“There are rumors that the business is in the middle of a crisis and will soon no longer have funds to spend on airplanes, farming, and culture,” says Marina. “Then it will concentrate on its core business of diamonds. That would be bad for me; my department would have less money for cultural events.” Marina organizes concerts, theater performances, and occasional sporting events for young people. We stop in front of the building of a sports club. “Want to have a look inside?” Of course I do.
The receptionist, a fiftyish woman, is less enthusiastic about the idea. “This is a school, not a museum,” she lectures us in a tone as cold as a January day in Sakha. Marina turns on all her charm, saying that she should make an exception for a German tourist. Well, okay, just down the hall and back, says the ice dragon.
At the end of the hall there is a basketball court. Pictures of soldiers at drill and heroes of World War II are hanging on the wall to provide motivation for peak performance. There’s also a well-equipped boxing facility, a room for practicing gymnastics, and a fitness center with weights and other bodybuilding equipment. I hear the clicking of footsteps on linoleum coming toward us. The receptionist. Is she coming to kick us out because we’ve been wandering around for more than sixty seconds? Far from it. “Do you want to see the table tennis room? I’ll turn on the light,” she offers, unlocking a door. Marina winks at me and we inspect two modern table tennis tables. Finally we’re allowed to look at a screen with black-and-white images from the surveillance cameras. Proudly, the receptionist points out the live images of a volleyball court, the hall on the upper floor, a wrestling hall and the forecourt. We thank her like well-behaved children and return to the street.
Truth No. 19:
Charm helps. Even on Russian gatekeepers.
DON’T WASTE THE HEATING, PLEASE
ONE GENERAL STORE is called Klondaik; a restaurant, Geofisik; the cultural center, Almas, which means “diamond.” I ask Marina whether you can buy precious stones here cheaper than elsewhere. “No. But you can get a bit of a diamond about the size of a speck of dust for 1,000 rubles.”
There are rumors that black-market goods are smuggled off the company premises, despite stringent controls.
The residential buildings in Mirny are mainly eight- or nine-story, U-shaped, purpose-built structures on stilts, with parks and adventure playgrounds in the enclosed areas. Nothing in the city seems to be more modern than the castles and pirate ships for the little ones. It looks like they used all the paint for brightening up the playgrounds so there was none left for the house walls.
Signs point out that doors should always be closed to preserve heat. To get into a house you always have to pass through two, three, or four of them, so that in winter the cold remains outside. A gentleman would be confronted with an unsolvable problem if he wanted to open all the doors for a lady.
“You’re lucky to be here now,” says Marina. “Next week it’s already going to be minus five.” Today, however, she can still wear jeans with gaping holes without freezing.
The fur store is hidden right at the end of the top floor of the Mega Shopping Mall. Hundreds of velvet-soft black and white mink coats are hanging in an area of under thirteen square feet. None of them is cheaper than 120,000 rubles—around US$2,000—and many cost twice that amount. Who needs a secondhand car when you can buy such a status symbol? A cardboard sign points out that if fur becomes wet it should be well shaken before it’s hung to improve its lifespan. Next to it, the name of the maker: EvropaGoldFur. This is odd as mink coats haven’t really been fashionable in Europe for decades, and even inherited ones are nothing but trouble (Throw away? The poor animal. Wear? Not politically correct. Sell? Tricky). Maybe someone ought to organize an old mink collection and send the things back to Siberia.
“The winters really are a bit extreme here,” says Marina. “But in recent years they’ve become warmer, often only minus thirty instead of minus forty.”
“Then you’re happy about climate change?” I ask.
“Oh, Jesus! No! We walk around on permafrost ground. If it gets too warm this will all be a lake. Do you want to see a polling station?”
From the square with the slightly wrong Lenin statue we go into the Almas Cultural Center. The entrance hall smells of popcorn; there’s also a movie theater in the complex, which at the moment is showing Jason Bourne, Deepwater Horizon, and the remake of The Magnificent Seven.
The term given to intrepid heroes who go swimming in icy waters in the Russian winter. Orthodox Christians prefer doing this on January 19 because priests bless the waters and bathers can shock-freeze their sins. People who think that morzhi sounds like a quick sneeze are on the wrong track. According to popular belief, if you dip your head underwater three times during the winter plunge, you’re sure to be free of colds for the rest of the year.
An arrow points to the polling station on the right, where wooden tables and pairs of women await citizens, who have to first register alphabetically. Four supervisors, wearing campaign buttons of different parties, sit next to the polling booths, which are behind curtains. The young man from United Russia is the most noticeable, with a red-and-white-striped tie, an undercut, and an expensive suit. Next to him is someone from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, dressed in a shirt and jeans, and someone from A Just Russia, dressed similarly. And at the end of the row is Juliya, the business relations consultant of the city administration who was also one of my welcoming committee at the airport. “We are counting how many people voted,” she explains. “But we are not allowed to speak to them; no one should be influenced.” She has to be here from eight in the morning until eight at night. I wonder whether the voters really do feel unaffected with the three party representatives sitting there. If I had no idea who to vote for, I would probably look to see who was wearing the best tie or who looked the nicest.
Marina betrays whom she voted for a short while later in a small shashlik restaurant. On the wall is a clock with a Putin motif and she has great fun posing beneath it with thumbs up for a photo. Nevertheless she rails against the government readily and often. “For them the best people are the ones who just sit in front of the TV and are then frightened to leave their houses or cities, and as a result only learn about the world through the media,” she says. There are probably more of them in an isolated outpost like Mirny than elsewhere. Is that why the most frightened people and the proudest nationalists often live in the sticks?
Back on the street we experience something like a scene from a dystopian apocalyptic movie. A black van with tinted windows and a loudspeaker on the roof drives slowly down the road. The same announcement is repeated over and over again: “Only one more hour. Make the right decision. Your life depends on how you vote today.”
It turns out later that the 48 percent turnout in Sakha is almost exactly average for Russia. (However, the winners of the election, United Russia, got fewer votes here than in other regions. Maybe the loud tie made less of an impression than expected.)