The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (4 page)

thought, could at least be a chance to

find out about life under occupation.

This whole area was taken by the

Germans at the very start of Hitler’s

war. Father Dmitry had spent two

years under German occupation, and

all old people would have shared his

experiences of foreign rule.

Except they did not want to talk

about that. They wanted to talk about

their faith, and about grandchildren

– in that order.

‘I started to believe in God in the

wartime. The bullets were flying.

Our uncle Matvei brought the faith

back from the army. He did not

drink or smoke. He gave up vodka,

and he stopped stealing or lying,’

said the aunt.

I looked round at Galya, who

was giggling silently. I began to

suspect this was a practical joke she

had set up to pass the time.

‘They will burn everything. Now

there is freedom of religion, if we

live long enough the pope of Rome

will come and kill us.’

She looked pleased, as if this

would be a very satisfactory way to

end her life. Then Galya’s mother

started reciting names.

‘Vita, he’s first. Write it down.

Then Olya and Natasha.’ I looked at

Galya, confused. She mouthed the

word ‘grandchildren’. I blinked and

wrote the three names down. ‘Tanya,

Sveta, Ira, Nina, Zhenya, Vasya,

Yulia, Maxim, Igor, Denis.’ The list

went on and on until it finally

finished: ‘Nadya, Veronika, Misha.

How many’s that?’

I counted them. There were

twenty-eight.

‘Exactly.

Twenty-eight. And

eighteen great-grandchildren.’

An argument ensued about

whether there were eighteen or

nineteen. We went over the list thrice

more. The aunt’s husband had been

killed in the war, so she had no

grandchildren and she eventually

tired of such a sterile debate. She

turned back to the faith, and my

mind drifted a little. I looked at the

generations:

thirteen

children,

twenty-eight

grandchildren

and

eighteen great-grandchildren. That is

the kind of contraction happening

everywhere in Russia. If every

couple has just one child, then the

generation size halves, which is

more or less what had happened

here.

It could not have been more

different when these two old women

were born. Industry and railways

had brought unprecedented mobility

to Russia in the years before the

revolution, but the villages where

they started their lives had still

changed little since the Middle Ages.

The fertility level was high –

comparable to that of Somalia today,

where each woman has more than

six children – and 80 per cent of

Russia’s population were peasants.

Although serfdom – the slavery

that tied peasants to the villages and

gave landlords almost limitless

powers to punish them – was

scrapped in 1861, the peasants were

still not free to move. They had to

pay off the debt incurred by buying

their freedom, and were collectively

liable as villages for the sum. Few

wanted to leave anyway. The

communal pull was so strong that

successive well-wishers from both

ends of the political spectrum

retreated

before

their

stubborn

attachment to their old ways of life,

the yearly division of land, the

Church, folk medicine.

Death

rates

remained

high.

Mothers smothered unwanted babies

in bed. Babies were left in the care of

their siblings, who often rocked their

cradles so hard they fell out and

died. Diarrhoea was treated by

hanging children up by their legs

and shaking them violently. ‘Outie’

belly buttons were spread with

dough so mice could nibble them

off. In most homes, more than half

the children died. The poorer

families,

according

to

one

eyewitness account of life in a

Russian village in the late nineteenth

century, often welcomed the deaths

of infants with the words: ‘Thank

goodness, the Lord thought better of

it.’

It was a life of superstition. Any

outsiders

were

distrusted

and

opposed. Local officials could flog

adults on their bare bottoms for the

most minor of offences. The

eyewitness, an aristocrat called Olga

Semyonova

Tian-Shanskaia,

described how in one village near

her home pigs dug up the body of a

baby that had been murdered.

‘No action was taken in the

matter. Peasants do not like criminal

investigations and keep quiet even

when they know something.’

Officials could demand taxes

before the harvest if they wanted,

and would then confiscate property

when the peasant in question could

not pay. When the revolution came,

the peasants rose up and seized the

lords’ lands, as well as that of any

profitable neighbours who had made

money from the few agricultural

reforms imposed before World War

One.

The

Bolsheviks,

who

understood

nothing

of

the

countryside, declared war on them,

seizing their grain and causing

famine. Somewhere between 10 and

14 million people died of hunger in

the four years after 1917.

These old women were living

witnesses to the history of their

nation, its triumphs and its tragedies,

but sadly they did not much want to

talk about it.

‘Now there is freedom of

religion, but there is little time. When

they smashed up the church, they

imprisoned the priests,’ said Galya’s

aunt,

slapping

my

foot

and

chuckling.

Her sister chipped in: ‘The pope

of Rome will soon announce a

census of religions.’

The aunt was not to be outdone.

She summoned all the breath in her

lungs and intoned: ‘They will come

and kill us.’

Both old women burst out

laughing. Galya leaned over to kiss

them on their pale cheeks. They

adjusted their headscarves, and we

left, leaving them sitting on the sofa

companionably

discussing

their

imminent demise. The photograph I

took could just as easily be from a

hundred years ago. Galya looked at

me, shrugged and giggled.

I tried to give up the quest at this

point and go back to Bryansk to

regroup, but Galya was having none

of it. Although born here, she visited

rarely and wanted to show the

peculiar Westerner off to all her old

friends. So it was that we boarded

another bus, which took us beyond

the end of the metalled road, to

Pupkovo.

There had been no rain for

weeks, and the road was pale dust

with a strip of yellowing grass up the

middle. I could not imagine how

anyone reached Pupkovo in the

thaw, when a winter’s worth of

snow melted all at once, but then the

thaw itself was hard to imagine in

this brutal heat. Chunks of the fields

on either side of the bus broke off

into the air, floating on a wavering

mirage.

When the bus stopped at the

entrance to the village, there was

desolation. A standing cross marked

where the communists had knocked

the church down. The church had

stood until 1937, the cross said, so I

wondered briefly if this was where

Father Dmitry had worshipped as a

boy. We strode down a slight slope

into the village, where houses ringed

an artificial pond. Most of the houses

lacked glass in their windows; some

of them lacked roofs. The place was

all but abandoned and it was clear

Galya was not the only person to

have left Pupkovo.

‘There used to be a club there,’

said Galya, pointing at one building,

which had been part of the collective

farm. Now she was not smiling. ‘But

there’s no one left to dance any

more.’

We

could

hear

laughter,

however, and skirted the pond to a

little cabin that had been built out

over its surface. A shiny German car

stood outside. A glistening fat man

in tight shorts and nothing else

waved us in, welcomed Galya by

name and passed his bottle of beer

into his left hand so that I could

approach him and shake his right.

He did not stand up or otherwise

move. His was the expensive car

parked on the lane. That and the

large gold cross on a gold chain

around his neck showed him to be a

man of means. Galya explained my

mission. The man turned to his two

companions and to a child who was

turning kebabs on the barbecue.

‘Dudko? Who the fuck was

Dudko? Wasn’t he from the Kaluga

region?’

The men simpered. The child

stared.

‘He was from the Kaluga region.

Come on, we’ll hire a forester’s

truck. Get some fucking beer, and

some meat and have a barbecue. It’s

not fucking far through the forest,’

he said with a grin, and a lunge

towards Galya.

Galya’s face was set. She

declined without giving me a chance

to come up with a plausible excuse.

We had people to meet, she said, and

took me by the hand once more.

‘Galya, why aren’t you wearing

a

fucking

cross? Aren’t

you

Russian? Where are you going?

Have a fucking beer.’

She towed me out of the cabin

and back on to the path. Her good

mood, already soured by the sight of

her home village, was gone.

‘See that,’ she said. ‘Some

example to his son. That was his son

there, the one who said nothing.

He’s got a pregnant daughter at

home with no husband, and he’s

sitting here drinking beer. No

education. It was people like him

who burned down my house, and

look at him there with his cross. Oh,

Russia, Russia.’

We turned left, her leading, on to

a path across the fields, or what had

once been fields. They butted on to

the village houses but grew only

rank grass.

‘Everything used to grow here,’

she said. Her voice was tight and her

steps fast. ‘See there: potatoes. Over

there: tomatoes. Here was beetroot.

And now, nothing. It’s just ruined,

like this whole country, and that man

is there with his money and his

beer.’

The sandy soil was exposed

along the path, but otherwise this

farmland had turned into wilderness.

There was no human mark left.

‘No one will even harvest this

hay. Why bother? There’s nothing to

eat it.’

The path dipped down into some

trees, where a small chapel sat in the

shade. It was built of softwood

planks and roofed with clear plastic.

Inside was a well, made of circular

concrete segments and choked with

foul green slime. It was an evil-

looking place to hold baptisms.

‘He built it,’ said Galya, with a

jerk of her head back towards the

pond. ‘He’s in the cement business.’

She paused to make sure I had

understood. ‘Business,’ she repeated

with invisible inverted commas

around it.

A man was clearing weeds from

a path that approached the far side of

the well. Galya greeted him as

Vasilyevich – son of Vasily – and

explained my goal. He shrugged at

the name Dudko. No Dudkos here,

he said, but he had some papers on

local history at his house if I was

interested.

It was the first lead all day, and I

accepted with enthusiasm. So, we

walked back past the pond, the fat

man, his car and his gang, whose