Russians

by Gregory Feifer

  Back in the village of Priamukhino, my inquiries into what may have caused the deaths of Father Andrei and his family produced little more than vague theories. But they did help expose a dying way of life in towns and villages across the country, where residents can ordinarily rely only on themselves for basic necessities. A census in 2010 revealed that more than a third of Russia’s 153,000 villages—and nearly two-thirds in some regions—house fewer than ten residents.12 The continuing mystery surrounding Father Andrei’s death reflected not so much a penchant for conspiracies in the countryside or evidence of the anarchy Russians have feared for centuries but the desperation of people struggling to subsist in a town where other considerations are secondary. Village head Alexander Volkov, who had no explanation for how the deaths happened, said tales of a population gone mad compounded the pain from the loss of an entire family. In the dilapidated wooden building that houses his office, he talked about the television crews that “swooped in here, filmed vodka bottles they themselves had brought, then broadcast that everyone here is a drunk and a vandal. Of course that hurt us.”

  “The rich have the gold, the poor have the fun,” goes an old Russian saying much favored by Soviet propagandists. I saw the opposite in Tver. As its residents’ hopes for a better life steadily decline, one change stands out amid the caved-in roofs and broken windows: new summer dachas belonging to affluent residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg, roughly three hours northwest by car, are going up here and there. Elderly survivors in the villages say they themselves will be gone within a decade or two, leaving their land to the moneyed newcomers.

  (Igor Tabakov)

  4

  Drinking

  The passion for drinking is innate in Russia.

  —Nikolai Leskov (1831–95)

  I don’t like drunkards, but I don’t trust those who don’t drink.

  —Maxim Gorky (1868–1936)

  However much vodka you buy, you’ll still have to run back for more.

  —Russian saying

  As if the beleaguered residents of Novoi Urengoi needed another reminder of the elements’ crushing domination even at the height of summer, endless dark clouds hung over the concrete-slab apartment blocks that stand amid the town’s gritty industrial sprawl on my second visit there. I’d returned to the Arctic Yamal Nenets region of western Siberia to observe the alarming effects of climate change on the surrounding landscape and had spent the day driving through a vast expanse of sandy tundra that stretches beyond the town limits, where scrubby brush and stunted trees growing above the permafrost struggle to complete their foliation cycles during the three months when the winter relaxes its choke hold there.

  The tundra eventually gives way to the world’s biggest frozen peat bog, an area larger than Texas, much of it dotted with puddles and ponds, some as big as lakes. Most are expanding because Siberia is melting. Enormous tracts of tundra frozen for tens of thousands of years are thawing so fast you can see the water level rising from year to year. The melting is releasing carbon dioxide and methane, greenhouse gases that have been trapped in the permafrost for more than ten thousand years. Now they bubble up so violently in some of the lakes that it prevents them from freezing even in the depths of winter. Siberia is among the best places to observe such effects of climate change because no warm jet stream or other weather pattern moderates its harsh continental climate. Thus it reflects even the smallest changes in global conditions sooner than elsewhere.

  My guide was a botanist from the Siberian city of Tomsk, hundreds of miles to the south, who had been sounding a lonely alarm about the transforming landscape. Fair-haired and handsome, Sergei Kirpotin, who was in his late forties, had an appropriately weathered face and the unhurried, easygoing manner of someone who spends a lot of time in the wilderness. We were accompanied by two more environmental scientists from other parts of Siberia and a couple of Kirpotin’s students who were taking advantage of the small sum I’d agreed to pay him for expenses to conduct climate-change research. After parking the rattling van we’d driven along remote, broken roads, we waded into the bogs.

  The going was even tougher than expected, at least by me. With every step, our feet sank deep below the spongy lichen and moss that obscured the boundary between the semisolid ground and marsh water that stretched to the horizon. I couldn’t help thinking what a great setting it would make for a chase scene in a horror film in which the victim can move no faster than a snail. Even worse were the mosquitoes, gnats and other flying insects that mounted ferocious sorties whenever we strayed too close to their territory near elevated bumps along the flat ground that had been thrown up by the heaving permafrost. Why no one lived in that harsh and utterly barren landscape was no mystery.

  But it was also stunningly beautiful. The never-ending expanse was splashed with patches of red, green, blue and other colors of the tundra’s fast-blooming flora. Fields of cranberries, blueberries and currants stretched as far as the eye could see. The berries were tiny but surprisingly sweet and delicious. Picking handfuls, I imagined I was the first human to have touched the bushes growing in this or that spot.

  Kirpotin described how the expanding ponds and lakes were eating into land normally covered by acres and acres of spongy white lichen, which reflected the sun’s rays back into space. As the lichen disappeared, the earth absorbed more warmth, reinforcing a snowballing cycle of rising temperatures. As further evidence, telephone poles near the town that had been sunk deep into the permafrost thirty years ago now tilted in all directions, forcing the authorities to replace them with new ones bolted to concrete ties resting on top of the wet ground.

  While Kirpotin pointed out dead brush surrounding the ponds and other evidence of the fast-rising water level, a young female student collected plant samples in plastic bags. I thought it odd that the other two scientists, men in their late middle age, weren’t collecting samples, measuring lichen coverage or, apparently, doing anything besides loafing around. Taciturn but otherwise perfectly friendly, they dismissed my attempts to interview them by issuing single-sentence generalities, as if afraid of being censured for even implying that anything, nature included, could be wrong with Mother Russia.

  After several hours of sloshing around, we piled back into the van for the bumpy ride back to our hotel, another concrete-slab affair. Like all our arrangements, the reservations had been organized through the local administration and required special permission from the Federal Security Service that took weeks to obtain. It was a given that the authorities were keeping an eye on me, even though there was apparently nothing sensitive about my presence in the region.

  As we separated to rest before dinner, one of the scientists, a leading environmental expert from the neighboring region of Khanty-Mansiisk, invited me to his room to taste some smoked fish. His expressions of pride in it were the first time I’d heard any enthusiasm from him about anything, and I accepted, postponing my note-jotting about the day to be friendly. Fifteen minutes later, I found the entire group inside his room huddled around an ancient coffee table laden with several filets of cured fish and cluttered with greasy glasses and plastic cups. The beer I’d brought was dismissed as superfluous. The tiny room’s straining refrigerator was crammed with the botanists’ pooled resources, mostly cheap vodka with names like Siberia and Old Omsk. Struggling to hide my apprehension at being unable to leave any time soon, I pulled up a rickety wooden chair, apologizing that I could stay only a few minutes.

  The others were sitting on a brownish Soviet-era couch and easy chair, both pocked by many cigarette burns. A window was open, but not enough to cut the cigarette smoke and heavy smell of fish. Although the exceedingly polite scientists cleared a greasy plastic plate for me, my arrival had clearly put a damper on their fun. Victor, the gaunt, red-faced, balding man who had invited me, was sharing the room with Kirpotin and his other colleague, Alexander. He lost no time trying to revive the mood by pouring vodka from a half-empty bottle into the cups and glasses. Much as I’d have
preferred lousy beer to lousy vodka, especially on my empty stomach, I knew better than to cause offense by protesting.

  Everyone held up an overfull glass. “Za znakomstvo!” boomed Kirpotin in the obligatory first toast in honor of a stranger: “To our acquaintance!” We all clinked our glasses while looking each other in the eye, according to custom, before downing our shots. The warm, acrid liquid burned going down, but to leave anything in a glass unless the drinking is already well under way is bad form for Russian men, and I was all too practiced in suppressing grimaces. Mastering the technique for getting vodka down had been tough at first, especially the harsh, poor-quality stuff often served and swilled in the regions. I found something distasteful about the method most of my Russian friends used: a demonstrative exhale before the raising of glasses. But it often worked, so I emptied my lungs silently.

  Afterward, everyone reached for a zakuska, a bite of food to chase down the alcohol, for which pickles or other marinated tidbits are considered best. Delicious dark Russian rye bread also serves the purpose very well, so well that just taking a smell—a technique said to have originated when bread was in short supply under communism—can also work. Russia’s preeminent historian of vodka, Alexander Nikishin—whose staunch defense of Russian greatness matched his expansive collection of antique bottles, posters and accoutrements that make up most of the displays at the vodka museum attached to Moscow’s Kristall factory (which produces Stolichnaya and some of Russia’s other famous brands, including Limonnaya and Moskovskaya)—rails against the proliferation of new, sweeter-tasting “ultra-premium” vodkas. “Vodka has to be like it’s always been,” Nikishin told me. “Unpleasant-tasting and smelling, but it gives a certain satisfaction when you drink it with the right zakuski.” I wasn’t really looking forward to the dry-looking white fish that had sat out for God knows how long, but it turned out to be delicious—delicate, with a slight smoky taste, not at all salty. “It’s wonderful,” I said.

  I’d felt the mood in the room change even as the vodka ran down my throat. The reserved scholars suddenly perked up. Smiling, Victor named the fish, which I’d never heard of, a local species of carp. “I’m the only one who knows where to get the really good stuff here,” he boasted.

  “He may be a botanist, but he’s expert in fish,” Alexander informed, his voice thick with sarcasm as he poured more vodka.

  “Anekdot!” Victor announced: the Russian word for “joke,” this one for my benefit. “Putin and Bush are fishing in Siberia. Putin sits grimly while Bush, frantically slapping at mosquitoes on his arms and neck, looks over at the motionless Russian president.

  “ ‘Vladeemeer, what the hey?’ he asks naively. ‘Why aren’t they biting you?’

  “ ‘It’s forbidden!’ Putin answers sternly.”

  Raising his glass, Victor concluded with “Well, davaite [let’s go]!” We clinked again and downed another round.

  Not missing a beat, Alexander—a short man with dark hair and a mustache who specializes in photographing the tundra—added his contribution. “You know the difference between Russians and Americans?” His look at me started me mumbling something about attitudes toward the rule of law until he cut me off.

  “Americans love their country and hate everyone who disagrees with them.” He paused to pour more shots. “Russians dislike their country and hate everyone who agrees with them.”

  More jokes followed in quick succession, as if in a lighthearted game of one-upmanship. The Russian joke is told as much to relieve some of the pressure caused by life’s everyday absurdities as to elicit laughter. Famously developed under communism, the anekdot still thrives today, its barbed irony directed chiefly at the newest oppressor class: the corrupt bureaucrats who are edging out rich New Russians. As more shots were poured and consumed, I gave up all hope of returning to my room and, in the vodka’s warm glow, began basking in the company of my new acquaintances. We may have been sitting in a smelly Soviet-era room in the middle of barren nowhere, but now somehow that seemed cozy, even cool. Perhaps that’s because vodka seems to have an effect that’s especially suited to places like Russia. You feel soppier, more sentimental than under the influence of other forms of liquor, often until you’re jolted back to reality with an expression of the racism or sexism that are openly accepted in everyday life.

  “It’s not true that Russia has the most beautiful women,” Victor said at one point, despite the presence of Kirpotin’s shy young protégée. “It’s just that we drink more vodka.”

  By then it was getting late and with a full day of work ahead, starting with an early morning, I suggested dinner. There was little reaction. Fifteen minutes later, I tried again. “I suppose we do have to eat,” Victor replied reluctantly. “But really, I’d rather stay here.” I felt lucky that all the fish and bread had been consumed. “Of course we have to eat,” Kirpotin said sometime later, rousing everyone to his feet.

  When we finally stepped outside, the warmth I felt toward my companions began extending toward dilapidated Novoi Urengoi itself. Whether or not feelings of brotherly or sisterly love for one’s drinking companions are universal, I found myself revising my attitude toward Russia as we plodded, heavily soused, along dirt paths through vacant lots surrounding the hotel. Where else would you have such an experience? “It’s not such a bad place,” you find yourself thinking. The cold, the crudeness and other unpleasantness, including the stares from local thugs driving battered BMWs and Mercedes toward one of the town’s few bars, make you feel even closer to your companions because everyone’s in the mess together. Emerging slowly but volubly onto a dusty main street, which was deserted except for occasional police casting suspicious glances, we were the greatest of friends. I suspect such feelings fuel the love a certain number of foreigners feel, or believe they feel, for Russia. The alcohol-fueled, come-what-may attitudes that often take hold of you provide a rush of excitement: the promise of hedonistic pleasure and abandon, heightened by a sense of real or perceived danger and great distance from more sober sensibilities back home.

  The restaurant was decorated with cheesy mirrored panels and a revolving disco ball. Eyeing us as we stumbled in, a table of what appeared to be prostitutes had to shout to be heard above the synthesized drumbeat of the blaring pop music. More vodka helped wash down dinner, and the new toasts included paeans to Victor’s Khanty-Mansiisk and Kirpotin’s Tomsk, cities I solemnly vowed to visit as soon as I could. Although I was beyond recalling how much we drank, I remember Kirpotin remaining levelheaded throughout and looking out for us weaker-minded revelers. When Victor, who’d done most of the pouring in the hotel, suddenly passed out at the table in the middle of dinner, everyone else continued as if nothing had happened. Later, we carried him back to the hotel.

  Imagine my surprise when I looked into his room early the next morning to find him gnawing on a cheap salami and pouring from a freshly opened bottle of vodka. “Come in, have a shot!” he offered cheerfully. Head pounding, I made my excuses with difficulty. He let me know that I was letting him down when I left to conduct interviews. Most were with independent businessmen who were being hounded by the authorities, the closest I could find to political opposition in a town dominated by Gazprom.

  Returning late in the afternoon, I found the men again sitting around the coffee table, now together with the young graduate student, and working on beer. I’d soon learn that they’d spent the entire day there. When I joined them, they were recalling their previous trips to various parts of Siberia. Only then did it dawn on me why they seemed to have done no work when we’d driven into the tundra the previous day: there was no work to be done. They were on a kommandirovka.

  Literally, kommandirovka means nothing more than “business trip.” Actually, it’s often an excuse to drink oneself silly while away from wives, girlfriends, parents and other mundane realities. Given the opportunity to travel, ostensibly for work, Victor and Alexander jumped at it as they’d obviously often done in the past. Sitting in their tiny, s
tuffy room drinking all day seemed like misery to me, but that’s why they’d come to Novoi Urengoi. This time I couldn’t even persuade them to leave for dinner.

  Journalists everywhere may be notorious for heavy drinking on their frequent kommandirovki, but I’ve rarely seen Westerners put away as much as some of my Russian colleagues can. Arriving at a Moscow airport at eight o’clock one morning in 2005 for a trip to cover parliamentary elections in Chechnya, when that region was still ruined by war and extremely dangerous, I was perhaps foolishly surprised to find a table of journalists knocking back bottle after bottle of beer. On the rickety Soviet-era plane to the neighboring Stavropol region, some continued drinking in the Russian tradition, which favors cognac during air travel. One Russian photographer in particular, who worked for an international news agency, excelled in upholding the tradition. Pressing his bottle of cheap Armenian brandy on random passersby, he appeared to take refusals from those bold enough to decline as personal insults. Those who agreed were also loudly chastised for taking swigs he invariably judged to be too small.

  My trip had been arranged by the government to show off its claims that Chechnya’s new pro-Kremlin authorities were stabilizing the region, which the Russian army had bombed into the Stone Age. No one then knew it would be the start of a remarkable drive that would rebuild the capital Grozny from a pile of rubble in a few short years. Meanwhile, in Stavropol, we boarded several small buses for the two-hour drive into Chechnya in a convoy escorted by special-forces troops riding in Soviet-era jeeps. The drunk photographer continued drinking. Polishing off the last of his cognac, he pleaded with others for beer before falling asleep, his head resting on the shoulder of a BBC correspondent who, despite nervously practicing lines for an upcoming live report, was too polite to ask the slumbering man to move. Jolted awake on the potholed road, the photographer tried convincing the driver to stop for more alcohol despite the potential danger from snipers and lack of any place to buy it. When we arrived at our first polling station in an elementary school, a tiny trickle of locals dressed in their Sunday best was also arriving to cast ballots while commandos toting massive automatic rifles set up a perimeter around the area to protect us. Wary of the watchful eyes of government officials and informers in a village where everyone knew everyone else, residents recited admiration for the pro-Moscow administration, repeating government pronouncements almost verbatim.