Letter from Russia
Expats living in Russia: whenever someone asks them why they persist, sigh, click their tongues lightly and reply, "But after Russia everything else, especially England, is so boring!" And it's true, life in Russia appears disorientatingly adrenalin-fuelled from the start, from the Stalinist chic passport control and the break-neck, pot-hole dodging drive from the airport.
In Moscow, a dizzying array of uniformed initials seem to line the streets. MVD, FSB, DPS, GUVD, very quickly blur in your mind into KGB, NKVD and OGPU.
Huge military caps float above the crowds like alien and alienating crafts, and barely post-pubescent conscript faces stare out menacingly from under shaven heads and khaki. You feel like a man tottering along a tightrope with no safety net below. At any moment Russia could lose you, in a back alley surrounded by venal policemen or in the bowels of the unbearably complicated, constipated bureaucracy.
But gradually you find yourself adapting, becoming inoculated against the absurdities, and understanding, even adopting, the grim-faced Russian stoicism and, with the help of pound-a-bottle vodka, eventually enjoying it.
I'm currently living seven hours east of Moscow, in the town of Nizhnii Novgorod. Until ten years ago it was closed to foreigners. The soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov was sent into exile here and the town's former name, Gorkii, still remains confusingly emblazoned on all train timetables. The town, especially as it is snow-covered, (it's currently minus seven and ankle deep) has a strange dilapidated charm. Slanting, rotting, but still inhabited wooden houses fill the centre whilst slanting, rotting, but still inhabited Soviet high-rise blocks fill the suburbs. Stagnant and mirthless, provincial Russia is enveloped by an unerring sense of the hopelessness of life, just as it is by the snow.
A Russian girl studying here comes from a "closed nuclear town" as her parents are nuclear scientists. The town is surrounded by a barbed wire fence, patrolled by soldiers with guard dogs, and only residents and relatives of residents are allowed in and out - and only with special passes. Trains entering and leaving are stopped and searched.
"You see that mineral water you've got in your hand", she said to me, beaming proudly as she recounted all this to me, "that comes from my town too!" I smiled, took a swig and, under my breath, muttered "Only in Russia!"
Max Delany
30th Oct 2003