In 1959 a young monk named Tsung Tsai escapes the Red Army troops that destroy his monastery, and flees alone three thousand miles across a China swept by chaos and famine. Knowing his fellow monks are dead, himself starving and hunted, he is sustained by his mission: to carry on the teachings of his Buddhist meditation master, who was too old to leave with his disciple.
Nearly forty years later Tsung Tsai — now an old master himself — persuades his American neighbour, maverick poet George Crane, to travel with him back to his birthplace in the at the edge of the Gobi Desert - now in the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia in China.
They are unlikely companions. Crane seeks freedom, adventure, sensation. Tsung Tsai is determined to find his master's grave and plant the seeds of a spiritual renewal in China. As their search culminates in a torturous climb to a remote mountain cave, it becomes clear that this seemingly quixotic quest may cost both men's lives.
The review below is by Joan Halifax Roshi, for which grateful acknowedgement is given.
"This is one very extraordinary book! First, I must say I do admire its writer, poet George Crane. He draws us into the world of the Buddhist monk Tsung Tsai with consummate skill. In the first page of this dramatic true story, the reader feels the rhythm, flesh, and tones of Tsung Tsai's remote monastery of the 1950's as if we and the author Crane were actually there. And we never lose this feeling of immediacy as the tale unfolds, and the poet-author Crane takes us from Woodstock to Mongolia, from Hong Kong to New York City.
"Who is this monk Tsung Tsai living in Woodstock, New York? His name means Ancestor Wisdom, and we find as this tale unfolds that he is true to his name. We learn that when he was a young monk, Tsung Tsai makes a hair-raising 2000 mile escape out of China from the Red Army that was flooding and destroying China in 1959. This is a China that is swept by famine and chaos. His monastery is destroyed, its monks are killed, China is flattened, and he is a hunted man. He also has been forced to leave his beloved hermit teacher Shiuh Deng in a cave in the far reaches of the mountains.
"Pursued and starved, Tsung Tsai slips through the eye of a small painful needle to freedom. Forty years later, he with Crane return to this remote region on the edge of the Gobi to find the bones of his beloved master and to renew the spirit of Buddhism in China. They return to a still unfriendly China, and a China whose peoples are living with very little. And we cannot but feel the utter desolation of this minimalist world.
"The encounter with Crane in Woodstock, New York, has many poignant and comic aspects. Crane is definitely not a believer. Yet the old monk quietly takes him into this world with his strange and penetrating humor and big mind wisdom. Tsung Tsai,
though, is not just an ordinary monk. He is a shaman and trickster as well. I am sure that some readers will compare the relationship between the monk and Crane to Castenada's relationship to Don Juan. However, this "Don Juan", our new friend Tsung Tsai, happens to be the monk down the street. We meet him through George Crane's heart and mind, and we like him. We also know that we can find him in Woodstock, New York. He is humble, really smart, funny, wise, spare, and old. He is also a shaman, scholar, and poet. In his Woodstock hut, he sleeps on a pile of cardboard boxes and keeps the scene around him to the very basics. And whenever he opens his mouth, we and Mr. Crane are all ears.
"Their friendship unfolds through the translation of poetry. Then one day, Tsung Tsai has the chance to return to China. We know little of this journey except that when he returns to the States, he seems to be deeply disturbed by what he encountered in China. True to our hero Tsung Tsai, he has a completely unlikely vision that brings him and Crane back to China to find the bones of his teacher in order to give them a proper burial. How will they manage this, you ask? They are both dirt poor. This is a highly unpublished poet and an unknown monk. Don't worry; our monk has this all worked out. Go to New York City, auction off the book of the story of their mission, get the advance, go to China, do the deed, then write the book about what happens. And so it goes, and are we fortunate! The adventure proceeds from there.
"I do not want to spoil the tale for you. Just to say, this is one trip I would probably not want to do in the flesh. Crane amazes me in how he hung in there. He now is my hero too. I have been in some pretty remote and rough places in the world, and I could taste the cold, smoke and hunger that Crane and Tsung Tsai bring
to us. The scalding , blowing sand of the Gobi Desert scours us out. The dank rooms they stay in oppress us. The insane walk up the mountain to find Tsung Tsai's Master's bones takes our breath away. We do not know if our heroes will survive. And their relationship takes on a whole new dimension, moving from curiosity to love as this tale culminates.
"George Crane was a foreign correspondent and authored four books of poems in addition to the translations he has done with his monk friend. Tsung Tsai is a meditation teacher, doctor of classical Chinese medicine, martial arts adept, poet, and calligrapher. We hope that he has a long life ahead of him. In the end, I can say that this is a beautifully written book and an extraordinary story that inspires and teaches. I bow in gratitude to these two men whose connection has already benefited many."
So, with thanks to both George Crane - and also Joan Halifax Roshi for the review - I leave Inner Mongolia for another 'Autonomous Region' of China - Xinjiang - courtesy of "The Road to Miran" by German author and traveller Christa Paula.
Christa Paula, an intrepid young student of Asian art and archaeology, set off in 1989 to explore an area closed to Westerners as well as to most Chinese, and one which is firmly under military rule. Tall and blonde, she travelled for the most part incognito, disguised in a Pathan cap, old grey jacket and big padded trousers. Her goal was Miran, the ancient Buddhist site of second-century wall paintings. In the company of Chang, a maverick taxi driver, Christa Paula travelled through an area dotted with nuclear testing sites, forced labour camps and mines in which prisoners dig and process asbestos without protective clothing. She discovered that villages which exist on maps are now radiation-contaminated ghost towns, and she witnessed everywhere the seeds of discontent and political unrest.
So from Xinjiang I opt to fly rather than endure another lengthy train journey. I leave from Hohhot Baita International Airport (the largest airport in Inner Mongolia) taking the 'China Southern Airlines' direct flight CZ6928, leaving at 21.05 and arriving just 3 hours 20 minutes later at 00.25. The flight is a bargain at £219 on eBookers - over £100 cheaper than any other quoted flight (although a train would have been about £34 - but taking over 29 hours!). I arrive on time at Ürümqi Diwopu International Airport - a vast, modern and very busy airport 10 miles northwest of downtown Ürümqi - in the capital of the "Forbidden Zone" of Xinjiang.
Sunday, 29 May 2011
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Walking the Gobi: 1,600 Mile-trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair
As mentioned in the previous review of “Dateline Mongolia”, although I learned much about modern urban living in Mongolia I was also fascinated to visit the ‘other’ Mongolia – the unknown wilderness of the Gobi Desert and its native nomadic culture. For this leg of my journey, I chose the book “Walking the Gobi: 1,600 Mile-trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair” by Helen Thayer. The Gobi Desert is a barren stretch of Mongolia that runs north of China, south of Russia and far from everything; not an ideal place to visit, except by book! Fortunately, the daring Thayer, age 63, fights nature and common sense for us, a fascinating account of her 1,600 mile journey with her husband, Bill, 74.
As I am already in Mongolia, my journey to this next leg is minimal – and involves a flight from Ulaanbataar in a cramped single engine plane belonging to Chuluu, a Mongolian pilot who dropped off and ferried supplies to the Thayers on their epic trip..
In Thayer’s words: “The crumbling concrete buildings, potholed streets, and crowded markets of Ulaan Baatar dropped away behind us as Chuluu set a southwestern course, which would take us to the far western edge of the desert on the Chinese border” and into "a parched rocky land that showed not a glimmer of welcome”. And so, in this forbidding, yet exciting scenario, I set out in the company of two adventurous pensioners to traverse the Mongolian Gobi – all 1600 miles of it!
The following review is by Bonnie Gayle Hood from the website www.goodreads.com, for which grateful acknowledgement is given.
“This was an amazing book, and contained everything I long for in a non-fiction book: daring-do adventure, a plot so amazing that it would work in a fiction book, and a place I have never been before.
“At times you have to remind yourself that this really happened, as I found it d difficult to believe. The book tells the story of Helen Thayer and her husband, in their 60's and 70's respectively, who, not long after a horrible rear-end collision with a truck, on a bridge in Seattle, that hurt her, from her spine all the way down to her feet, walked 1,600 miles across the Gobi desert in 81 days, in Mongolia, in the blistering, lip-cracking, 120+ degree summer heat.
"They did it with only 2 camels, which they named Tom and Jerry, who carried their supplies. They weren't allowed radios, as they were too close to the Chinese border.
“Their walk was fraught with danger: they nearly died of dehydration, they were almost thrown into a Chinese prision, they came across smugglers, they were bit by scorpions, and she had to consume mass quantities of pain pills to make it with her injuries.
“They also encountered great kindness, and at times almost smothering hospitality, from each and every Mongolian they encountered, in addition to coming to love the land around them, and making friends with Tom and Jerry.
“I adored how their focus was on honoring the people, customs, animals, and land of Mongolia. The reader can't help but come away with, not only a better understanding, but also a greater appreciation for the people who make the Gobi desert their home. She is a descriptive writer, and at times, all they see for days on end is flat nothingness, but it never gets boring or monotonous. She has a way of zeroing in on the interesting moments.
“I also really enjoyed the book's interesting factoids about the Gobi desert. I found myself raising my eyebrows in wonder at least every other page, especially toward the beginning of the book. For example, did you know that only 3% of the Gobi is covered with sand? Or that, during the winter, the Gobi is covered with snow, and averages -40 degrees?
“The only 2 things I wished for were captions about the black and white photographs at the beginning of each chapter, so that the reader would know what they were looking at, and in fact, it would have been nice to have a section of color photos in the center of the book. I also wished for an inventory list of what they took on their journey.
“For those who have a hike across a desert on their life's to-do list, and for those who are arm chair adventurers (I'm in the 2nd category) this book is a riveting non-fiction read.”
And so, with thanks to Bonnie Gayle Hood for the review, I reluctantly leave this country - which lived up to all of my expectations – and make the first of several journeys to Mongolia’s massive neighbour China. As with the six other largest countries in the world (Russia, India, Australia, Brazil, the United States and Canada) I am splitting this territory up into constituent parts to get a full feel of the place. In this case I am visiting each of China’s “Autonomous Regions” as well as the central region (including Beijing) and certain contentious states such as Hong Kong and Shanghai.
My first foray into China is – appropriately enough given that I have just left Mongolia – the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia. This journey is courtesy of “Bones of the Master: A Journey to Secret Mongolia“ by US author George Crane. This tells the story of a Buddhist monk, Tsung Tsai, who in 1959 fled from the Red Army who had destroyed his monastery and walked 3000 miles across China, determined to carry on the teachings of his master. Forty years later, Tsung Tsai travels back to his birthplace with the author, to find his master's grave in the remote Crow Pull Mountain area in Inner Mongolia and to build a shrine.
Having returned from the Gobi wasteland to Ulaanbaatar, I make my way to Ulaanbaatar’s rather Georgian-looking train station and catch the 4604 train from Ulaanbaatar to Hohhot, the capital of inner Mongolia. One of the most popular Trans-Siberian / Trans-Mongolian trains for both Russians and foreigners, the train is operated by Russian and Chinese staff. When the train passes from Mongolia into China, the wheels of the train are changed to a smaller gauge, which takes a few hours, and I am glad I paid the extra $40 ($215 in total) for first class with a shower facility. It also has a nice car-restaurant.
Thus I leave from Ulaanbaatar at 10.00pm on Monday and arrive at Hohhot on Tuesday at 10.05am feeling surprisingly refreshed...
As I am already in Mongolia, my journey to this next leg is minimal – and involves a flight from Ulaanbataar in a cramped single engine plane belonging to Chuluu, a Mongolian pilot who dropped off and ferried supplies to the Thayers on their epic trip..
In Thayer’s words: “The crumbling concrete buildings, potholed streets, and crowded markets of Ulaan Baatar dropped away behind us as Chuluu set a southwestern course, which would take us to the far western edge of the desert on the Chinese border” and into "a parched rocky land that showed not a glimmer of welcome”. And so, in this forbidding, yet exciting scenario, I set out in the company of two adventurous pensioners to traverse the Mongolian Gobi – all 1600 miles of it!
The following review is by Bonnie Gayle Hood from the website www.goodreads.com, for which grateful acknowledgement is given.
“This was an amazing book, and contained everything I long for in a non-fiction book: daring-do adventure, a plot so amazing that it would work in a fiction book, and a place I have never been before.
“At times you have to remind yourself that this really happened, as I found it d difficult to believe. The book tells the story of Helen Thayer and her husband, in their 60's and 70's respectively, who, not long after a horrible rear-end collision with a truck, on a bridge in Seattle, that hurt her, from her spine all the way down to her feet, walked 1,600 miles across the Gobi desert in 81 days, in Mongolia, in the blistering, lip-cracking, 120+ degree summer heat.
"They did it with only 2 camels, which they named Tom and Jerry, who carried their supplies. They weren't allowed radios, as they were too close to the Chinese border.
“Their walk was fraught with danger: they nearly died of dehydration, they were almost thrown into a Chinese prision, they came across smugglers, they were bit by scorpions, and she had to consume mass quantities of pain pills to make it with her injuries.
“They also encountered great kindness, and at times almost smothering hospitality, from each and every Mongolian they encountered, in addition to coming to love the land around them, and making friends with Tom and Jerry.
“I adored how their focus was on honoring the people, customs, animals, and land of Mongolia. The reader can't help but come away with, not only a better understanding, but also a greater appreciation for the people who make the Gobi desert their home. She is a descriptive writer, and at times, all they see for days on end is flat nothingness, but it never gets boring or monotonous. She has a way of zeroing in on the interesting moments.
“I also really enjoyed the book's interesting factoids about the Gobi desert. I found myself raising my eyebrows in wonder at least every other page, especially toward the beginning of the book. For example, did you know that only 3% of the Gobi is covered with sand? Or that, during the winter, the Gobi is covered with snow, and averages -40 degrees?
“The only 2 things I wished for were captions about the black and white photographs at the beginning of each chapter, so that the reader would know what they were looking at, and in fact, it would have been nice to have a section of color photos in the center of the book. I also wished for an inventory list of what they took on their journey.
“For those who have a hike across a desert on their life's to-do list, and for those who are arm chair adventurers (I'm in the 2nd category) this book is a riveting non-fiction read.”
And so, with thanks to Bonnie Gayle Hood for the review, I reluctantly leave this country - which lived up to all of my expectations – and make the first of several journeys to Mongolia’s massive neighbour China. As with the six other largest countries in the world (Russia, India, Australia, Brazil, the United States and Canada) I am splitting this territory up into constituent parts to get a full feel of the place. In this case I am visiting each of China’s “Autonomous Regions” as well as the central region (including Beijing) and certain contentious states such as Hong Kong and Shanghai.
My first foray into China is – appropriately enough given that I have just left Mongolia – the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia. This journey is courtesy of “Bones of the Master: A Journey to Secret Mongolia“ by US author George Crane. This tells the story of a Buddhist monk, Tsung Tsai, who in 1959 fled from the Red Army who had destroyed his monastery and walked 3000 miles across China, determined to carry on the teachings of his master. Forty years later, Tsung Tsai travels back to his birthplace with the author, to find his master's grave in the remote Crow Pull Mountain area in Inner Mongolia and to build a shrine.
Having returned from the Gobi wasteland to Ulaanbaatar, I make my way to Ulaanbaatar’s rather Georgian-looking train station and catch the 4604 train from Ulaanbaatar to Hohhot, the capital of inner Mongolia. One of the most popular Trans-Siberian / Trans-Mongolian trains for both Russians and foreigners, the train is operated by Russian and Chinese staff. When the train passes from Mongolia into China, the wheels of the train are changed to a smaller gauge, which takes a few hours, and I am glad I paid the extra $40 ($215 in total) for first class with a shower facility. It also has a nice car-restaurant.
Thus I leave from Ulaanbaatar at 10.00pm on Monday and arrive at Hohhot on Tuesday at 10.05am feeling surprisingly refreshed...
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Dateline Mongolia: Urban Travels in Nomad’s Land
As mentioned in my last entry, the next leg of my journey is Mongolia (also commonly referred to as Outer Mongolia; Inner Mongolia now being a province within China). This is one country that I have always been fascinated with from afar, and I was really looking forward to my trip there. One aspect of this country which has always intrigued me is its conflicting reputation as both an unknown wilderness (typified in its vast expanse of Gobi Desert and native nomadic culture) and a former stronghold of the Soviet Union, as seen in the concrete edifices of its capital city, Ulaanbataar. As such, and because of my fascination with this country, I allocated two books to Mongolia which hopefully capture, between them, these dual aspects. The first of these "Dateline Mongolia" is located mainly in the capital of Ulaanbaatar (with frequent excursions much further afield in the country), and details three years spent in the country by American immigrant Michael Kohn during his stint as editor of the state newspaper, the Mongol Messenger.
Mongolia was obviously one of Kohn’s favourite stops — as Lonely Planet travel guides’ Mongolia man, he speaks the language and has hung out all over that semi-autonomous Northeast Asian region, from the Gobi desert and the Altai mountains to the capital, Ulaanbaatar. He was also the main author for guides to Tibet and Colombia, and helped out compiling info for three more volumes. But his main job for three years was editor of The Mongol Messenger, Mongolia’s state-owned newspaper. So when he claims, for instance, that the government’s new tax on mining companies is making foreign investors in that country nervous, you’d best believe it.
Kohn’s book details what he saw when he arrived in the late ’90s: a country in transition from the traditional, isolated Mongolia of rugged people living in gers (aka yurts) in a wild and beautiful landscape to a place eager to join the world marketplace, where SUVs and the Internet are more important than yaks and camels. In other words, a place like any other — except that it’s situated in one of the most distinctive regions on the planet, the steppes that bred Genghis Khan.
The book highlights Mongolia's transition from the early days of Genghis Khan, to the later days of Communism, and to the current days of the emergence into the Western Culture. It tells of the author's journeys through the country and its cultural milieu, from child jockeys, to falcon poaching to exiled Buddhist leaders and to wars between lamas and shamans.
This is a vivid, informative, and irresistible journey through one of the world's most isolated and mysterious countries. It is a nation where falcon poachers, cattle rustlers, exiled Buddhist monks, death-defying child jockeys, and political assassins can be found in virtually every town. "Dateline Mongolia" is written with a fast-paced, journalistic style offering a unique perspective on a little-known society - from the politicians and businessmen trying to deal with the challenges being thrown up since the country was released from the clutches of Communism in 1990 to the spiritual turf war being waged between lamas, shamans, Mormon elders, and Christian Missionaries. This is a compelling read and more than satisfied my curiosity about the urban aspects of this mysterious land.
As mentioned above, I was also fascinated to visit the ‘other’ Mongolia – the unknown wilderness of the Gobi Desert and its native nomadic culture. For this leg of my journey, I chose the book “Walking the Gobi: 1,600 Mile-trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair” by Helen Thayer. The Gobi Desert is a barren stretch of Mongolia that runs north of China, south of Russia and far from everything; not an ideal place to visit, except by book! Fortunately, the daring Thayer, age 63, fights nature and common sense for us, a fascinating account of her 1,600 mile journey with her husband, Bill, 74.
As I am already in Mongolia, my journey to this next leg is minimal – and involves a flight from Ulaanbataar in a cramped single engine plane belonging to Chuluu, a Mongolian pilot who dropped off and ferried supplies to the Thayers on their epic trip..
In Thayer’s words: “The crumbling concrete buildings, potholed streets, and crowded markets of Ulaan Baatar dropped away behind us as Chuluu set a southwestern course, which would take us to the far western edge of the desert on the Chinese border” and into "a parched rocky land that showed not a glimmer of welcome”. And so, in this forbidding, yet exciting scenario, I set out in the company of two adventurous pensioners to traverse the Mongolian Gobi – all 1600 miles of it!
Mongolia was obviously one of Kohn’s favourite stops — as Lonely Planet travel guides’ Mongolia man, he speaks the language and has hung out all over that semi-autonomous Northeast Asian region, from the Gobi desert and the Altai mountains to the capital, Ulaanbaatar. He was also the main author for guides to Tibet and Colombia, and helped out compiling info for three more volumes. But his main job for three years was editor of The Mongol Messenger, Mongolia’s state-owned newspaper. So when he claims, for instance, that the government’s new tax on mining companies is making foreign investors in that country nervous, you’d best believe it.
Kohn’s book details what he saw when he arrived in the late ’90s: a country in transition from the traditional, isolated Mongolia of rugged people living in gers (aka yurts) in a wild and beautiful landscape to a place eager to join the world marketplace, where SUVs and the Internet are more important than yaks and camels. In other words, a place like any other — except that it’s situated in one of the most distinctive regions on the planet, the steppes that bred Genghis Khan.
The book highlights Mongolia's transition from the early days of Genghis Khan, to the later days of Communism, and to the current days of the emergence into the Western Culture. It tells of the author's journeys through the country and its cultural milieu, from child jockeys, to falcon poaching to exiled Buddhist leaders and to wars between lamas and shamans.
This is a vivid, informative, and irresistible journey through one of the world's most isolated and mysterious countries. It is a nation where falcon poachers, cattle rustlers, exiled Buddhist monks, death-defying child jockeys, and political assassins can be found in virtually every town. "Dateline Mongolia" is written with a fast-paced, journalistic style offering a unique perspective on a little-known society - from the politicians and businessmen trying to deal with the challenges being thrown up since the country was released from the clutches of Communism in 1990 to the spiritual turf war being waged between lamas, shamans, Mormon elders, and Christian Missionaries. This is a compelling read and more than satisfied my curiosity about the urban aspects of this mysterious land.
As mentioned above, I was also fascinated to visit the ‘other’ Mongolia – the unknown wilderness of the Gobi Desert and its native nomadic culture. For this leg of my journey, I chose the book “Walking the Gobi: 1,600 Mile-trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair” by Helen Thayer. The Gobi Desert is a barren stretch of Mongolia that runs north of China, south of Russia and far from everything; not an ideal place to visit, except by book! Fortunately, the daring Thayer, age 63, fights nature and common sense for us, a fascinating account of her 1,600 mile journey with her husband, Bill, 74.
As I am already in Mongolia, my journey to this next leg is minimal – and involves a flight from Ulaanbataar in a cramped single engine plane belonging to Chuluu, a Mongolian pilot who dropped off and ferried supplies to the Thayers on their epic trip..
In Thayer’s words: “The crumbling concrete buildings, potholed streets, and crowded markets of Ulaan Baatar dropped away behind us as Chuluu set a southwestern course, which would take us to the far western edge of the desert on the Chinese border” and into "a parched rocky land that showed not a glimmer of welcome”. And so, in this forbidding, yet exciting scenario, I set out in the company of two adventurous pensioners to traverse the Mongolian Gobi – all 1600 miles of it!
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
The Museum at the End of the World: Encounters in the Russian Far East
"The Museum at the End of the World: Encounters in the Russian Far East" is a difficult book to categorise. It is not ethnography, yet the authors are self-identified ethnographers and the descriptions and prose are clearly in an ethnographic style. It is not a history of museums and museum expeditions in far-eastern Russia, but it includes some wonderful historical anecdotes on the American Museum of Natural History’s (AMNH) Jesup Expedition, conducted at the turn of the twentieth century. It is not a survey of museums in the Russian Far East, but it does provide valuable descriptions of regional museums located in Providenia, Anadyr, Magadan, Khabarovsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Esso, and Palana. It is an academic anthropological travel book, and this contradiction between the scholarly and popular genres produces both the strengths and weaknesses of the work.
Alexia Bloch was a junior anthropologist, having then just finished her dissertation based on extensive fieldwork in central Siberia. She was working at the AMNH as a postdoctoral fellow when the trip was made in 1998. Laurel Kendall is a senior anthropologist, curator of the Asian section in the AMNH anthropology department, with decades of experience in Korea and some work in China and Vietnam, as well. The "Museum at the End of the World" is titled ironically, and the authors do a good job at highlighting the cosmopolitan histories and present realities of even the small towns in the Russian Far East—nearly every town they visit has a foreign anthropologist in residence, and there are burgeoning relationships with Alaska and other parts of the US, Canada, China, Japan, and Korea, especially in trade. On the other hand, the authors’ own troubles securing air tickets and making flights highlight the drastic contraction in post-Soviet transport infrastructure and the lessened mobility of local Siberians with the reduction of subsidies from the centre. Bloch and Kendall visit regional museums (roughly in the order listed above), bringing CD-ROMs of the Siberian Jesup collection and copies of a recent catalogue of the Drawing Shadows to Stone photographic exhibit of Jesup photographs (from both sides of the Pacific but emphasising the Siberian collections) for museums and libraries. The book is an account of their journey, punctuated with excerpts from letters or early articles describing the travels and adventures undergone by Vladimir Bogoras, Vladimir Jochelson, and Berthold Laufer as they investigated Chukotka, northern Kamchatka, and the Amur River area, respectively, in 1900-1902. Reading about Laufer’s visa problems due to his being a German Jew and the Tsar’s secret instructions to local authorities to thwart and monitor Jochelson at every step, due to his history as a revolutionary exile, puts Bloch’s and Kendall’s visa worries and air ticket snafus in perspective. While it may not seem so to contemporary travellers in the Russian Far East, political and infrastructural conditions for travel and research have vastly improved over the course of the twentieth century.
Regional museums in the Soviet Union were often a “grass-roots” affair, especially in the smaller towns, and they reflect the idiosyncratic curiosities, as well as the particular intellectual and material resources of the communities that they represent. The authors were treated to thorough (if sometimes tedious) tours of all the exhibits in each museum, and I enjoyed the descriptions, although I would have liked a few more pictures of the displays. One of the main goals of Bloch and Kendall’s trip was to build relationships between the AMNH and local museums, and just as importantly, to connect with local indigenous communities to provide them with information about the AMNH collections and lay the groundwork for possible future projects connecting New York better with the Russian Far East. As they recount, these two objectives cannot always be pursued simultaneously. Many of the museums, especially the larger ones in cities like Magadan, Khabarovsk, and Petropavlovsk are managed by non-native “newcomers” and their priorities do not always put indigenous people and their interests first. However, we also learn that the category “newcomer” does not always reflect an individual’s social ties or political heart. For example, the director of the museum in Palana was a Koryak man, but he was so indifferent to Bloch and Kendall’s visit that he went on vacation the month they were supposed to arrive and left it to his deputy, the “newcomer” Tatiana Volkova, to receive the Americans.
In writing this book, the authors have produced clear, accessible prose without the jargon and few of the preoccupations that define anthropology. It is, however, a scholarly work published by a university press, so all sources are properly referenced and the bibliography covers all the important sources on the history of the Jesup expedition and the anthropology of the region. Peculiar Russian/Soviet habits and institutions are explained, and the authors are acutely aware of the social and political ramifications of their presence in, and representations of, the Russian Far East. It is a solid work and the authors are to be commended for that. The authors are especially to be commended for the fact that - what could have been a dry and overly anthropological work - is actually a highly engaging account that gives the reader a real sense of the Russian Far East; albeit from the perspective of an interested outsider.
And so, after just over 5 months of literary travel in this massive country; I take my leave of Russia. The next leg of my journey is Mongolia (also commonly referred to as Outer Mongolia; Inner Mongolia now being a province within China). This is one country that I have always been fascinated with from afar, and I am really looking forward to my trip there. One aspect of this country which has always intrigued me is its conflicting reputation as both an unknown wilderness (typified in its vast expanse of Gobi Desert and native nomadic culture) and a former stronghold of the Soviet Union, as seen in the concrete edifices of its capital city, Ulaanbataar. As such, and because of my fascination with this country, I am allocating two books to Mongolia which hopefully capture, between them, these dual aspects. The first of these "Dateline Mongolia" is located mainly in the capital of Ulaanbaatar (with frequent excursions much further afield in the country), and details three years spent in the country by American immigrant Michael Kohn during his stint as editor of the state newspaper, the Mongol Messenger.
Given the randomness of travel in this region of the world, I bite the bullet financially, and decide to go for the relative security of a scheduled flight from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky airport in the Far Eastern District to Ulaanbataar airport. This is a gruelling 21 hour 50 minute flight with Rossiya Airlines and then Aeroflot (stopping off briefly at Moscow), and costs an even more gruelling £1,518.70 for the one-way flight. However I arrive on time (at 6.10 in the morning) and reasonably refreshed, and ready to explore Mongolia...
Alexia Bloch was a junior anthropologist, having then just finished her dissertation based on extensive fieldwork in central Siberia. She was working at the AMNH as a postdoctoral fellow when the trip was made in 1998. Laurel Kendall is a senior anthropologist, curator of the Asian section in the AMNH anthropology department, with decades of experience in Korea and some work in China and Vietnam, as well. The "Museum at the End of the World" is titled ironically, and the authors do a good job at highlighting the cosmopolitan histories and present realities of even the small towns in the Russian Far East—nearly every town they visit has a foreign anthropologist in residence, and there are burgeoning relationships with Alaska and other parts of the US, Canada, China, Japan, and Korea, especially in trade. On the other hand, the authors’ own troubles securing air tickets and making flights highlight the drastic contraction in post-Soviet transport infrastructure and the lessened mobility of local Siberians with the reduction of subsidies from the centre. Bloch and Kendall visit regional museums (roughly in the order listed above), bringing CD-ROMs of the Siberian Jesup collection and copies of a recent catalogue of the Drawing Shadows to Stone photographic exhibit of Jesup photographs (from both sides of the Pacific but emphasising the Siberian collections) for museums and libraries. The book is an account of their journey, punctuated with excerpts from letters or early articles describing the travels and adventures undergone by Vladimir Bogoras, Vladimir Jochelson, and Berthold Laufer as they investigated Chukotka, northern Kamchatka, and the Amur River area, respectively, in 1900-1902. Reading about Laufer’s visa problems due to his being a German Jew and the Tsar’s secret instructions to local authorities to thwart and monitor Jochelson at every step, due to his history as a revolutionary exile, puts Bloch’s and Kendall’s visa worries and air ticket snafus in perspective. While it may not seem so to contemporary travellers in the Russian Far East, political and infrastructural conditions for travel and research have vastly improved over the course of the twentieth century.
Regional museums in the Soviet Union were often a “grass-roots” affair, especially in the smaller towns, and they reflect the idiosyncratic curiosities, as well as the particular intellectual and material resources of the communities that they represent. The authors were treated to thorough (if sometimes tedious) tours of all the exhibits in each museum, and I enjoyed the descriptions, although I would have liked a few more pictures of the displays. One of the main goals of Bloch and Kendall’s trip was to build relationships between the AMNH and local museums, and just as importantly, to connect with local indigenous communities to provide them with information about the AMNH collections and lay the groundwork for possible future projects connecting New York better with the Russian Far East. As they recount, these two objectives cannot always be pursued simultaneously. Many of the museums, especially the larger ones in cities like Magadan, Khabarovsk, and Petropavlovsk are managed by non-native “newcomers” and their priorities do not always put indigenous people and their interests first. However, we also learn that the category “newcomer” does not always reflect an individual’s social ties or political heart. For example, the director of the museum in Palana was a Koryak man, but he was so indifferent to Bloch and Kendall’s visit that he went on vacation the month they were supposed to arrive and left it to his deputy, the “newcomer” Tatiana Volkova, to receive the Americans.
In writing this book, the authors have produced clear, accessible prose without the jargon and few of the preoccupations that define anthropology. It is, however, a scholarly work published by a university press, so all sources are properly referenced and the bibliography covers all the important sources on the history of the Jesup expedition and the anthropology of the region. Peculiar Russian/Soviet habits and institutions are explained, and the authors are acutely aware of the social and political ramifications of their presence in, and representations of, the Russian Far East. It is a solid work and the authors are to be commended for that. The authors are especially to be commended for the fact that - what could have been a dry and overly anthropological work - is actually a highly engaging account that gives the reader a real sense of the Russian Far East; albeit from the perspective of an interested outsider.
And so, after just over 5 months of literary travel in this massive country; I take my leave of Russia. The next leg of my journey is Mongolia (also commonly referred to as Outer Mongolia; Inner Mongolia now being a province within China). This is one country that I have always been fascinated with from afar, and I am really looking forward to my trip there. One aspect of this country which has always intrigued me is its conflicting reputation as both an unknown wilderness (typified in its vast expanse of Gobi Desert and native nomadic culture) and a former stronghold of the Soviet Union, as seen in the concrete edifices of its capital city, Ulaanbataar. As such, and because of my fascination with this country, I am allocating two books to Mongolia which hopefully capture, between them, these dual aspects. The first of these "Dateline Mongolia" is located mainly in the capital of Ulaanbaatar (with frequent excursions much further afield in the country), and details three years spent in the country by American immigrant Michael Kohn during his stint as editor of the state newspaper, the Mongol Messenger.
Given the randomness of travel in this region of the world, I bite the bullet financially, and decide to go for the relative security of a scheduled flight from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky airport in the Far Eastern District to Ulaanbataar airport. This is a gruelling 21 hour 50 minute flight with Rossiya Airlines and then Aeroflot (stopping off briefly at Moscow), and costs an even more gruelling £1,518.70 for the one-way flight. However I arrive on time (at 6.10 in the morning) and reasonably refreshed, and ready to explore Mongolia...
Once Upon a Time in Siberia: A Journey Across Russia's Wild East (Russian Siberian Federal District)
In all his travel writing, Colin Thubron combines acute observation with a deep historical awareness. These characteristics are certainly in evidence for "In Siberia" his account of a trip from the western Urals through to theb Fareast of this massive country. It has to be said, however, that the tone of the book is sombre - hardly surprising in view of the terrible events that took place over many centuries in Siberia. Thubron describes it as Russia's Elsewhere. "Long before Communism located the future in an urban paradise, Siberia was a rural waste into which were cast the bacilli infecting the state body: the criminal, the sectarian, the politically dissident." One is reminded of how the British thought of Australia in the nineteenth century. And yet, paradoxically, Siberia was also seen as a haven of primitive innocence, almost an Arcadia.
Again and again in his journey, Thubron encounters regret at loss of faith. Many of the people he meets (he is evidently fluent in Russian) talk of the failure of Communism almost in religious terms. Some, though not all, have turned back to religion, sometimes in strange forms. Siberia was also the original home of shamanism; shamans were persecuted by the Communists and since its demise there has been an attempt to revive the ancient beliefs and traditions. Thubron attempts to find authentic shamans but there are hardly any left, and even those that still exist appear to have preserved only fragments of what once was.
The search for new forms of faith appears among scientists too, for whom the boundary between science and magic seems to be hazy. (Kirlian photography was a Russian invention.) Near Novosibirsk Thubron visits the grandly named Institute of Clinical and Expermental Medicine. Here he is shown an apparatus for measuring the magnetic signature of patients. This was supposed to treat or at least diagnose epilepsy and cancer. Part of the equipment was not working owing to the failure of the electricity supply but Thubron was persuaded to try a "hypomagnetic chamber" which was functioning and was intended to open up "psycho-physical recesses not normally explored", although there was the usual let-out clause: it all depends on the individual responsiveness. Thubron, it appeared, was not sufficiently sensitive: he felt nothing and failed to detect the dummy machine from the real one.
At the end of his journey, at the Yakutsk Academy of Sciences, Thubron meets Yuri Mochanov, an archaeologist who insists that he has discovered evidence that civilization began in Siberia and is two and a half million years old. Mochanov is puzzled and hurt by the refusal of Western archaeologists to take him seriously. And yet he does seem to have discovered something of interest: evidence of occupation of the Arctic edge at a much more remote period than had been previously known, some 300,000 years ago, but his isolation from mainstream science had fostered unsustainable beliefs in him.
Two of Thubron's Siberian journeys stand out particularly. In one, he takes a steamer north to the Arctic Circle on the River Yenisei, arriving finally at Dudinka, a nightmarish place inhabited by people who have lost all hope and seem to do little but drink and occasionally hunt the remains of the once-plentiful reindeer herds. And yet, when he leaves, they club together to give him a parting gift: a plastic bag full of omul salmon, which he is unable to use.
The final journey takes him to the Pacific, but here too the temperature is glacial. And he goes to visit the remains of the camps where the victims of Stalin's purges were sent. An unimaginable two million people were killed here, in conditions as appalling as those of the Nazi death camps. Thubron spares the reader little in his description of what occurred, though he does not speculate on why this terrible crime should be so comparatively little known in the West. Is it because it was not genocide (Stalin was impartial in his choice of victims), or because Stalin was our ally in the war?
Things are at least better now, Thubron tells his guide as they contemplate the site, though one senses a question in his statement. Yuri does not seem entirely convinced. "Those were religious times, in a way," he says. "People believed things." Again we find this longing for a faith. Thubron leaves us with the hope that such events could never happen again, but it is a hope rather than a certainty.
Few travel books these days lack photographs, but this is an exception. Thubron seems to have travelled pretty rough and it would have been difficult to carry a camera safely, but I suspect that he would not have wanted one in any case. His writing is certainly vivid enough to evoke a sense of place, but what interests him is not the surface of things but what lies underneath and in the past. For this, pictures would be an irrelevance and a distraction. © Anthony Campbell (2004)
From this bleak - yet strangely exotic - wilderness I do not need to travel far, for the next leg of my journey is still within Russia. It is, in fact, my final port of call in Russia: the Far Eastern Federal District. Indeed, such is the amorphous nature of the remote Russian Far East, I am already in this district, as Colin Thurbron's journey across Siberia ended in the port town of Magadan, the administrative center of Magadan Oblast which is located in the Far Eastern District. This is fortunate as - as the following account demonstrates - reliable travel to and from this remote district of Russia is virtually non-existent.
For my final trip within Russia I am travelling to a number of remote locations in the Russian Far East courtesy of the book "The Museum at the End of the World: Encounters in the Russian Far East." A little over a century ago the American Museum of Natural History launched its ambitious Jesup North Pacific Expedition to learn more about the peoples inhabiting the remote easternmost extension of Russia and the northwest coast of North America. In this book anthropologists Alexia Bloch and Laurel Kendall tell the story of their journey through this same part of the world in 1998, retracing the old expedition as they link the expedition legacy of artifacts, photographs, and archival material from the museum in New York to the present-day descendants of its subjects. Thus I set off of this journey from Provideniya, a small settlement situated on Komsomolskaya Bay, in the northeastern part of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.
Again and again in his journey, Thubron encounters regret at loss of faith. Many of the people he meets (he is evidently fluent in Russian) talk of the failure of Communism almost in religious terms. Some, though not all, have turned back to religion, sometimes in strange forms. Siberia was also the original home of shamanism; shamans were persecuted by the Communists and since its demise there has been an attempt to revive the ancient beliefs and traditions. Thubron attempts to find authentic shamans but there are hardly any left, and even those that still exist appear to have preserved only fragments of what once was.
The search for new forms of faith appears among scientists too, for whom the boundary between science and magic seems to be hazy. (Kirlian photography was a Russian invention.) Near Novosibirsk Thubron visits the grandly named Institute of Clinical and Expermental Medicine. Here he is shown an apparatus for measuring the magnetic signature of patients. This was supposed to treat or at least diagnose epilepsy and cancer. Part of the equipment was not working owing to the failure of the electricity supply but Thubron was persuaded to try a "hypomagnetic chamber" which was functioning and was intended to open up "psycho-physical recesses not normally explored", although there was the usual let-out clause: it all depends on the individual responsiveness. Thubron, it appeared, was not sufficiently sensitive: he felt nothing and failed to detect the dummy machine from the real one.
At the end of his journey, at the Yakutsk Academy of Sciences, Thubron meets Yuri Mochanov, an archaeologist who insists that he has discovered evidence that civilization began in Siberia and is two and a half million years old. Mochanov is puzzled and hurt by the refusal of Western archaeologists to take him seriously. And yet he does seem to have discovered something of interest: evidence of occupation of the Arctic edge at a much more remote period than had been previously known, some 300,000 years ago, but his isolation from mainstream science had fostered unsustainable beliefs in him.
Two of Thubron's Siberian journeys stand out particularly. In one, he takes a steamer north to the Arctic Circle on the River Yenisei, arriving finally at Dudinka, a nightmarish place inhabited by people who have lost all hope and seem to do little but drink and occasionally hunt the remains of the once-plentiful reindeer herds. And yet, when he leaves, they club together to give him a parting gift: a plastic bag full of omul salmon, which he is unable to use.
The final journey takes him to the Pacific, but here too the temperature is glacial. And he goes to visit the remains of the camps where the victims of Stalin's purges were sent. An unimaginable two million people were killed here, in conditions as appalling as those of the Nazi death camps. Thubron spares the reader little in his description of what occurred, though he does not speculate on why this terrible crime should be so comparatively little known in the West. Is it because it was not genocide (Stalin was impartial in his choice of victims), or because Stalin was our ally in the war?
Things are at least better now, Thubron tells his guide as they contemplate the site, though one senses a question in his statement. Yuri does not seem entirely convinced. "Those were religious times, in a way," he says. "People believed things." Again we find this longing for a faith. Thubron leaves us with the hope that such events could never happen again, but it is a hope rather than a certainty.
Few travel books these days lack photographs, but this is an exception. Thubron seems to have travelled pretty rough and it would have been difficult to carry a camera safely, but I suspect that he would not have wanted one in any case. His writing is certainly vivid enough to evoke a sense of place, but what interests him is not the surface of things but what lies underneath and in the past. For this, pictures would be an irrelevance and a distraction. © Anthony Campbell (2004)
From this bleak - yet strangely exotic - wilderness I do not need to travel far, for the next leg of my journey is still within Russia. It is, in fact, my final port of call in Russia: the Far Eastern Federal District. Indeed, such is the amorphous nature of the remote Russian Far East, I am already in this district, as Colin Thurbron's journey across Siberia ended in the port town of Magadan, the administrative center of Magadan Oblast which is located in the Far Eastern District. This is fortunate as - as the following account demonstrates - reliable travel to and from this remote district of Russia is virtually non-existent.
For my final trip within Russia I am travelling to a number of remote locations in the Russian Far East courtesy of the book "The Museum at the End of the World: Encounters in the Russian Far East." A little over a century ago the American Museum of Natural History launched its ambitious Jesup North Pacific Expedition to learn more about the peoples inhabiting the remote easternmost extension of Russia and the northwest coast of North America. In this book anthropologists Alexia Bloch and Laurel Kendall tell the story of their journey through this same part of the world in 1998, retracing the old expedition as they link the expedition legacy of artifacts, photographs, and archival material from the museum in New York to the present-day descendants of its subjects. Thus I set off of this journey from Provideniya, a small settlement situated on Komsomolskaya Bay, in the northeastern part of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.
Friday, 18 February 2011
Yekaterinburg: The Thawing of the Cold War Reveals A Deadly Secret. (Russian Urals Federal District)
In April of 1979 the city of Sverdlovsk (now known by its original name of Yekaterinburg) in Russia's Urals Federal District was struck by a frightening anthrax epidemic. Official Soviet documents reported sixty-four human deaths resulting from the ingestion of tainted meat sold on the black market, but U.S. intelligence sources implied a different story, and the lack of documentation left unresolved questions. In her account of an investigation by a team of US scientists in 1992 - "Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak" - Jeanne Guillemin addresses the mystery of what really happened during that tragic event in Sverdlovsk.
Anthrax is a virulent and deadly bacteria whose spores can remain in soil for as long as seventy years, killing grazing animals and putting humans in jeopardy of eating infected meat. Contemporary concern is more centred on anthrax as an airborne biological weapon whose inhaled spores can result in ninety percent mortality for those infected.
As part of a team of doctors and researchers, Jeanne Guillemin travelled to Russia in 1992 to determine the cause and extent of the epidemic. Her affecting narrative transforms a case of epidemiological investigation into a politically charged mystery. What helps here – and I must admit that I was worried that this hefty book might prove to be heavy going – is that Guillemin is an anthropologist, rather than a biologist. Her concern in the investigation is to talk to the survivors of the outbreak, to build up a picture of the movements of the victims and also their daily living in order to identify any patterns. Thus, through her interviews with residents of 1990s Yekaterinburg, we gain a fascinating insight into the lives of ordinary people from before and after “Perestroika”.
She also creates a vivid sense of immediacy and drama with her insider's account of the team's investigative work—the analysis of pathology photos and slides, meetings with political and public health officials, the retrieval of essential medical data—and candidly reveals the subjective side of science as she conducts interviews with afflicted families, visits sites, and interacts with those suspected of clouding the truth.
And indeed, there are many of the ‘old guard’ of the Communist era here who toe the official line of tainted meat as the source of the outbreak – rather than the more controversial possibility of an accidental emission from a nearby military compound (Compound 19). This despite, the seeming contradiction of then President Boris Yeltsin - who was party official of Sverdlovsk during the outbreak - awarding pensions to relatives of the victims in the 1990s.
Guillemin however, is even-handed in her accounts of these former Soviet scientists and their motives. As she says of one: “Burgasov is completely of the old Soviet order, an anachronism, an old bear hiding in the woods. Whether or not he really knew what was going on at Compound 19, he did not break rank…. When he... presented the official Soviet explanation of the outbreak, he probably believed everything he said.” Guillemin displays none of the potential arrogance she may have shown as a Western scientist coming to examine a bacterial disaster in a former Cold War enemy. Indeed, she is equally open in acknowledging both the lack on concrete understanding of anthrax in the West, and also the Western nations’ own frequent flagrant disregard of international law regarding biological weaponry research.
It is this scientific impartiality, coupled with her anthropologist’s focus on the human element of this outbreak, that makes this such a fascinating account. Whilst expounding on the necessary scientific detail of the outbreak – crucially the difference in symptoms between gastrointestinal (i.e. through tainted meat) and inhalatory (i.e. through airborne spores) - Guillemin is always concerned about the human and the social context of the outbreak: both in the 1970s and in the 1990s of the investigation. It is here that we get a sense of what life like for ordinary people (many victims were factory workers or small holders) in this major Russian city – both in the Soviet-era 1970s and the early 1990s of “Perestroika”.
Often the tale is of people living simple but harsh lives, and whose emotional pain at the loss of loves is balanced by a sense of impotence in the face of the government machine. Guillemin and her translator are often reduced to tears during these accounts.
Perhaps one of the most poignant elements of this book is a series of photos, taken from the graves of outbreak victims (it is traditional in Russia to add photos to gravestones), The black and white images of these individuals stare out from the page, one by one, frozen in time yet actively reminding us that this is no dry academic investigation. This is an attempt to find out who or what is responsible of over 60 deaths of individuals by a deadly virus, leaving a generation of bereaved relatives without answers. Guillemin proves an excellent narrator to guide us through this process: “I think of the 1979 anthrax outbreak as an obscenity, the deaths themselves brutal and unnecessary, the handling of them a ritual of degradation for the families and friends of these victims”.
Ultimately - as Guillemin herself acknowledges – conclusions are reached, but there is no sense of victory here. From what pathological evidence remains from the KGB purge in the 1970s, and through triangulating the pattern of victims’ whereabouts with wind dispersal during the outbreak period, the evidence that an accidental outbreak of airborne anthrax virus from the military Compound 19 is the cause. Yet it is apparent that there is no official appetite to hold anyone to account for this – and it is notable that the one place that the scientists are unable to gain access to is Compound 19 itself. Even Yeltsin’s offer of pensions to victims’ families remain unpaid at the time of writing.
And so, a pyrrhic victory of sorts – although in publishing her account Guillemin at least gives voice to these victims. For the purposes of my journey, she also casts light on a little known, yet still contentious, part of the former Soviet Union.
Whilst normally I would describe my onward to journey to my next destination at this point, there is no need in this case; for I am already here, in Yekaterinburg. The next step of my trip is actually a journey across the vast expanses of Siberia, which will take me from the Western fringes of the Urals (commencing in Yekaterinburg) through to the Far Eastern outposts of Russia, courtesy of Colin Thubron’s acclaimed travelogue: “In Siberia”...
Anthrax is a virulent and deadly bacteria whose spores can remain in soil for as long as seventy years, killing grazing animals and putting humans in jeopardy of eating infected meat. Contemporary concern is more centred on anthrax as an airborne biological weapon whose inhaled spores can result in ninety percent mortality for those infected.
As part of a team of doctors and researchers, Jeanne Guillemin travelled to Russia in 1992 to determine the cause and extent of the epidemic. Her affecting narrative transforms a case of epidemiological investigation into a politically charged mystery. What helps here – and I must admit that I was worried that this hefty book might prove to be heavy going – is that Guillemin is an anthropologist, rather than a biologist. Her concern in the investigation is to talk to the survivors of the outbreak, to build up a picture of the movements of the victims and also their daily living in order to identify any patterns. Thus, through her interviews with residents of 1990s Yekaterinburg, we gain a fascinating insight into the lives of ordinary people from before and after “Perestroika”.
She also creates a vivid sense of immediacy and drama with her insider's account of the team's investigative work—the analysis of pathology photos and slides, meetings with political and public health officials, the retrieval of essential medical data—and candidly reveals the subjective side of science as she conducts interviews with afflicted families, visits sites, and interacts with those suspected of clouding the truth.
And indeed, there are many of the ‘old guard’ of the Communist era here who toe the official line of tainted meat as the source of the outbreak – rather than the more controversial possibility of an accidental emission from a nearby military compound (Compound 19). This despite, the seeming contradiction of then President Boris Yeltsin - who was party official of Sverdlovsk during the outbreak - awarding pensions to relatives of the victims in the 1990s.
Guillemin however, is even-handed in her accounts of these former Soviet scientists and their motives. As she says of one: “Burgasov is completely of the old Soviet order, an anachronism, an old bear hiding in the woods. Whether or not he really knew what was going on at Compound 19, he did not break rank…. When he... presented the official Soviet explanation of the outbreak, he probably believed everything he said.” Guillemin displays none of the potential arrogance she may have shown as a Western scientist coming to examine a bacterial disaster in a former Cold War enemy. Indeed, she is equally open in acknowledging both the lack on concrete understanding of anthrax in the West, and also the Western nations’ own frequent flagrant disregard of international law regarding biological weaponry research.
It is this scientific impartiality, coupled with her anthropologist’s focus on the human element of this outbreak, that makes this such a fascinating account. Whilst expounding on the necessary scientific detail of the outbreak – crucially the difference in symptoms between gastrointestinal (i.e. through tainted meat) and inhalatory (i.e. through airborne spores) - Guillemin is always concerned about the human and the social context of the outbreak: both in the 1970s and in the 1990s of the investigation. It is here that we get a sense of what life like for ordinary people (many victims were factory workers or small holders) in this major Russian city – both in the Soviet-era 1970s and the early 1990s of “Perestroika”.
Often the tale is of people living simple but harsh lives, and whose emotional pain at the loss of loves is balanced by a sense of impotence in the face of the government machine. Guillemin and her translator are often reduced to tears during these accounts.
Perhaps one of the most poignant elements of this book is a series of photos, taken from the graves of outbreak victims (it is traditional in Russia to add photos to gravestones), The black and white images of these individuals stare out from the page, one by one, frozen in time yet actively reminding us that this is no dry academic investigation. This is an attempt to find out who or what is responsible of over 60 deaths of individuals by a deadly virus, leaving a generation of bereaved relatives without answers. Guillemin proves an excellent narrator to guide us through this process: “I think of the 1979 anthrax outbreak as an obscenity, the deaths themselves brutal and unnecessary, the handling of them a ritual of degradation for the families and friends of these victims”.
Ultimately - as Guillemin herself acknowledges – conclusions are reached, but there is no sense of victory here. From what pathological evidence remains from the KGB purge in the 1970s, and through triangulating the pattern of victims’ whereabouts with wind dispersal during the outbreak period, the evidence that an accidental outbreak of airborne anthrax virus from the military Compound 19 is the cause. Yet it is apparent that there is no official appetite to hold anyone to account for this – and it is notable that the one place that the scientists are unable to gain access to is Compound 19 itself. Even Yeltsin’s offer of pensions to victims’ families remain unpaid at the time of writing.
And so, a pyrrhic victory of sorts – although in publishing her account Guillemin at least gives voice to these victims. For the purposes of my journey, she also casts light on a little known, yet still contentious, part of the former Soviet Union.
Whilst normally I would describe my onward to journey to my next destination at this point, there is no need in this case; for I am already here, in Yekaterinburg. The next step of my trip is actually a journey across the vast expanses of Siberia, which will take me from the Western fringes of the Urals (commencing in Yekaterinburg) through to the Far Eastern outposts of Russia, courtesy of Colin Thubron’s acclaimed travelogue: “In Siberia”...
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Transnistria (again): Further Education from the ex-Siberian Community
I now find myself, for a second time, in the tiny – and contentious – state of Transnistria. So why, amongst the hundreds of other, larger and more established countries, am I gracing this place with a second visit? After all, this is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine. And it is only recognised by two other states (themselves, of limited international recognition – Abkhazia and South Ossetia).
Well, the reason for this is twofold – firstly I was a little unsatisfied with my last visit there. Not that the book I read: "This is Radio PMR" was not enlightening and interesting, but it was primarily a photobook interspersed with individual interviews and as such I felt that I only scratched the surface of this complex - and contentious - nation in my last visit. Also, since my visit, a book has been published which presents a first-hand account of contemporary life there, by a native of Transnistria. This book, “Siberian Education” by Nicolai Lilin recounts his life in the criminal underworld of the city of Bender, and promises to be a very different perspective than my previous trip there.
However, before giving my account of this book I should add a caveat – in fact the caveat is that of the author himself. At the outset of the book he states that: “certain episodes are imaginative recreation, and those episodes are not intended to portray actual events.” This broad statement leaves us, as readers, with the dilemma of not knowing what IS fact or fiction in the following account… I can understand the complaints of certain reviewers that they cannot therefore, treat this book as a serious social commentary, however for the purposes of my trip I am satisfied. After all, most of the books I have chosen for countries are fiction, and even if this IS a wholly fictionalised account – it fits my criteria well in being by a native author and set within my timescale in an actual location in Transnistria (the city of Bender).
As far as the book itself goes, veracity aside, I found this to be an interesting and enjoyable read. Nicolai describes his upbringing in a close knit community of ex-Siberian criminals in the ‘Lower River’ area of the city of Bender; from his pre-teen (but still prolifically criminal) youth until his forced eviction from the city in his early 20s. This eviction is as a conscript in the Russian Army – sent to the frontlines of the Chechnyan conflict (a conflict which only merits a few pages here, but which has already been described – from the Chechnyan perspective – previously on my journey). The book’s cover informs us that Nicolai subsequently lived in Ireland before settling as an Italian citizen – although the circumstances of this are never covered in this book (and have added to the scepticism surrounding the validity of his account of his criminal past…)
Still, I found this to be a gritty and visceral account of criminal life in an enclave of Transnistria (and certainly an interesting counterpoint to the rather clinical accounts given in my previous visit via “This is Radio PMR”).
The timescales of this account run roughly from the 1980s to the late 1990s, and mainly focus on his teenage years as a fledgling ‘criminal’ (a term of honour in his community). Life in this criminal society is a strange mix of ancestral pride, social etiquette (the elderly must be respected, fellow criminals must be greeted in an elaborately formal manner etc) and extreme violence – especially against rival criminal communities, who are often seen as degenerate by the Siberians. Perhaps one depiction that typifies this almost schizophrenic society is Nicolai’s account of how the family weapons are kept within the religious shrines of the household. No irony is acknowledged here.
Similarly, Nicolai’s progression from boy to man is a mix of increased social responsibility (within his community) and increased criminal activity. He is given his first ‘pike’ (knife) by a respected Siberian criminal at the tender age of 12 – and promptly gains an elevated status amongst his peers as a result.
Another element of Nicolai’s rite of passage is his first criminal conviction and incarceration in a juvenile prison. Here, divorced from the ‘Low River’ society, Nicolai has a degree of protection through fellow ‘Siberians’ but is nevertheless constantly in close proximity with other gangs. The atrocities carried out by these other gangs within the confines of the prison (including a particularly disturbing account of a prolonged gang-rape) are both nightmarish and, if one is honest, take one back to the author’s caveat that certain “episodes are not intended to portray actual events”.
Another important element of criminal society that Nicolai encounters whilst in prison is the socially-important culture of tattoos. Apparently tattoos play an important role in the criminal subculture - both in telling the story of a criminal’s life and enhancing his reputation as a result. Given this pivotal importance, skilled tattooists are also highly regarded within the criminal fraternity and enjoy an almost shaman-like status.
Nicolai determines to become a tattooist, and succeeds, and this is largely portrayed as a step on the road, in his life, to his escape from a criminal community that he portrays as both potentially fatal and in terminal decline. Certainly in recent interviews he has stated that the Siberian criminal society that he depicts in this work no longer exists – which seems odd given the tight-knit structure that he portrays as existing only a decade or so ago.
Another event that – more forcibly – extracts him from his criminal surroundings is his conscription (a virtual kidnapping by the authorities) into the Russian army to fight rebels in Chechnya. Most of Nicolai’s graphic account of his time in the army fighting the rebels (or “saboteurs” as he refers to them) comes, a little confusingly, in a chapter at the start of the book, and provides an interesting alternative perspective to that provided by Chechnyan surgeon Khassan Baiev in the earlier Chechnyan book “The Oath”.
Upon his enforced conscription the book abruptly ends, leaving us hanging as to the story of Nicolai’s time in Chechnya and subsequent escape to his current life as an Italian citizen. Perhaps this is intentional and another book is in the offing.
If my account seems a little cynical, I would say that that is inevitable. His opening caveat, along with a lack of explanation of how Nicolai came to be accepted as an Italian citizen despite his long criminal record – as well as his convenient attestation that the Siberian criminal community that he describes no longer exists – all make me question the amount of fact over fiction here. That said, taken at face value, I found the book to be pretty well written and an interesting account of criminal social mores in a post-Soviet Mafia-like community (and certainly, there is no denying that these Mafia-type gangs are thriving in the post-Soviet region, as previous books on my travels have shown).
As I mentioned in my last blog: there are no civilian flights into or out of Transnistria, so I retrace my inward journey from Bender to Chisinau via a Marshrutka. I have my exit papers so no issues at border control.
The next step of my journey returns me to Russia, specifically to Yekaterinburg, a large industrial city in the Urals Federal District, some 900 miles east of Moscow. To get there from Chisinau I take a 4.00pm flight on Siberian airlines from Chisinau’s International Airport. This takes me to Domodedovo airport in Moscow 2 hours later. Fortunately this is one of Moscow’s more salubrious airports: there are a lot of amenities including a clean lobby, secure waiting area, good cafes and restaurants, and a business centre. Author’s note: a few days after writing this description, on 24th January 2011, a suicide bomber detonated a 7kg explosive device at the airport, killing 35 people and injuring 110. Early news reports stated that “Militant groups from the North Caucasus are suspected of planning the attack.” (BBC News). This is a grim reminder that the conflicts and dangers described in some of the books on my journey have a very real impact upon the lives of ordinary people, and demonstrates how, in virtually the whole of this planet, ‘peace’ is an aspiration rather than an actuality…
At 10.00pm I take another flight directly to Yekaterinburg (flight announcements refer to it as Ekaterinburg/Sverdlovsk) which touches down at 02.10am (although this is largely due to time difference – the actual flight is just 2 hours 10 minutes). The price? £242 one-way, including taxes etc. Not bad for such a vast distance…
Thus begins my latest excursion – with “Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak”, an account by anthropologist Jeanne Guillemin of her visit to Yekaterinburg in 1992 with a team of US scientists to investigate the causes of a deadly outbreak of anthrax there back in 1979; at the height of the Cold War…
Well, the reason for this is twofold – firstly I was a little unsatisfied with my last visit there. Not that the book I read: "This is Radio PMR" was not enlightening and interesting, but it was primarily a photobook interspersed with individual interviews and as such I felt that I only scratched the surface of this complex - and contentious - nation in my last visit. Also, since my visit, a book has been published which presents a first-hand account of contemporary life there, by a native of Transnistria. This book, “Siberian Education” by Nicolai Lilin recounts his life in the criminal underworld of the city of Bender, and promises to be a very different perspective than my previous trip there.
However, before giving my account of this book I should add a caveat – in fact the caveat is that of the author himself. At the outset of the book he states that: “certain episodes are imaginative recreation, and those episodes are not intended to portray actual events.” This broad statement leaves us, as readers, with the dilemma of not knowing what IS fact or fiction in the following account… I can understand the complaints of certain reviewers that they cannot therefore, treat this book as a serious social commentary, however for the purposes of my trip I am satisfied. After all, most of the books I have chosen for countries are fiction, and even if this IS a wholly fictionalised account – it fits my criteria well in being by a native author and set within my timescale in an actual location in Transnistria (the city of Bender).
As far as the book itself goes, veracity aside, I found this to be an interesting and enjoyable read. Nicolai describes his upbringing in a close knit community of ex-Siberian criminals in the ‘Lower River’ area of the city of Bender; from his pre-teen (but still prolifically criminal) youth until his forced eviction from the city in his early 20s. This eviction is as a conscript in the Russian Army – sent to the frontlines of the Chechnyan conflict (a conflict which only merits a few pages here, but which has already been described – from the Chechnyan perspective – previously on my journey). The book’s cover informs us that Nicolai subsequently lived in Ireland before settling as an Italian citizen – although the circumstances of this are never covered in this book (and have added to the scepticism surrounding the validity of his account of his criminal past…)
Still, I found this to be a gritty and visceral account of criminal life in an enclave of Transnistria (and certainly an interesting counterpoint to the rather clinical accounts given in my previous visit via “This is Radio PMR”).
The timescales of this account run roughly from the 1980s to the late 1990s, and mainly focus on his teenage years as a fledgling ‘criminal’ (a term of honour in his community). Life in this criminal society is a strange mix of ancestral pride, social etiquette (the elderly must be respected, fellow criminals must be greeted in an elaborately formal manner etc) and extreme violence – especially against rival criminal communities, who are often seen as degenerate by the Siberians. Perhaps one depiction that typifies this almost schizophrenic society is Nicolai’s account of how the family weapons are kept within the religious shrines of the household. No irony is acknowledged here.
Similarly, Nicolai’s progression from boy to man is a mix of increased social responsibility (within his community) and increased criminal activity. He is given his first ‘pike’ (knife) by a respected Siberian criminal at the tender age of 12 – and promptly gains an elevated status amongst his peers as a result.
Another element of Nicolai’s rite of passage is his first criminal conviction and incarceration in a juvenile prison. Here, divorced from the ‘Low River’ society, Nicolai has a degree of protection through fellow ‘Siberians’ but is nevertheless constantly in close proximity with other gangs. The atrocities carried out by these other gangs within the confines of the prison (including a particularly disturbing account of a prolonged gang-rape) are both nightmarish and, if one is honest, take one back to the author’s caveat that certain “episodes are not intended to portray actual events”.
Another important element of criminal society that Nicolai encounters whilst in prison is the socially-important culture of tattoos. Apparently tattoos play an important role in the criminal subculture - both in telling the story of a criminal’s life and enhancing his reputation as a result. Given this pivotal importance, skilled tattooists are also highly regarded within the criminal fraternity and enjoy an almost shaman-like status.
Nicolai determines to become a tattooist, and succeeds, and this is largely portrayed as a step on the road, in his life, to his escape from a criminal community that he portrays as both potentially fatal and in terminal decline. Certainly in recent interviews he has stated that the Siberian criminal society that he depicts in this work no longer exists – which seems odd given the tight-knit structure that he portrays as existing only a decade or so ago.
Another event that – more forcibly – extracts him from his criminal surroundings is his conscription (a virtual kidnapping by the authorities) into the Russian army to fight rebels in Chechnya. Most of Nicolai’s graphic account of his time in the army fighting the rebels (or “saboteurs” as he refers to them) comes, a little confusingly, in a chapter at the start of the book, and provides an interesting alternative perspective to that provided by Chechnyan surgeon Khassan Baiev in the earlier Chechnyan book “The Oath”.
Upon his enforced conscription the book abruptly ends, leaving us hanging as to the story of Nicolai’s time in Chechnya and subsequent escape to his current life as an Italian citizen. Perhaps this is intentional and another book is in the offing.
If my account seems a little cynical, I would say that that is inevitable. His opening caveat, along with a lack of explanation of how Nicolai came to be accepted as an Italian citizen despite his long criminal record – as well as his convenient attestation that the Siberian criminal community that he describes no longer exists – all make me question the amount of fact over fiction here. That said, taken at face value, I found the book to be pretty well written and an interesting account of criminal social mores in a post-Soviet Mafia-like community (and certainly, there is no denying that these Mafia-type gangs are thriving in the post-Soviet region, as previous books on my travels have shown).
As I mentioned in my last blog: there are no civilian flights into or out of Transnistria, so I retrace my inward journey from Bender to Chisinau via a Marshrutka. I have my exit papers so no issues at border control.
The next step of my journey returns me to Russia, specifically to Yekaterinburg, a large industrial city in the Urals Federal District, some 900 miles east of Moscow. To get there from Chisinau I take a 4.00pm flight on Siberian airlines from Chisinau’s International Airport. This takes me to Domodedovo airport in Moscow 2 hours later. Fortunately this is one of Moscow’s more salubrious airports: there are a lot of amenities including a clean lobby, secure waiting area, good cafes and restaurants, and a business centre. Author’s note: a few days after writing this description, on 24th January 2011, a suicide bomber detonated a 7kg explosive device at the airport, killing 35 people and injuring 110. Early news reports stated that “Militant groups from the North Caucasus are suspected of planning the attack.” (BBC News). This is a grim reminder that the conflicts and dangers described in some of the books on my journey have a very real impact upon the lives of ordinary people, and demonstrates how, in virtually the whole of this planet, ‘peace’ is an aspiration rather than an actuality…
At 10.00pm I take another flight directly to Yekaterinburg (flight announcements refer to it as Ekaterinburg/Sverdlovsk) which touches down at 02.10am (although this is largely due to time difference – the actual flight is just 2 hours 10 minutes). The price? £242 one-way, including taxes etc. Not bad for such a vast distance…
Thus begins my latest excursion – with “Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak”, an account by anthropologist Jeanne Guillemin of her visit to Yekaterinburg in 1992 with a team of US scientists to investigate the causes of a deadly outbreak of anthrax there back in 1979; at the height of the Cold War…
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