Media and Literature

Cartoons:

Hedgehog in the Fog, 1975, by Yuri Norstein

The Fox And The Hare, 1973, by Yuri Norstein.

Tale of Tales ,1979, by Yuri Norstein.

A House for Kuzka, 1984, by Aida Zyablikova.

Winnie-the-Pooh, 1969, by Fyodor Khitruk.

There Once Was a Dog, 1982, by Eduard Nazarov.

Films:

The Return, 2003, by Andrey Zvyagintsev

Kalina krasnaya, by Vasiliy Shukshin

The Irony of Fate, by Eldar Ryazanov

Back to Kotelnich, by Emannuel Carrer

Komunalka, by Francoise Huguier

Books:

Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Idiot

Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita

Zahar Prilepin: Sanjka

Andrey Gelasimov: Thirst (ogi prosa)

Anna Politkovskaia: Douloureuse Russie journal d’une femme en colere (Painful Russia: Diary of an Angry Woman)

Sletlana Aleksievich: The Unwomanly Face of War

On the way to Ardatov

July 2006

With my visa in hand, this is my first time crossing the border into Russia. I am 22 years old. I have been dreaming of this country for a long time. My long student vacations allow me to consider nearly a month of travel. I have made contacts; I want to rub up against what I perceive as “reality” in different cities of the country rather than follow the tourist routes to visit Red Square or the museums of Moscow or Saint Petersburg.

When I think of Russia, I immediately recall the sensations of the long train journeys I made there. I think of the atmosphere of its stations, its endless and noisy trains, big steam machines remnants of another time. I think of the street vendors gathered on the platforms of the small stations we passed through, the buckets filled by grandmothers in headscarves with berries from the forest, pirozhki, dried fish, or fresh beer, but also, depending on the factories present in the cities we passed through, resellers of stuffed animals, vases, or even crystal chandeliers presented along the train windows to travellers, who might have the opportunity to get a good deal.

I remember the uniforms of the “wagon managers”... The “Konduktorsha” is an unforgettable character of the Russian train; her both considerateand fierce way of handing out sheets, bringing tea, or waking you up in the middle of the night to remind you of your stop.

I also remember many of my train bunk neighbours in these large 3rd class wagons, their patience in explaining to me the rules of collective railway life, in starting a dialogue in Russian, spending time with me around crossword puzzles or vocabulary lessons, sharing tea, chicken, or some biscuits.

For my first trip, thanks to my parents, I got in touch with an Orthodox priest who organized summer camps for children in the Arzamas region. This region is located about 500km east of Moscow. I knew it was a fairly poor region, known for its correctional colonies for minors and its prisons. The nearest large city is Nizhny Novgorod. This priest, Father Mikhail, organizes summer camps for the children of Ardatov village and the surrounding villages, including young people coming out of correctional colonies. He wants to allow these children to have a good time in nature and provide them with an excellent religious and patriotic education. Over the phone, he told me, “Yes, you can come, you will be able to help organize games for the children, but also help with cooking, and you will bring them a broader view of the world...”

So, this is the backdrop to the first leg of my journey. I must recount how I made it there, to the Ardatov camp. I had a friend living in Moscow, so I landed at his place there. He helped me secure train tickets. I had maybe a day’s worth of train travel, and I was due to arrive in the middle of the night at a small station named Mukhtolovo Vogzal. Someone was supposed to pick me up and take me to the camp. In Moscow, I remember my friend escorting me to the train and leaving me in the thirdclass carriage (platzkart). He told me I looked like a frightened little rabbit.

Bear in mind that I didn’t speak Russian or just a few words at most. The train was set to stop in the middle of the night. You get off the train at two in the morning with your backpack... And then, what’s going to happen?

A man did indeed come to collect me with a van. He put my bag in the back, I sat next to him, and then he drove all night. In fact, I remember that on the roads, we had to swerve all the time because there were potholes everywhere. It took us a long time to arrive. I couldn’t really communicate with him. He tried to explain to me what it would be like there.

Then, we arrived at the camp. There was a large fire. It looked like a military camp. And it was the middle of the night. They told me, “Look, there are tents,” they opened a tent for me and said, “Look, there’s a space between two kids; that’s where you’re going to sleep!” I thought, “Well, I don’t want to wake up; where on earth have I landed?”

Life at Father Mikhail’s Camp

At that time, I spoke very, very little Russian, if any at all. In fact, I had a hard time understanding where I had ended up. Looking back, it was likely a place and a way of recreational and educational practices, somewhat characteristic of contemporary Russia. It mixed elements inherited from the pioneer camps of the Soviet era with a bit of religious and patriotic education that harkened back to the Every morning there was a flag-raising ceremony. The children had to do gymnastics, they had to do push-ups, they had to sing a song in front of the flag, and I watched all of this, thinking that holiday camps in France are not at all like this. In France, there isn’t this culture of having to do everything together. But there, everything was collective. This, I think, is very much tied to Soviet culture.

The children seemed happy; they simply lived in this camp during the summer, learning to dance, play different games, to sing songs. It was ultimately quite similar to a scout camp in the midst of nature. There were compost toilets, which the children had nicknamed “America,” and the letters USA were painted on the wooden planks.

What surprised me was that they spent a lot of time learning to waltz. So in the photos, you can see that they are wearing beautiful dresses and are learning to waltz in the fields.

What surprised me was that they spent a lot of time learning to waltz. So in the photos, you can see that they wear beautiful dresses and learn to waltz in the fields. I think they probably wanted to differentiate themselves from the communist pioneers in their choice of activities and have activities more reminiscent of the pre-communist period, like ballroom dances.

And then there were, for example, priests who taught rifle shooting. So they had shooting ranges. Some were shooting at birds. That frightened me a bit.

There were also various large games. There were ping-pong tournaments, dodgeball, and other games in the fields. So I was watching all this and thinking, where on earth have I landed? Moreover, there was no phone network, so I was a bit lost. I couldn’t call my friend in Moscow to help me understand where I had ended up. I stayed there for maybe a week or ten days. The children at the camp were very kind to me, but the adults scared me a bit. They told me that I shouldn’t walk alone in the surrounding countryside because it was dangerous and because I was a foreigner, so I was asked to be particularly careful. I wondered: “Is this the real Russia?” But gradually, I found my place; I helped in the kitchen and organised the games. I made a friend, Youlia, who taught me dozens of words every day that I noted in a notebook. I vividly remember the essential words I learned at that camp: “flashlight,” “nail clippers,” “mosquito,” “bucket”...

I also remember the word “faith” because the children asked me many religious questions; sometimes, they looked at me as if I was an alien. The fact that I wasn’t Orthodox was something inconceivable to them; it aroused a certain suspicion.

The fact that our country’s currency wasn’t the rouble was also exceptional for them. You have to understand that this was a very remote region, in that the children never had the chance to see the nearest large city. And it was maybe in 2006, so the internet was not yet widespread. I think these young people still had little understanding of how people live elsewhere. So they were very curious and had a lot of questions for me. In Russian, there is a slightly pejorative term to talk about this part of Russia; we say “glubinka”, deep Russia, that of the villages or small towns, which in reality cover a large part of the country.

I remember they sang songs in the evening around the fire, under the stars. It seems to me that they were Cossack songs. In reality, it was beautiful and moving, even if it seemed very foreign to me, and I had trouble grasping the political meanings of this type of education.

Is it more beautiful when you feel radically foreign?

I understand now that what I am interested in the experience of travel is this first feeling of total otherness, in the sense of a huge distance to the other, and then gradually this feeling of familiarity that arrives. How the foreign slowly becomes familiar...

Our sleeping place

So, was it the same year or the one just after? In fact, I did two things during my first summer in Russia: the project with the Orthodox priest and then a project in another summer camp where there was a group of children learning French from the Alliance Francaise of Nizhny Novgorod and also children from orphanages who were on vacation.

So, with two or three other French volunteers, we were there to teach French to the Alliance Francaise of Nizhny Novgorod children in the morning and also to play with the children from the orphanages in the afternoon. I did it for two years in a row, so the photos, I don’t really know if it’s the same year or the following year. But for me, it was also a significant discovery because it took place in old children’s sanatoriums from the Soviet era, which are pretty characteristic places.

These places could accommodate a huge number of children, perhaps more than two hundred. There were corps, each with different groups that bore names. Early in the morning, at the time of group gymnastics, before breakfast, they would shout: “Nash otriad”, “Nash deviz”... it was very much marked by Soviet culture. There were also Olympiads, where they had to form different teams with a strong spirit of competition.

(Please note that the term “otriad” refers to a term used in Soviet pioneer camps, equivalent to “group” or “detachment” in English. The phrase “nash otriad”, and “nash deviz” means “our group” and “our motto” in English, reflecting the communal spirit of these camps.)

By the ruler

These children greatly needed affection and love, and some even asked me if I would take them back to France and become their mothers. So it was a very intense, touching experience... I think it also raises the issue of orphanages. That is, um, how can I say this? It’s complex and a real problem in Russia; I mean, it’s a standalone topic in society. Because it concerns many, many children living in harsh conditions with a lot of violence, you can see the photo with the young girls who look like boys. They live in ways where they need to protect themselves immediately and defend themselves. They have to be tougher than those who are stronger than you.

And yes, they were extremely touching children at the same time. Looking at these photos, I can’t help but wonder what they might have become now that they’re adults... Girls

During this first trip to Russia in 2006, I was fortunate to spend almost a week with a family in a small village in the Republic of Udmurtia, Gurez’ Pudga, near the small town of Mozhga. Actually, I should explain how I got there; it’s quite a long story! For this first trip to Russia, I wanted to do it by bus. I left from Berlin because I knew there were direct buses connecting Berlin and Moscow. It was a very long, tiring journey, 56 hours in my memory... but it was essential to me not to make this journey by plane. I wanted to arrive in this distant Russia gradually. Deep down, it’s a country and a journey that scared me, and I believe that taking all this time to arrive allowed me to tame the fear progressively, familiarise myself, live the transition, and get used to it.

And on this bus, I sat next to Marina, a Russian student returning to spend the summer with her family in her village. Marina was extremely gentle and kind, and incredibly, she spoke German. She had infinite patience to explain many things to me, from the transit insurance at the Belarusian border to the functioning of the toilets in the bus stations, to how to eat the dried fish that could be bought during breaks on the road.

At the end of the trip, she gave me her phone number and encouraged me to come and see her in her village. It was about fifteen hours from Moscow, or maybe more; I don’t remember too well... it didn’t seem at all realistic to go there; I already had a lot planned...

And then we arrived at the village. I remember it like a dream. For me, it was the feeling of coming somewhat into this picture-perfect image of the Russian village: the wooden houses with finely carved windows, the dirt paths, gardens full of flowers, rowan trees with their little orange berries, and geese passing by the houses. I discovered these atmospheres in the Soviet-era films that I enjoyed watching. I couldn’t believe I was in this setting. Marina’s house was truly beautiful. Her father had built it entirely with his own hands. There was a part of the house for living. The interior was hot, full of wallpaper, and patterned rugs, downstairs there was a small kitchen where everyone squeezed in to eat, and the stove next to which the grandmother slept, and then the banya, the traditional steam bath, and then on the other side of the yard, dry toilets, workshops, and the whole farm part with animals. At the time, they had a cow, goats, geese, hens, and a beautiful garden where everyone worked a lot. In general, it was a family where everyone worked a lot; rural life probably does that. But it impressed me a lot. When the cat dozed off near the stove, Marina’s father would say: “Come on, you’re going to work too; go hunt some mice!

Familly house

First meeting with Marina’s familly

I have a lot to tell about the moments I spent with this family, as I returned there quite often afterwards... For a few years, I went to Russia every summer and always spent a few days with them. It was beautiful to see them again; I felt at home. It’s as if all of a sudden, I had a lot of brothers and sisters in this family. They were extremely welcoming and made room for me in their family from the first time.

In fact, there was a form of curiosity on their part because I was French. They had never met, to my knowledge, a French person. Significantly few foreigners had ever come to this village. There had been, I believe, Protestant pastors who had arrived a few years earlier. So I think I was a bit of a curiosity for their loved ones, an event. I remember that they would sometimes invite cousins and uncles. And so, it was always very joyful, very festive.

My memories of these days are very much centred around preparing things together and cooking. They took a lot of pleasure in teaching me how to do things. So I learned to make pelmeni, pirozhki, or a Udmurt speciality: perepechi.

So we would all get in the kitchen and prepare food for hours. Or we would prepare canned tomatoes. When I got there, the girls of the house were always in indoor clothes, like nightgowns. In Russian, it’s called “Khalat”. When I got there, they would give me one so that I could feel at home too.

Mitia (Marina’s father) and Maxime (Marina’ brother) cutting their own pig

I also remember that we would sit on this bench in front of the house, eating sunflower seeds for hours while discussing this and that. There was a lot of curiosity about me, my life in France, my hobbies, and my travels. We talked a lot, and during my first trip, I spoke tiny Russian. But I tried to manage in everyday interactions, and I learned a lot because, in fact, in this family, they talked to me a lot, and so I learned to speak, little by little, in Russian.

I would even say that I learned a bit like a child who is spoken to before they can talk, but we address them, we tell them things, and that was in many moments in the kitchen, drinking tea on the bench, outside, taking a walk in the village. It was very calm and restful. We didn’t leave the village; we simply lived. So, quietly at the pace of the days, at the garden’s rhythm. In any case, these are very beautiful memories. I had the impression that I had found in “them” “my” place, reassuring, where I could return all my life.

It was also necessary to take care of the animals, work in the garden, repaint the windows, pluck the chickens, and milk the goats or the cow, they loved to have me participate in all the housework, and I discovered all this with great pleasure, at the same time as the Russian language.

You can see a portrait of Lenin in this photo. Actually, I don’t know what to call it, but it was a place where people could gather in the village to organize parties. And there was a portrait of Lenin which was placed there as a wink both historically and humoristically.

I believe there was, in this village, an assumed legacy of the Soviet era. That’s what I understand. But it would be interesting to talk about it, to discuss it with them again. Moreover, I had recorded songs in the Udmurt language at this place; we stumbled upon a party while walking. As I haven’t explained yet, in this region of Russia, people live before Russian domination, which has its own language and culture. Marina’s family is an Udmurt family, and they were bilingual, even if interactions, at least in my presence, were mainly in Russian, except with the grandmother.

Once, I came during the winter for New Year’s, and it was indeed very, very beautiful. It was magnificent, there was a lot of snow, maybe between -25 and -30, and it was an excellent experience for me to live this village life in winter. I remember that travelling on the roads, well, it was particularly impressive. Every time I came, once a week, they heat- ed the banya, the traditional steam bath. It was a whole ritual. The birch branches are used to hit oneself to stimulate blood circulation. The hot tea, when coming out to rehydrate after sweating. I liked this ritual. I remember once that Marina’s brother, Maxim, put vodka in my tea to play a joke on me.

Marina’s father, to my knowledge, had lived and worked in this village for a large part of his life. It seems to me that he had never been to Moscow. In fact, I think he rarely left his village, except for occasional trips to the capital of the Republic, Izhevsk, for administrative matters, for example. And yet he had a great curiosity about the world; he asked me a lot of questions. In the end, he wondered what the value of travel was and asked me: “What does it bring to know places that are not one’s home, the place one has shaped and in which one lives?”

And then, I talked to him about my thirst to discover the world and make friends worldwide. But then he asked me: “Benedicte, what is a friend for you? Can you have a friend who lives in another country?”

We had these rather philosophical discussions in my limited Russian. But these moments made me think deeply, wondering what the purpose of travel was.

And why not stay in one’s garden when it is so beautiful? What is the interest in making friends at the other end of the world? What do I find in these moments, in this feeling of elsewhere? What am I looking for?

He also talked to me about more serious topics related to politics (the war in South Ossetia, for example, which had broken out while I was with them), about the also difficult and violent life of these Russian villages, linked in particular to alcohol and the harshness of the economic situation. I was well aware that it was not necessary to stop at the idyllic image. These moments of discussion were very important to me.

I travelled to the Republic of Altai for two weeks in August 2008, I was again travelling all summer in Russia to discover new regions, and I had heard about a project from the Antoine de Saint Exupery Foundation which aimed to retranslate The Little Prince into a set of rare languages, including the Altai language. There had already been translations during the Soviet era, but they were poor and biased by ideological constraints that did not allow accurate translation. This new translation was in collaboration with the Union of Altai Language Writers, which was still a very Soviet, very official institution. We were 4 French-speaking volunteers, accompanied by two writers and a translator, and we were supposed to bring copies of the new translations to all the schools and libraries of the Republic, but all, including those that were not accessible by road, those that were in the mountains on the Mongolian or Chinese border. This trip was a huge opportunity.

There is one of the drivers and one of the translators who accompanied us from village to village. On the left is another French-speaking volunteer who participated in the project.

I should describe what it was like for me to arrive in Altai... I knew it was a beautiful region, I had read things... and then there are already several days of travel by train from Moscow, we realize that we are gradually moving away from “European” Russia, but in the cities we cross, it’s not so noticeable. Novosibirsk, Biisk.

I take a bus to Gorno-Altaysk. I got there, and I discovered all these very Asian faces; people looked just like what I represent as being Mongols, Chinese, or Central Asian populations. And then they speak this “Altai” language, which was a language of the Turkish family... I hear it in my ear; it’s like a first dissonance in my representations. And I also understand that they are Buddhists. And then they live in beautiful mountains that at times could resemble the Alps, and at other times resembled Mongolia.

And at the same time, you could see that they were very marked by something from Russia, especially in schools. It was the Soviet mentality. And so I was saying to myself, what is this unlikely mix?

In fact, to put it quickly, Chinese people who speak Turkish, who are Buddhists and who are at the same time of “Russian” culture... rather Russian in the sense of Soviet in fact, which is not Russian but... I think this is a moment when I understood how much what is called “Russia” is a complex historical and political construction.

We visited, I believe, almost all the schools of this Republic, in various villages, which were very far from the cities. For me, it was so exceptional to be so far from everything… I would never have been able to visit these places if I hadn’t participated in this project. There were, for example, schools that were only accessible by boat.

Every time we arrived somewhere, we were greeted by school principals and library managers. So everything happened very quickly because we could visit two or three schools in a single day, and we travelled a lot. I have trouble remembering all these people we see in the photos.

On the way, we saw glorious landscapes. Mountain rivers, snow-capped peaks, trees covered with prayer ribbons, prehistoric petroglyphs, and immense lakes. I remember it as if it were a dream. And at the same time, I couldn’t believe it; I was saying to myself, ‘So, this is Russia?’ It didn’t look at all like what I had been able to imagine. I also remember that we saw horse farms everywhere.

And it was very impressive. We even saw wild horses. And that doesn’t exist in France. And what I remember here is that it was in August, and in fact, in Siberia, August is the time when it moves from summer to winter, almost without any transition. We entered a valley where the snow was falling so densely that we had a snowball fight!

Buddhism strongly influences the culture of these people. I remember there was a difference between what they called white Buddhism and yellow Buddhism. This form of white Buddhism leaves a lot of room for nature spirits and shamans, unlike yellow Buddhism found elsewhere in Asia. We were accompanied by these two men, a writer and a poet from the Union of Altai Language Writers, and they explained a lot about Altai culture and these moun- tains. Every time we arrived in a new valley or near a stream, they asked nature for permission to let us in, look, walk, and make room for us.

I think I really realized then that “Russian” culture was not at all monolithic. The cultures in Russia are very plural. There are many, many different cultures depending on the regions, the peoples, the languages, and the religions.

There, we had stopped in a kind of holiday village to spend the night, a “turbasa” as they say in Russian, built in the style of traditional nomadic houses, in wood.

Every time we stopped, it was a new experience, an extremely warm welcome, children who wanted to touch us, school parties, games, and traditional food. They gave us mare’s milk to drink and the offal to eat from sheep freshly killed for the occasion. They recited poems to us in the Altai language; they gave us drawings of The Little Prince illustrated by the children.

Running home Time to say goodbye

End of August beginning of September 2008

At the end of the same summer, in 2008, after having travelled in Altai, I took new trains, stopped at new stations, and went back to the west, but this time to go further south, towards the Caucasus. I wanted to go to the Krasnodar region because I had planned to visit the uncle and aunt of a friend, Samira, with whom I had become friends in France that same year, as well as her two children, Alex and David. Samira was an Armenian refugee from Baku in Azerbaijan. She had left Baku in the context of the war and interethnic violence that had broken out at the time of the collapse of the USSR in the wake of the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Her parents had been victims of this war. She had then found refuge in Russia, at her uncle Guéna’s, her aunt Anzhelik’s, and her cousins’, and had lived there from the 90s until the early 2000s. Subsequently, fleeing a violent husband, she settled in Germany, then France. We had met through an association where I was helping refugees in their procedures thanks to my basic knowledge of the Russian language.

I remember an extremely warm atmosphere. I recall that, as usual, they wanted to feed me a lot. People always want to provide you in Russia. We also laughed a lot.

It was a very oriental atmosphere of sweet tea and pastries with nuts and jam. Indeed, the south of Russia, close to the Caucasus, has something unique - you feel that it’s an entirely different Russia. Already, the houses are not at all made of wood. They were made of bricks and never finished there, like in Turkey or the Maghreb. Now that I know other countries like Iran, these are places where I perceive that these cultures are closer to these countries - Georgia, Armenia, and Iran - than to Russian culture.

This is some sort of dry pancakes made out of fruit jus, super tasty!

Cooking and cooking

In addition, as I said, it was a family of Azerbaijani Armenian culture. So their cuisine and lifestyle were influenced by that. I remember fire-roasted eggplants that were a delight. When I eat them even today, it immediately transports me back there.

They had made me eat otter and warned me that it was a fine meat, but since I did not understand the word, I had not been able to prepare for the idea. And when I looked it up much later in the dictionary and realized it was an otter, I was shocked.

“They

Their eldest son worked at the market. I remember that he had a stand for music and movies. We spent time at the market because they wanted me to bring a lot of things back for their refugee family in France. I loved the atmosphere of this market. This southern region was the atmosphere of oriental bazaars full of dried fruits and aromatic herbs.

In general, I have always enjoyed spending time in Russian markets. It must be said that there are often elderly who, for economic reasons, sell jars of vegetables from their gardens, hand-knitted socks, and old belongings to have few more incomes in addition to their meagre retirement. I liked taking the time to chat with these elderly, and then I would often buy small things from them to bring it back to France as a gift or as memories: a few cups, a teapot, a scarf, socks, old illustrated postcards, and children’s books. All these objects that bear the traces of past generations represent for me the atmosphere of Russia; they often speak of the lost world of the USSR, but through small things that have been passed down, that have been preserved, and that still have value since they are sold at the market.

These atmospheres help me understand Russia, and it is my turn to pass on this mosaic of moments, sensations, these markets, these houses where I was welcomed, these villages, these schoolyards, these faces... All of this can attempt to answer sensitively and openly the questions I have asked myself, and that the current political context would tend to close off or confine: ‘What is Russia, and who are the Russians?

Copyright © 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Designed and translated by Elizaveta Manoshkina

Photographs and stories by Benedicte Braconnay manolisok.art

Printing by Cloc Book Print

Assembled by Elizaveta Manoshkina in RCA