Culture | openDemocracy

Lost and Found in Russia 2: Building Heaven or Hell

Susan Richards

1997 Novosibirsk, Siberia

Ed: Before the fall of communism, Natasha and Igor were drawn to the Volga town of Marx by the expectation that once Russia's Germans were granted their homeland, a new and prosperous microcosm of Russia would arise there (cf first excerpt). When that did not happen, they were stuck in Marx, unable to sell their house. Only in 1995 did they finally manage to swap their house for a flat in the nearby city of Saratov.

Selling the Saratov flat proved extremely dangerous in the criminalised, unregulated early days of privatisation. They were comforted by the prospect of moving back to Natasha's birthplace, Novosibirsk, where Natasha's father was a big boss. But that move did not resolve their problems either. They spent their first Siberian winter in some cellar, a refuge for winos and prostitutes. For all their education, they also lacked the skills to find work in the new Russia.

Natasha's father was holding a birthday party. I had heard a lot about him over the years: the charmer, the great builder, member of Novosibirsk's old Party elite. She never mentioned her mother, and something about her silence deterred questions. It was her father who brought her up, and she spoke of him with love and pride. She was clearly his darling. But I still had no idea why she fled from him, and from all the privileges that came with that background. In Russia, it was far riskier to throw away such advantages than in the West. What made her leave her first happy marriage, to rush hither and thither across Russia, from one husband to the next, only to end up back home in a basement with winos and drop-outs?

Natasha's father and step-mother lived in a flat in the city centre. We travelled in on the tram. Despite their penury, Natasha and Igor were smartly dressed in clothes from a shop which imported second-hand clothes from the West.

The front door was opened by a vivacious, nut-brown man with a vigorous mane of curls, the spitting-image of his daughter. Gallantly, he kissed my hand. The flat was light and airy, but perfectly modest. Had Natasha's father's savings gone in the inflation of those first post-communist years, I wondered? Or was the opulence of Natasha's childhood, which she recalled so vividly, only relative?

Despite the cancer that had struck his vocal chords, her father seated me beside him and regaled me through the long summer evening with whispered jokes and stories. But his efforts and his gallantry could not disguise the sadness which hung over the occasion. His much younger wife, a broad-hipped doll with a round, painted face, produced a sumptuous birthday meal. She hardly spoke all evening, but her face wore a martyred smile. ‘What about me?' it seemed to say. Even as she netted her big boss, he had turned into a sick old man.

Natasha fussed around her father and me like a nanny. She was nervous, and it was no wonder. For while we were changing for the party she dropped a bomb into our conversation: her father had spent his life building those arms factories which dominated the city's skyline. ‘One made nuclear weapons,' she said in a horrified whisper, holding my gaze in the miniature mirror in which she was making up her eyes.

‘My sister and I grew up knowing nothing - we thought he just built houses.' In fact, of course, most of the city's economy, and 40 per cent of the Soviet empire's was military. ‘It wasn't Papa who told me, but Sasha.' He was her first husband. ‘He didn't want to. He knew what it would do to me - I bullied him into it.' She turned round and looked at me directly. ‘I adored Papa so much. He'd been my idol - I felt betrayed. I couldn't forgive him. He belonged to that world - he knew all about it and he never told us, never prepared us. How I used to laugh when people used to talk about psychotronic weapons! I thought it was pure paranoia! They counted on that, on us thinking it was too far fetched! But when I asked him about them recently, he said he "knew the factories well!"' Before I could ask her any more, Igor interrupted us, hurrying us off to the party. In the tram coming in Natasha would not look at me, but stood gazing out of the window, frighteningly pale and still.

Natasha's anxiety rubbed off on her father. Even now it was clear how close the two were. When everyone else was in the kitchen fetching food, he whispered hoarsely in my ear, out of the blue, as if he knew what his daughter had been telling me: ‘It wasn't right what we did.' At that moment Natasha walked in from the kitchen bearing a steaming plate of pilau. ‘You were only the builder - it wasn't your fault!' she protested, rushing to his defence. ‘Well, what's done is done,' sighed the old man, reaching up to the top shelf of the cupboard for his best bottle of Armenian brandy. ‘Let's be grateful for small mercies - the Armenians still love us,' he smiled bravely, filling my glass.

As we sat back, sated with delicious pilau, the old man turned to me: ‘I don't believe in God - I won't have that,' he rasped in the shell of my ear so that no one else would hear. Even behind these words I heard an uncertainty: had he been wrong about that too? ‘Let's drink to peace,' said the old cold warrior.

***

Natasha's confession about her father had been prompted by her seeing the book I had been lent that morning. It was about psychotronic weapons. I had not heard the term before.

Apparently, they inflicted damage at long distance. They could implant thoughts in people's minds without their knowing it. Oh dear, I thought on hearing this, here we go, back into that unmapped territory, among the monsters. Back home, I would have laughed. But the man who pressed the book on me, a scientist, insisted that these were no fabulous monsters. There was a reason why they did not appear on my mapped world, he was saying: the secret had been too well guarded by governments. It was the dark side of the science he worked in.

Natasha was nobody's fool. She had been like a cat on a stove since seeing that book. Her reaction was what made me really want to know more. When we got back home from the party and she was asleep, I started reading the book.

Psychotronic weapons were no futurologists idea, I read. They already existed; they were capable of destroying command systems at long-distance. The information they transmitted could kill troops, and potentially whole populations. They worked by manipulating the electro-magnetic force-fields around living organisms ...

I looked at the sleeping Natasha. Was it possible that her beloved father, builder of the arms factories, had built a factory for psychotronic weapons? Was that it, the shock that had destabilised her life, sent her spinning round Russia pursued by furies, ridding herself of the antiques, the crystal, all the finery bought with her fathers' money?

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„Lost and Found in Russia" at openDemocracy Russia.

Other excerpts from Susan Richards's book can be found at:

A visit to Marx

The first of three excerpts from a new book by openDemocracy Russia editor Susan Richards. Lost and Found in Russia tells the story of post-communist years through the lives of a group of idealistic young people in the heartland.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/article/lost-and-found-in-russia-a-visit-to-marx

My Dream House

The final excerpt of openDemocracy Russia editor Susan Richards' book Lost and Found in Russia follows Natasha and Igor to Crimea. Seven years have passed since the author last saw them in Siberia.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/article/lost-and-found-in-russia-3-my-dream-house

----------------------------------

New book by openDemocracy Russia editor Susan Richards

‘A brilliant, poignant evocation of a society in transition.' Robert Service

‘Sheds a uniquely intimate light behind the facade of the new Russia.'Colin Thubron

‘A uniquely personal chronicle, and a testament to friendship.' Victoria Glendinning

‘Tells us more about the lethal tides of recent Russian history than years of newspaper reports.' Philip Marsden

Lost and Found in Russia: a visit to Marx

Susan Richards

January 1993 Town of Marx False Pregnancy

Communist rule had only just ended when I set out on my travels. The overriding goal of President Yeltsin's government was the dismantling of the massive planned Soviet economy. Yeltsin had banned the Communist Party and implemented a programme of ‘shock therapy': price controls were relaxed, the currency was floated and a mass programme of privatisation had begun.

Prices shot up twenty-six-fold in a single year. Russia's colonies taking their independence had already served to dismember the old economy. Economic activity was halved and inflation took off. Since the Central Bank kept printing money and offering cheap credits to industry, it quickly rose to 2,000 per cent, leaving the rouble worthless.

Deep gloom had settled over Russia. I was looking for some piece of countryside where people would already be starting to build a new Russia, one worth living in. Wishfully, I thought I might find it on the Volga, in the territory of the pre-war homeland of Russia's large German minority. In 1988, Gorbachev's government had decided to re-establish this homeland by way of making amends for the deportation of all Soviet Germans when the Wehrmacht invaded in June 1941. Since Germany's Chancellor Kohl had committed to supporting the project, I hoped that this region would have been spared the paralysis that had Russia in its grip.

So ignoring all attempts to dissuade me, I headed for the main town of that historic Volga homeland.

Snow-bound clouds hung over the town. The icy street was empty and the town was wrapped in silence. Between the houses, high fences sealed off the yards from the street. Presently, the door opened to reveal a small, curly-haired woman. ‘Come in, you must be freezing.

Natasha spoke in English, fluently. At that juncture, it was extraordinary to meet anyone in the provinces who spoke a foreign language well. As I peeled off my outer garments I complimented her. ‘Thanks, but here it just marks you out as a suspicious character.'

In her bare kitchen a three-legged marmalade cat was licking itself on an upturned log of wood. ‘You must be hungry if you've been staying with Anna,' she went on. Natasha had a lively, snub-nosed face and high Slavic cheekbones, though she was deathly pale. As I ate, she told me how she and her husband had ended up in Marx. ‘We were living in the Caucasus. When Gorbachev announced the plan for a German homeland, we thought it was all going to happen here.' She sighed and lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the last. ‘We were just married. In love. Full of dreams. I saw this ad in the paper. Delightful private house on the banks of the Volga. I bought it sight unseen. "It doesn't matter if it isn't exactly what we want," we said to ourselves. "Once the Germans get things going we'll be able to do anything - restore it, build another."

Everyone warned us. My father pleaded with me. My cousin Borya, who's a KGB general, travelled across Russia to get me to change my mind: "Don't be a fool, it's not going to happen!" he said. He must've known something we didn't. But we wouldn't listen. You see, it was the new beginning we'd been longing for.'

Natasha sighed and poured us tea: ‘To think - I gave up my little house in the Caucasus for this barrack! It had this garden full of flowers..When we arrived I asked the driver why he'd stopped. "This is it," he said. "You're joking!" I said.'

‘Now we can't get out. Who'd buy a house in Marx now? We can't even get work. Igor's a brilliant engineer, and he knows all about computers, but he's been out of work for months. I'm a journalist, I've got a degree in mathematics and I speak English, but I can't even get a job teaching!'

‘How do you manage?'

‘I've got a few private pupils. Mostly, we just sell things. We had all these pictures, crystal, furniture ...'Now it was bare, except for beds, a table, some chairs and books.

While Natasha was talking, a man appeared in the doorway and stood looking at me disapprovingly. He was strikingly handsome, with olive skin and a trim moustache that curved down each side of his mouth as far as his chin. His black eyes, underscored with dark rings, were sad. ‘Ah, Igor.'

‘So why can't you get a job?' I asked him.

‘Because I don't belong,‘ he replied. ‘It's a town of serfs! There are no educated people here - we've only got each other,' he replied, fixing Natasha with his soulful eyes.

‘I used to be sorry for them,' he went on. ‘Then I realised you can't do that - you've got to judge them. I'll give you an example,' he said, walking to the sink and turning the tap. ‘Take this tap - quite simple, you might think. It turns on. It turns off. Well, our neighbours don't have running water.' I murmured something sympathetic. ‘What was that? Did I hear you say "poor things"?' Igor rolled his eyes. ‘They could have had it long ago - free of charge. But guess what?' He was in a lather now. ‘No, you couldn't guess, you come from the West. Those "poor things" of yours would rather live like that. Yes! The idea of change, any kind of change, terrifies them. They revel in their backwardness - in the Caucasus, where I come from, a man will at least pretend to be brave. In Siberia - Natasha's from Siberia - they've got a different kind of courage. But not in Marx! I tell you - you've come to the real Russia here!'

Natasha was watching with amusement. ‘I can't tell you how lonely it is. And ugly! You'll damage your eyes! Listen - when they needed bricklayers to build the new Catholic Church they had to go to Saratov - no one here could remember how to lay bricks straight!'

On it rolled, Igor's litany of contempt and self-pity, acted out with extravagantly theatrical gestures. He pulled out a bottle. ‘In the Caucasus we wouldn't call this drink. But you can't be too careful nowadays. It's the only stuff you can trust. The rest's all doctored.' The bottle, 96 per cent proof, came, improbably, from France. The couple proceeded to teach me how to drink raw alcohol, using fruit juice as a chaser.

A few glasses later, Igor pulled his log closer to the table and looked me in the face. ‘Come on, you can tell us,' he said, cajoling. ‘Why have you come?' I explained, not for the first time.

‘Don't give me that malarkey.' He was hectoring now. ‘Who sent you?'

‘What do you mean? No one!'

‘Who did you say you were working for?'

‘I don't work for anyone.'

Natasha sat back, relishing the spectacle of her husband baiting me. He pressed on.

‘Who paid you to come?'

‘It's not quite like that. You see I'm a ...'

‘Come off it,' he interrupted, sarcasm boiling over. ‘There you are - sitting in your nice London house with your charming children and your loving husband. And you expect us to believe that one fine day you decide to come and see how people live in the town of Marx! I don't believe you.'

‘That's not my fault.'

‘Ah, I get it!' Igor interrupted, ‘You're here for a bit of rough! You'll go home and dine out on horror stories of your brave trip to the heart of Barbaric Russia.'

‘I came because I want to understand.'

‘Understand? The woman wants to understand!' Igor bellowed, rolling his dusky eyes. ‘When has the West ever wanted to understand Russia?'

‘I can't answer for the West.'

‘You don't seem able to answer for yourself either.'

‘And you don't seem able to listen.'

It was almost dawn and I was fed up with being bullied. I lost my temper. ‘Look, I may be a fool for trying to write a book about Russia right now. I'm clearly a fool to have come here. But what about you? I can leave - you're stuck. Anyway, who'd send a spy to a dump like this?' There was a long silence. Then Igor fell about laughing and Natasha threw her arms round my neck and started kissing me: ‘Honey, honey look to me - I am waiting for you so long,' she slurred, her impeccable English smashed by drink. ‘You're a wunafull, wunafull ...' Horrified, I disentangled myself and locked myself in the front room, where Natasha had up a camp bed.

I lay awake, stung by Igor's accusation that I was either a spy or a sensation tourist. How different it was when I set out on my travels in the last years of Soviet power, researching Epics of Everyday Life. Then, I wanted to find out how ordinary people were handling the revelation that they had been lied to all their lives. Often, I was the first Westerner they had met. It was people's resilience that struck me then. Where was that resilience now?

I woke early next morning to the sound of a howling cat. I had slept badly, mocked by my naivety at thinking that any island of prosperity could rise up here, out of this drowned land...I unlocked the door to find her scrawny and heavily pregnant, clearly about to give birth. After failing to rouse Natasha and Igor, I wrapped myself in a blanket and watched over her as she went into labour. On the wall hung a photograph of Natasha wearing a striped jacket and a cap made of newspaper on which was written the word MARXLAG. A strand of barbed wire ran across the picture.

By the time Natasha and Igor woke up the feline drama was over. The cat's convulsions had produced blood and afterbirth, but no kittens. Like the Volga German homeland, it was a false pregnancy.

------------------------------

„Lost and Found in Russia" at openDemocracy Russia.

Other excerpts from Susan Richards's book can be found at:

Building Heaven or Hell

This second excerpt from Susan Richards' book Lost and Found in Russia follows the same characters, Natasha and Igor, to Siberia four years later, in 1997. What is it in Natasha's past that haunts her, pursuing her across Russia? A very odd clue emerges.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/article/lost-and-found-in-russia-2-building-heaven-or-hell

My Dream House

The final excerpt of openDemocracy Russia editor Susan Richards' book Lost and Found in Russia follows Natasha and Igor to Crimea. Seven years have passed since the author last saw them in Siberia.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/article/lost-and-found-in-russia-3-my-dream-house

New book by openDemocracy Russia editor Susan Richards

‘A brilliant, poignant evocation of a society in transition.' Robert Service

‘Sheds a uniquely intimate light behind the facade of the new Russia.'Colin Thubron

‘A uniquely personal chronicle, and a testament to friendship.' Victoria Glendinning

‘Tells us more about the lethal tides of recent Russian history than years of newspaper reports.' Philip Marsden

Russian anti-Nazi film v Kremlin bulldogs

Mumin Shakirov

Pavel Bardin's film Russia 88 has yet to reach the big screen, but myths and legends have already grown up around it. This film had been eagerly awaited by numerous critics, rights activists, and anyone concerned about the rise of xenophobia in the country. However, it turns out that the authorities are not ready for the release of Russia's first film to portray Russian Nazis. Secretive Kremlin ideologues are putting all sorts of obstacles in the way of this film, and have advised cinemas not to show Russia 88.