A Journey from Moscow to Vladivostok via the Trans-Siberian Railroad - Part 3
Day 9 – Sunday, 7/29/18 07:35. UTC: Sunday, 7/29/18 00:35.
Novosibirsk
55.026 82.92849
By my reckoning: Sunday, 7/29/18 07:35.
Novosibirsk. New Siberia. The old one wasn't enough for
them?
Am I Rusophilic? Do I have Stockholm syndrome or gone
native? Perhaps. All during the Cold War I had no animosity toward the Russian
people and rejoiced whenever we broke through the paranoid rhetoric of our
governments and found a bit of the immense common ground between us. Of course,
I watched my grandmother send care packages to the Old Country and my
grandfather occasionally told us folk stories about the foolish rich man and
the ignorant but wise servant. He told the punch line where the peasant showed
up the rich land owner with relish. I grew up with the impression that the Old
Country was a land of poor but wise and generous simple folk under a crust of
cruel affluence. I was right.
So that is just a continuation of my family lexicography.
It's hard for a bear to stop eating fish. An ancient Russian proverb I just
made up.
Have I abandoned my own country? Of course not. I, too, have
not stopped eating fish. You can appreciate a different culture, people, and
language and come back with a better appreciation of your own. It's not a zero
sum game. Russians are Russians, no matter what ethnicity they are. Tatar.
Khazak. Buddhist. They are not Russian-Buddhists or Russian-Tatars or Russian
anything else's. They are Tatars who are also Russians. Buddhists who are also
Russian. No one expects them to give up their ethnicity or culture. No one is
considered racist for wanting to preserve their own rich and ancient history.
They are just themselves and they are just Russians.
So I find the diversity and unity of eleven time zones worth
of people inspiring and plan on putting it into practice on my own continent.
At home there is a lot of animosity between people who aren't even different
ethnicities. A lot of hatred. There's nothing I can do to change other people.
I cannot teach someone to love. I can only love them.
Despite sour puss Putin a lot of people smile and laugh.
That's what a lot of them do if they can't communicate very well. Come to think
of it, that's the first form of communication we use when we can't communicate
as babies. We fall back on it when we can't communicate as adults.
Enough pontificating.
After breakfast I stopped at the front desk and told them
how helpful and nice magic fingers was the night before. (Note: I forgot to
mention that a lot of us were having trouble getting connected to the Internet.
Angelica at the front desk walked us through it. When we still couldn't get it,
she took our devices and said she had “magic hands'' and fixed it for us. I
decided magic fingers sounded better.)
They said I could write something if I wanted. I said, of course. I left a nice
note about a nice person.
We had the morning free and went out around noon. We met our
guide, Olga. She was quite the character. Definitely a Soviet era person.
Siberia means either; Sleeping Land, Cold Winter, or
something else I didn't catch. It makes up 80% of Russia. The United States,
including Alaska and Hawaii, can fit inside it with room to spare. In all of
Russia only 15% is habitable. The average temperature goes from 30 below to 30
or 35 above. The coldest temperature ever measured in the winter was minus 51.
Russia has instituted a homesteading program. They will give you one hectare of
land free in Siberia if you agree to work it. Alaska had a similar program that
only stopped in the 1950's. So. Run, don’t walk, to your Siberian Sanctuary.
There's a statue in town of four stylized pumas holding up
something. They are sables. These were hunted regionally for their fur, which
is very fine and warm. It is an export and a supporter of the city. Don't buy
Chinese sable clothing. They are raised in cages and the fur is useless. It's
not as warm and it falls out. Get the fur that has been tempered by Siberia.
Faux Sable is only good for faux frostbite.
There are hunters here that are the best in the world.
Cossacks. When they hunt squirrels, they have to shoot them through the eye,
otherwise the fur is considered no good. Naturally, these hunters were valued
in the war as snipers.
We passed a statue of Lenin, I don't have to tell you.
And we saw the opera house, theater, and ballet. Like
everything in Siberia, it is big. Olga said the first decree the Communists
made after the Revolution concerned education. The Communists were very
concerned with the cultural and intellectual health of the citizens. In this
regard Stalin was a genius. A devil, but also a genius. Russians don't seem to
mind contradictions.
Since this is not Moscow, they don't have long runs of any
performance. Instead, they will rotate through a roster of shows. And since
this is not Moscow they don't get a lot of visitors, so their audience is
local. Rotating through shows gives the audience something new to see and the
performers a change. The theater is full most performances. During the war the
theater was used as a hospital.
The stage is 1,000 square meters. Olga has a nephew who is a
ballet dancer. He hates performing on any other stages because they are too
small. When they go on tour they have to build smaller set pieces. The theater
was being built when the war broke out. Like everybody else in Russia, the men
went to fight the Nazis. And like everyplace else, the women built the war
machine and continued the finish work on outstanding projects. You will have
ballet when you come home, they said. Not enough lived to see that.
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| A Larch House |
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| No one would be fool enough to sit... |
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| ...Oh. |
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| My loyal subjects |
Olga showed us an odd statue. It is a throne. The upright
and arm rests are made of chains and there is an opening in the back by the
head. There are various funny little iron men perched around it holding various
odd items. Hanging down is a crown which is half helmet and half jester's hat.
It is inviting you to sit down and assume the mantel of kingship with the
little men as your servants. But beware. The chains bind and a demon can
whisper to you through the door.
Freaky? It gets better. The throne is next to city hall as a
warning to all of the politicians who walk by. I had a similar idea myself,
only my reminder to be placed in front of every Kremlin, White House, Forbidden
City, etc., is a working guillotine. Just in case it is ever required. You never
know. As Vladimir Putin recently said succinctly: The throne is never far from
the scaffold.
She showed us some log houses. Siberia has an abundance of
cedar, larch, pine, and birch. The cedar possesses antibiotic properties, so
staying there, even for a few nights, can be healthy and good for respiratory
issues. White birch trees have always been a symbol of young Russian girls,
they are straight and tall. The white bark looks like the blond hair and fair
skin of the Scandinavian lands from whence they came. Now adays there are more
mixed marriages, so it is no longer significant.
The house she showed us was beautiful. Every house has a sun
symbol near the top. The sun is a symbol of god and health and well-being from
pagan times. When you visit a Russian family they might give you pancakes,
which are round and yellow, often served with jam. They are offering you their
god. They are wishing good things to you.
Across the street was an empty lot. There used to be an even
prettier and bigger example of this architecture. The governor of the region
had sold it, illegally, to a developer, who knocked it down and then left it
vacant. He's in a Russian prison now. I hope it’s a bad one. But the house is
still gone. Putin appointed an interim governor from Crimea so he wouldn't have
any connections or owe any debts to the locals. There will be an election this
September. I asked Olga about Putin appointing all of the governors. How can
they be having an election? She said that, yes, Putin was appointing governors,
but they didn't like that so they are going back to holding free elections. I
said, You can do that? She said, nonchalantly, Ya, like it was no big deal. I
suppose. What's he gonna do, send them to Siberia?
They say that Moscow is the political capital of Russia, St.
Petersburg is the cultural capital, and Novosibirsk the scientific. There are a
lot of scientists here doing research in medicine, agriculture, and technology.
The biggest cardio vascular hospital in Siberia is here. They are working on a
treatment for cancer involving injecting boron into the cancer cells. If they
succeed they will win a Nobel Prize. On one of the campuses they have a statue
of a mouse wearing a lab coat, glasses, mortar board, etc. Since mice have been
instrumental in all of their medical research, they have created this memorial
to honor Dr. Mouse.
In the north of Siberia a tribe of people live who have the
lowest incidents of cardio vascular disease in the world. People wondered why?
Was it genetic? Was it the environment? They finally decided it was diet. These
people eat a lot of raw fish, cedar nuts, and lingam berries. These are rich in
omegas, vitamins, and anti-oxidants. She said that both Russian and American
scientists have determined that artificial vitamins cause cancer. Processed
foods, sugar, and all the crap we eat no longer provide nutrients for the body,
they provide profits to the human feed industry.
Novosibirsk also has a lot of universities. Violinists from
the Music conservatory are considered among the best in the world, as well as
their dancers.
The city of Novosibirsk is a new city, New Siberia. It was
founded by Alexander III sometime around the turn of the twentieth century. It
wasn't planned. Instead, it is here by accident. The Ob River is here.
Alexander decided to build the trans-Siberian railroad. Before, it took six
months by horse riding on non-existent roads to get there, changing horses
every six hours. If you were a common peasant it would take two years. But why
would you bother?
Alexander built from both sides, Vladivostok in the east and
Moscow in the west. See if you can make your fingers meet in the middle. As
they got close together they didn't meet. Instead, they had a problem. The Ob
River freezes a meter or more in the winter, and then the melting snow in the
south hits the frozen river and floods. Today they bomb the ice in the spring
to break it up. Novosibirsk is on a site made of granite, so it was the natural
choice.
A railroad bridge crosses the river here. It's been replaced
due to metal fatigue. A piece of the original is here as a monument. The
construction is like the Eiffel Tower. There is a monument to the geographic
center of Russia in Novosibirsk. Over the last century Russia has lost land due
to wars and such, so it is no longer here. Somewhere nearby. Monuments, ruins,
and landmarks change. People remain.
After this success they wanted to find a way to run a train
from New York to Paris. This would require building bridges across the Barents
Straight from island to island from Siberia to Alaska and then down to the USA.
Russia was broke by then and couldn't afford it. The sponsors of this project
raised money from several donors and drew up and signed a contract. They were
completely set to run with this modern Silk Railroad. Then the revolution broke
out. Nobody knows what happened to the money. It may be sitting in a Swiss bank
account. Bankers might have stolen it. Or some think Trotsky took it to finance
the revolution. All we know is, there’s no railroad from New York to Paris.
I noticed that every once in a while a car would drive by
with a flag with a blue X on it. Today is Navy day and people are showing
support for their sailors.
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| A snack at a rail break |
At lunch the discussion got lively. We were talking about
how nice everyone we met has been so far. Except the bankers, said Michelle. In
Perm they tried to exchange money. The teller scrutinized their brand new one
hundred US dollar bills and rejected most of them. And she was rude.
Olga said, yes. The bankers are all bad. Twice a year Putin
holds a four hour press conference and answers questions submitted in advance.
I've watched two of them. They’re quite fascinating. There were a lot of
complaints about the banks. He said he would look into it. When Putin says he
will do something, it is done, Olga said. Well, for a few weeks the banks were
better, but then they went back. Olga wants to reopen the gulag for bankers and
corrupt politicians. Can we make contributions?
Olga's very outspoken, indeed. Staunch Putin supporter, but
not at all put out that Yevgeny doesn't entirely agree. As I said before,
Russians don't have the same 'All or nothing' attitude that we have (though
they have plenty of other quirks. Rudeness is not one of them.) She was a nurse
and an interpreter. She once interpreted for the CEO of Pepsi. At lunch
everybody at the table was drinking Pepsi except him. He was drinking water. He
said, Olga. Don't drink that. Nobody knows what's in it. Only four people in
the world know the recipe. If you spill some it will burn a hole through
whatever you spill it on.
She was a little authoritarian herself, being from the old
Soviet time. She told us to stop eating all the crap we do. And at a food market
that afternoon we will buy lingam berries and cedar nuts (you WILL buy them!)
She was good natured and funny about it. Yevgeny just sat their shaking his
head. Okey, Gramma Olga. We’ll buy your Soviet health food.
We then visited the train museum. That was fascinating. We
saw some cars mentioned in Dr. Zhivago. First, second, and third class
carriages, not as nice as ours. A prison car, definitely not nice. Snow plows.
A kitchen car and a medical train. The medical train had red crosses painted on
top, I assume required by the Geneva Convention so bombers can avoid them.
Well, this was target practice for the Fascists, as she called them. They
didn't abide by conventions. So they painted the tops to look like train
tracks. Whenever they heard planes at night they stopped the train, doused all
the candles, and waited for them to pass.
Olga lost an uncle in the Great Patriotic War. Every family
in Russia lost an uncle, a grandfather, or some other relative in the war.
Every family in Russia remembers. In their own way. Memory persists.
They also had automobiles. Stalin's limo. Trucks. Rocket
launchers. And a new car they designed and showed to Stalin. They called it the
Motherland. Stalin took out his pipe, leaned forward, and said, And what will
you say when someone asks you how much for your Motherland? They said, Did we
say Motherland? We meant Victory.
Good answer.
Though Russian cars are not very good. Russians can build
tanks, cannon, airplanes, submarines, and spaceships, but not cars.
Khrushchev wanted to eliminate the cult of personality, so
in the 1965 Communist Convention he ordered that images of Lenin, Stalin, etc.,
be removed from public spaces. Some trains from the earlier era had the image
of Lenin and Stalin on them. They were removed.
All of the trains in the museum are maintained, regularly
painted, and kept in running order. You never know when you might need them.
There could be a Dr. Zhivago in Russia’s future.
On our way back to the hotel to pick up our luggage, we
stopped at a market and bought, you guessed it, Cedar nuts. I got some Tiger
Tea and lingam honey. Olga said we don't have to declare it. It's all properly
packaged.
When I gave Olga a tip at the end of the day, I told her it
was for her gulag project. I want first contribution.
We got our stuff and got back on the train for our all night
ride to Krasnoyarski.
Vocabulary word for the day: Добрый ночь Dobrey Nochi Good
night.
Day 10 – Monday, 7/30/18 09:35. UTC: Monday, 7/30/18 00:3.5
Krasnoyarskiy
56.01271 92.87706
By my reckoning: Monday, 7/30/18 09:35.
Yevgeny had to wake me up before they took our car off to
the depot for the day's storage. I had gone the bed around midnight after a few
fingers of vodka. Ok. Quite a few. And woken up at 6:30. I figured I'd stay up
and just lay down again for a bit. I was out like a light. Hopefully now I've
paid back my sleep deficit.
We checked in and had breakfast. You know what Russian food
is like by now. Lots of salad, cheese, sliced sausage, bacon and eggs, pancakes
and sour cream. I haven't eaten so well since I was a child.
Yevgeny saw Putin's girlfriend on TV while we were having
breakfast. She's beautiful, of course, an Olympic gold medal gymnast,
certainly, and is now in Parliament, surprise, surprise. Only the best for the
Tsar's bedroom. There is definitely a divide between those who remember the
Soviet days and those who don't. We could call them Soviets vs Glasnosts.
Soviets knew Stalin was no angel, but there was bread on the table, medical care,
education, and relative peace for the general public, and after all what's life
all about, anyway? They all knew they were being lied to, just not exactly by
how much. Yevgeny was born in 1981, so he was in college during the Crazy
Nineties and just didn't pay attention to it all. He was too busy studying
linguistics. He's a college teacher now. Younger people really don't care about
politics. As long as they are fed and cared for, just like their parents did
under Stalin. Bread and circus. Just like we do now.
I said it's much the same with us. We're lied to on a
routine basis. Many people believe it, amazingly, but for the most part people
are more interested in what their government is not doing for them than world
politics. Here, the Soviets believe but the Glasnosts don't. Kind of the same
everywhere.
Of course, there is the problem that Putin has no successor.
He does not appear to be grooming anybody for the role. We may wish that he
would just go away, but be careful what you wish for. There are other popular
possibilities for the job that are much more militant. There are people who
want to fight back against the west much more forcefully. Putin is really a
moderate and a pragmatist despite what we are constantly being told. He does
not want the IMF to turn Russia into another Greece and he does not want Russia
to be dominated by anybody. Beyond that, he's willing to work with other
countries. That was Yanakovich' sin in Ukraine. The IMF handed him a bailout
package that looked good until he read the fine print. The end goal was
impoverishment, so he went to Putin and got a better deal. So he had to go!
Our guide, Elena, met us at noon. We had lunch in Putin's
favorite restaurant. It serves authentic Siberian food. Putin likes to do his
hunting, fishing, bear riding, and tyranting here. He comes with his friend and
minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu, every once in a while. Shoigu's a
fascinating person, too. He's a Buddhist and the minister of defense, which I
think is amazing. Those contradictory Russians at it again!
I asked Yevgeny some more about the treatment of gays in
Russia. He said in the cities there are gay bars everywhere. Thursday is gay
night everywhere as well. I said how Americans are told that Putin hunts gays
with his Empire storm troopers. He shook his head dismissively. No. If they
leave everybody alone nobody cares. True, they can't marry or march in public,
though I don't know if they've tried. Masha Gessen has and Pussy Riot was
jailed for desecrating a cathedral. They were either noble freedom fighters or
plain street thugs, depending on your point of view. But there is hardly
persecution for the mind-his/her-own-business gay person. That is much the way
it was in this country in the nineteenth century. Gays were recognized and
ignored and even had gay bars and clubs, though white collar gays like doctors
and lawyers were expected to keep a respectable face on it. Out of sight out of
mind. Though I suspect things are different in the Moslem republics, though I
don't know that, either. I bet that's where the stricter laws are on the books.
Though I have never heard of anyone being beheaded or caned in Russia, which is
routine in places like Saudi Arabia. That’s enough ‘thoughs’ for now.
The city was settled by Cossacks. End of history.
The river here, the Yenisei, is called the Milky Way and is
one of Russia's larger rivers, more than 4,000 kilometers. It is famous for
sturgeon, which grow up to four meter long and weigh up to 425 kilograms. In
Siberia they like to do things big. That was also a Soviet conceit. Bigger,
faster, stronger, better. How many hectares of land were cultivated this year?
How many kilometers of roads built? How many tons of oil produced? How many new
Communists born? Quotas, quotas, quotas!
There are three main roads in Krasnoyarsky. Lenin, of
course. Karl Marx. And Mira Ave. Mir means peace or the whole earth, depending
on context. There is a saying from Soviet times. Mir for mir.
Surikov lived here. Surikov was a famous painter. He was not
formally trained and only went to an art school in St. Petersburg later. His
works are now in museums in Moscow and St. Petersburg. His house is a museum
with some of his earlier works. They get the cheaper works. Checkov was also
here for a while. Yevgeny said something about Goethe. He might have been here,
too. I don't remember.
A lot of the houses here are made out of Siberian larch.
Like cedar it is resistant to rot and is not painted. The wealthier owners
built their houses on stone foundations. For the rest of us peasants they were
built right on the ground.
We stopped at a cultural center near the river. It is being
restored. Russia has in excess of 160 ethnicities, many in the east. Starting
in Novosibersk I noticed more oriental looking people. The vendor I bought the
cedar nuts from said he's from Azerbijan and comes here to work. We are very
close to China here. Mongolia, I suppose. Or Manchuria, which sounds even more
exotic.
Speaking of restorations, I noticed a lot of construction
going on everywhere. One of Putin's campaign promises was to fix the roads in
the oxygen poor cities outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg. They were pretty
Soviet era. So they're getting fixed.
And speaking of ethnicities, I don't think I have seen any
blacks here. Putin recently offered asylum to 15,000 white Boer farmers from
South Africa. I don't know about blacks. Of course, Russia never imported
slaves from Africa. I don't know who became slaves when slavery was legal in
Russia. Political prisoners, maybe? The homeless and indigent? That's a puzzle.
There is a medical school here. After Chernobyl a lot of
patients came here for treatment. The mud from the rivers has medicinal
properties and was used to treat them. Some went home but a lot of them stayed
here. Now they have a large Ukrainian population here. Russia has absorbed
another group of strays and made them Russian.
We stopped at a museum of the Great Patriotic War. Every
city has one. 75,000 men went to fight from here. 30,000 didn't come back.
Elena repeated the fact that every family lost someone in the war. She may have
said one in two families, not sure if I heard her correctly. But she had lost a
grandparent, so so far it's been pretty consistent. Great Patriotic War,
indeed.
I said thank you in Russian (spacebo) to one person in our
group and Galina thought it was funny. She's Russian and worked in the Soviet
Union as a teacher and with the children's camps (not those kinds of camps. The
camping type.) She told me I will speak Russian in no time. I should move to
Russia and find a nice Russian girl. Hmm. Not a bad idea. Those Moscow girls do
make me sing and shout. Our girls are all broken. They're all busy politically
correcting each other and the rest of the world. All they know how to do is
girlsplain to everybody how misogynistic, sexist, racist, and bigoted we all
are, in that order. Maybe I need a different approach. Hmm. Now that I am
Russian eating borsch and potatoes and drinking good wodka, and all, I can do
something about it.
Hey! You keep your fucking fat feminist finger out of my
face or I'll bite it off! Woah. Was that... self-respect…? Is that my
masculinity coming back? Not that I had much to begin with. Anyway, I doubt that
any self-respecting Russian girl would take me up on my offer.
Back to reality.
After a while I went out for a walk. I went down by the
river and walked along it. There were people selling stuff, of course. And
people smoking and selling hookas. There's definitely a middle eastern flavor
to this town.
The riverside is across a very busy road. There's a
crosswalk there but the lights were turned off. I waited for the infrequent
confluential break in traffic from both sides to cross. I looked back and people
were just crossing and the traffic just stopped for them. No beeping. No
swearing. Nothing. What's this, do people have implants controlling them in
their brains? Implants with brains in them implanted in their brains wired
directly to the Kremlin? How peculiar. So on my way back I waited until there
was a lull in traffic from my left and just walked across the street. People
coming from the right just stopped and let me by like it was as natural as
Nutella.
So they tell me there is no drug or crime problem in Russia.
Yevgeny told us. Several of our guides said the same thing. We're back to the
freedom vs. security thing. Tsar Vladimir has cleaned up the place, but at what
cost? It is clear that they do not have the freedom that we have, exactly, but
everyone I spoke to likes living in Russia and Putin is immensely popular.
Opposition to him is mild and more that people would like to see a new face in
the Kremlin than that they want to overthrow a tyrant.
If it is true that Russia has solved their crime and drug
problems, you'd think that every leader in the world would want to come here to
study what they have done. Countries are always interested in innovations made
by others. Whether it's metros or sewage systems or any other major civic
project, why reinvent the wheel?
By the statue of Checkov there's a grill restaurant that
sells shawarmas and Mideast fare like that. I decided to eat there and
pantomimed and pointed to what I wanted. This and the waiter's Google
translator insured that I didn't order the camel kidneys. I got lamb, a salad
with beef, Mideast bread, and an Amstel beer. I had wanted a Russian beer and
had pointed at what I assumed was a tap, but they brought me an Amstel instead.
OK. Any beer in a storm. I didn't bring my jacket and it was getting cold, so they
brought me a blanket.
On my way back to the hotel some young people, three boys
and two girls, stopped to talk to me. I was trying to locate a grocery store on
Google maps and thought at first they were offering to help. They started
talking to me and I said English or German. With a few words in English and
pantomiming they let me know they wanted me to take their picture. That was
surprising. So I took the boys' picture, the girls were not so outgoing, and
they went away, laughing. They didn't
pick my pocket, even. If that happened to me in New York I'd be
insulted.
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| New friends |
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| Mideastern fare. |
Noone's around to go out for a drink on the safe and drug
free streets of Krasnoyarskiy. So I may just go out by myself for a vodka and
some honest Russian contemplation.
На здоровье (Na Zdoroviе)
I found a place called the People's Bar and Grill a block
from the hotel after wandering around a bit and not getting mugged or anything.
Gotta love it. Inside there were a few bar flies, as is tradition, and a very
friendly atmosphere. I sat down and flaunted my ignorance. They were all
friendly and maybe a bit tipsy. I would bring up the rear. I ordered a shot of
wodka, ice cold, and we tried to communicate. I used my five or six Russian
words and they had various proficiencies in English, but still pretty low.
They talked to me and were friendly, though at first I
wondered if I might be in one of those gay bars what with the way they were
looking at each other and laughing, as if at my expense. Not that it mattered. Nobody was dancing on
the bar in black leather or anything. They tried communicating with me and I
realized that they were not being rude, just curious. After a few halting ,
Where are you from in America? And. What it your name? The barflies left and I
was left to talk to the bar tender. His English was superb. Just kidding. It
was sketchy and he looked at his translator app once in a while (I gotta get
one of those) but we communicated well. Where are you from? How do you like our
city? How do you like Russian food? What do you think of Americans? He likes us
and would like to visit America.
He suggested some gay drink called a B-52. Cointreau,
Bailey's, and gasoline, I think. I said, nyet. Wodka and maybe a beer. Got any
Russian beer? Yes. People's beer. Of course! Or maybe a half liter of the
Lenin's Lambic? Got it. He said he had a lot of questions. I encouraged him to
ask. We talked about America. Russia. Our beautiful cities. Our friendship. He
got more comfortable speaking English with me and it got easier to communicate,
though it still required some pantomime and smiling and laughing. The universal
language. I told him not to be afraid to speak English. After two shots and a
beer I paid my tab, 500 rubles, and bid him das vedanya. And I got a new
vocabulary word. Neer-ve-sha, which means not at all (you're welcome.)
These are the times I live for.
Vocabulary word for the day: друг Droog. Friend.
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| Old section of bridge from Statue of Liberty days. |
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| New bridge. Here's where the east/west lines converged. |
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| The Boys. Pre Khrushchev’s purge. |
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| Borsch for 2000? |
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| Much more inspirational, you think? |
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| Right, Mr. Stalin. Not the mothership. LAND! |
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| Indoor market. |
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I think I’ll skip the jerky
wanabee and go for the
Lingham berry tea and Cedar nuts,
thank you.
|
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| The models for this fountain were local. |
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| Surikov |
 | |
| Checkov |
Day 11 – Tuesday, 7/31/18 05:47. UTC: Monday, 7/30/18 22:47.
Krasnoyarskiy
56.01271 92.87706
By my reckoning: Tuesday, 7/31/18 05:47.
Woke up at 5:30 this morning after getting to bed around
midnight. Sure. Today we don't have anything planned until 12:30 and I'm revved
like a Russian race car. Damn body.
A few days ago I got my registration. You get one after a
week and it shows that I'm cool or something. And it has my name in Russian:
Джонатан хоьард локс.
I also got a form from customs on my way through Moscow
airport that I need to exit the country when the FSB is done with me. Both are
paper clipped to my passport. If it looks official, kinda keep hold of it. If I
lose my entrance card it just means a royal hassle and extra fees to prove that
I came here legally and would like to go home now, please. Is good, da? I took
a picture of it, which might be illegal now that I think of it. Forget I said
that.
 |
| Your papers, please? |
I mentioned Russian homesteading the other day. There's a
blogger I follow named Dmitry Orlov who is Russian and came to the US with his
parents when he was nine years old and then went back for his business when he
was older. So he's immersed in both Russian and American language and culture,
fluent in both. Because of this he is in a good position to comment on all
things Russian and American. Standard disclaimer, these are his opinions, first
hand experiences, nobody told him what to say. Equally qualified individuals
with a similar, or reversed, background may disagree. Blah, blah.
Once he was blogging about homesteading. He mentioned
getting free land in Siberia. Homesteading in the best of places is hard work.
The entire family has to work clearing timber, building a log cabin, clearing
farmland. One of the first things you do is go out and find the biggest,
meanest, orneryist bear in the woods and shoot him. Then you make his fur into
a cloak and hat. This sends a powerful message to all of the predators who
might be thinking of taking his place as alpha. Already taken, boys. That's
Russian politics by example for you.
Putin knows this. After he became president Putin got the
biggest, orneryist oligarch in the Russian swamp, a fellow named Mikhail
Borisovich Khodorkovsky, and threw him in jail for tax evasion, just like we
did to Al Capone during our rum running phase. Remember when we used to be able
to slap down our creeps? Wikipedia calls him a 'philanthropist.' Ivan the
Terrible had that down pat. Except he kept doing it over and over again. Too
much work. One dead bear should be all you need!
As an after note, Putin later released both Khodorkovsky and
Pussy Riot early from prison. He had made his point and the rest of the
predators in the swamp had taken note. Besides that, Khodorkovsky's mother was
ill and for Pussy Riot, again, his point was made. You girls show a little
respect now, OK? Despite what we think of him, President Putin is not
vindictive.
We are on our train to Irkutsk. We boarded at 1:30PM and
will arrive around 8:00AM tomorrow morning. We will cross one time zone.
Irkutsk is called the Paris of Siberia. Yes, I know. It sounds like the Paris
of Pompeii. From what I've seen already I fully expect the former.
What do I do for the next 17 hours? We'll have stops, of
course. Once in a while we'll be free range humans. The smokers will all smoke.
I have a bottle of vodka, also of course. I'll probably invite the boys down
for a drink after 7:00 dinner. The girls are invited, too, of course. We just
can't be as course. Just kidding. Of course we can.
Yevgeny has been very good to us. He comes around to see
that we are OK. Makes sure we have water. Gives us instant coffee if we want it
(we have hot water. I assume it's residue from the steam engines.) He lent me
an article on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. That was fascinating. It was started
by Alexander II, who was assassinated. His son, Alexander III continued. When
his son, Nicholas II was older he put him in charge of the committee for
dealing with local bureaucracies ultimately taking over total responsibility
for the project. They were going through many different areas and sometimes
different countries such as China and the recently independent Manchuria had to
be strong armed or fought, or if that didn't work, a lot of powerful interests
had to be bought off. Leases were negotiated; several lines were planned,
started, taken over by warring governments, and abandoned. But it was worth it.
Before the Trans-Siberian Railroad it was easier getting to the east coast of
Siberia by traveling to Paris, taking a ship to New York, crossing the United
States, and sailing across the Pacific Ocean to Vladivostok
Break time. Someone was selling raspberries by the stop,
which wasn't even a station. It was a ‘in the middle of nowhere.’ One hundred
rubles for a big plastic cup, maybe a pint or so for a dollar and sixty cents.
I asked if I could take his picture. He said no. He's not supposed to be
selling them and the police could be around. They try to get around the Man
here, too.
They couldn't get the railroad around Lake Baikal. They
tried putting tracks on the ice in winter. But the first train that tried to
cross broke through the ice. They needed some way to consistently get troops
and supplies across to support the Russian-Japanese war in 1905. Nicholas had
ignored one advisor who recommended negotiating with the Japanese and, instead,
listened to another one who advocated provocations. He had his Neocons too. The
one who chooses is not the one who decides. The Japanese won and got Russian
land in reparations. Time to find another route.
Add to this unrest among rail road workers and you've got a
revolution. Most industries could have a strike and the effects would be local.
The rail road workers could shut down the country. Nicholas had created a
machine that could work against him.
This is when Nicholas agreed to change the country to a
constitutional monarchy. Nicholas was not the greatest Tsar in the (inbred)
dynasty. These all provided paving stones on the road to 1917. Of course, not
everything about Nicholas was bad. He might have been partially a victim of
circumstance. The nineteenth century was a time of political evolution. New
parties, founded on new and radical ideas were rising. Zionism, founded mostly
by Russian Jews, sought a homeland for their ethnic group. Bolshevism, also
founded by Jews, had the desire to promote a world government. There was
Socialism, Communism, and Marxism not tied to any one ethnicity. And hotheads
stirring up the masses. The Duma had been created like European parliaments. In
Russia, the economy was not terrible. Social changes were being enacted, such
as eliminating slavery and giving relief to the peasants. The ruble was worth
two dollars at that time. Today the dollar will buy you around 60 rubles.
Change happens, but sometimes not fast enough for the masses. And sometimes too
fast for the ruling elites. Plus the Bolsheviks hated the Tsar.
There was part of another article after this one. It
concerned several areas and how they are faring now. One was the media.
Governments can't function with a free press. In the Crazy Nineties everyone
wanted to experience western style freedom of the press. There were numerous
shows on numerous stations broadcasting all sorts of perspectives, both pro and
con government. Some were competing against each other to see how
anti-government they could be. Some of them are anti-Putin today. He's aware of
this fact and is slowly reining them in. Remember, we get news, not truth.
Ben Franklin would take on apprentice printers, as was
normal for craftsmen of his day. But his twist was that he would lend them the
money they needed to set up shop once they finished their apprenticeship, but
only if they went to the city he wished and allowed him editorial oversight. He
was the Rupert Murdock of his day. So when you hear the term fake news, think
of Ben Franklin. Russia's media is (fairly) free. Some of it. But that's just
for now. It's best not to entirely believe anybody, just to be safe.
Yevgeny also recommended a TV special on the Internet called
Russia with Simon Reeve. He says it's good and has some interesting
conclusions. I said I'd check it out.
Dinners on the train are phenomenal. Salad, borsch, chicken
cutlets with cheese and cream sauce. Not like airplane junk. There were two
very loud couples in the dining car with us. I didn't think that Russians who
were not fighting a revolution were that loud. Toward the end of the meal they
started singing. They were happy about something. Or singing a rousing
patriotic tune about the Motherland and glory and stuff.
Time for vodka and a soothing night being rocked by the
train.
Vocabulary word of the day: Kak дела Kak-de-LA How are you?
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