1997 Novosibirsk, Siberia
Ed: Before the fall of communism, Natasha and Igor were drawn to the Volga town of Marx by the expectation that once Russia's Germans were granted their homeland, a new and prosperous microcosm of Russia would arise there (cf first excerpt). When that did not happen, they were stuck in Marx, unable to sell their house. Only in 1995 did they finally manage to swap their house for a flat in the nearby city of Saratov.
Selling the Saratov flat proved extremely dangerous in the criminalised, unregulated early days of privatisation. They were comforted by the prospect of moving back to Natasha's birthplace, Novosibirsk, where Natasha's father was a big boss. But that move did not resolve their problems either. They spent their first Siberian winter in some cellar, a refuge for winos and prostitutes. For all their education, they also lacked the skills to find work in the new Russia.
Natasha's father was holding a birthday party. I had heard a lot about him over the years: the charmer, the great builder, member of Novosibirsk's old Party elite. She never mentioned her mother, and something about her silence deterred questions. It was her father who brought her up, and she spoke of him with love and pride. She was clearly his darling. But I still had no idea why she fled from him, and from all the privileges that came with that background. In Russia, it was far riskier to throw away such advantages than in the West. What made her leave her first happy marriage, to rush hither and thither across Russia, from one husband to the next, only to end up back home in a basement with winos and drop-outs?
Natasha's father and step-mother lived in a flat in the city centre. We travelled in on the tram. Despite their penury, Natasha and Igor were smartly dressed in clothes from a shop which imported second-hand clothes from the West.
The front door was opened by a vivacious, nut-brown man with a vigorous mane of curls, the spitting-image of his daughter. Gallantly, he kissed my hand. The flat was light and airy, but perfectly modest. Had Natasha's father's savings gone in the inflation of those first post-communist years, I wondered? Or was the opulence of Natasha's childhood, which she recalled so vividly, only relative?
Despite the cancer that had struck his vocal chords, her father seated me beside him and regaled me through the long summer evening with whispered jokes and stories. But his efforts and his gallantry could not disguise the sadness which hung over the occasion. His much younger wife, a broad-hipped doll with a round, painted face, produced a sumptuous birthday meal. She hardly spoke all evening, but her face wore a martyred smile. ‘What about me?' it seemed to say. Even as she netted her big boss, he had turned into a sick old man.
Natasha fussed around her father and me like a nanny. She was nervous, and it was no wonder. For while we were changing for the party she dropped a bomb into our conversation: her father had spent his life building those arms factories which dominated the city's skyline. ‘One made nuclear weapons,' she said in a horrified whisper, holding my gaze in the miniature mirror in which she was making up her eyes.
‘My sister and I grew up knowing nothing - we thought he just built houses.' In fact, of course, most of the city's economy, and 40 per cent of the Soviet empire's was military. ‘It wasn't Papa who told me, but Sasha.' He was her first husband. ‘He didn't want to. He knew what it would do to me - I bullied him into it.' She turned round and looked at me directly. ‘I adored Papa so much. He'd been my idol - I felt betrayed. I couldn't forgive him. He belonged to that world - he knew all about it and he never told us, never prepared us. How I used to laugh when people used to talk about psychotronic weapons! I thought it was pure paranoia! They counted on that, on us thinking it was too far fetched! But when I asked him about them recently, he said he "knew the factories well!"' Before I could ask her any more, Igor interrupted us, hurrying us off to the party. In the tram coming in Natasha would not look at me, but stood gazing out of the window, frighteningly pale and still.
Natasha's anxiety rubbed off on her father. Even now it was clear how close the two were. When everyone else was in the kitchen fetching food, he whispered hoarsely in my ear, out of the blue, as if he knew what his daughter had been telling me: ‘It wasn't right what we did.' At that moment Natasha walked in from the kitchen bearing a steaming plate of pilau. ‘You were only the builder - it wasn't your fault!' she protested, rushing to his defence. ‘Well, what's done is done,' sighed the old man, reaching up to the top shelf of the cupboard for his best bottle of Armenian brandy. ‘Let's be grateful for small mercies - the Armenians still love us,' he smiled bravely, filling my glass.
As we sat back, sated with delicious pilau, the old man turned to me: ‘I don't believe in God - I won't have that,' he rasped in the shell of my ear so that no one else would hear. Even behind these words I heard an uncertainty: had he been wrong about that too? ‘Let's drink to peace,' said the old cold warrior.
***
Natasha's confession about her father had been prompted by her seeing the book I had been lent that morning. It was about psychotronic weapons. I had not heard the term before.
Apparently, they inflicted damage at long distance. They could implant thoughts in people's minds without their knowing it. Oh dear, I thought on hearing this, here we go, back into that unmapped territory, among the monsters. Back home, I would have laughed. But the man who pressed the book on me, a scientist, insisted that these were no fabulous monsters. There was a reason why they did not appear on my mapped world, he was saying: the secret had been too well guarded by governments. It was the dark side of the science he worked in.
Natasha was nobody's fool. She had been like a cat on a stove since seeing that book. Her reaction was what made me really want to know more. When we got back home from the party and she was asleep, I started reading the book.
Psychotronic weapons were no futurologists idea, I read. They already existed; they were capable of destroying command systems at long-distance. The information they transmitted could kill troops, and potentially whole populations. They worked by manipulating the electro-magnetic force-fields around living organisms ...
I looked at the sleeping Natasha. Was it possible that her beloved father, builder of the arms factories, had built a factory for psychotronic weapons? Was that it, the shock that had destabilised her life, sent her spinning round Russia pursued by furies, ridding herself of the antiques, the crystal, all the finery bought with her fathers' money?
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„Lost and Found in Russia" at openDemocracy Russia.
Other excerpts from Susan Richards's book can be found at:
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
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
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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