Sibir: My Discovery of Siberia

by Farley Mowat

  The northern crowd in the Pekin was typical. The only time they simmered down was for a few hours Saturday afternoon when they crowded around T.V. sets to watch a football game. After the game we were hauled off to attend a party in the suite of another Yura – an enormous Tatar who, Yuri Rytkheu told us, was a Big Chief on the northern Pacific coast of Siberia. The other guests were a weird mélange of nationalities and professions. There was an Armenian geologist named Edvard who was the discoverer of the Kamchatka gold fields; a magnificently bosomed Hungarian lady who was, aptly enough, the director of Nursery Schools in Krasnoyarsk; two geophysicists who had just finished a three-year stint in the Kolyma Mountains and were now beginning six months leave; an Evenk reindeer breeder (the Evenk are a native race from northeastern Siberia); a long, lean, and bespectacled young poet named Gleb; a blonde editress of children’s books; one Chukchee author (Yura); two befuddled Canadians, and a bevy of attractive ladies who may or may not have been Party girls – in the non-political sense of the word. Since everybody seemed to be able to speak at least three languages, the place was Babel. It did not seem to matter. A big radio was carted in and set playing full blast and those who could find room began to dance.

  Relays of waitresses appeared laden with trays of food and drink, and when the table would hold no more they spread their largesse on the beds. The provisions seemed to be mainly raw eggs, raw tomatoes, Ukrainian baked chicken legs, and enough vodka, cognac, and champagne to sink the place. The raw eggs were eaten by sucking them, and they were not at all bad if followed immediately by a dollop of vodka which doubtless cooked them before they reached bottom.

  The reindeer breeder spoke French and the Hungarian lady spoke French and English so we three had a conversation. I learned quite a lot about reindeer and would have learned more except that the lady’s dress was so décolleté that every time she turned toward the reindeer man he lapsed into passionate Evenk which none of us could understand. Edvard, the Armenian, had taken a fancy to Claire and she was learning a great deal about Armenians.

  It was a good party. I have enjoyed many like it in the Canadian north, although this one had a notable distinction; these people never did get out of hand. When the singing began (and you have to hear Russians singing at a party to believe it) Yura (Tatar) went down the hall both ways from the suite, checking with the neighbours to see if they were being disturbed by the noise. Apparently nobody was. In fact most of them came back with Yura and joined the party. But at 1 a.m., apparently by common consent, everyone packed it in and we all went off to bed.

  It may be thought that we saw little of the tourist attractions of Moscow. This is true, although it was not for want of trying. On one occasion we set out to visit the famous Moscow Exhibition Park. After an hour’s drive we arrived there to find the main gates open, the ticket sellers happy to accept our money, but every single one of the pavilions locked up tight. On another occasion I tried to visit the Military Museum and had the same experience, even though I had carefully checked the hours when it was supposed to be open. There is a special kind of independent arbitrariness in the way public institutions are run in Moscow, and this includes restaurants and stores. They seem to close when, and for as long as, the whim of the moment dictates. This lends a piquant element of uncertainty to Moscow life. One is never sure how any expedition will turn out; and this could hardly be better illustrated than by the Franko Affair.

  It began in the dining room of the Writers’ Club, one of the most sumptuous establishments in Moscow and formerly the headquarters of the Masonic movement, and a favourite haunt of Leo Tolstoy. Claire and I were there one evening in company with Laura Kuskov, a petite blonde translator. We were relaxing after a five-course meal and desultorily discussing life and letters with an admiral of the Soviet navy who was also a much-published author, when a brisk young man named Sasha dashed up to our table. Sasha was a secretary with the Foreign Department of the Writers Union. He thrust three tickets into my hand.

  “Great surprise,” he cried. “Invitations to celebration of most famous Ukraine poet. Special good seats for you to see!” Whereupon he turned and dashed away as if, just possibly, he wanted to be sure we had no chance to refuse.

  “Where is it?” Laura called after him.

  “Is here … at 8 o’clock!” Sasha replied and vanished.

  We assumed he meant the theatre on the second floor of the Club, so we sipped our cognac and continued chatting with the admiral, who was greatly interested in the kilt I was wearing. He seemed a little dubious about its practicability in Siberia, whither we had told him we were going.

  A few minutes before 8:00, we ambled upstairs to the theatre and presented our tickets. The lady doorkeeper seemed puzzled. “Tonight is here scientific films … you are welcome, of course, but here is no poet celebration.”

  Laura snatched the tickets and scrutinized them. “Oh God!” she cried. “It’s at Tchaikovsky Theatre! That Sasha!”

  Happily there was a taxi outside and under Laura’s goading the driver made speed. A few minutes later he slewed to a stop and Claire and I were about to bundle out when Laura leaned over, clouted the driver on the shoulder, and screamed: “No! No! You idiot! This is Tchaikovsky Hall!”

  The driver took off before I could even slam the door, and at exactly 8 p.m. delivered us to the ornate portico of the Tchaikovsky Theatre.

  Now although it may be socially acceptable for North American theatre-goers to arrive late at a performance, in the Soviet Union such an action constitutes the worst kind of gaffe. Laura was in a state bordering on panic as she whipped us into the inner corridor, waving our tickets like flags in front of every usher she saw, and running us along like driven sheep in the direction they indicated. Nobody looked closely at the tickets.

  At one minute past the hour we scurried into a huge room from which a single set of double doors led toward a glare of lights. The backs of a group of people almost filled the wide doorway. We dashed up behind them, followed them through … and found ourselves on the stage of an immense auditorium in company with about fifty soberly dressed, distinguished-looking men and women.

  Five tiers of chairs had been arranged on the stage behind a long, baize-covered table bristling with microphones. The chairs were filling fast. By the time we reached them (carried along by sheer momentum) there were only a few still unoccupied – directly behind the long table and close beside a sort of podium or lectern. At this point I hesitated, contemplating flight, but Claire nudged me cruelly. “Sit down for heaven’s sake! The whole place is staring at you!”

  It was true enough. Fifty solemn faces on the platform were turned our way with expressions of polite incredulity. Beyond the footlights we could see a wash of faces whose owners also seemed much interested in the spectacle of three brightly attired ladies – one of whom sported a large red beard – milling about in a confused way at front stage right.

  We sat down and tried to disappear. It was difficult. Spotlights were trained onstage to provide illumination for several television and motion picture cameras. Still photographers added their own illumination, producing a recurring flicker of flashbulbs.

  A robust, black-suited gentleman on our left, who turned out to be a high ranking member of the Politburo, got to his feet and announced that the evening’s entertainment was to be in honour of the famous Ukrainian poet, Ivan Franko, who, though dead these many years, was loved and honoured throughout the Soviet Union. Many famous guests, the chairman told us, were present on stage this night to do Franko honour. He proceeded to name the guests and each stood up and made a little bow. They included the cream of the Moscow literary élite, not to mention a score of major political figures. The audience, many members of which had equipped themselves with opera glasses (these can be rented in any theatre in Moscow) closely examined each famous figure. Having made all the introductions on his list, the chairman seemed to realize that something had been left out. He cast a perplexed glance at us and the opera glasses all
swung our way – but inspiration failed the chairman. He shook his head in a baffled manner and turned back to the program.

  Speakers and singers and reciters of poetry now came forward one by one to the podium. Since I sat on the outside chair beside the podium I was not screened by the table, and the T.V. cameras had an unobstructed view of me. Claire drew my attention to this fact with a murderous, “Cross your legs! And keep them crossed!”

  Some of the speakers spoke in Russian, and Laura, slowly recovering from acute paralysis, gamely translated for us. However, many more spoke in Ukrainian and this was outside Laura’s provenance. Finally she turned to a dignified lady sitting on her left and politely asked if the stranger would mind translating from Ukrainian. The lady seemed startled but before she could reply she herself was called on for a speech … after all, she was the Minister of Culture for the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

  Since there was nothing much else to do except consider what fate I would visit on Sasha when I caught him, I began to ponder the implications of this celebration. For centuries Ukrainians and Russians have lived uneasily as neighbours, and often there has been violence between them. Both are intensely nationalistic peoples. Each race has stubbornly defended its own culture and language against encroachments by the other. The situation has some similarities with the one which still exists between French and English in Canada. Yet here was a Ukrainian national (and very nationalistic) poet being honoured, not only in Moscow but simultaneously throughout the Soviet Union, with all the pomp and ceremony the state could muster. I have no way of knowing if Franko was a good enough poet to warrant this attention. However, I do know that the honour being paid to him, and through him to all Ukrainians, was a clever piece of practical politics. How much, I thought to myself, could be done to heal the spreading rift between Quebec and the rest of Canada if we had the intelligence and the will to make similar gestures.

  I was still musing when intermission arrived – an hour and a half later. We were the last to leave the platform but we did not linger in the V.I.P. waiting room. With averted eyes we scurried for the exit.

  We went back to the hotel and as we sipped our nightcaps we considered the nature of the problem we had presented to the audience at the theatre, to the television watchers, and to the cinema goers in the Ukraine and elsewhere who would never have any explanation for the abrupt materialization and equally abrupt disappearance of those three strange ladies.

  Two

  A DISQUIETING episode preceded our departure from Moscow.

  Claire and I had gone to bed early, but shortly after midnight we were awakened by a gut-shaking rumble which seemed to permeate the entire building, setting the dishes on our table tinkling nervously.

  I went to the window. Moscow normally goes to sleep at midnight and the broad, dimly lit street five storeys below was empty of life. Nevertheless the air throbbed with a harsh, metallic thunder. The sound grew closer until a massive column of tanks loomed into view at the far end of the street.

  These squat behemoths were the precursors to a truly Orwellian spectacle. For three hours an unrelenting river of steel thundered through the black October night. The buildings on both sides of the street shuddered to that passing-on, but did so eyelessly. Not a single lighted window broke the obscure facade.

  The tanks were followed by echelons of armoured carriers, self-propelled guns, atomic cannon, and an array of tank-towed missiles which looked particularly menacing because each was wrapped in a dark canvas shroud.

  Although I knew this chilling display of weaponry could only be a rehearsal for the military parade which is a feature of the annual celebration of the Great October Revolution, the effect was to make me feel naked and alone in a potentially lethal and hostile world.

  Claire, who had joined me at the window, was less impressed. She soon became bored by this display of male bellicosity.

  “From up here,” she said, stifling a yawn, “they look like a lot of children’s Dinky Toys. Come back to bed!”

  I slept uneasily for the remainder of the night, my imagination haunted by all the propaganda I had ever read, or heard, about the Communist hammer, poised high to crush the life out of the Western world.

  I was still bleary-eyed next morning when we boarded a big black Chaika limousine for the trip to Domodedovo Airport. Domodedovo lies sixty kilometres distant and the route to it follows a long segment of the circular bypass highway which is supposed to be Moscow’s ultimate boundary – a ring of concrete intended to contain the burgeoning city and prevent if from spilling out over the surrounding countryside.

  There was a heavy snowstorm and the road was crowded with trucks carrying concrete sections for the prefabricated apartment buildings which were springing up everywhere. We drove for miles and miles past rows of apartments, built and building. In some areas they were sprouting in the midst of age-old growths of log houses which must have looked the same when Napoleon came amongst them. Tiny, and ornately decorated, the log houses were Old Russia, and they were doomed. Their passing does not depress the Muscovites, particularly those who grew up in such homes without water or plumbing and often enough with three or four families squeezed into as many rooms. What the average Muscovite seems to want – and the quicker the better – is a brand-new apartment of his own; and he is not apt to be overly critical if the walls are so thin he can hear his neighbour breathing.

  Against all odds of weather and traffic we reached the airport on time – one full hour before scheduled departure, which is not to be confused with actual departure time. Aeroflot treats its schedules with a casual disdain which can be a trial to the keyed-up nerves of Westerners.

  Russians have a saying (they have one for every eventuality) which sums up their attitude towards Aeroflot’s cavalier disregard for schedules. “You should not complain if the plane leaves late,” Kola told me solemnly. “Be grateful that none have ever been known to leave ahead of time.”

  Russian tolerance for such delays is at least partly due to the knowledge that Aeroflot’s safety record is unmatched. Generally speaking Soviet civilian aircraft will not take off if there is the slightest doubt about the weather, or about any other factor bearing on safety.

  However, the cautious policies of Aeroflot are not universally observed. Claire and I once shared a three-seat section on a flight from Moscow to Tbilisi, capital of the Georgian Republic, with a Moscow physicist who, from the moment we boarded the plane, was in an unabashed state of funk. We asked him why he seemed so unhappy.

  “Georgian pilots … and watermelons!”

  Pressed to explain, he described a trip he had made a year earlier.

  “We boarded our plane at Tbilisi airport and then were kept waiting an hour in the broiling heat while the crew personally put aboard an entire truckload of watermelons. Since there wasn’t room in the cargo compartment they just stacked them in the centre aisle, five or six deep. When we got into the air and hit some turbulence, the cursed melons were the only things aboard that had room to move and they rolled under seats and even burst open the door into the pilot’s cabin. We human passengers were stuck where we were. No chance to reach the toilet. I had to sit with my knees under my chin most of the way to keep from getting my feet squashed.

  “I’m sure we didn’t actually go over the Caucasus Mountains. We were too heavy to get enough altitude. We must have flown between them, but-it was such thick cloud I can’t say for sure. Anyway we did get to Moscow and then we had to sit in the plane for another hour until a truck appeared and the crew got the melons off the plane.”

  “What happened to the melons?”

  “Oh, the crew doubtless sold them for twenty times what they cost. Good businessmen, the Georgians, only the government really shouldn’t let them play about with airplanes.”

  Domodedovo Airport was swarming with the most fantastic mixture of people. They seemed to include representatives, often in native dress, of every known race, together with some of totally unknown
origin. There are more than ninety ethnic groups in the U.S.S.R. and the majority live south or east of the Ural Mountains. Domodedovo is their airport, serving Siberia and the Far East, but it also serves most of non-Soviet Asia, and Asia has taken to the air with passion and abandon. For almost the only time I was in the Soviet Union, I was able to wander about almost unnoticed, despite being kilted, bearded and draped in an Eskimo parka. By the standards of Domodedovo my garb and my appearance were relatively square.

  Our flight departed only thirty minutes late, which seemed to surprise Kola and Yura. After we had settled ourselves, and endured the take-off, I asked Yura to tell me something about the TU-104 jet in which we were flying. He was unhelpful.

  “Airplanes I do not like! Dog team is better.”

  “We’ll ask the pilot,” Kola interjected, and without more ado shepherded Claire and me forward to the cockpit, apparently treating it as the God-given right of every Soviet citizen to visit that sanctum if and when he chose.

  The Captain, a fatherly-looking fellow, explained his plane with gusto. It was a civilian modification of a bomber type, he told me. Then, with a grin, “In the United States they call it Badger bomber and they worry because we have so many. Don’t tell them most of our 104’s carry passengers instead of bombs. Is big military secret!”

  When we returned to our seats, the co-pilot, a handsome young chap from Kiev, came along with us. He was infatuated with northern aviation, having spent several years with the polar division of Aeroflot. His northern flying had been mostly over the Chukotka Peninsula (Chukotka and Alaska are only fifty-six miles apart) and he amused us with an account of how American radio stations sometimes sought to seduce Soviet fliers into defecting across the intervening Bering strait.