In Siberia

by Colin Thubron

  To our right, behind a broken barbed-wire fence, the ruin of a three-storey factory rears white walls above the white stream. It was the flotation plant for uranium, Yuri says, dangerous to enter still, where a work-shift could be dead after a few months. He accelerates grimly, and the walls drop behind us. ‘Even after they’d left, they died of it.’

  A mile later the van flounders against impassable banks, and we walk up through a bright, cold silence. Sometimes the snow surges above our knees. Yuri tramps ahead, indifferent, with his hat tugged down to his neck. I follow in his footsteps, my heartbeat quickening, as if we are entering a cathedral or a morgue. Instead we reach a huddle of administrative buildings in yellow stone. They are all ruined, their roofs caved in, their doors unhinged or rotted away. The window-frames are snow-silvered rectangles of nothing. Steps lead up to a veranda and through a door to a 20-foot drop.

  The poet Anatoly Zhigulin, who survived this camp in the 1950s, described brutal maimings, accidents, internecine murders, desperate strikes. A prisoner had no name, no self. He could be addressed only by his number. Some were in chains. They climbed four miles before they reached the mines; and from their camp on the far side of the mountain, a squad of women convicts trudged eight miles every day to carry home cold rations.

  The iron frame of the camp gates stands redundant in the debris of its towers. Beneath the snow our feet snag on objects we only guess at, and drag up barbed wire. Rusted machinery pokes above the surface. Beyond, we stumble through the wrecks of barracks and prison cells. In the roofless rooms the guards’ benches are still in place, with a range of hooks for their coats. The snow lies on their platform beds in hard, crystalline piles. A pair of boots is discarded by a stove. Everything emits a hand-to-mouth rusticity and squalor. Skeletal iron doors still swing on isolation cells a few feet square. The slots survive where the prisoners’ gruel was pushed through, and the barred windows remain intact, and the stove in the guards’ sauna.

  The air seems thin. But Yuri’s cheeks are pink and burnished. He is kicking the snow from around a grid of notched stumps to uncover wood foundations. ‘That’s where the tents were,’ he says. ‘That’s where they slept.’

  It was the same through much of Kolyma. The prisoners lived and died in tents. Despairingly they pressed insulating moss and peat between the twin layers of canvas, sprinkled them with sawdust, and stacked boards outside. Inside was a single cast-iron stove.

  And now gently, insistently, the snow is falling. It drifts over the low stumps and covers the buildings with its pale indifference. It floats through the roofless passages, the guard chambers, the rooms of administration, of neglect, of boredom. It fills the valley with a sick translucence.

  Yuri goes on kicking at the tent foundations, then looks up at me. ‘You know, my grandfather was a village postman, who spent years in the camps for making a joke about Stalin.’

  ‘A joke?’

  ‘Yes. He was in charge of the village telephone, and one day he told somebody in passing: “By the way, Stalin’s on the phone to you!” So he ended up in the camps for five years. My parents must have suffered for that.’ He presses a wooden slat back with his boot. ‘People grew up in their parents’ silence.’

  We climb to where he remembers the cemetery lay, but it is lost under snow. The opalescent light has intensified over the valley. Around us the trees and shrubs are laden and heavy, as if bearing white fruit. They shiver with tiny wagtails. I pick some dwarf-cedar needles, which prisoners used to boil in the futile hope of deflecting scurvy.

  I say: ‘Whatever it’s like now, things are better than they were then.’

  Yuri does not answer at first. Everything with him takes a long time. He has a slight stutter. He says: ‘Those were religious times, in a way. People believed things.’ He seems to envy that.

  So suffering came down from the sky, as natural as rain or hail. There was no one to accuse. No one was near enough, embodied enough. Stalin’s empire, like Hitler’s Reich, was meant to last through all imaginable time. The past had been reorganised for ever, the future preordained.

  I say, not knowing: ‘You’ll never go back to that.’

  Yuri says: ‘We’re not the same as you in the West. Maybe we’re more like you were centuries ago. We’re late with our history here. With us, time still goes in circles.’

  I don’t want to hear this, not here in the heart of darkness. I want him to call this place an atrocious mystery. I want him not to understand it. With his blond moustache and Tartar cheekbones, I have cast him as the quintessential Russian, the litmus test for the future. The mountain air has gone to my head.

  But his hand, which was tracing a circle, now tentatively lifts. ‘Maybe we spiral a little,’ he says, ‘a little upwards.’ He looks across to where the cableways limp in ghastly procession over the heights. ‘I wish my grandfather had lived on. He loved a good joke, and people can joke about anything now. We’ve still got that. Jokes.’

  I clasp his shoulder, but we are too fat in our quilted coats, and my hand slips from him. He smiles for the first time, on a mouthful of discoloured teeth, before turning back along the track.

  And on that frozen hillside he starts to sing.

  Searchable Terms

  Abakan

  Afghanistan: Russian war in

  Aganbegyan, Abel

  Akademgorodok, Novosibirsk

  Alaska: sold to USA

  Albazin

  Aleksei (of Birobidzhan)

  Aleksei Akilovich (Old Believer)

  Aleksei Nikolaevich, Czarevich

  Alexander I, Czar

  Alexandra, Empress of Nicholas

  Altai, Ice Princess of

  Altai mountains

  Altai republic

  Amur river

  Anfissa (of Tyumen)

  Angara river

  Association of the Tambour see Doongyr

  Babel, Isaak

  Baikal, Lake

  Baikal–Amur Railway

  Baikalskoe

  Baptists: in Komsomolsk-na-Amur

  Baraba steppe

  Barguzin ranges

  Barnaul

  Belovodye (promised land)

  Berezovka river

  Bering, Vitus Jonassen

  Birobidzhan

  Blagoveshchensk

  Boris Godunov, Czar

  Boris (of Komsomolsk-na-Amur)

  Botkin, Doctor

  Bratsk High Dam

  Brezhnev, Leonid

  Buddhism: and shamanism

  in Buryatia and

  Christian missionaries

  burial tombs see kurgans

  Buryat people

  Buryatia

  London Missionary Society

  station in

  Butugychag

  California

  Catherine II (the Great), Empress of Russia

  Cementny Zavod (punishment camp)

  Charlemagne, Emperor

  Chechnya

  Chekhov, Anton

  China: river Amur border with

  Russia merchants in

  Khabarovsk; trade with

  Russia

  Chita

  Civil War (Russian, 1919–20)

  Clara (of Birobidzhan)

  Clinton, William Jefferson

  coal mining: at Vorkuta

  collectivisation

  Conrad, Joseph

  cosmic consciousness

  Cossacks: in Siberia sack

  Sibir (1582); found Irkutsk

  at Albazin in

  Manchu service; found

  Yakutsk

  Cowie, Martha see Yuille, Robert

  and Martha

  Dalai Lama

  Dalselmash factory

  Dalstroy (agency)

  Darwin, Charles

  Decembrists

  diamonds: in Sakha

  Dikson

  Diring Yuriakh

  Dolgans (people)

  Doongyr (Association of the Tambour)

  Doroskova, Ag
rippina

  Dostoevsky, Fedor: exile in Omsk

  and cosmic

  consciousness

  drugs (narcotic)

  Dudinka

  Dukhobors (‘Spirit-wrestlers’)

  Dzhurma, SS

  Ehrenburg, Ilya

  Elgen(women’s labour camp)

  Elizabeth Feodorovna, Grand Duchess

  Entsy people

  Evenk people

  Fedor (Magadan Jew)

  Feodosy, Archbishop of Omsk

  Galina (curator, Museum of Siberian Culture)

  Galina (Old Believer wife)

  Garanin (Dalstroy official)

  Genghis Khan

  Ginzburg, Yevgenia

  gold: in Kara; in Sakha

  in Kolyma

  Golden Horde (Mongol)

  Goose Lake

  Gorbachev, Mikhail

  Gorno-Altaisk

  Gulag: memories of; at

  Vorkuta

  graves; at Severobaikalsk

  acceptance of; in

  Kolyma see also

  labour camps

  Haroun al-Rashid, Caliph

  Hegel, G. W. F.

  Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

  Herodotus

  Herzen, Alexander

  Hitler, Adolf: 1939 pact with Stalin

  Horse river

  Huns

  Igarka

  Igor (Clara’s son)

  Indigirka

  Innokent, St

  Irkutsk

  Irtysh river

  Ivan IV (the Terrible), Czar

  Ivolginsk

  Ixodes tick

  Japan: investments in Far East

  Jews: settlement in Birobidzhan

  John Chrysostom St

  Kamchatka: volcanoes

  Kara gold fields

  Karakorum (state)

  Kashketin (camp commandant)

  katorga death camps

  Katun river

  Ket people

  KGB

  Khabarov, Yerofey P.

  Khabarovsk

  Khlysti (sect)

  Khor river

  Khrushchev, Nikita S.

  Kipling, Rudyard

  Kitezh, City of (legendary)

  Kolchak, Admiral Alexander Vasilievich

  Kolyma

  Komsomolsk-na-Amur

  Kozyrev, N. A.

  Krasnoyarsk

  Krupskaya, Nadezhda Lenin’s wife)

  Kuchum, Khan

  kulaks

  Kunga-Boo (shaman)

  kurgans (tombs)

  Kuytun

  Kuzbas basin

  Kyzyl

  labour camps see also Gulag

  Lavrentiev, M. A.

  Leakey, Louis Seymour Bazett

  lemmings

  Lena river

  Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich: statues

  exile

  in Shushenskoe

  death

  London Missionary Society: in

  Novoselenginsk

  mafia (Russian)

  Magadan

  mammoths

  man, origins of

  Manchu dynasty

  Mandelstam, Osip

  Mangazeya Marfa (circus artist)

  Mastrov (river steamer)

  Melkite Church

  Memorial (organisation)

  mica

  Mine 29 (Vorkuta)

  Minusinsk

  Misha (of Dudinka)

  missionaries

  Mochanov, Yuri

  Mongolia: and Tuva

  Christian missionaries in

  mosquitoes

  Mukhanov, Peter

  mummies

  Muraviev-Amursky, Count

  Nikolai Nikolaevich

  Museum of Siberian Culture

  Nansen, Fridtjof

  Natasha (of Khabarovsk)

  Nerchinsk silver-mines

  Nerchinsk, Treaty of (1689)

  Nicholas I, Czar

  Nicholas II, Czar: murdered with

  family and

  Rasputin sees mammoth

  skeleton

  Nikolai (Potalovo doctor)

  Nivkhi tribesmen

  Norilsk

  Novoselenginsk

  Novosibirsk

  nuclear power

  Ob river

  Ob Sea

  oil fields

  Oimyakon

  Old Believers

  Olga, Grand Duchess

  Olga (Yekaterinburg pilgrim)

  Olkhon island (Lake Baikal)

  Omsk

  Orotukuan

  paganism: among Yakuts

  Paris Universal Exhibition (1900)

  Pasternak, Boris

  Pavlov (Dalstroy official)

  Pazyryk culture

  Pechora river

  Pepeliaev, V.

  perestroika

  permafrost

  Peter I (the Great), Czar

  Pivan Pokrovskoe

  pollution

  Potalovo

  Primoriye

  Proctor, Richard Anthony

  Pushkin, Alexander

  Rasputin, Grigory

  Rasputin, Masha (pop star)

  Rasputin, Valentin

  Rechnoi state farm, Omsk

  religion: practice and worship

  churches

  and monasteries revival

  along Yenisei

  see also Buddhism

  missionaries; Old Believers

  paganism

  Revnovo village

  Rezanov, Nikolai

  Roerich, Elena

  Roerich, Nikolai

  Russian Academy of Sciences

  sable

  Sakha republic

  Sakhalin

  Sakharov, Andrei

  Samoyed people

  Sasha (Birobidzhan friend of Igor)

  Sasha (of Novosibirsk)

  Sayan mountains

  science

  Scythians

  Selenga river (and valley)

  Semyenov, Grigory

  serfdom: abolished (1861)

  Sergei, Grand Duke

  Sergei (circus artist)

  Sergei (Old Believer)

  Serpentinka

  Severobaikalsk

  Seward, William

  Shakhovskaya, Varvara

  Shalamov, Varlam

  shamans and shamanism

  Shamil (of Severobaikalsk)

  Shelikhov, Grigory

  Shelikhova, Natalya

  Shturmovoi

  Shushenskoe

  Siberia: extent migrants and

  settlers in oil-fields

  secession proposals

  name; mystique

  native peoples as

  place of exile

  religious dissenters in

  Sibir

  silver mines

  Skoptsi (sect)

  Skovorodino

  Sokol

  Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

  Stalin, Josef: repressions and

  persecutions

  popular appeal

  pact with Hitler (1939)

  death

  paranoia; exiled

  in Turukhansk; empire

  Stalina (Vadim’s wife)

  Stallybrass, Edward and Sarah

  Steller, Georg

  Stepan (Entsy man)

  Stolypin, Piotr

  Stone Tunguska river

  Stroganov family

  Stundists (sect)

  Sverdlov, Yakov

  Svetlana (Krasnoyarsk schoolteacher)

  taiga

  ‘taiga madness’

  Tania (Yakut woman)

  Tannu Ola

  Tarbagatai

  Tartars

  Tayshet

  Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre

  Therese (Khabarovsk prostitute)

  throat-singing

  Timireva, Anna

  Tobol river

  Tobolsk

  Tolbuzin, Aleksei

  Tolstoy, Count Lev

  Trakt road
/>
  Trans-Manchurian Railway Trans-Siberian Railway: towns;

  slowness carries

  migrants; replicated at

  1900 Paris Exhibition

  gauge; bypasses Tobolsk

  building of

  branches at Tayshet

  character of trains

  Transbaikal

  Trubetskaya, Princess Yekaterina

  tundra

  Tura river

  Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich

  Turukhansk

  Tuva

  Tyumen

  Udachny

  Uglich: bell from

  Ulan Ude

  Union of Sovereign Northern

  Republics: proposed

  Ural mountains: character

  Urchan

  Ussuri river

  Ust-Ulagan

  Vadim (traveller on Yenisei)

  Valentina (of Dudinka)

  Vasil (of Vorkuta)

  Viktor (of Pokrovskoe)

  Vladivostok

  Volkonskaya, Princess Maria

  Volodya (station-worker)

  Vorkuta

  Vorkuta river

  Vorogovo

  Wagner, Moritz

  women: in Soviet prison camps

  status in

  Siberia

  Yagodnoe

  Yakimova, Rima

  Yakut people

  Yakutsk

  Yakutsk Academy of Sciences

  Yekaterinburg

  Yeltsin, Boris

  Yenisei river: size; travel on

  headwaters; contamination

  confluence at Kyzyl; at

  Krasnoyarsk

  Yeniseisk

  Yermak (Cossack leader)

  Yuille, Robert and Martha (nee Cowie)

  Yulia (Clara’s daughter)

  Yuri (geologist)

  Zarinsk

  Zaslavskaya, Tatyana

  Zhigulin, Anatoly

  Zhirinovsky, Vladimir

  Zhukov, Marshal Georgi

  Znamensky Monastery, Irkutsk

  About the Author

  COLIN THUBRON is the award-winning author of several volumes of travel writing and fiction. Among the Russians is the first of a trilogy of books about the Russian land mass that also includes The Lost Heart of Asia and In Siberia. Colin Thubron lives in London.