As we walked high above the Yenisei, we noticed a lot of construction sites and cranes on either side of the river. Many swanky-looking apartment buildings were going up fast. The whole riverbank area seemed to be going through an overdue period of reconstruction; some of the apartments looked so attractive they could have been built along the Thames. When it was time to leave, we walked inland and found ourselves at the eastern end of the street where the bus had dropped us off. We couldn’t make out exactly where the bus stop was as the signposts were missing. There were one or two couples walking so Nastya asked them for directions. They shied away. This is normal in Russia where the Soviet years forced a culture of suspicion. No matter which part of the city we ask directions, people have always walked away from us, pretending they didn’t hear or just brazenly ignoring us. This time it was obvious we weren’t thieves, Soviet spies or KGB informers as Nastya said out loud ‘We are lost, please just point to the bus stop.’ One of the couples gave in and told us where to stand. At the bus stop Nastya began to shout ‘Get your back to a tree, you could be shot.’ I adjusted my position to not leave any part of my body visible to anyone in the apartment windows behind us. Nastya said that in poorer areas of Krasnoyarsk there are some people who live on dubious incomes. In these areas some people carry guns and will shoot at someone in their area simply for being stupid enough to leave themselves open. I put my back to a tree and waited for the bus.
As it was my fourth time in Siberia, and my spoken Russian was improving, I steadily felt less afraid walking around on my own. I started walking Nastya to the bus stop when she was leaving for her night shift at 7.30 p.m. and would then walk home alone. When she came to the end of a day shift, I would leave our apartment at 7.20 p.m. and walk to her office along populated main roads. This had begun as a very pleasant thing to do. However, with the possible-sniper experience of Akademgorodok, the pleasure of walking around on my own diminished somewhat; I began to walk faster and became very suspicious of people within a close proximity to me. This was of course totally irrational as nobody meant me any harm. When I walk anywhere I usually have a song on repeat in my head. I have songs for different occasions, and different memories. Up until that time the soundtrack accompaniment to my walk to Nastya’s office had been Bowie’s ‘Golden Years’; but this unfortunately changed to the main theme of John Carpenter’s 1976 movie Assault on Precinct 13. As I walked down the street, I heard the initial ‘Rat-a-tat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat-a-tat’ before ‘Du-du-du-du-dun’. I had visions of cars packed with badasses cruising past with semi-automatics complete with silencers. God forbid I walk past an ice cream van.
iv. What is Good for a Welshman is Great for a Siberian
There’s an old joke that goes something like this: An Englishman, a Frenchman and a Russian are admiring a painting of Adam and Eve. The Englishman says ‘Look at the paleness of Eve’s skin, the rose-red of her cheeks; she must be English.’ The Frenchman says ‘Look at the way they are looking deep into each other’s eyes, they are full of romance, and must be French.’ The Russian finally adds ‘They have no clothes and only an apple to eat, and they think it’s paradise. They are Russian.’ Ignoring the fact that this will be extremely offensive to many people, there is an element of truth in the way it stereotypes Russian people.
The Soviet government famously attempted to instil in its population a belief that Russia was some kind of utopia; but had a lot of trouble doing so while Stalin’s government went round killing millions of people. Even so, there are inordinate numbers of Russian people I have met who believe that Russia is practically faultless. While initially I may have had some of my facts wrong as a result of Western anti-Russian propaganda, there are several factors of Russian life that are indisputably unfair and in some cases dangerous; for example: when the roads and pavements were repaired over the summer there were no barriers preventing people from hurting themselves. Twice I was nearly killed by walking into a reversing JCB or mini-crane. The kerbstones, which were dug up initially by heavy machinery, were left alongside the road jutting out in all directions. Cars had to be careful to avoid them and crossing the road meant stepping into the ditch where previous kerbing was, hopping through the myriad of rubble, climbing over the old kerbstones and then doing the same on the opposite side. For the elderly and disabled it was practically impossible in some places. When buildings and railings are removed, they are simply cut off with a grinder about 10 cm from the ground; this leaves metal poles sticking up everywhere. While one could argue it simply takes common sense to avoid these dangers it made me very grateful for the often all too easily criticised health and safety laws back in the UK. Besides building-related issues, food safety standards in Russia are clearly ignored. None of the eggs in our fridge were ever in date, and with the regular power outages it was hard to say just how many times everything in the freezer had defrosted and refrozen. Cheese in Russia is arguably the same stuff that bouncy balls are made from and most milk products are laced with palm oil.
Although my life in Russia is generally a vast improvement on my life in the UK, I can’t avoid the fact that I have been spoilt in some ways by Western standards and cultural differences. Before visiting Siberia, I had never had to show my passport to board a train, never had to fetch water from a well or grow my own food. I have never in my life had to rely on someone’s ability to hunt for deer to avoid starvation, and I have never had to work any period in any job for free, even when the economy was at its worst. Life in the West isn’t perfect; certainly there are faults in the capitalist system, and the current British government are doing their very best to make life harder for the working classes, but it’s easier in many ways compared with life in the East.
As a Westerner, I am spoilt. I have come to expect everything to be available in the supermarket; I expect everything to be within date; for buildings and roads to be repaired in a timely fashion; and for hospitals to have the latest technologies and to have access to modern medicine instantly, thanks to the NHS. I would have said that I expect the public transport to be of a certain standard and to provide seating, but the fact is that the train service in Russia is a vast improvement on the service provided by Arriva Trains Wales. These standards that I am accustomed to as a Westerner have often amazed my Siberian family, and although Siberians have the luxury of dacha lifestyles and a wide-open country to explore, what is considered ‘good’ by Western standards is ‘great’ from the Siberian perspective. This newfound insight hasn’t made the transition to Russian life any easier for me. There have been occasions in supermarkets when I just wanted to grab the owner by the scruff of the neck and shout ‘Why can’t you provide stock that is in date!’ Similarly, I have wanted to knock some sense into friends of mine in the UK who have spent time feeling sorry for themselves. There was once an occasion when a friend of mine was forced to cancel their satellite television subscription because of the recession. When this cancellation was then posted on Facebook, my friend received several messages of condolence and sympathy. Apparently, such a loss was considered really awful. To top it off this friend then went on to say how he was considering moving to Russia to escape the UK austerity measures. He wasn’t joking. One of my worst memories is of Moscow, when I saw a 90-year-old homeless babushka next to a metro station begging for food. It’s an image that will never leave me. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of babushkas suffered the awfulness of being forced to beg on the streets following the collapse of the USSR. I wanted to grab my Satellite-TV-less friend in the UK and implant my memory of the homeless babushka; but I couldn’t. It’s not for me to judge others’ perception of value, although I sometimes find this hard.