Another thing that annoyed me was the completely false propaganda that claimed the jailed members of Pussy Riot were being sent to a Siberian Gulag. Both Perm and Mordovia lie to the west of the Urals, in European Russia, nowhere near Siberia; and Gulags were abolished sometime in the 1950s. When people in the West say the word ‘Siberia’ they immediately conjure up an image of some vast snow-covered no-man’s-land where the sun never shines; but Siberia is actually hot and sunny for half the year and is quite a lovely place to be. Siberia is after all just a place, like Caerphilly or Legoland. Knowing Siberia as well as I do, I find the stereotype of Siberia to be quite offensive. Had Pussy Riot been sent to Cardiff or Swansea Prison people wouldn’t have cried out half as much, and yet I believe that the actual loss of freedom and lack of ‘privacy’ wouldn’t have been very different compared to where they were actually sent.
When I spoke to friends online about these glaring untruths, and their obvious use to instill anti-Russian sentiments, I too was met with hostility. It was considered taboo to defend Russia. Even when I made my argument as clearly as I could and presented the evidence above, I was rebuffed with a series of the same untruths and anti-Russian slogans. It was as if I was speaking to robots, who reeled off the same phrases no matter what was said to them. The only other time I can recall having experienced similar hostility and automaton soundbite repetition was when, years earlier, I had tried to talk to a member of the BNP about racism. Some of the people I spoke to about Pussy Riot were academics at the top of their field, and yet they wouldn’t even consider anything I had to say or admit that the anti-Russian propaganda was in fact just that. They didn’t care if they had their facts right or not, and nor did they care for me trying to fill in the gaps. Russia, and Siberia were now bad places, and it was cool to shout it out. One conversation I can remember with absolute clarity went something like this:
‘Perm and Mordovia aren’t even in Siberia.’
‘So, they’re still near it though.’
‘They’re also near to Central Europe but you don’t hate Central Europe do you?’
‘What are you on about? They’ve been sent to Gulags in Siberia not Europe. Don’t you read the news?’
‘Yes, and both Perm and Mordovia are not in Siberia.’
‘What does that matter? What have you got against Pussy Riot?’
By pointing out where information was incorrect I was in danger of being seen as anti-Pussy Riot, which I definitely am not. What struck me the most was that while I was talking to people who were advocating the right to free speech, I didn’t feel able to speak freely. Just as I felt it was unsafe to discuss the Pussy Riot trial openly in Russia, I felt equally as intimidated at the thought of discussing it in the UK for fear of being misunderstood.
PART V
a. Aeroflot Flight SU1481. December 12th 2012. Krasnoyarsk – Moscow
When I woke at 4.30 a.m. I could already hear my dad in the kitchen making tea and coffee. It reminded me of when I had stayed at his house for a while back in 2009. I knew that would be the last time for maybe a year that I would hear my dad boiling the kettle, and the sound of him hitting the teaspoon against the side of the cups. I was happy about the fact we would have our kitchen back again, though it had been real fun with three of us, and an experience we weren’t ever likely to live again. Time had flown by too quickly. After taking it in turns to use the bathroom, knock back hot drinks and get dressed, we had to rush outside to where Dima was waiting to drive us to the airport.
On the drive there I berated myself for wasting too much time. I hadn’t made the most of my last month with my dad and he had spent a considerable amount of time in the apartment on his own. Now he was leaving. I was also anxious about how he would fare in Yemelyanovo Airport. Without any ability to speak Russian, and no flight calls in English, it was going to be difficult for him to know if he was getting on the right flight to Moscow. Nastya and I had thought about this the night before and discussed trying to attach him to someone on the same flight; or simply making a mental-note of the people in front of us at the check-in desk and getting my dad to memorise them. The problem with these ideas were that we might not find someone kind enough to attach my dad to, and if he had to follow someone Russian, there was the possibility of him losing them. After all Russian people mostly wear dark clothes in December, including big winter coats and hats that all look very alike; so even if we did find someone on the same flight my dad could follow, it would be easy to confuse that person with a hundred other people.
At the check-in desk we found ourselves stood behind some very tall people. All of whom wore blue tracksuits with a little sports logo. Nastya noticed as we waited behind these giants that there was a black man entering the airport, a very rare event indeed. He walked up to the queue, and pushed in just before my dad, which although quite rude was a blessing in disguise. We had hoped there would be someone on my dad’s flight who was distinguishable from the crowd. I had even said a few quiet words to the heavens. They answered by sending us the only 7 ft black man we had ever seen in Krasnoyarsk. I took it as being some kind of miracle and told my dad to follow him. We watched as my dad disappeared through check-in then left to find Dima, who had waited in the car because he hadn’t been able to find an official parking spot.
Outside, Nastya and I walked along the front of the airport to the big glass doors that were the fire exit of the departure lounge and spotted my dad. He came over to the glass. We communicated in pidgin sign language and writing letters in the ice on the glass. He shrugged his shoulders and turned his head left and right continuously – meaning he couldn’t find the bloke he was supposed to be following. I made a frost map of the lounge and pointed him to the café that was around the corner. He hadn’t seen it yet. He went there quickly, found the giant man and came back relieved. We made a few funny faces on the frosted glass as a final goodbye. My dad looked really small and vulnerable through that glass. We had taken Boris’s big hunting coat and shapka from him at the check-in desk. He was now wearing the grey woollen coat and a beanie hat he had arrived in. We had to leave, not only because of the temperature (-35°C), but we had to go to the UFMS to register my residency stamp. It was the only day we could do it because we needed Boris, Nataliya Petrovna and Dima to come with us, and Dima was only free on weekends.