One Steppe Beyond Read online

  ONE STEPPE BEYOND

  Copyright © Thom Wheeler 2011

  Map by Georgie Fearns

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.

  The right of Thom Wheeler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

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  eISBN: 9780857653277

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE: PÄRNU

  CHAPTER TWO: TALLINN

  CHAPTER THREE: ST PETERSBURG

  CHAPTER FOUR: VOLOGDA

  CHAPTER FIVE: THE GOLDEN RING

  CHAPTER SIX: THE TWO STANS

  CHAPTER SEVEN: ACROSS THE URALS AND INTO SIBERIA

  CHAPTER EIGHT: HEARTLANDS

  CHAPTER NINE: TOMSK

  CHAPTER TEN: KRASNOYARSK

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: LAKE BAIKAL

  CHAPTER TWELVE: CHITA

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE FAR EAST

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: VLADIVOSTOK!

  For Jo

  Thom Wheeler studied Russian at university and returned to live in St Petersburg for several years after the 1997 trip, earning a living teaching and guiding, while also reviewing bands for the Russian Big Issue; he then lived and worked in Ukraine, Estonia and Georgia. He is now based in Brighton, where he teaches drama.

  PROLOGUE

  St Petersburg had been a cold and bleak place when my sixth form history class and I arrived during the last days of the Soviet Union, its real identity disguised under its Soviet name Leningrad and several feet of heavy February snow. The city’s residents were generally reserved and suspicious, or, conversely, overly friendly in an attempt to sell Red Army uniforms, Soviet badges, or cheap Sovietskaya champagne. Our itinerary had included the usual suspects on the tourist route: Alexander Nevsky Monastery, St Isaac’s, the Hermitage, but also we were ‘very lucky’ to be taken on an excursion to a local school.

  On arrival at School No. 81 on the Petrograd side, the district north of the Neva River, we were given a short tour around several gloomy-looking classrooms with dull lighting and bare grey walls, before congregating in a small hall, where some of the more senior students joined us. As a gesture of fraternity we had brought with us a loaf of bread, painstakingly sculpted to depict flowers and birds in bold relief on the top. The procedure planned was that one member of our party would step forward and formally present the symbolic loaf to a representative from the school – a simple enough task, which is why I had no misgivings when it was decided that I would take on the job of official diplomatic bread hander-over.

  However, as this ceremony drew closer, I found myself unable to control a mounting fit of the hysterics, not helped by winks and nudges from other members of the group. The Russian recipient of the loaf stepped forward, a girl of about sixteen called Katerina. Katerina contributed to my barely suppressed hysteria by the fact that she herself was suffering from an all too obvious fit of the giggles coupled with mounting embarrassment. Her cheeks were reddening to such a shade of crimson that they looked fit to burst, her clear discomfort at being centre of attention adding to her awkwardness.

  Then came the moment for the loaf to be exchanged. During the split second as it left my hands and was about to arrive in hers, it somehow slipped and merely clipped across the ends of Katerina’s fingers. It then seemed to hover in mid air for an eternity, before commencing its downward plunge, performing a couple of somersaults before impacting on the floor. The beautifully sculpted ceremonial loaf divided into two uneven halves. My eyes had searched frantically for a face in which to bury my own embarrassment. Most of my group were laughing wildly, in marked contrast to our Russian hosts, who stood wearing uniformly blank expressions – apparently taking these loaf-exchanging ceremonies very seriously. Katerina was quick to rescue the bread. The atmosphere, which had crashed along with the loaf of bread, gradually lightened over refreshments of shortbread and blackberry juice, giving me and Katerina the chance to laugh about the mishap and exchange notes about our respective countries. We also exchanged addresses – and Katerina became my first and only pen friend.

  Getting my first letter from the Soviet Union was very romantic. She wrote at length about her recent holiday in Odessa, and how she had passed her driving test; she even enclosed a picture of her behind the wheel of a Lada – looking supremely proud. The second letter was exciting too, as she was really looking forward to coming over to England to visit. All she needed from me was an official invitation. The third letter, which arrived shortly after the second, reiterated how excited she was about coming to see me, and that all I now needed to do was organise an official invitation for her mother and younger sister.

  I was too old for pen pals. Especially when they came with so much baggage. The bureaucratic mountain that it was necessary to climb in order to get merely one Soviet citizen across Europe on an Aeroflot flight was significant, but a whole family would require more stamina than I could muster. Fortunately, Katerina apparently felt the same – as when I wrote back with a lengthy list of requirements, which included eight passport-size photographs and a not inconsiderable amount of hard currency, I didn’t get a reply.

  By the time my brief friendship with Katerina had become nothing more than a memory, the same was true of the Soviet Union. Almost overnight an entire country existed no more. At midnight on 31 December 1991, arguably one of the most important states of the twentieth century ceased to exist. As dawn broke on New Year’s Day in 1992, the great socialist experiment that had imposed itself on the world for seventy years was over. No fanfares, no great battles – the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union had already been replaced by the Russian Federation’s tricolour – as a once mighty power left the stage without so much as a whimper. The leaders of the original 1917 revolution had aimed to rid the world of capitalism, and all the oppression and exploitation which capitalism entailed, believing the Soviet state to be ‘the only sure way to bring about social and material contentment’, sentiments which, wherever you stand on the political spectrum, are difficult not to be warmed by. However, once the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus had agreed to disband the union, it was that very capitalism that was to gush in to fill the vacuum. The USSR was replaced by fifteen independent states, all in varying degrees of chaos. Russia was to be dominant within the newly formed confederation, but this was still a long way away from the iconic images of Boris Yeltsin astride a Taman Division tank in opposition to the coup d’état months earlier.

  In one of Katerina’s letters she had included a flimsy, discoloured map of the USSR. It was a map given gravitas by its condition, torn folds held together with tape, faded coffee cup stains – suggesting it had visited every last place printed on it. The map found its way onto my wall and I spent much time marvelling at this huge country, hypnotised by the alien, impenetrable Cyrillic script, daydreaming about all the possibilities that lay waiting in the post-Soviet world. Beyond the exotic-sounding names of Kazan, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok existed a world that somehow wasn’t there before the collapse, when there had been nothing but Moscow and the distant spectre of Siberia. Now the whole of this vast space was alive again – a whole new world to explore. For the first time, as I gazed captivated by this abstract of lines and shapes, Russia became more than the romantic invention of cold war thrillers, and tour companies with snowy winter itineraries. It mutated into a geographical monster, now somehow accessible and tangible. The USSR had been little more than its capital, like a tree only part visible above ground, anchored by a hulking great network of subterranean roots. For the first time those roots had made themselves visible to me – and I wanted to see more!

  My chance came a few years later, and took the form of Uncle Tony. Not really an uncle, he was one of those family friends who had always been there. From as early as I can remember, Uncle Tony had been drinking coffee at the kitchen table and laughing his deep, hearty laugh, enthusiastically recounting impossible tales. It was during one of his visits that he mentioned a forthcoming trip to Estonia to meet a business associate. When Tony wasn’t pursuing life’s pleasures with the gusto of a man half his age, his business was wood, a lot of which came cheaply from Eastern Europe. Without a second thought for ideology Uncle Tony was one of many now filling the void left by communism.

  ‘I’ll be staying with Olavi, he runs a timber yard in the south... Small town called Pärnu,’ Tony said with a glint in his
eye. ‘You ought to visit some time, it’s a really beautiful country.’ I had never really given Estonia a second thought. I knew nothing about it, and was all too aware that Uncle Tony’s opinion was solely derived from it having a supply of cheap timber for his garden sheds – or whatever else he did with the wood that arrived by the ship load. Tony was silent for a few moments before adding nonchalantly, ‘I’ll get you a job out there if you want.’

  This somewhat throwaway-sounding offer of a job was a little more potent than it may at first appear. Since that visit to the Soviet Union over five years before, my time had been spent completing a thoroughly amorphous course of higher education. Employment in my chosen vocation of community drama hadn’t come easily; in fact, employment of any kind came with very little regularity. I was in my prime, hungry to make a mark on the world, yet I was making ends meet by delivering egg and cress sandwiches on a bicycle with a bent axle to condescending office workers – and getting a little bit too excited about my visits to the local job centre.

  The highlight of my week was meeting with Jo – she too had graduated from the faculty of delusional education and we had both moved up to London, eager to put our newly acquired skills into practice. We used our time together comparing notes on soul-destroying McJobs and planning community productions to make the world stand up and pay attention. Unfortunately, the more we drank, the more outlandish and completely unrealistic these productions became. We did, however, succeed in one thing – exhausting most of our meagre earnings, and thus giving us no other choice than to wake up the next morning, bleary-eyed, ready to clamber back into our increasingly comfortable ruts.

  Uncle Tony’s words were a lifeline, a chance to kick-start my stagnant existence – OK, a little further afield than the 25 kilometres stated in my job search declaration, but a job’s a job. Gainful employment in the ex-Soviet Union was a dream come true.

  CHAPTER ONE

  PÄRNU

  ‘The world does not understand Estonians, and Estonians do not understand the world. The world can easily live with this, but can Estonians, that is the question.’

  ANDREI HVOSTOV

  The job was timber ‘stress grading’, which involved a lot of coffee, a lot of smoking and very little stress. I was to work alongside Janis, the yard foreman, an Estonian man of twenty-eight in a state of constant agitation - he couldn’t stand still for a moment, either playing with an unlit cigarette in his hand, playing ‘keepy uppy’ with an invisible football or juggling objects only he could see. On my first day, between cups of coffee, Janis and an assembled group deliberated long and hard over the future of a burnt-out timber truck. Now, I’m no expert on aging Soviet heavy goods vehicles, but running my untrained eye over the ailing truck I concluded quickly that, largely due to the huge amount of daylight underneath the bonnet, there was no future for it. I couldn’t understand what Janis and his friends were saying, but as the minutes turned to hours I got my first insight into the mindset of the Homo sovieticus. Why work when there are important decisions to be made? I found their attitude endearing, feelings probably not shared by the management.

  THREE SOVIET PROVERBS

  The future belongs to he who knows how to wait.

  Initiative will be punished.

  We pretend to work; they pretend to pay us.

  Janis had recently returned from the UK having completed a course in stress grading. However, he appeared in no hurry to show off his new know-how. When the gathering of men in dusty boiler suits eventually started to disperse, I noticed Janis anxiously searching the yard for further distractions, his eyes hunting high and low with the alertness of a meerkat for anything that might provide an opportunity to kill some more time. Failure to find anything was met with a childish resignation, and I’m sure I saw him stamping his foot as the realisation hit home that work would have to begin. But Janis was nothing if not resourceful. Having manoeuvred a split pine trunk into position, rather than scrutinise it for quality he sat himself down on it and reached for his cigarettes, muttering what could only have been the Estonian equivalent of ‘A quick fag, and then we’ll start’. A 1950s poster courtesy of the Soviet Union’s tobacco industry had offered the simple message ‘Smoke cigarettes’. Janis’ smoking habit was living proof of the effectiveness of the Soviet propaganda machine.

  Finally, with a fresh cigarette behind the ear, he clapped his hands together, rose to his feet and pushed a reluctant ‘OK’ from his mouth. Grading the timber involved dividing the wood into what we termed white and red – on the whole this meant spruce and pine, pine being the heavier and more likely to be exported to England for the manufacture of furniture – then dividing up the 5.5-metre-long slabs of trunk depending on the percentage of knots. After the planks had been checked they were bundled into parcels of twelve and piled up ready for the boat. Planks with too many knots, or which had been badly cut or damaged by worms, were put to one side. Janis set to it with fervour; despite earlier delays he now seemed to be in his element. The fresh Baltic breeze brought clean, vital, sweet-smelling air, and warm sun illuminated the surrounding woods, reflecting off the silver birch and the yellow timber in the yard.

  The yard was a couple of miles outside the town of Pärnu, where the previous day myself and Jo had met up with Olavi and Roland, his old friend from university days and partner in the timber yard. Yes, that’s right – Jo, my old friend from university days. She had done a lot of travelling in South East Asia, and Estonia would probably not have been her first choice of destination, but like me she reckoned anywhere was better than nowhere, and when the opportunity for a little adventure came about she had jumped at it. We had met our hosts outside the post office as planned. Olavi had been impossible to miss, a man of Viking stature whose physical superiority was somewhat offset by a fixed look of bewilderment. A thick strawberry blonde beard partially concealed his weather-beaten and ruddy complexion. When Olavi opened his mouth he revealed a set of teeth that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an aging horse.

  We had arrived in Estonia’s second city somewhat fatigued, having crossed Europe in our ageing campervan, Max. Our journey had begun with us hurtling across France, arriving in Munich to be met by a raging blizzard. It was April, so we were both slightly bemused by the extreme conditions.

  At some point during a visitor’s stay in Munich, all roads will lead to the Hofbräuhaus. It is a magnet for travellers from all over the world – especially popular with antipodeans – over a fourteen-day period in October. This 500-year-old beer hall is allegedly the largest public bar in Europe, if not the world. It has welcomed such luminaries over the years as Paul Theroux and Vladimir Lenin, though probably not at the same time. Legend has it that long ago a certain German princess insisted her ladies-in-waiting go to the Hofbräuhaus for medicinal reasons, as the beer was believed to be necessary in maintaining a healthy constitution. Some of the girls were quite likely to consume up to 7 litres a day! Now, call me old-fashioned, but this being true, when did they find the time to plait the princess’s hair?

  Despite the venue’s popularity with tourists and Germans alike, the day we went the crowds were few; in fact, at first we had an entire 20-foot-long bench to ourselves. By the time our second Stein arrived (for the uninitiated, that’s an incredibly large beer), we had been joined by Bavarians Gustav and Leopold. Gustav wore an outfit of leather finished by a leather flat cap tilted over one eye, which wouldn’t have turned heads if worn on a float during a Gay Pride parade. It didn’t turn heads in Bavaria’s foremost beer hall, either. Leo, meanwhile, was decked out in an off-the-peg suit and looked like he’d come straight from his job at the Munich municipal council headquarters. Gustav gently tickled a sprig of greying hair that had crept out from under his hat whilst the other rested on a glass of German beer the size of an average waste-paper basket, an image that would stay with us. We found much to guffaw about, and the sound of Steins crashing together accompanied by cries of ‘Prost!’ could be heard throughout the evening as the benches filled. Encouraged by our companions and the curly-wurly sticks of salted bread we were persuaded to munch on by the ethereally beautiful and very agile waitresses in their dirndls, we consumed far more than what I assume is the recommended number of Steins. Come closing time, we stumbled out onto the streets of Munich, pale imitations of the hardy wanderers who had driven into town but a few hours earlier.