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.
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„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