The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation by Bullough Oliver

Author:Bullough, Oliver [Unknown]
Language: eng
Format: epub

of mind in those first hours. He had

been picked up at his church. He had

thought he was being taken to his

flat. He was instead taken to the

Lubyanka, and on to Lefortovo.

Everything was being done to keep

him off balance.

Did his own personal experience

of the horrors he would face if he

were sentenced to prison help his

resolve or undermine it? I thought

back to Abez, to the dying village in

the Arctic where the mosquitoes

whined around my head and bit

through my socks.

And I thought about Alexander

Merzlikin, our bearded guide to the

graveyard where Karsavin and the

others

were

buried,

and

a

conversation we had had as we

waited on the platform for the train

back south. A dozen or so local

people stood patiently, making no

movement, while Tanya and I waved

madly around our heads, trying to

keep the mosquitoes off.

‘I don’t know how they can

stand the mosquitoes,’ I had said to

Merzlikin, gesturing at the others. ‘I

don’t know how you can stand

them.’

He smiled and shrugged. He was

not a man of many words.

‘And I can’t imagine what it’s

like in winter,’ I added, slightly

lamely.

He nodded: ‘Unless you’ve been

here, you can’t.’

That was the problem, I realized.

Father Dmitry knew what he was up

against. He knew what a Russian

prison was like in winter. But I did

not. I could not appreciate the

horrors he had lived through, nor the

events that had shaped his mind. I

needed to go back to the north, to

see what it had been like for him in

the cold and dark.

WINTER

8

It’s like a plague

A Russian train in winter is a far

better place than the same train in

summer. With snow and the long

dark night outside, inside was snug

and warm. In summer, a top bunk is

torment, but now I was happy to

wrap myself in my blanket and, if I

felt a little too hot, to hold my

fingers against the ice on the

windowpane. I could melt through it

and leave little clear circles, then

watch the crystals crawl over them

once more.

The platform of the Yaroslavl

station in Moscow had been hard-

pressed snow and dirt. A man stood

selling power tools. He had a heap

of drills around his feet, and a cattle

prod in his hand that he crackled at

me as I walked past. On the opposite

platform

stood

a

train

with

destination boards proclaiming Ulan

Bator and Beijing in three languages.

It pulled out five minutes before us.

In a few days’ time, we would be

thousands of miles apart.

Just before our departure, a man

came swinging down the train

flogging

knock-off

phones. A

woman, one of my neighbours,

asked what he had.

‘Are you going to buy,’ he asked

aggressively. She hesitated. ‘Then

what’s the sense in showing them to

you?’

The woman looked around at us

in surprise at his sales technique, and

we shrugged and grunted and

introduced ourselves. On the top

bunk opposite me was Andrei, a

snub-nosed woodsman in a vest – ‘I

am a driver, a sawyer and a boss.

See, that’s four jobs’ – with strong

opinions, particularly about people

from Chechnya – ‘They should all

be killed, they don’t work and see

how much money we give them.’

Just a couple of weeks before, a

suicide bomber had attacked one of

Moscow’s

main

international

airports, killing thirty-seven people.

H i s sister had passed through the

airport ten minutes previously, he

said, so that may have been the

source of his strong feelings,

although the suicide bomber had not

in fact been from Chechnya.

Beneath Andrei was a sulky-

looking girl who spoke on the phone

for most of the first evening, and

slept for most of the next day.

Opposite her, and directly beneath

me, was Yekaterina, a pretty girl

from Vorkuta who listened to

everyone’s conversations and smiled

without saying much.

Most of the conversation over

the next day was driven by our

neighbours on the other side of the

aisle. They were a mother and

daughter from Ukhta. The mother –

her name was Angelina – had

learned English a long time ago and

was delighted to show off to the

carriage

by

holding

exclusive

conversations with me about Prince

Charles. I spoke to her in Welsh for

a while when she asked me what this

place Wales was that he was prince

of. She then happily explained to our

neighbours

that

she

had

not

understood a word. They had not

understood a word of the exchange

that led up to it, so probably did not

realize I had been speaking in a

different language at all, but she did

not let this undermine her triumph.

Angelina’s grandfather was in

the gulag in the early days. He was a

Ukrainian convicted in the 1930s,

during the wave of collectivization

that submerged Father Dmitry’s

family along with millions of others.

He was released after the war but not

given permission to return home.

His daughter – Angelina’s mother –

came

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