2004 Crimea, Sevastopol.
Over the years I had sent letters and messages to Novosibirsk, but there had been no response. They had vanished without trace. I found them through Anna. She had received an email from Igor out of the blue, with some information he thought would interest her. ‘And did it?' ‘Huh!'
The couple were somewhere in Crimea now, on the Black Sea. I had invited myself to stay with them. The departure hall of Moscow airport was full of Russians who seemed to consider it normal to be going abroad with the family on holiday. They were leafing through glossy Russian magazines entitled Limousine and Property Today and their children were wearing brand new tracksuits and listening to I-pods. But these beneficiaries of Moscow's boomtime were not rich. They worked as bookkeepers, chauffeurs and chefs. Crimea was cheap and did not really count as ‘abroad'. Indeed, it had been part of Russia until 1954, when Khrushchev, in a quixotic gesture, bequeathed it to Ukraine, his native land. Until the Soviet Union broke up that had not made much difference to Russia. But now it was a phantom limb: it felt like part of Russia, though it was not.
On the flight I tried to imagine what had become of Natasha and Igor. Would they have joined the thrusting new economy of my fellow passengers? When we last met in Siberia, the couple had come through many an ordeal and equipped themselves with business skills. I tried to imagine them living a prosperous, middle-class life by the sea, but this seemed unlikely. The forces shaping their lives were stormy and unpredictable, and this move suggested that Natasha was still running away from her past, from the mother who haunted her dreams.
Natasha was there to meet me at Simferopol airport. Her snub-nosed Slav face under that thick mop of curls was burnished by sun, and her eyes were sparkling. She was jumping up and down with excitement. By her side was a smartly dressed younger man who walked with a bad limp. Hmm, so she had finally left Igor. ‘Oh no, it's not what you think!' she said quickly: ‘Meet our dearest friend and colleague - Volodya, hero of the Afghan War.'
As Volodya drove south out of Simferopol, Natasha told me his story. A much-decorated young colonel, he had been brought here straight off the battlefield in Afghanistan, almost dead from his wounds. By the time his convalescence was over, Crimea had become home. The community of retired Russian servicemen was large, for Russia's navy was still based here. After the Soviet Union fell apart, the government struck a deal with Ukraine that until 2017 they would go on renting the facilities of the naval base.
The low rolling hills over which we were driving were so dense with colour that we might have been in a landscape by Derain, or the young Kandinsky: purple fields of lavender, vastly overgrown, gave way to golden slopes of wheat, ripe for harvesting, then to ropes of green vines stretching out of sight. The usual litter of rusting frames and posts, half-built concrete sheds and fencing could not mar the improbable beauty of the place.
Once, said Volodya, the wine was good and the trade in lavender oil lucrative. But the collective farms that had kept the Soviet naval bases supplied had fallen apart. The soil was so rich it produced three harvests a year. The food kept growing, but there was little market for it now. By the roadside men and women were selling tomatoes, raspberries, cherries and strawberries, and vegetables, ridiculously cheap.
Natasha was talking about the politics of Sevastopol and some project that she and Igor were doing with Volodya. As she talked, something fell into place: the same instinct for trouble which led the couple to move across Russia into the eye of a political storm in Marx was surely at work again in their move down here. For Crimea, fought over for centuries, was today locked in a battle invisible to the outside world. It had become Ukraine's Hong Kong: Russia's empire might have fallen, but the Russians were still here, and their navy too.
Such was the political impasse between Ukraine and Russia that no one was in charge. ‘We live in the present, a present that's stuck in the past. You can't get anything done - not even buy a train ticket, let alone get a phone line or a passport. Not unless you know someone, or have money to bribe them. There are Afghan war heroes who've been waiting twelve years for a phone line! It was really hard when we came here - we couldn't find work at all. And if we hadn't met Volodya we'd never have managed.'
When the sea came in sight Volodya turned down a track and threaded his way between plots of land lush with flowers and fruit trees. In each, a little house had been cobbled together out of scavenged bits and pieces. The car pulled up in front of a couple of concrete huts with tin roofs, standing in a maze of weeds. Behind the fence, two dogs leaped around, barking in delight. Igor was standing, as upright in his bearing as ever, beaming at us. He was tanned and handsome. The moustaches which still curved down on either side of his mouth were still black and elegantly trimmed. But his hair was white now, and his front teeth were gone.
We sat and drank fruit juice in the shade of a terrace improvised out of army camouflage. After Volodya left, I looked inside the hut. It was simply furnished. To my surprise there was hardly a book to be seen. On Igor's immaculately tidy desk there was a computer, and even an Internet connection. Thanks to Volodya, Igor said with a grin, they were producing a newspaper again - and they called it The Messenger, like the last one. This time they were distributing it free.
‘As you can see, they've gone, the possessions. It seems we had to lose everything. One more time. We had to learn how to live all over again. The dogs taught us to get up at dawn and go to bed when it got dark. At one point we even had to sell our books - even the English ones. Just to stay alive. We lived on buckwheat porridge for a month. It's funny - food was always something I'd taken for granted. Then we understood how little you need to live on. And how good it made us feel. So light and free!' Natasha's words spurted out like uncorked champagne.
‘If we'd stayed on in Novosibirsk we'd never have learned these things. Life was too easy. Yes, we were earning good money. We were living in this nice flat. We had everything a person could want. But there was nothing to do - nothing but drink kefir and listen to the air conditioning. Besides, it wasn't really honest, the money we were making there. Do you remember? Igor thought up this brilliant wheeze for advertising the houses the company was building. We set up this competition for children to draw My Dream House. We used the winners in our ad campaign. The paintings were wonderful. But it wasn't honest - it looked as if the company was really going to build those dream houses. Which couldn't have been further from the truth!
I was sleeping in a hut across the yard from theirs. As I went to bed I noticed an unopened crate of vodka bottles stashed under a table in the corner of the room. So Natasha was still drinking. How come she was looking so happy, so healthy, then? How come they were publishing The Messenger, but giving it away. How were they earning any money? Nothing quite added up.
However, I had cleared up an old mystery. Over supper I asked Igor and Natasha about those rumours running round Novosibirsk when I last visited them. Rumours of a leak at the plutonium factory near their flat. Were they right? Yes, it was a bad leak, they said. Natasha, who was marinated in alcohol, was unaffected. But Igor, who did not drink, suffered badly. His teeth fell out soon after my visit.
After I turned the light off the sound of digging started up, quite close by, in the next door garden. Now and then a torch flashed. On and on the digging went. What could they be doing, I wondered as I drifted off to sleep?
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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
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
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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