by David Greene
Covering the White House, I certainly took my swims in foreign policy, attending numerous summits between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and America’s George W. Bush, who once famously remarked that he looked into Putin’s soul and liked what he saw (a moment when I could almost hear Putin, a former KGB spy, saying to himself, Got him!).
And yet neither Rose nor I could escape feeling this naive confusion about Russia, as if we were missing something. The summits we saw on television as kids, with Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev—weren’t they setting Russia on a path to becoming a Western democracy and true American ally? Why hasn’t Russia gotten there? Isn’t that what Russians want their country to be?
We talked about the risk of moving to a new country, especially one known for being cold and unwelcoming. And Rose was quick to remind me of the risks. She’s not a woman who holds much back or shies away from debate. (Her Lebanese-Sicilian good looks may have gotten her into beauty pageants in high school, but the event she always won was the interview.)
“Okay, so let’s get this straight here,” she said in one of our many conversations, sitting in our tiny Manhattan apartment. “We moved to New York for my job a year ago. Now you’re asking me to leave my new job, move to Russia, be cold for several years, and live in a country that may not even give me a visa to work?”
I felt she captured things pretty well. “Yes?”
“I like the idea of an adventure . . . especially before we have kids. But Greene? You understand you’re going to owe me.”
The decision wasn’t easy, and the two of us talk to this day about what might have been different had we turned Russia down. In the end it may have been our curiosity that won out. Rose put it best: “I don’t know a damn thing about Russia, except for its food and culture. But I . . . I have always thought that seeing a new place, experiencing it, learning about it as a couple—together—could be a fun adventure, and who knows if we’ll ever get this chance again?”
After walking off the plane, through a bitterly cold jetway that did nothing for marital peace, Rose and I were hit in the face by Russia. Russians, as it turns out, don’t like lining up for anything. It may come from a sympathetic place: During Soviet times the difference between being first or sixth in line at a poorly stocked store could be the difference between your family having bread on the table that night, or not. Lines became free-for-alls.
But I would love for someone to explain to me why this practice must endure at the immigration line at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport. Rose and I were bumped rudely, trampled on, yelled at in Russian, pushed aside, and frowned at until we just decided to let the whole horde of Russian passengers go ahead of us. Then we calmly walked up to the Russian immigration officer, a scowling woman dressed in a pale blue government uniform.
“Iz N’iu Iorka?” she seemed to grumble. We assumed it was Russian for “From New York?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Da,” Rose said, surprising even herself by what just came out of her mouth. In a single word she gave me a sign that she really was going to try to make the best of this.
We found our luggage and exited into the terminal. “Whatever you’ve done to us, Greene—it’s all happening.” Rose gave me a this-is-all-your-fault smile. “Welcome to Russia.”
Our first task was to find Boris and Sergei. When NPR told me that my first task upon arrival in Russia was to locate Boris and Sergei, I thought it was either a joke or some kind of funny code. Does everyone in Russia have two best friends named Boris and Sergei? Rose and I wondered in jest. But indeed, Boris Ryzhak and Sergei Sotnikov are NPR’s office manager and producer in Moscow. And they were picking us up at the airport.
I had Sergei’s mobile number, called it, and finally located the two men. Sergei is five foot seven, slightly shorter than I am, meaning that Boris towers over him. Boris is a former semiprofessional basketball player, a giant with graying hair, floppy lips, rich, dark eyes, and a deep voice that soothes even when I have no idea what he is saying in Russian.
“Zdrast-vui-tyeh!” he said, giving me a hearty handshake. “Hellooo,” Sergei said, at once translating Boris and offering his own greeting. They led us to a van, loaded our luggage, and drove us into the city we would now call home.
Everything looked foreign—especially because the Cyrillic alphabet is entirely different from the Latin alphabet used in so many languages—English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German—a distinction not lost on my wife (“You really had to pick a county with a whole new alphabet to learn?”). The job offer and decision to move all happened so quickly that there was no time for language classes back in New York. As an English-speaking newcomer in Russia, you find yourself scanning buildings and signs, looking for words written in good old Latin letters—or at least appearing to be.
“Pectopah?” I said out loud in the van, noticing a word with familiar lettering on plenty of buildings. “What’s pectopah?”
Sergei and Boris burst into laughter. “David,” Sergei said. “You have fallen into the trap! Those are actually all Cyrillic letters. The letter that looks like a p is r in Russian. The c is an s sound. And the h is actually our version of n.
I was sheepish. “Oh. So that’s actually—‘restaurant’?”
“You got it!”
I felt like a contestant on Wheel of Fortune who figured out the phrase well after the entire viewing audience.
Language challenges aside, being in the hands of these two men gave me and Rose our first sense of comfort—one that lasted for our nearly three years in the country, and helped us through the most difficult days.
On its face our arrangement gave us little reason to trust Boris and Sergei. They are employed by UPDK, a semiprivate real estate agency that, during Soviet times, offered Western news organizations everything they needed—housing, office space, drivers, translators—and then proceeded to spy on them and control their movements. Agreeing to work this way was the only way Western news outlets could do business in the Soviet Union.
Fast-forward to today, and Western news outlets like NPR can operate independently. But partly for convenience, and partly because being fully transparent to the authorities tends to raise less suspicion, many outlets have continued to work this way, including NPR. The bureau chief’s apartment and office are in a building owned and managed by UPDK and very likely still bugged. (Our apartment had more “smoke detectors” hanging from the ceiling than a firehouse.) And officially Boris and Sergei are employed by the agency—though, to be clear, they are in their jobs because they love NPR and they are in every way part of the fabric of our news organization. The arrangement is by NPR’s choice and—save for the bugging—is purely bureaucratic. Not once did I question Sergei’s and Boris’s loyalty to me and to Rose. They became our protectors, our family, even de facto parents, available on the phone at any hour if Rose or I had a crisis—or even just needed to ask Sergei the Russian translation for lamb or beef while shopping at the supermarket. (We would finally get sick of making baaa and mooo sounds at the meat counter).
2 • SERGEI
OUR TRAIN TRIP begins on a chilly, not oppressively cold, February night. It is just after 10:00 p.m. in Moscow, a city that sleeps as infrequently as New York does.
Sergei and I packed light, a single roll-aboard suitcase each. We drag them over hard chunks of ice on the sidewalk and stand on the busy street in front of NPR’s office to hail a taxi—well, actually, just someone’s car.
Real taxis are available. But calling one is pointless because it can take hours for a driver to beat the traffic and reach you. So the quickest way to get from point to point is to do what amounts to hitchhiking. If you stand in the road and put your hand up, a Russian driver will usually pull over within minutes, hoping to give you a ride and make a few extra rubles before or during his or her commute.
Moscow traffic jams are notorious and can immobilize drivers for hours. The New Yorker had a wonderful piece in 2010 about a pedestrian who go
t mad at a driver on the road and felt so confident the offending car would not move much that he walked blocks and blocks home, grabbed a baseball bat, and returned to vent his anger by smashing up the offending vehicle which, as he predicted, was still stuck in traffic in roughly the same spot.
Its not that public transportation isn’t available. Moscow has one of the biggest and most efficient subway systems in the world. It’s just incredibly unpleasant. Whatever the temperature outside happens to be in Moscow, there seems to be some rule that the temperature will always be fifty degrees warmer in the metro. So if it’s about freezing outside and you’re bundled up in winter wear, it’s a veritable sauna on the subway, making the whole place stink of sweat and sweat-soaked fabric. The subway is also crowded with Russians who have no interest in improving a stranger’s travel experience. A passenger needing access to the door to get off at the next station will simply walk into you, expecting that the fleshy obstacle in the way will get the message and move.
Rose, who likes to stand her ground, learned about the city’s unspoken rules of the road the hard way. As we approached a metro stop during one morning rush-hour ride, a herd of sweaty passengers squeezed through the crowd toward Rose and me. I nudged Rose, motioning that we should retreat as far from the door as possible, but she resisted, not wanting to condone rudeness. She waited in vain for someone to politely ask or at least politely motion that they would like to get by. Her determination was both admirable and hazardous. As the train came to a stop and the door slid open, the exiting wave of humanity slammed into her—this human standing in their path—flinging her airborne, out of the train and onto the platform. I rushed off the train and helped her up. By the time she had collected herself and cursed Russia, our train was on its way to the next station.
. . .
IN THE CITY people who are warm and generous to family and friends in the safe confines of home become rushed, mean, selfish, and unpleasant in the anonymity of public spaces. Selfish drivers refusing fellow drivers room to enter side streets or willfully blocking busy intersections routinely create traffic nightmares. Selfish, uncaring commuters on the metro create the chaos that landed Rose on her backside on the train platform. So whenever you leave a family’s warm and inviting apartment or a meal at a comfy café in Moscow, it’s worth reminding yourself that you’re about to encounter coldhearted bedlam on the streets.
Cars are buzzing by Sergei and me on the twelve-lane avenue outside our office, but within a few seconds of putting our hands in the air, a black Mitsubishi with tinted windows comes to a sharp stop in front of us, skidding the final two feet over ice. The driver rolls down the passenger-side window, releasing a plume of cigarette smoke into our faces. “Yaroslavsky Vokzal,” Sergei says. “Chetyresta,” the driver demands. That’s four hundred rubles—about thirteen bucks. A bit pricier than usual, but it’s late, and I feel like the majesty of setting off on a Trans-Siberian journey is a little like heading off on your honeymoon—don’t let fussing over money detract from the occasion.
“Price okay?” Sergei asks.
“Sure.” I climb into the backseat. Sergei gets in front with the driver, who is curious about why Sergei asked the American in the back if the price was acceptable.
“Moi boss, ee on ne ochen harasho gavarit pah-rooski,” Sergei replies. (Rough translation: He’s the boss, but his Russian stinks.)
We are headed to Yaroslavky Vokzal, or Rail Station—one of a dozen major train stations in Moscow. They are generally named for the city most trains depart for (trains to St. Petersburg leave from Leningradsky Voksal, for example). Many of the Trans-Siberian trains depart from Yaroslavsky—at all hours of the day and night.
The traffic on this night is surprisingly light, so after four minutes, the quickest thirteen-dollar cab ride in history comes to an end. Sergei and I are pulling our bags inside Yaroslavky Voksal, which is a fistful of humanity. In other countries—say, the United States—there is some unwritten rule that people generally don’t like being active in wee hours of the night. Russians don’t follow that. Flights leave airports at all hours of the night. Trains depart at all hours of the night. And restaurants and bars that stay open all night tend to be full—all night.
“David, we should stop at the ticket office.”
Sergei has already purchased our tickets for tonight’s leg from Moscow to Yaroslavl. But we had planned to buy tickets at this station for the next few legs, from Yaroslavl to Nizhny Novgorod, and from there to Izhevsk.
Now the fun begins: a Russian train-ticket window.
Here are a few facts. You can search Russian trains online. But the prices and availability that come up mean next to nothing. Even the times displayed can be meaningless, because often they are listed using Moscow’s time zone, or they may use the local time zone of the city you’re going to. There’s just really no telling.
Basically the best option is to visit a ticket window at a train station itself, rarely a smooth experience, but at least you can go over each and every detail with a human being before you plunk down wads of money. Even then, the chances of everything on the ticket being clear and correct are fair at best. And there is usually a lot of yelling and stress in the exchange with the ticket agent, not to mention angry passengers in line behind you, hogging your space and giving every hint that you’re taking too long. And there’s the slight chance someone from the government is amid the chaos, listening in to learn where a Western journalist such as myself happens to be traveling—something I experienced in neighboring Belarus, a former Soviet republic so addicted to Soviet living it’s as if news of the 1992 collapse never reached there.
As with many experiences around here, I typically approach a Russian ticket window with a great deal of anxiety. Over time, I have learned to treat this affliction prophylactically, taking deep breaths and distracting myself by imagining pleasant scenes of sailboats and seashells. Sergei and I walk up to the ticket area, and it’s chaos as always. Some windows are closed, some are open, most are ambiguous, with a person staffing the window, a crowd of passengers milling about, but nothing apparently happening. We approach one window with just one customer—a woman in a sleek black overcoat, in my imagination an employee of one of Moscow’s posh law firms or energy companies, yelling at the top of her lungs at the agent on the other side of the glass. She steps aside, stewing, clearing a path for us.
Deep breaths, deep breaths . . .
“Zdrads-vui-tyeh,” Sergei says to the ticket agent, who just stares back. She has cropped hair that’s dyed a color popular among many Russian women—it’s an unnatural red, slightly less orange than a carrot, and clashing dramatically with her apple-red Russian Railways vest. Her name tag identifies her as Anna Nikitenko. I see Anna’s mouth move and am fairly certain I hear something, but it’s barely audible. There is a speaker on our side and a microphone on Anna’s, but the system is not accomplishing much.
Sergei yells the details of the tickets we want—third-class tickets in a few days from Yaroslavl to Nizhny Novgorod, then a few days later to Izhevsk. This seems to have done something productive, because Anna begins slamming keys on her keyboard.
ANNA: [something totally inaudible]
SERGEI: “Shto?”[“What?”]
ANNA: [something totally inaudible]
SERGEI: “David, she wants to know if we want insurance.”
ME: “For what?”
SERGEI: “I don’t know, and it would be confusing to ask.”
ME: “Okay, no.”
ANNA: [Something that sounds vaguely like “sblum” to me.]
SERGEI: “Shto? Shto?”
ANNA: [inaudible]
SERGEI: “Bedsheets?”
ME: “Yes, please.”
SERGEI: “Da, da.”
Sailboats, seashells . . .
ANNA: “Tri tysyachi pyatsot devyanosto rublei.”
ME: “‘3,590 rubles!’ I understood that.”
SERGEI: “Nice. Got the money?”
; We pay—around one hundred and twenty dollars total for two third-class seats on these legs of our journey—and receive beautifully printed pink tickets with the gold seal of the Russian Railways, the reward for all our troubles. As we walk away, the woman in black returns to the window and begins screaming at Anna. Misery loves company, and just for fun I decide to linger. Sergei translates what the woman in black is yelling at Anna about.
“You didn’t tell me when you sold me this ticket that I was in an upper berth! Do I look twenty years old? I have high blood pressure. I can’t travel like that.”
Sergei explains that this outburst is likely more about status than this woman’s health. To many Russian travelers, third class alone isn’t quite as low as it gets—third class with an upper berth is rock bottom. It brings the indignity of having to climb up, like a monkey, anytime you want to reach your sleeping space. To Russians, it’s like being spotted driving a bad car.
“David, a Russian may work in agriculture and have a job digging mud,” Sergei tells me, as we both lean against a wall near the ticket counters. “But if it makes him enough money to buy a fancy car he is happy to boast about, so be it. It’s not about what business you’re in. It’s about whether the business makes you the money you need to drive the car you want.”
Status is everything, a reality that often becomes comical. I recall once marveling at it inside a wine bar in Austria. Rose and I were on vacation and told the bartender we were living in Russia. He told us he just had a table full of Russian businessmen who asked for his most expensive bottle of Austrian wine.
“I told these guys that my favorite bottle is actually cheaper—the pricey one is really not a good year,” the bartender said. “But they almost sounded angry, and cut me off. They said just bring us your most expensive bottle.”
Arrogant as this behavior seems, there’s also something melancholy about it. Russians spent so many years in a rigid Communist state with no personal wealth and little freedom to make decisions on their own. Now, people who have money are adjusting to the experience, flexing muscles for the first time. In fact my father, a physician, told me he wonders whether Russians in post-Soviet times are like patients emerging from a coma. “When you wake up,” he said, “it’s not like you can use all your limbs again immediately. It takes time to relearn how to move your arms, your legs.” It’s a metaphor that could apply to more than money. As Shishkin writes, Russians for generations looked for direction from leaders in an “unconscious slavery” that was “bitter for the body but life-sustaining for the spirit.” As some Russians experience an awakening, in a society that’s evolving, their behavior can seem erratic and unfamiliar to outsiders. I repeatedly reminded myself of this during my time in Russia: Culture and history matter. They’ve shaped people here, including Sergei.