Siberian people are a world away from the Moscow-dwelling Muscovites. For a start, they smile more often. It’s not uncommon to be invited to dinner and be presented with half a dozen courses of meat dishes and vegetables, and to be given some for the way home. Even if you visit someone very briefly they usually put an array of nibbles on the table for you to dip into. They care about other people’s wellbeing, as if everyone were distantly related. I have my own theory that this is implanted by two major factors. The first factor is that most Siberian people are poor in monetary terms. Those I have met have little compared to Western standards, and therefore there is an attitude of ‘We are all in it together. So why not share’.
The second factor that informs my theory is that Krasnoyarsk is zek country. Krasnoyarsk housed a large number of Gulags – the enforced labour camps of the Stalin era from the 1930s to the 1950s. When the prisoners, known as zeks, were released (if they managed to survive), they couldn’t always obtain resident permits for the towns and cities they once lived in and so became residents of Siberia. Not only that but once a prisoner was released, after suffering hard labour in 40° C summers and -40° C winters, they were probably in no state to travel far, and didn’t feel they could always be understood by Russians who had not been enslaved themselves. This was something Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn touched on in The Gulag Archipelago. According to Solzhenitsyn, there was an understanding between zeks that could not be penetrated or understood by outsiders. This train of thought seems to be apparent even today. The people of Krasnoyarsk and its neighbouring cities have a precious and very rare sense of community, based on hardship, which they know most Westerners cannot fathom. This is something akin to the sense of community I know exists in Ely, Cardiff. However, that community is largely constructed of working class people, some of whom receive state-funded benefits (like my family did). These benefits are seen as a luxury among Siberians, although they do have a slightly less generous welfare system of their own. Having been rescued from drowning myself by Jobseeker’s Allowance, even though I hated doing it, and there was a stigma attached to it, I am ever thankful that Britain is still a welfare state. It’s a terrible thing that this is currently under attack from the Tory government; if I hadn’t been able to float on JSA for a short period between jobs I may have perished, due to a lack of survival skills and an obvious lack of ability and space to grow my own food.
In Siberia, if you don’t work, or grow your own food, or you’re not an oligarch, you face extreme poverty, unless helped by another. You’d think in a place like Siberia where the weather systems are lethal, the danger of being killed by a number of deadly creatures is very real, and the economic climate is so severe, that only the tough would survive. This is true in a way, because Siberian people are tough, but the conditions set by the weather and the government only strengthen their resolve and their sense of humanity further. Like the people of Ely, Siberians seem to have a greater empathy for those who have it hard. For example: when I was waiting for a bus one day I noticed a babushka crossing the road where there was no designated crossing area. She got halfway across and then stopped because traffic was heavy in both directions. I thought she was going to get killed, but then a large, white off-road car stopped right next to her. The driver parked his vehicle in such a way as to stop the flow of traffic in the two lanes behind him. He got out and walked the woman across to the pavement safely. Then got back in his car and went on his way. It’s the little kindnesses that count and Krasnoyarsk is the world’s capital of little kindnesses.
iv. Knowing Where to Walk
During that first month in Russia I felt afraid, I was visibly scared of everything and it was noticeable. Though I was never in any danger, the outside world felt so alien, so completely different from what I was used to in Wales, that I interpreted it as being hostile. The apartment blocks, tall and grey, sometimes had balconies that looked as if they were going to fall off and there were many wild dogs that although thin, were agile and obviously hungry. People spoke a language I couldn’t understand, and sometimes in very harsh tones, and I didn’t know the Cyrillic alphabet. I couldn’t even translate the simplest warnings on the buses, or anywhere else. Plus, the fonts used on some of the signs looked decidedly military. Although these things aren’t necessarily intimidating, the lack of control I felt was. I had no way of communicating with anyone other than Nastya and I had no control over what I ate either. Nastya did the cooking because I didn’t know any of their cooking methods, and as I didn’t have a lot of money I couldn’t buy my own food. Not only that but it would have been offensive to cook my own meals. At times when we went to a supermarket, Nastya would scorn me for choosing something she said was unhealthy, but at the same time, she would buy a lot of candies. This lack of control over nearly every aspect of my life, at times, drove me further into myself.
With no spoken Russian at all, I had to be accompanied by Nastya at all times. She was my guide, translator and wife, and the three roles were occasionally too much for her. When she had to work a twelve-hour night shift, I was stuck in the apartment on my own. At times I felt a bit like a prisoner, although I was a prisoner of my own making. Some nights Nataliya Petrovna would come over to cook for me when Nastya was working, but this only made things worse. As we couldn’t communicate, I resigned myself to staying in our bedroom with the door closed. When it was time to eat, Nataliya Petrovna would knock on the door and motion me towards the kitchen. Though it was very kind of her to do this, I would rather have been left to my own devices and cooked something myself; there are only so many meatballs one can eat, and as they were home-made, I often found myself crunching teeth against pieces of bone. Even when I was alone at night, it was very difficult to prepare a meal. Many of the food stuffs in the fridge were out of date, and I couldn’t tell what a lot of it was. If something had mould on it, they kept it for use in some soup or stew. I was from a culture of ‘If it’s got green on it, don’t risk it’, living among a people whose ethos was the opposite.
Alone at night, it was also hard for me to sleep. A massive electricity station stood just across from the apartment on the side of our bedroom and it gave off an electric hum that couldn’t be stopped, even with the window closed. Sometimes in the dead of night, this substation released what can only be described as massive explosions, caused by surges in power. These never failed to startle me from sleep, and when several explosions went off in a single night, I had the impression of being alive in a war zone.
On days when Nastya was free we would take walks along the Yenisei or visit whatever attractions were available. There are two Ferris wheels on the north side of the river, one in the park opposite the office where Nastya works and one in the central city park opposite Revolution Square. These wheels never stop turning all year round, except for the holidays around New Year.
About 20ft from each Ferris wheel was the ticket office, where a woman sat inside from morning till night. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, or for the hundreds of other people like her in similar roles. Spread all over the city there are tiny little shops, some no bigger than ice cream vans. There is no access inside them except for a backdoor which is always locked. These kiosks are product specific. They either sell magazines, ice cream or cigarettes. There are more cigarette kiosks than any other. Each stall has just one person inside. Outside of these you tend to see two or three Coca-Cola-branded fridges of the type you find in British corner shops. The difference in Russia is that these fridges stand in the street and can only be opened by the stall keeper who, once she has taken your money, pushes a button that remotely releases the magnetic lock on the fridge door. She then watches as you take exactly what you paid for.