha met me at the Simferopol airport. Her snub-nosed Slavic face under a shock of thick curly hair shone in the sun, her eyes sparkled. She jumped up and down with joy. With her was a well-dressed young man who limped heavily when walking. Hmm, that means she left Igor after all. “No, no, it’s not what you think,” she said quickly. – Meet our wonderful friend and colleague Volodya. He is a hero of the Afghan war."
While we were driving south from Simferopol, Natasha told me Volodin’s story. A young colonel, hung with medals, barely alive from his wounds, was brought here from Afghanistan straight from the battlefield. When he finally recovered, Crimea had already become his home. At that time, the Russian fleet was located there, and many military personnel, upon retirement, remained to live there. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian government entered into an agreement with Ukraine that until 2017 the Black Sea Fleet would rent bases in Sevastopol.
We drove up gentle hills; the colors were so rich it was as if we were inside the landscapes of Derain or early Kandinsky: purple fields covered with blooming lavender, then golden slopes with ripe wheat, then tangles of green vineyards stretching far ahead. Even the inevitable rubbish - rusty structures and pillars, unfinished concrete sheds and fences - were drowned in the incredible beauty of these places.
Once upon a time, Volodya said, there was good wine here, and the trade in lavender oil brought great profits. But now the collective farms that maintained the bases of the Soviet fleet have disintegrated. The soil here is so fertile that it produces three harvests a year. Fruits, vegetables, and bread are still growing, but there is practically no one to sell it to. Men and women stood along the road and sold tomatoes, raspberries, cherries, strawberries and vegetables for ridiculous money.
Natasha started talking about politics in Sevastopol and about some project that she was currently working on together with Igor and Volodya. As her story progressed, everything fell into place: without a doubt, this couple was brought here by the same craving for trouble that at one time drove them (across all of Russia) into the epicenter of the political storm in Marx. Crimea, which had been fought over for centuries, was at that moment in a state of permanent conflict, invisible to the rest of the world. It became the Ukrainian Hong Kong: the Russian empire was collapsing, but the Russians continued to live there, and their fleet was stationed there too.
Such was the impasse in relations between Ukraine and Russia, and no one took responsibility. “We live in the present, and the present is stuck in the past. There is nothing you can do - you can't even buy a train ticket, let alone get a passport or get a telephone line. Only if you have friends or money for a bribe. The heroes of Afghanistan waited twelve years to get a telephone line! When we arrived here, it was difficult for us - we could not find work. And if we had not met Volodya, we would never have found him.” When the sea appeared, Volodya turned onto a country road running between lush gardens with many flowers and fruit trees. In the gardens there were houses hastily built from construction waste. The car stopped in front of two concrete huts covered with tin; There were lush thickets of weeds all around. Behind the fence two dogs were jumping and barking joyfully. There we saw Igor: he stood (as always, very straight) and smiled radiantly at us. He was tanned and handsome. The mustache that bordered his mouth was, as before, black and neatly trimmed. But his hair was now completely white, and his front teeth were missing.
We sat and drank fruit juice on a makeshift terrace made from a stretched piece of camouflage. When Volodya left, I looked into the house. It was simply furnished. To my surprise, there were almost no books. There was a computer on Igor’s spotlessly clean desk, and there was even an Internet connection. Smiling, Igor said that thanks to Volodya they began publishing a newspaper again - like the last time, they called it “Vestnik”. Now they distributed it for free.
“As you can see, all our property is gone. Apparently, we were supposed to lose everything. Again. We had to learn to live again. We learned from dogs to get up at dawn and go to bed at nightfall. At some point we had to sell our books - even the English ones. Just to survive. Once we lived on buckwheat for a whole month. It’s even funny: we always took food for granted. Then we realized how little we needed to live. And how good it makes us feel. You feel light and free!” Natasha’s story burst out like champagne from a bottle.
“If we had remained in Novosibirsk, we would not have known any of this. Life was too simple. Yes, we made good money. We lived in a nice apartment. We had everything our hearts desired. But there was nothing to do there - just drink kefir and listen to the noise of the air conditioner. Besides, we didn't earn that money very honestly. Remember? Igor came up with a brilliant idea on how to advertise the houses that that company built. We also organized a children's competition where they had to draw “My Dream House.” But this was dishonest - it looked as if the company really intended to build these “dream houses.” Which, of course, was completely wrong!”
I spent the night in the second house, located at the other end of the site. As I was going to bed, I noticed a box of unopened vodka bottles hidden under the table in the corner of the room. So Natasha was still drinking. How did she manage to look so happy and healthy then? How come they printed the Herald but gave it away for free? How did they earn money? Everything somehow didn’t add up.
But I found out the solution to an old riddle. Over dinner, I asked Igor and Natasha about the rumors that were circulating in Novosibirsk the last time I was there. They said there was a plutonium leak at a plant near where they lived. Was this true? Yes, there was a big leak, they said. This had no effect on Natasha, who had been drinking alcohol, but Igor, who did not drink, suffered greatly. Soon after I left, his teeth fell out.
I turned off the light, and suddenly I heard the sound of a shovel: someone was digging the ground - very close, as if right in the garden outside the door. Every now and then the lantern flashed. The shovel kept knocking and knocking. What are they doing? – I thought, falling asleep.