Only European civilization proved capable of overcoming its ethnocentrism. Within it arose the desire to know other civilizations, as well as the theory (formulated by Bronislaw Malinowski) that global culture is created by a constellation of parallel cultures.
NOVOSIBIRSK — OMSK
Day, night, and day.
The monotonous, insistent thud of the wheels, increasingly difficult to bear. It resounds the loudest at night: you are imprisoned in this thudding, as in a trembling, vibrating cage. We ran into a storm, for suddenly snow sealed up the window and you could hear the howling of the wind even inside the compartment.
“No road of any kind, only through terrifying mountains and gorges.”
OMSK — CHELYABINSK
The sixth, or maybe the eighth, day of traveling. In the great, monotonous spaces, the measures of time are lost; they cease to have any force, cease to have any meaning. The hours become formless, shapeless, elastic like the clocks in the paintings of Salvador Dalí. Moreover, the train passes through various time zones, and one should be constantly adjusting the hands of one’s watch, but what for, what is there to gain by this? The perception of change (the principal determinant of time) atrophies here; so does the need for change: man lives here in something like a state of collapse, of numbness, of internal paralysis. Now, in January, the nights are very long. And for most of the day, a dark gray, persistent gloom prevails. The sun appears only occasionally: then the world becomes bright, azure, drawn with a sharp, decisive line. But later the gloom seems all the more deep and all the more pervasive.
Traveling on the Trans-Siberian, what can one see of the so-called reality of the country? Nothing, really. The greater part of the route is swathed in darkness, but even during the day little is visible beyond the snowy emptiness that unfolds in every direction. Little stations — at night, lonely, weak lights, some specters staring at the train as it rushes by in clouds of snow, and immediately vanishes, sinks from view, swallowed by the nearest forest.
I have a compartment for two, in which I ride the entire time alone. An oppressive loneliness. One cannot read, for the car lurches about in all directions, the letters jump, get blurry, and after a while the eyes hurt. There is no one to talk to. I can go out into the corridor. And then what? All the compartments are closed; I don’t even know if anyone is traveling in them, for they don’t have little windows to look through.
“Is anybody traveling in these compartments?” I ask the steward.
“That depends,” he answers evasively, and disappears.
There is no way to start a conversation with anyone. People (even when they materialize from somewhere) either immediately skirt around me or, if I all but catch them by the sleeve, will snap something back in reply and instantly disappear. If they do answer, it is evasively, ambiguously, monosyllabically, so that nothing can really be deduced from the answer. They say, “We shall see”; they say, “Well, yes”; or they say, “Who can tell?”; or else, “Absolutely!” But most often they say something that could indicate that they have already understood everything, that they have penetrated to the very essence of the truth. They say, “Well, that’s life.”
If there exists such a thing as the genius of a nation, then the genius of the Russian nation is expressed in, among other things, just this saying: “Well, that’s life!”
Anyone who will ponder at length the meaning of these words will understand a great deal. But I would like to learn something more — and I cannot. All around me is emptiness; all around me is scorched earth; all around me is a wall. It is no mystery why: I am a foreigner. A foreigner gives rise to mixed emotions. He gives rise to curiosity (one must quash this one!), to envy (a foreigner always has it better; it suffices to see that he is well dressed), but above all to fear. One of the pillars upon which the system rests is isolation from the world, and a foreigner, by the mere fact that he exists, undermines this pillar. For contact with a foreigner Stalin would condemn a person to five, ten, years in the camps, and often he would order him shot, so it is small wonder that people fear the foreigner as they do fire.
I too am riding in a police wagon, only it is incomparably more comfortable than the one in which they transported General Kopeć. And I have not been sentenced; I am not a deportee. But the principle of isolation is the same. This underscoring of the fact that one is a stranger here, an other, that one is an intruder, an abomination, something jarring, trouble. And that is in the best case! For a foreigner is after all something far more dangerous — he is an infiltrator and spy! Why is he staring out the window, what is he looking for? He will see nothing! The entire Trans-Siberian route is cleansed of everything that could catch the spy’s attention. The train rushes on as if in a plastic tunnel — only bare walls and more walls: the wall of night, the wall of snow. And why does he try to ask questions like that? Why does this interest him? What does he need to know that for? Did he take notes? He took notes. What did he take notes of? Everything? Where does he keep those notes? With him at all times? That’s not good!
And what did he ask? He asked if it’s far to Sima. To Sima? But we’re not stopping in Sima. Precisely. But he asked. And what did you say? Me? I said nothing. What do you mean, nothing! You had to say something. I said that it’s a long way. That’s not good! You should have said that we already passed Sima, that would have confused him!
There, see? It’s better to avoid questions, because one doesn’t ever really know how to answer them. It’s easy to come out with something truly stupid. There is something about a human being that makes it difficult for him to hit it right on the button with a proper reply. And the worst of it is that anyone who has met with a foreigner and has exchanged a word with him is already suspect, already marked. One has to live in such a way, walk around town in such a way, along the streets, along the corridors of train cars, so as to prevent this from happening, so as not to bring misfortune down on one’s head.
CHELYABINSK — KAZAN
It is closer and closer to old, native Russia, although it is still a long way to Moscow.
“No road of any kind, only through terrifying mountains and gorges.”
While still at university I read Bierdayev’s old book in which he reflected upon how the great expanses of the Imperium had influenced the Russian soul. What does a Russian think about, somewhere on the shore of the Yenisey, or deep in the Amur taiga? Every road that he takes seems to have no end. He can walk along it for days and months, and always Russia will surround him. The plains have no end, nor the forests, nor the rivers. To rule over such boundless expanses, says Bierdayev, one had to create a boundless state. And behold, the Russian fell into a contradiction — to maintain the great expanses, the Russian must maintain a great state; on the maintenance of this great state he expends his energy, of which not enough remains for anything else — for organization, for husbandry, and so on. He expends his energy on a state that then enthralls and oppresses him.
Bierdayev believes that this immensity, this limitlessness of Russia, has a negative influence on its inhabitants’ way of thinking. For it does not demand of them concentration, tension, an intensification of energy, or the creation of a dynamic, vigorous culture. Everything falls apart, is diluted, drowned in this ungraspable formlessness. Russia — an expanse, on the one hand, endless, broad, and yet, on the other hand, so crushing that it takes one’s breath away, and there is nothing left to breathe.