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149 pages

English

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In this picaresque story of adventure, David Greene captures an overlooked, idiosyncratic Russia in the age of Putin.A journalist for National Public Radio in the US, David Greene decides to travel thousands of kilometres from Moscow to Vladivostok on the iconic Trans-Siberian line. On the train and in the many Siberian outposts he stops as he meets a wide range of ordinary Russian people - from a group of Beatles-singing babushkas to soldiers and struggling entrepreneurs - with situations arising that are at times comical, awkward or poignant. Travelling in third class, he learns to adhere to the train's unwritten social codes and to navigate the unfamiliar environment of Siberia, occasionally shadowed by security agents.Conjuring up other famous travellers to the regions such as Anton Chekhov, David Greene manages, through the events he describes and his reflections and conversations on the journey, to construct a complex, compassionate and astute portrait of Putin's Russia, far away from the glamour and prestige of Moscow.

Sujets

Histoire

Russia

History of Europe

Russie

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Publié par	Alma Books
Date de parution	03 février 2015
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781846883712
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0650€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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MIDNIGHT IN SIBERIA

MIDNIGHT IN SIBERIA
A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia
D AVID G REENE

ALMA BOOKS LTD
London House
243–253 Lower Mortlake Road
Richmond
Surrey TW9 2LL
United Kingdom
www.almabooks.com
First published in the US by W.W. Norton & Company in 2014
First published in the UK by Alma Books in February 2015
© David Greene, 2014
Cover picture: © Getty Images
Photos by David Gilkey/NPR © NPR. Reprinted by kind permission
Map © W.W. Norton & Company. Reprinted by kind permission
David Greene asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
ISBN : 978-1-84688-370-5
eBook ISBN : 978-1-84688-371-2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

CONTENTS
Author’s Note on the Map
Map
Prologue
MIDNIGHT IN SIBERIA
Introduction
1. Rose
2. Sergei
3. Boris
4. Another Sergei
5. Lyubov
6. Nina
7. Alexei
8. Vasily
9. Galina
10. Marina
11. Angelina
12. Andrei
13. Polina
14. Ivan
15. Tatyana
16. Nadezhda
17. Yet Another Sergei
18. Taisiya
19. Igor
20. Olga
21. Vitaly
Acknowledgements
Index

TO MY WIFE ROSE

AUTHOR’S NOTE ON THE MAP
The Trans-Siberian Railway is Russia’s spine, a thin line of constancy that holds this unwieldy country together. It’s more than just a line on a map. The railroad connects families, bringing distant relatives together more affordably than air travel. And it connects different chapters in this country’s journey – today, high-speed luxury trains carry Russia’s über-elite and standard-class trains carry business travellers, tourists, and families, all following the same path used by Stalin to ship political prisoners to the Siberian gulags.
While the Trans-Siberian, as broadly defined, includes a number of different routes, the primary two connect Moscow to Ulan-Ude, where one route continues east to Vladivostok and the other (the Trans-Mongolian) dips south to Beijing. I decided to stick – mostly – to the all-Russia route, using the train as a vehicle and guide, seeing Russia from west to east. I did take a few detours, as you can see. I jogged over to Yaroslavl, not a stop on the main route. Same goes for Izhevsk. And I took a bus down to Chelyabinsk, hoping to pick up a southern branch of the Trans-Siberian to reconnect with the main route in Omsk. That plan fell apart when I realized I would need a Kazakh visa for a bit of that trip. It proved far more efficient to backtrack to Ekaterinburg than to take a last-minute gamble at the Kazakh consulate. From Ekaterinburg, it was a rather straightforward trip eastbound (save for a heart-thumping hovercraft ride across Lake Baikal and a late-night jump back on the train in the village of Baikalsk). Then we hugged the Chinese border, before swinging a sharp right turn and completing the home stretch into the Pacific port of Vladivostok. There we arrived, after 5,772 miles (if we’d stayed on course), more tea than vodka (not by much), more instant noodles than fresh meals (by a lot), and a whole lot of conversation.

PROLOGUE
Wasn’t history supposed to end in 1991?
Apocalyptic as that sounds, it was essentially the prediction of a political scientist named Francis Fukuyama who two years before that had penned an essay called ‘The End of History?’
As anti-Communist fervour was building around the world, Fukuyama argued that the East-West battle of ideas which fuelled the Cold War was finally coming to an end. He favoured nuance over finality, predicting that the world had not seen the last of totalitarian regimes and communist ideology. They would ebb and flow and influence events here and there. But the trend was unmistakable: Liberal democracy, parliamentary-style governments and market-driven economics were taking hold in more and more countries of the world. That would more or less continue. The great debate was over.
Fukuyama sure seemed prescient in December 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved.
The question worth asking in 2014 is whether we’ve arrived at the end of the End of History.
Russia, led by its enigmatic, macho leader, Vladimir Putin, blatantly ignored pleas and warnings from the West and forcibly annexed Crimea, which was (and remains, if you ask the most wishful thinkers) part of the sovereign nation of Ukraine. To foreign-policy alarmists, this marked the resumption of the Cold War. To even the coolest minds it was a seminal event likely to poison the West’s relations with Russia.
Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state and one of the world’s most influential foreign-policy minds, wrote in the Washington Post following the Crimea annexation that it is dangerous to view Ukraine “as a showdown” over whether the sovereign nation “joins the East or the West”. Ukraine has to function, Kissinger wrote, “as a bridge between them”.
He went on to argue that the West certainly has interests in Ukraine – growing economic and cultural ties – but that so does Russia, perhaps even more. Kiev was the birthplace of the Russian Orthodox religion. Ukraine has been strategically important to Russia for centuries, especially Crimea, where Russia maintains its Black Sea naval fleet. And in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, many people speak Russian and feel a closer cultural connection to the East.
Kissinger wrote that each side has to recognize the interests of the other. He didn’t hold out much hope for that: “Putin is a serious strategist – on the premises of Russian history. Understanding US values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point of US policymakers.”
His casting of this modern conflict represents just one view. But it’s hard to argue with the reality he underscores: at worst, Ukraine could become a colossal misunderstanding that morphs into a new “showdown”. At best, Ukraine can be used as a “bridge” between competing interests and philosophies. Either way, the old fault line and the East-West battle over ideas, territory and influence remain present today.
All of this has been building of course. The United States and its allies were furious when Russia invaded its neighbour Georgia in 2008. Likewise, Russia was furious in 2011 when it agreed under enormous pressure to abstain rather than veto on a UN vote to approve NATO military action in Libya, given assurances that NATO was going to tread delicately. NATO bombs were dropping within days.
There are reasons to think these tensions may die down. Russia and the West have shared interests, and they’ve worked together effectively at times – on space exploration and pressuring Syria to hand over its chemical-weapons stockpile. Russia’s global dominance in energy may also be fading, and that could weaken Russia’s economy to a point where it must either get along with the West or face economic deprivation and collapse from within. But for now, Putin clearly believes that a stand-off with the West is in Russia’s strategic interest and that he’s strong enough to pull it off.
Just as notable as Russia’s aggressiveness abroad is Putin’s management of the home front. In recent years, he has solidified the Kremlin’s control over local and regional governments, pressured news organizations, curtailed the right to protest and targeted minorities – most glaringly, Russians who are gay and lesbian. He has also threatened human-rights organizations, especially those that receive funding from the United States and elsewhere abroad.
Most stunning? By all accounts – and admittedly, polling in Russia is often unreliable – Putin is more popular than ever.
On 1st May 2014, more than one hundred thousand Russians descended on Red Square to celebrate their president and cheer his conquering of Crimea. It was arguably the most impressive display of Russian patriotism since the Soviet collapse and quite a counterpoint to the anti-Putin protests of 2011 that received plenty of attention from Western media but appear, for the moment, largely forgotten.
If we think of 2014 as a snapshot, what do we see? A Russian leader moving further away from Western democratic values. An East-West divide marked by growing mistrust. A military standoff that has seen both NATO and Russian forces mobilizing and carrying out exercises with the aim of intimidating.
This moment may not mark the end of Fukuyama’s End of History. Perhaps this is one of those moments he predicted when the Cold War enemy would score a blow on the ultimate path to defeat.
I’m tempted to look at this moment differently: as a reminder that culture and history matter, values and traditions endure, peoples of the world have different instincts, wishes, priorities and dreams. It is easy to see Vladimir Putin as an authoritative leader with his own selfish motivations who has been able to squash anyone who wants to protest and dupe everyone else into letting him lead. That portrayal may hold some truth. But Putin, popular as ever, shrewd as always, also embodies a Russian soul that is unfamiliar to many in the West.
During the Cold War, Soviet citizens were nearly impossible for Americans and others in the West to understand. Authors and journalists – Hedrick Smith among them with his book The Russians – took us into apartments in Russia, into the lives of people, giving us a rare window into the culture of a place that seemed so cold and threatening.
Part of understanding