Sunbathing in Siberia by M. A. Oliver-Semenov Read Free Book Online Page B

the communist party during the 1980s, spearheaded by Mikhail Gorbachev. This was also the period in which Gorbachev sought to introduce glasnost, a policy that called for increased openness and transparency in government institutions. With the building constantly open to the elements while under permanent reconstruction, it seems to perfectly encapsulate Gorbachev’s political ideals, though I don’t think a half-complete tower was exactly what he had in mind when planning Russia’s reform.

    People are People
    The vast expanse of the Yenisei River makes Krasnoyarsk one of the most pleasant places in the entire world, and even though the city itself is huge, because of all the greenery throughout the suburbs and the centre, and a constant view of the mountains, it always feels to me that I am in a small town. It’s not just the old Stalinist architecture, the classical music in the street, the river, the outstanding natural beauty, or the feeling of being miles from the capital and its pseudo capitalist ways; Krasnoyarsk would be nothing without its people.
    Nastya told me that when I arrive in Moscow, to blend in well I should pull the meanest face I can and never smile: ‘No one smiles in Moscow’. People do tend to look either angry or completely miserable. Before I visited Siberia, my view of Russians came from clichés in films and was that they were mostly crazy, devious, calculating, treacherous people who hated the West, and were likely to be used as spies if they ever went to the UK or America. I suppose some people may be. You get crazy devious people wherever you go, but I have never met any in Moscow or Siberia. In fact, I am ashamed now to even think of my Hollywood-instilled notion of Russians. The people I have spoken to in Moscow were kind and open, and the people of Krasnoyarsk even more so. I tend to think of it in terms of the London/Cardiff difference. I have met many foreign travellers in Cardiff, most of whom preferred the people of Wales – Cardiff in particular – to the people of London and England. Not to say they thought the English unkind, just slightly more abrasive than the Welsh.
    Siberian people are a world away from the Moscow-dwelling Muscovites. For a start, they smile more often. It’s not uncommon to be invited to dinner and be presented with half a dozen courses of meat dishes and vegetables, and to be given some for the way home. Even if you visit someone very briefly they usually put an array of nibbles on the table for you to dip into. They care about other people’s wellbeing, as if everyone were distantly related. I have my own theory that this is implanted by two major factors. The first factor is that most Siberian people are poor in monetary terms. Those I have met have little compared to Western standards, and therefore there is an attitude of ‘We are all in it together. So why not share’.
    The second factor that informs my theory is that Krasnoyarsk is zek country. Krasnoyarsk housed a large number of Gulags – the enforced labour camps of the Stalin era from the 1930s to the 1950s. When the prisoners, known as zeks, were released (if they managed to survive), they couldn’t always obtain resident permits for the towns and cities they once lived in and so became residents of Siberia. Not only that but once a prisoner was released, after suffering hard labour in 40˚ C summers and -40˚ C winters, they were probably in no state to travel far, and didn’t feel they could always be understood by Russians who had not been enslaved themselves. This was something Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn touched on in The Gulag Archipelago . According to Solzhenitsyn, there was an understanding between zeks that could not be penetrated or understood by outsiders. This train of thought seems to be apparent even today. The people of Krasnoyarsk and its neighbouring cities have a precious and very rare sense of community, based on hardship,