“I still do not understand, though, why you have not resigned. You are a nuclear specialist with an engineering qualification. I am sure you could find a decent job.”
“I can’t resign because I cannot abandon my ship. I am a commander, not one of the enlistees. There is no one to replace me. If I left, I would feel a traitor.”
“A traitor to whom? The state, surely, has betrayed you?”
“In time, the state will come to its senses. For now, we just have to be patient and preserve our nuclear fleet. That is what I am doing. Even if the Ministry of Defense pursues a policy of betrayal, my duty is to Russia. I am defending the people of Russia, not the state bureaucracy.”
There you have the portrait of a Russian submarine officer in our times. He is stuck out there at the farthest reaches of our land and, true to his military oath, he daily covers the embrasure with his own body because there is nothing else to cover it with.
To fulfill his obligations in the midst of the profound financial malaise that has befallen the armed forces, the commander must have complete dedication. He leaves home at precisely 7:20 in the morning and returns at 10:40 at night every day. He is on board his submarine for ten hours or more. The navy is collapsing before our eyes, and with technology that is not being properly maintained, incidents, including a major disaster, are possible at any moment. The only thing that hasn’t changed at all is the raising of the flag. This ritual is observed every day at 8 A.M., come hurricane, blizzard, accident, or change of government.
Incidentally, Dikiy walks from his home to where the Vilioutchinsk is moored. It takes him precisely forty minutes. He walks not because the exercise is good for him but because, of course, he doesn’t have the money for a car and because no other transportation is provided by the navy. The Second Flotilla, to which the Vilioutchinsk belongs, is in the throes of a fuel crisis, as indeed is the rest of Kamchatka. No cars or buses run to the jetties. The navy does not have enough gasoline in a country selling oil to all and sundry! But that is the least of it. What if the fleet runs out of bread? The garrison is constantly in debt to the local bread factory, which goes on supplying the ships on credit.
Can you believe it? The service personnel who maintain the nuclear shield of an international power are being fed on charity. I wonder how the president feels when he attends the G8 summit meetings.
Well, okay. All the officers in Rybachie walk to work in the mornings. On the road the officers’ corps is usually buzzing like an angry beehive. Its members are discussing the questions on all their minds: How long can they put up with this situation? What kind of an abyss are we rushing toward?
Their heated political debates are fueled by the view in front of the officers. As you walk toward Pier No. 5, for example, where the Vilioutchinsk is moored, you can contemplate Khlebalkin Island, where there is a derelict ship-repair yard. Two or three years ago, fifteen or so submarines would be in the Khlebalkin yard for servicing. Today the surface of the water is calm and mirrorlike, and not a single vessel is to be seen. The officers were informed that even the servicing of submarines was now subject to a rigorous economy.
“It’s an appalling sight,” Dikiy says. “We know exactly what it signifies. Our technology must be properly maintained. You can’t just go on expecting miracles. Submarines are not like spry old men who never need to see a doctor. Accidents are inevitable.”
The disintegration has demoralized some of the Rybachie officers. It has turned others to debauchery. They have seen it all in the garrison of late: bizarre behavior and suicides.
“The present situation makes the officers bitter,” Dikiy tells me. “That is why I am so insistent that everybody should be there for the raising of the flag on the dot of eight. The men should see the eyes of their commander, and read in them that everything is in order, everything is being held steady, we are continuing to fulfill our duty no matter what. In spite of everything.”
“Officers’ bullshit! Fine words for soft heads!” Many reading these lines may dismiss Dikiy’s sentiments in that way. To some extent, they will be right. These really are lofty sentiments, but the situation of the officers who have not yet resigned from the disintegrating Pacific Fleet is that they perform their demanding duties solely because those fine words are their anchor. They are men with ideals and principles. That’s why they are in the navy. They volunteered for the submarines because of the prestige and in the expectation of dazzling careers with high salaries. They have known different times and expect them to continue.
Because real life does not have the consistency of a film or a novel, the sublime coexists happily in Rybachie with the ridiculous and the routine.
“It’s impossible to live the way your husband does. Sometimes at least a man needs time to himself.”
Larisa Dikiy is a chortling beauty born in Zhitomir, in Ukraine, a woman who has sacrificed her own life to live on the verge of starvation so that her husband can fulfill his duty. She laughs mischievously in reply: “Well, actually I rather like things the way they are. At least I always know where my husband is. He has nowhere to hide from me, so I’m saved all those pangs of jealousy.”
Dikiy is standing beside us. He smiles an awkward smile, like a schoolboy who has just received a declaration of love from the prettiest girl in his class. I discover that the captain is a shy man. He blushes. I could almost weep. I see clearly that the enormous burden of responsibility the commander of a nuclear submarine bears is incompatible not just with his standard of living and way of life but also with his age and appearance.
At home, without his uniform, Alexey Dikiy, captain first class, looks just like the boy at the top of the class, thin and melancholy. By Moscow criteria, where young people still mature rather late, that is precisely the situation. Dikiy, remember, is only thirty-four.
“But you have already clocked up thirty-two years of service in the navy. It’s time you retired!” says Larisa.
“Actually, I could,” the captain says, again embarrassed.
“What do you mean? You joined the fleet when you were two? Like the son of a noble family who was registered in a regiment when he was born and by the time he came of age already had a good service record and epaulettes?” I press him for an answer.
The captain smiles. I can see he is looking forward to what he is going to tell me. His father was indeed a naval officer, but is now, of course, retired. Dikiy grew up in Sevastopol, at the Black Sea naval base. “As regards my thirty-two-year service record at thirty-four years of age—” he begins, but is promptly interrupted by his vivacious wife.
“It means that he has spent his entire service life in the most difficult sector of all, the submarine fleet, in the immediate vicinity of reactors and nuclear weapons. One year’s service there is counted as three.”
“You don’t feel that on those grounds alone, the state should long ago have showered you with gold?” I persist. “Are you not insulted that you have to share your dinner among three people as if you were a student?”
“No. I am not insulted,” he replies calmly and confidently. “It would be senseless for us submariners to come out on strike. In our closed city everybody lives the same way I do. We survive because we help each other to survive. We are constantly borrowing and rebor-rowing food and money from each other.”
“If somebody’s relatives send them a food parcel, that family will immediately organize a feast,” Larisa tells me. “We have a visiting circle. We get fattened up. That’s how we live.”