The England We Know

Russian Voices Abroad

Olga Kenton

• Publisher: Academica Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781680533941
• eBook ISBN: 9781680533958
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad is based on a series of interviews, recorded between 2019 and 2021, with twelve Russophone immigrants—those who have achieved success and those who haven’t, the well-educated and the blue-collar—interpolated with the author’s memoir. Each story invites the reader into the intimate world of these men and women who have built their lives in England, the destination and dreamland for those who have arrived here from various corners of the former Soviet Union: Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, and Russia. Whereas, for others, the UK has become their third or even fourth home, these stories take readers on a journey to Canada, Italy, France, and New Zealand. These vividly reconstructed stories give voice to the so-often voiceless revealing family secrets and the trauma of generations. They are the stories of lives transformed. In The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad Olga Kenton provides readers with a deep and empathetic understanding of the immigrant experience. These deeply personal stories—filled with moments of joy, sorrow, struggle, and triumph—explore themes of identity, belonging and the search for a new home.

Table of contents

• The England We Know:Russian Voices Abroad
• Olga Kenton
• The England We Know:Russian Voices Abroad
• Olga Kenton
• Academica PressWashington
• Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 
• Names: Kenton, Olga (author)
• Title: The england we know : russian voices abroad | Kenton, OlgaDescription: Washington : Academica Press, 2025. | Includes references. Identifiers: LCCN 2025940933 | 
• ISBN 9781680533941 (hardcover) | 9781680533958 (e-book)
• Copyright 2025 Olga Kenton
• The author may not always agreeor share the participants’ views and opinions
• Certain names and locations have been changedor anonymised to preserve confidentiality
• To my dear family
• Contents
• Acknowledgements xi
• Preface xiii
• Conceptualising the Project xiii
• Part I Introduction 1
• About the Project 1
• Finding Participants and Interviewing 2
• Echoing Oral History and Ethnographic Writing 5
• Reference List 7
• The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad 9
• Voices of Moscow 9
• Dmitri 13
• Voices of My Grandparents 23
• Sofia 31
• Voices of Urals 41
• Yuriy 49
• A Lost Sandal 59
• Anastasia 65
• Voices of Crimea 77
• Alex 85
• Children of 1984 97
• Alyona 105
• My Never Established Modelling Career 113
• Anna 117
• Shouts 131
• Voices of New Zealand 137
• Yuliya 143
• Voices of Hong Kong 151
• Andrey 155
• Voices of New Zealand 165
• Masha 171
• Voices of France 187
• Olga 193
• Voices of England 205
• Eugenia 211
• Nine O’Clock in Buenos Aires 221
• Part II Commentary 225
• Finding the Form and Structure 226
• A Visual Layer 230
• Themes Emerged 231
• The Notion of Silence 232
• Conclusion 233
• Reference List 234
• Appendix 1 237
• Appendix 2 241
• Appendix 3 243
• Appendix 4 245
• Acknowledgements
• This project would not have seen the light if not for a chain of life events and journeys that brought me to Birmingham. But most of all, this project would not have been possible without the endless help and support of people to whom I am incredibly grateful. I want to thank my lead supervisor, Dr Dan Vyleta, for believing in this project from the very beginning and giving it the green light in 2018. I also want to express my gratitude to my co-supervisor, Professor Natasha Rulyova, for her support and helpful guidance throughout my dissertation. I am thankful to the Creative Writing Department team: Dr Richard House, Professor Luke Kennard, and Professor Rob Stone for their helpful mentorship. I would also like to thank my PhD viva examiners, Dr Ellen Wiles and Mr Tim Kelly, for highlighting several points that contributed to strengthening my thesis. Thank you to CAL, EDACS, a d Library Services Support for Postgraduates for organising helpful workshops and training. Likewise, thank you to the University of Birmingham Legal team for helping me with reviewing the needed documents at the beginning of the project. I also want to hank my colleagues from the Department of Modern Languages for their interest in my project and friendly support. I am truly thankful to the participants of my project for sharing their fascinating stories and for trusting me with the representation of their voices. I also want to thank Karen Hamilton for her outstanding job proofreading my thesis. A very special thanks also to those who helped me advertise this project in various media across the UK: Tanya Chuvatkina, editor-in-chief of Pulse UK, and Elena Leslie, former editor-in-chief of Angliya, and Svetlana Kotina. I am also very grateful to Valentine and Henry Tony Miller for permitting me to use the quote from their renowned father’s book, Black Spring. Likewise, thank you to Nicolas Pasternak-Sla er for permitting me to use quotes from his translation of A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. Finally, I want to thank my husband, my children, and the extended members of my family for their unconditional and constant support.
• Preface
• What comes to your mind when you hear the word “immigrant”? Whom do you picture? A young, healthy, well-educated, and linguistically skilled individual? A middle-aged or elderly person, desperate for any work, relying on social housing and benefits – someone whose children don’t speak the local language and need to attend the English as a Foreign Language classes? A Russian immigrant. What do you see now, as the media – saturated with stereotypes and clichés – plays with your perceptions, pulling you in the direction of their choosing? Have they reshaped your world, or are you remaining steadfast – an island? Am I? As an immigra t myself, I wanted to explore what it means to be one.
• Almost ten years ago, while researching sex trafficking and modern slavery in the UK for a novel I would write, The Immigrants (2017), I came across a number of fascinating stories about Russian immigrants in England. They were stories that piqued my journalistic and creative interests, that became a PhD research project in the making – in conjunction with the Department of Film and Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham – as I set out to explore and document the real lives of Russian-speaking immigrants, The Silent Voices of Russian Immigration. This book is the final outcome of that project and an insight into the lives of ordinary Russophone immigrants, their triumphs, their defeats, and their transformation. They are the stories of “home,” struggle, and adaptation. But mostly they are the stories of their England.
• The idea of using detailed, ordinary people’s accounts was inspired by the works of Svetlana Alexievich, Truman Capote, and Gay Talese. And the participants’ interviews are presented as creative, nonfiction narratives, allowing them to breath and to tell their stories in their own words. I have also tentatively followed in the footsteps of writers like Gaito Gazdanov, Marcel Proust, Henry Miller, Erich Maria Remarque, and Anaïs Nin to position myself as a narrator in memoir, as I share the intimacy of my personal experiences with the reader.
• Part I explores the project in greater detail, explaining the participant selection process, interview methodology, and my artistic objectives. It also examines how this project aligns with oral history and ethnographic writing. The main section of Part I presents the short stories of twelve participants that are interwoven with my memoir.
• Part II offers a commentary to help readers understand the narrative structure and thematic patterns as they emerged from the participants’ accounts.
• With over ten years of experience as a freelance journalist for Russian-speaking media outlets, I’ve realised that transforming spoken words into written text requires careful crafting to achieve readability and impact. This process demands the shaping of language into a more digestible form while strictly preserving factual accuracy. So, while some names and locations in this book have been changed or anonymised to protect several participants’ identity (for obvious reasons), every story is authentic, based either on recorded interviews with the participants or real events from my own life – experiences ranging from the beautiul to the deeply traumatic.
• As such, this book gives voice to the ordinary Russian-speaking people who arrived in England, settled or struggled to do so. Through these multifaceted life stories, presented without definitive interpretation, readers are invited to engage with each narrative on their own terms.
• Part I Introduction
• The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad is a collection of stories of real people who moved to and settled in the UK from the Eastern-European Bloc and former Soviet Union republics. The stories – interpolated with my own story – are based on interviews with these Russian-speaking immigrants; they seek to present the breadth, complexity, and diversity of the Russian experience of immigration to the UK. These are not the voices one usually expects to hear – each distinct, yet echoing in chorus. Together, they mirror the richness of the Russian-speaking world, each voice a world in its own right.
• In her interview to Novaya Gazeta, Svetlana Alexievich, reflecting on her book the Second-Hand Time, states, “Most people simply did not expect or understand that they would wake up in another country. In another Tajikistan, another Belarus, another Russia.” (Dyakova) As a child, I was excited and enticed by the vast array of Western goods that suddenly began to appear on the shelves of Moscow’s shops. While everything about “new” Russia appeared to be uncertain and bleak, everything about the West seemed better. It was the reason why, as I looked “abroad,” I saw a dreamland – a place of possibilities, a magical world where dreams could come true. Yet I never imagined that one day, I might live permanently abroad.
• Even now, more than two decades after the collapse of the USSR, anecdotal evidence suggests that many Russians often see the opportunity of a new life abroad in clichéd terms, as a “big dream,” or “a lottery ticket” that promises the prize of being able to exchange the problems of their current Russian existence for a much better life abroad. This dream often materialises itself in the form of an idealised vision of the happier and wealthier life on offer, and is, in my opinion, often a key motivating factor in the decision process of would-be Russian immigrants. Further, this vision is, of course, heavily shaped by media, social and otherwise.
• When I began working on this project in 2018, many things about “Russians abroad” were very narrowly portrayed in the UK media. Russians were often described as wealthy oligarchs who had fled persecution, or as common criminals in search of opportunity, Kremlin spies, or gold diggers. However, the narratives presented in this work predate the current political conflict between Russia and Ukraine. For many of the interviewees, Russia is primarily associated with the great Russian culture and with a multilayered linguistic heritage, rather than today’s politics. Although I did not intend to explicitly explore the political views o the participants or their position on the Russian government, those topics found their way into the flow of the conversation and appeared in several accounts. Since most of the primary research was carried out before February 2022, I decided not to address the current political situation in the body of the work. Therefore, in the subsequent chapters, the reader will find participants’ reflections on Russia’s politics prior to February 24, 2022.
• The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad gives voice to a sliver of immigrant stories, they are the stories of those who have achieved success and those who believe they have lost out: the well-educated and blue-collar workers, men and women, the young and old alike.
• The process of conducting interviews with Russian-speaking immigrants occurred over two years, and was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• In order to source the prospective participants for my project, I placed an advertisement in the local Russian media outlets (Pulse UK and Angliya newspapers) as well as on Facebook (“Russians in the UK,” “Russians in England,” “Russian Moms in London,” “Russians in Manchester,” “Russian Book club”). All the prospective participants contacted me initially by email, expressing heir wish to participate in my project.
• Following the rules of the AER University of Birmingham, only those who agreed to sign the consent form were deemed as eligible to participate in the project. Of the 31 people who contacted me, 21 agreed to provide the required consent.
• The interviews took place from April 2019 to December 2021 (See Appendix 3). Additionally, in June 2021, I conducted a short survey among the members of the “Russian Book Club” on Facebook.
• I additionally received a late request from one participant – Inna. Her consent form was received on September 15, 2021. Our first email correspondence occurred on April 5, 2022. A snippet of her story, based on our exchange of emails, is included in the section “Shouts.” The snippets of interviewees’ stories that were included in “Shouts” are discussed in Part II.
• As per the socio-demographic background of the participants, I conducted full-length interviews with sixteen women and four me . All participants were born in the Soviet Union, or one of the former Soviet Union republics. Women’s age group: 18–25 (none), 25–35 (3 participants), 35–45 (7 participants), 45 and above (6 participants). Men’s age group: 18–25 (none), 25–35 (1 participant), 35–45 (3 participants), 45 and above (none). As per their level of education, sixteen participants have a tertiary level degree, the other four have completed the equivalent of a college degree. While it is understandable that such a limited number of participants cannot speak for the entire Russian community in the UK, the stories they shared contribute to the diversity of lives and views of Russophone immigrants beyond this project.
• The vast majority of first interviews were conducted via a Skype video call, followed by an additional in-person meeting. As p eviously mentioned, I have conducted full-length interviews with twenty participants. Of these, I chose twelve (not counting those whose statements I used in the “Shouts” section of the text) stories that were used as key chapters for this work. The par icipants’ creative profiles were chosen to reflect the diversity of immigrants’ narratives, demonstrate their various points of view on life in the UK, and highlight common themes. The stories – linked by the common tropes they share with those that come before and after – and their themes of childhood, the past, and language all reflect on the individual’s present life while giving expression to their hopes and concerns for the future.
• To provide a broad spectrum of socio-demographic content – while working within the length limitations of this project and keeping the objectives of the creative process in mind – I had to decide which stories to include in the project, which to leave aside, and what interview material to feature in the creative profiles. While transforming the interview materials into appealing and readable creative nonfiction stories, my goal was to incorporate detailed information about the participants in order to create captivating scenes that would draw readers in. The choice of interview material for inclusion was guided by aesthetic criteria that emphasise vivid details, unique voices, and the rich and emotional tone of the story, ensuring each narrative not only captivates but also offers deep insights into the immigrant experience, therefore enriching the readers’ experience. To reduce repetition, I avoided including stories that seemed repetitive or too similar in order to maintain a varied and engaging narrative for the audience. To illustrate, two of the participants were females in their forties, both from Lithuania, who arrived in the UK for financial reasons and who worked as cleaners. While, of course, the details of their lives were different, overall, the stories, to some extent, looked similar. This decision was made to ensure that each story included in the project was as compelling and informative as possible.
• As previously mentioned, the participants’ stories are interpolated with my own story in the form of a memoir. As the creator of this project, it was important for me to interweave my voice as an immigrant to the UK alongside the creative accounts of others. While curating the stories, I realised that if I was to maintain a balance between my voice and those of the participants, I would need to structure them in a specific way: a chapter from my memoir (which can stand alone as a short story) is followed by a participant’s story that shares a common theme – such as childhood memories, reflections on life after the Perestroika e a, or living abroad, etc. I discuss this in greater detail and provide additional examples of similarities between the participant’s narratives and my memoir, as well as the juxtaposition of these stories, in Part II.
• To an extent The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad could be considered an oral history, or ethnography, or more generally as “life stories.” However, I do not aim to present this project within the strictly academic sense of an oral history or to document the interviews as ethnographic narratives. According to the Oral History Association, “oral history is a recorded, in-depth interview, based on considerable preliminary research […] the recording is preserved, made accessible to others, and interpreted.” For one thing, the text does not only contain other people’s words and stories, but also my own: my personal memoir is i terpolated and serves as a foil to the voices we encounter. It is also important to note, that (in accordance with the University of Birmingham’s guidelines for research ethics) I will not make the raw interview recordings accessible to others. The participants’ stories retain their own words, but they are organised and shaped by me as the author of the project. In this, I use a similar method of representing other people’s stories as Svetlana Alexievich does in her Voices of Utopia. Yet, Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices of Utopia – which some scholars define as a collection of testimonies – builds around significant historical events: wars (World War II, Afghanistan), catastrophes (Chernobyl disaster), and important political and social changes (collapse of the USSR). By contrast, The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad examines the phenomenon of Russian immigration to the UK without systematically tying immigration to particular historical triggers. Like Alexievich I am interested in how people look at their life experience and how they emotionally explore these experiences; however, they are witnessing only to themselves, not to an external event.
• As stated earlier, The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad also echoes ethnographic writing, which includes fiction, creative nonfiction, and even poetry. Discussion of how ethnographic writing blurs the borders between science and art and how ethnographical approaches to the narrative contribute to story creation and development has arisen since the early 1900s, and examples can be found in the works of scholars such as Ruth Behar, Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston, Kirin Narayan, and Paul Stoller, among others. Moreover, Jenny Ingridsdotter and Kim Silow Kallenberg, in their article ‘Ethnography and Arts: Examining Social Complexities through Ethnographic Fiction,’ suggest that mixed genres and alternative ways of writing have a long tradition in ethnology and anthropology (58). Drawing on discussion on how ethnography intersects narrative writing, Michael Humphreys and Tony Watson define ethnographic writing as a written account that concludes findings of any “specific concerns” related to the culture, cultural life of a community or organisation (40). It is, indeed, one of the goals of this project – through the interviewi g process – to present various aspects of the lives of Russian immigrants in the UK. Jenny Ingridsdotter, discussing the difficulties of how to present her ethnographic research on post-socialist migrants in Argentina, explains that Svetlana Alexievich’s writing “became a key” to the way she approached her fieldwork as well as organising and writing the outcomes of her research (60). Likewise, reading Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices of Utopia and many interviews with her in which she discusses her empirical approach of listening to the people and collecting their stories aided enormously in the process of working on this project.
• While I had a pre-set list of questions (See Appendix 1), most of the interviews were relatively unstructured, and each subsequent question was based on the previous answer by the interviewee. Isabel Wilkerson in her essay Interviewing: The Accelerated Intimacy, says:
• People often compare interviewing to peeling an onion. Though it’s a cliché, the metaphor is instructive. […] You tear off the outer layer and throw it away. […] You want the center of the onion […] (31).
• Whereas a key requirement of my research was the accurate collection of primary data through the process of these individual participant interviews, the creative requirement was developing a literary narrative that unravels the intrigue of the individual participants’ lives in a manner that is emotionally and intellectually affecting. This required that participants were willing to share intimate details of their lives as immigrants. This, in turn, required that a level of trust was established between the participant and myself during the interviewing process. I believe that this outcome was successfully achieved, and this is evidenced by the sharing of family photos and of archival documents about their extended family and anсestors.
• In their interviews, the participants disclosed many aspects of their lives as immigrants to the UK, along with the stories of their past, their vanished dreams and fulfilled hopes, their thoughts and views about the various aspects of their life. As I see this project, it’s not only a story about Russian-speaking immigrants, but also a story of a nation, and of modern society. While The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad can be regarded as a collection of testimonies that add up to a slice of oral history, the reader should bear in mind that it is also a text that has been assembled and arranged with an artistic goal in mind: it seeks to place the reader in a conversation with these immigrants. The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad does not present any conclusions, rather it encourages the reader to explore their own thoughts and appeals to the reader’s imagination and feelings.
• “Immigration and immigrants” is one of the hot-button topics that regularly appears in the media. While immigrants are treated as an unindividualised collective to be placed on the scales of judgement, it is easy to make statements and draw conclusions. It is quite the opposite when you are listening to someone’s individual story. Therefore, I hope that The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad allows readers to make their own judgement about Russians in the UK.
• Humphreys, Michael L., and Tony J. Watson, “Ethnographic Practices: From ‘Writing-up Ethnographic Research’ To ‘Writing Ethnog aphy.” In Organizational Ethnography: Studying the Complexities of Everyday Life, edited by Frans Kamsteeg, Dvora Yanow, Sierk Ybema, and Harry Wels, 40-55. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2009. Accessed 19 February 2024, www.citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/docume t?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=be73810c71a839f0c017d0fc610f58bb20a28897
• Ingridsdotter, Jenny, and Kim Silow Kallenberg. “Ethnography and the Arts: Examining Social Complexities through Ethnographic Fiction.” Etnofoor 30, no. 1 (2018): 57–76. Accessed 19 February 2024, www.jstor.org/stable /26469014.
• Oral History Association. “OHA Guidelines for the Evaluation of Oral Historians.” Accessed 13 August 2023, www.oralhistory.org/oha-guidelines-for-the-evaluation-of-oral-historians/.
• Wilkerson, Isabel. “Interviewing: Accelerated Intimacy.” In Telling True Stories. A Nonfiction Writer’s Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call, 30–34. New York: A Plume Book, 2007.
• The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad
• Life seemed like an endless journey
• — Gaito Gazdanov, The History of a Journey
• Every migrant once was a child … That’s why the story of someone’s journey always begins in the past.
• ***
• It was the middle of autumn, that time of the year when days are rapidly turning short and stone-grey—the sun bleak and pale—when rain occupies cities and roads, and streets, and minds; and the fog, in its mezzo-piano movement, gets underneath the layers of your clothes, then your skin, and then your soul. When everyone and everything moves a note closer to melancholy.
• The lamps around the garden were on. I was standing beside the window, watching as the fallen leaves crawled slowly across the ground …
• I’ve been living in the UK for more than ten years now since the start of 2012. Although, I arrived here for the first time in December of 2007. I had joined my husband for a short three-day stay before we headed off for New Zealand, the country I wanted to call home for the next four years but never could. Because at that time my home was still Moscow.
• Moscow has such a rich and long history; it’s a place where one government has been usurped by another, that has been ruled over by great and weak leaders and more than a few tyrants. Moscow is a place that has birthed a myriad of great writers, musicians, artists, theatre and film directors, but it is also home to millions of ordinary people, like me. My “relationship” with this city is obviously not as long as its history, but Moscow has and always will have a special place in my heart. It is my city, my home, albeit a home of the past. 
• Yet, except for a few photos and gifts, nothing in my Birmingham home reminds me of Moscow. All those things that I once cherished have now been stamped “past” and left where they belong—at my parents.’ So, as I write these words, I know that I don’t have the answer to the questions: When will I go back? Will I go back? Do I need to? I don’t think I do … And as I put pen to pape , I can see my friends’ faces—as if captured by a few snaps of a polaroid—frozen with dismay … unable to understand – How could she? I can see their disbelief as they refuse to understand the unwanted words they’ve just heard. Some years ago, I would have felt the same way. But not now. It’s difficult to describe what Moscow has become for me. She is like a beloved relative with whom I want to stay in touch, though always at a distance.
• Moscow has become a vague city, hidden behind the memories that like a mirage are somehow always beyond your reach. I can’t imagine, what I would feel if I ever went back? Sadness? Melancholy for a lost past? Would I feel like a stranger in a foreign city? Perhaps all of this, or maybe nothing of it at all. Going back to the places you once loved is like meeting an old friend—when those years of separation are suddenly squeezed back in on themselves as if time has been turned backwards, as those years of lost closeness begin to feel like days once more.
• ***
• The unheard rustling of the leaves was drawing me towards my own thoughts.
• I was watching an empty room at the theatre on the other side of the park that soon filled up with actors who began their usual practice. They have been doing it for the past few weeks—repeating the same scenes, on and off, stopping, starting again; they were going in and out of the room, standing together in a circle and then spreading out towards the corners. Occasionally, someone would come closer to the large, ceiling-to-floor, picture window and glance out into the dark as if they were in search of an answer to that same question that I have so often asked myself: Is my life simply a rehearsal?
• ***
• I remember only certain episodes from my past. They are the memories that suddenly come to mind triggered by an unexpected melody, aroma, or a line in a book, just as photos, old letters and postcards that have left their indelible mark. For the most part though, the past is nothing more than a sentiment; it is a place where you can sometimes seek meaning by borrowing from a previous existence. Yet, to write about it is like revisiting a foreign country where you can no longer speak the language.
• I don’t really like to talk about myself; I’m simply more interested in other people. But I suppose, as many writers do, I do eel the need to put something of a personal stamp on proceedings before I pull open the curtains to allow the main players to take centre stage. So, I shall reach back in time in search of the beginning; the only issue is to find that defining moment in time. It all began some thirty years ago, more or less ...
• The first three years of my life were spent in the Tsaritsynskiy district of Moscow; my mum and dad were living with my grandparents, and her older sister Olga and her family. Three families, crowded together in a two-bedroom lower-ground-floor apartment.
• Then, when I was three, we moved into one of the newly built apartment blocks in the south of the city. At that time, Moscow was growing rapidly. And as the outer suburbs began to sprout with the hundreds of apartment blocks required to meet the needs of the expanding city, the old villages, farms, and industrial parks were extinguished. Each of these new districts was supposedly designed to provide all the necessary comforts and amenities for the citizens: they were clone-like colonies of apartment blocks with large flats, schools, GP surgeries, grocery stores, cultural centres, and cinemas—most people found themselves overwhelmed by the idea that they’d finally be moving into their own home instead of a shared communal flat.
• I knew children who grew up in a small communal apartment, sharing one room with their grandparents, parents, and siblings. It wasn’t unusual. “We are in the queue,” people would say with a sigh, never knowing when this queue might end. For some, it never ended. However, while many of my father’s colleagues opted to join the waiting list for a free state apartment—some of them for years and years, while others were simply left with the empty promise following the collapse of the Soviet Union—my parents decided not to wait and were among some of the first Muscovites to buy their propriety, privately, from the city’s cooperative society. Reading my grandmother Galya’s letter—written to my father in 1996—I’ve since learned that she helped him purchase the apartment when he was short of cash.
• We lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the thirteenth floor. I can only remember fragments of the stories my parents would tell me about their voyages to the local furniture shops after they’d secured their apartment. Their tales about how they needed to ask for the help of friends and family to get the essentials, along with a willingness to pay the necessary bribes so you migh be able to add your name to a waiting list. My room was furnished with bits and bobs that I inherited from anywhere and everywhere: a glossy brown wardrobe from my cousin; an old sofa-bed covered with the black, velvet blanket (that for some unknown reason I adored and considered stylish) from my grandmother Valya; iron bookshelves from my dad’s police office; and a brand-new desk, purchased for me a few years later, before I started school. I suspect that’s why I don’t have many memories of my childhood room: it was nothing special. Or maybe it’s because my favourite place to be was my grandparents’ apartment in the Moskvorechye-Saburovo district.
• Soviet Union—Canada—England
• 39 years old
• In the UK since 2005
• ***
• My first thoughts about London: slow, expensive, nice… That said, when I arrived, I didn’t have time to explore the city—I was busy looking for a job and a place to live. I was shocked by London prices. And there were plenty of other unwanted surprises that lay ahead, most of them though were related to the needed paperwork: visas, job permit, getting my teaching qualification recognised.
• Not that any of these issues were particularly new to me as when I was fifteen, I emigrated to Canada with my parents. It was an unplanned migration; I don’t think people migrate like this any more—all of a sudden.
• Like me, my parents were both born and raised in Chelyabinsk. I’m their only child. My dearest childhood memories are about my family: going to the dacha, mushroom hunting, and watching the parades in the public holidays. While during the New Year festivities my parents would take me to see the various children’s shows that were on: the puppet theatre, concerts and plays.
• Every day after school, I would come home, warm up some food and then go to the sports centre. I spent my free time doing acroatics, gymnastics, karate. But I also attended the local art school, where I had a great group of friends and a fabulous teacher, Sergey Mikhailovich Udalov, who used to say that to draw anything, you needed to see it. In the summer he would take us camping in the forest; we would hike to a river or lake, and pitch our tents, or trek to some of the small historic villages where there were still old huts with their traditional Russian folk ornaments. He taught us to see and appreciate the beauty of Russia nature. And then there were those days when he would invite some of the Great Patriotic War veterans to visit us, so that we could draw their portraits. I have always respected those people, as I knew my grandad Zhenya fought in the Great Patriotic War. He was a sniper. It was only after he died, that I found out that he had been sentenced to five years in the Gulag. As someone said, he “punched the clock.” I think he was lucky as he was only accused of some insignificant crime—had it been for political reasons, the outcome might have been quite different. After the war, his name was eventually cleared, and he was even awarded several medals of honour. I suspect it’s also why I became so interested in the authors who wrote about the Gulag system. I read almost the entire Shalamovs’ collection, Eugenia Ginzburg, Solzhenitsyn.
• Then there was Perestroyka. I remember spending a lot of time in queues outside of the grocery shops. Luckily, my grandparents on both sides of the family had their dachas, while one of my grandfathers also rented a plot of land where he grew potatoes. So, we used to spend our summer months gardening. And thanks to the dachas we were seldom short of good food for the table. Of course, there still were times when we had to live for months on end surviving on macaroni and grains. All my favourite dishes consisted of meat, probably because there wasn’t that much meat available in the shops at that time. As a family, we loved being able to come together to share a meal, to eat our favourite dishes: pelmeni, plov, belyashi, Olivier salad, borsh.
• I grew up feeling that all Soviet people were part of one big family. I used to play football in the yard with my mates, while the old folks would sit outside playing dominos. But then the nineties came, and something changed. People became different: it seemed as though everyone we knew suddenly turned into a stranger overnight. It was as if “humanity” disappeared. ‘To be able o get something’ became the motto of those years. People started getting rich—some more than others, some less. Some could afford their first inomarka, a foreign car. The country changed.
• It was around this time that my parents discovered the truth about the nuclear disaster in Chelyabinsk. After the collapse of he Soviet Union, a lot of previously secret information held by the government was released to the public. We found out that in 1957 and 1967 there had been a nuclear disaster, our own local Chernobyl, that no one had known about. They were dumping radioactive discharge into the River Techya and its surrounding area.
• Mum was a doctor, working in the blood transplantation centre, and frequently travelled around the regions of Chelyabinsk to collect blood from donors, and deliver it to those who needed it. After she heard about the radiation, mum realised that she had been collecting contaminated blood from the people who lived in the region. She was so angry, and I remember mum saying, ‘Why doesn’t the State care about us … they treat us like pigs?’
• That was a turning point—my parents decided to emigrate. They didn’t want to go to Moscow or Leningrad, where they would face he same issues as at home. Mum had lost her trust in the government, her belief in the country. So, they explored the alternatives and found a way to migrate to Canada. We had a decent apartment in Chelyabinsk that they sold.
• Our journey to Canada began on a train from Chelyabinsk to Moscow. I spent a day wandering about the city and saw the Kremlin or the first time.
• /
• Figure 1. Dmitri’s archive.
• Almost penniless, we had arrived at the airport looking like gypsies with all our belongings: a cast-iron frying pan, three po s, a kettle, heavy duvets. Both dad and I were dressed in our heavy winter coats and Russian hats. We knew where we were going but had no real plan; there were no flights to Toronto, only to Montreal. So, we flew to Montreal. It was my first ever flight.
• We landed in Canada on the twenty-second of January 1996, still undecided about where it would be best to live, Montreal, Vancouver or Toronto? We liked the idea of Montreal, but we didn’t speak French. Not that our English was much better. So, we hired a car and drove to Toronto, where we found a cheap motel on the outskirts of the city, and we stayed there for the first few days until we managed to rent an apartment in Scarborough.
• The morning after our arrival, I went for a walk, but I was so afraid of getting lost that I was reluctant to do anything but walk in a straight line. I saw Ontario Lake, and some of the city’s skyscrapers. I was trying to count the number of floors because the tallest building in Chelyabinsk only has sixteen floors. But it was so drizzly and foggy that I could hardly see the buildings’ peaks. It was as if they were lost in the sky. Many years later, we would follow this route to remember our first days in the city.
• I had never experienced winter rain, or such warm winters, until we immigrated. I kept telling people that Toronto was the warmest place I had ever lived in; compared to Chelyabinsk, Toronto’s weather was as mild and warm as it was unpredictable.
• All these memories are so dear to me now. But back then, during my first year of immigration, it was all very stressful. The euphoria of moving to a new place quickly vanished. I soon came to feel screwed up; I missed my home and friends, while my parents were busy making money and trying to settle. I had no friends, nothing. I enrolled in a local school. I can still remember my first day. It was a chemistry lesson, and I couldn’t understand a damn thing the teacher said or wrote on the board, even though I tried to use the English-Russian dictionary. What I did get was that I’d already studied everything that they were now tryi g to teach me, in my old school in Russia. That was it.
• I only knew a few words in English, enough to ask for directions, but not enough to understand the replies. I’d try to ask them to point me in the right direction, but instead of pointing they would more usually say, ‘You need to take a bus,’ ‘It’s too far… take a bus….’ It was so frustrating. I didn’t want to take a bloody bus. I had no money, but of course I couldn’t tell them that I didn’t have money for a bus fare.
• We walked everywhere in those first weeks. Even after the immigration authorities started giving us free bus tokens to get to he local language school, my parents would economise and walk to the language centre so that they could save their tokens. We would use them to catch a bus to go shopping on the weekend.
• Eventually the school asked if I’d like to join an ESL class, where I was the only Russian student; there was also a girl from Israel who could speak Russian and, a bit later, a couple of new guys from the Ukraine and Latvia joined our group. It took me about a year to learn English. Though, English with a heavy Russian accent. I’ve never bothered about trying to change my pronu ciation—I’m not ashamed of it at all. It’s enough to know that when I speak, everyone understands me.
• Of course, we soon discovered that we were in the same “immigrants’ line” as everyone else. I still remember the day when we went to the immigration centre, we were more than a little surprised to see that most immigrants were from Sri-Lanka. That was a new and shocking experience. I’d never seen Asian or Black people before; I stared at them intrigued by their traditional dress, and the way they behaved.
• It was only after I began my university studies—with so many international students on its campus—that the idea of multiculturalism became my new normal. I struck up friendships with people I liked, regardless of their nationality or ethnicity.
• Lots of things were new and strange to me there, like distances between places and the way people lived. In Chelyabinsk, as in the whole of Russia, most people live in apartment blocks, while in Canada they more typically live in houses that are located far from each other and from the necessary amenities. Those suburbs were designed for people with cars, not for just people. Ce tainly, the public transport wasn’t regular and tended to be slow—it used to take ages to get home from the city. So eventually, we bought second-hand bikes that we used all the time.
• Canadians were polite, too polite sometimes. They would use ‘excuse me, ‘sorry’ endlessly. ‘I will forgive you this time,’ I would reply to them.
• The thing that amused me was how the Canadians dressed: one layer, another layer, fluffy headband, and sports shoes. They looked like Napoleon’s army in retreat in 1812 after Borodino. I used to put on a shirt or jumper, a warm coat, a hat, a scarf, boots. I have to say, when I moved to England I stopped paying attention to the way people dressed.
• Another thing was how they liked to politely hold a door open for each other … you could be half a kilometre away, but they’d still stand there, holding that door open, waiting in patient anticipation of your needing to run and for you to offer up that obligatory ‘thank you.’
• And then there was their stupid small talk… I still detest it, but now I’m aware of it.
• While in the shops, the moment you stepped through the door you’d hear someone ask, ‘Can I help you?.’ It was so annoying… wha did they want from me? Leave me alone, let me have a look. Although, what was worse was that I had no idea how to get rid of them. That was until I finally learned their standard form of a polite reply, ‘I’m just looking.’ Those words made my life so much easier.
• And then there was that oddest of remarks that I was initially absolutely clueless about: ‘What’s up?.’ My English wasn’t good. So, eventually, I got around to asking one of my friends. He said, it’s a simple way of asking, ‘How are you?.’ Although, what he didn’t do was to explain that no one actually expects to hear a response. That was unfortunate because when I next heard ‘What’s up?’ and I rattled off my practised response, the person completely ignored my reply and kept walking. Talk about dismayed. At least I was until I was told that the standard but irrelevant response is a simple, ‘Not much….’
• It’s just all funny little things.
• A bit after we moved into the apartment block, other Russian-speaking immigrants started arriving. One guy arrived from Ukraine—Yasha—he was a super-attendant [laughing]. He was a housekeeper. He lived in this apartment block and worked there, maintaining the building.
• Everyone used to ask each other the same question, ‘Did you find a job according to your profession or not?’ There weren’t many people who did. Those lucky ones, who managed to get the same type of job as they had in Russia, would hear, ‘Wow, that’s so cool.’ It meant that your life was sorted, that you were lucky and in the right place. However, most of our neighbours’ lives we en’t that easy: someone worked as a pizza driver, others did some part-time shifts, others were on benefits, others on benefits and doing some freelancing. And we used to talk to each other, listening to all these stories. That’s life.
• My parents found Canada challenging. They started slow, with any small job at first. They delivered leaflets, then dad found a job as a pizza driver. I had a part-time job, too—roofing. It was dirty and hard work.
• Mum did best; she retrained as a doctor in Canada. From my point of view, she was a hero. She had to confirm her medical qualiication and spent years restudying so that she could practise medicine in Canada. She resat all her exams again, and then redid her internship in the USA. It was tough. My father—he was an engineer in Russia—wasn’t as lucky; he ended up doing all sorts o jobs. Now he’s working as an administrator with my mother. So, of course, he’s more of a pessimist when it comes to their life in Canada, but they have everything they ever wanted. And they’re happy.
• As for me, in Russia, I was an okay student. Usually, I managed to achieve Bs, maybe even a few As, and the occasional C. Perhaps it was because, when I was a teen, the atmosphere in Russia wasn’t good: we had “New Russians,” oligarchs who thrived, while the honest and well-educated people ended up jobless. My mates and I used to think, why bother with a higher education if you were simply going to end up on the street, like all those professors and doctors, who were now struggling to survive. It’d be better to be like those well-built mafia guys in their leather jackets, driving expensive cars. I had no ambition to study. So, I suspect we left at the right moment.
• Suffice it to say, even in Canada, I didn’t find my way immediately. There was a period when more Russian teens appeared in ou apartment block, and there were the typical Russian parties, when we used to sit on the stairs of the fire exits, drinking vodka, smoking, and listening to music. Kino’s verse resonated with me, ‘If you have a pack of cigarettes in your pocket then your day was not too bad.’ Yasha used to get very upset with our behaviour. There were plenty of conflicts too. Although the thing that annoyed me most about my Russian friends in Canada is that they za bazar ne otvechali. They all seemed nice as they looked at you with a smile, but what they did was different from what they said—and I never liked it.
• But then something changed in me. I started to work hard at school; I was motivated by the desire of becoming a doctor like my mum. When I finished school, I enrolled in Toronto University, and we moved to the city centre which let me explore it better. I had excellent grades, ninety percent in most of the subjects. Although, during my second year, I had a change of heart. I understood that the medical profession wasn’t for me, just as I knew that I liked art. Though I realised that, while I had some talent, my artwork would be difficult to sell. At that time, I thought I needed to choose a safe profession. So, to cut a long sto y short, I graduated from Toronto University and from the School of Fine Arts. I became a secondary school teacher of science and have been working as a teacher for fourteen years. I work on my art in the evening and during the weekends and have now been exhibited in a few London and Las Vegas galleries.
• ***
• After living in Canada for ten years I decided to move to London.
• I had met my wife to be, Vivien, while I was studying at university. She’s also a teacher. Our eight-year-old daughter, Lana, who speaks English and Russian and loves to sing, was born in London.
• When I moved to London, given the exchange rate at the time, everything seemed so expensive compared to Canada. I never though I’d be able to afford to live in the city. I rented a room in Slough and, within a month, Vivien joined me. For the first three years, we lived in a shared apartment that we frequently needed to change for one reason or another: once the owners asked us to leave because they’d put the house on the market; the next time because they wanted to do some renovation work ... Then we found our house.
• In terms of work, it’s easier to find employment in the UK. And salaries are higher. Really, if you have a decent job, you don’t need to worry about much, other than the visa being automatically cancelled when the job contract ends. So, while you’re working, you need to look for another job to stay in the country; you’re consistently stressing over what you’ll do if you don’t secure the job. The first high school I worked at was problematic; I prefer not to remember that time. Then I moved to another school and started to sort the needed paperwork. The usual dull stuff.
• I get on well with my work colleagues. Many of whom have become good friends. Which reminds me of a story from about nine years ago: we agreed that we’d celebrate Christmas with a Russian-style party. So, I explained to them that in Russia, instead of going to the pub people would bring their alcohol and something to eat to their workplace for a celebration. Though my friends liked this idea, they still wanted to go to the pub afterwards. So, I brought some bottles of vodka and simple snacks—gherkins, rye bread. And my friends got a few bottles too, so we ended up with four or five litres of vodka. Then I said, ‘In the case of a yone involved in science, they have to drink from test-tubes.’ So, we drank our vodka and listened to the USSR’s national anthem; my friends liked it and got absolutely hammered. Although they still found the energy to go to the pub. Of course, given the fun that was had by all, we agreed to repeat the experience the following year.
• At school, I will occasionally joke with my students, ‘You see this brick, it was given to me when I worked for the KGB…,’ or, when they are doing some laboratory test, I’ll say, ‘There are many dangerous chemicals here, but as a Russian spy I can assure you, that there is no poison.’ And when the Skripals were poisoned, I would joke, ‘We don’t have any poisonous stuff here, but please don’t try to taste it.’ But to be honest, my students don’t usually ask me about Russia, they live in their own world. Still, sometimes, if I think it might be of interest, I’ll tell them bits about my country. Or, if I’m feeling a bit mischievous, like the time when someone asked me about Novichok and Skripal, I say,
• ‘Is he still alive?’
• ‘Yes.’
• ‘So, then it wasn’t the Russian secret services. If they’d wanted him dead, then he’d be dead. They wouldn’t keep him alive.’
• There was a time when people would ask me why Russia did this or that. I would typically say that it had nothing to do with me or feel it necessary to explain that I hadn’t lived in Russia for a long time. The truth, however, is that Russia is a power that the West should consider and respect. Which is why you can only look at the West’s aggression towards Russia with humour. It seems that as they lose their own power and stability that they become ever more belligerent. It’s as if they’ll do whatever they deem necessary to show that they are still strong, and that there is only one threat: Russia. Nonsense.
• Someone asked me, is there a Russian community in London? Yes, I said. But the British don’t really know much about Russians; hey only know about the Polish, Indians, or Pakistanis because most immigrants in London are from those countries. They know about Russian oligarchs and that there are quite a few Russians involved in the IT sector, but they know nothing about ordinary Russian people.
• I have Russian, British and Canadian citizenship; and while I haven’t been to Russia since 1996, I still consider myself Russian. Nothing has changed in me, even if my wife thinks it has. I’ve changed as a person (since our daughter was born, I stopped drinking, I prefer to spend my time with my family), but my identity has not changed. I’m one hundred per cent Russian; it’s in my soul … I’m proud of being a Russian.
• At the same time, I know that if I go back, after so long, Russians will think of me as a foreigner. That said, I do want to go back for a visit at some stage, to show my daughter Moscow and St. Petersburg. When I was young, before we left for Canada, I seldom travelled beyond the borders of Chelyabinsk. We simply couldn’t afford such trips—although once I got to visit Leningrad. But after we immigrated to Canada, mum was really worried about me going to Russia; she felt so traumatised by the country’s regime. Besides, at that time it was too far to go back, there was no reason, and no money.
• We continue to visit our parents in Canada every year, and we like being able to travel around Europe. Our plan, however, is to stay in England. It’s home.
• I used to love visiting my grandparents: three flights of stairs and I was in front of a brown, quilted, faux-leather door tha grandad would open. The aroma of onion, sunflower oil, and fresh dough, wrapping invitingly around me, used to fill the whole space of my grandparents’ khrushchyovka. The tiny hallway had its dimmed light, and flowery green wallpaper; on one side there was a thin rectangular mirror, on the other was a door to the bathroom, hooks for the clothes, and a shelf where grandad hung his fedora hats—opposite the entrance. Everything was old and shabby, like they’d lived here their entire lives and inherited this apartment from another family member. But in fact, my grandparents only moved there towards the end of the 1980s.
• While my grandparents’ apartment wasn’t large, I still loved exploring every hidden nook and cranny. One of my favourite places was the cloakroom; it was no more than two square metres in size, with a lightbulb that dangled from the middle of the ceiling at the end of a piece of wire. The room was filled with all kinds of things: grandad’s old coats and hats with their strong, musty smell; wool-knitted shawls and socks; rubber boots and fishing rods; the wicker baskets that were taken out when they went mushroom hunting; newspapers and magazines; broken chairs; and other bric-a-brac. Deep inside this closet, there was a large pile of duvet covers, pillows, and quilts that I would climb into so that I could cover myself with a few blankets, pretending that I was in a dark, fairy-tale forest, sitting in an izbushka, hiding from Baba Yaga or some other dangerous, mysterious creature. I would spend hours hiding there until someone started yelling, ‘Olya, it’s time to go…’ or ‘Get out of there, food is on the table, and it’s getting cold.’
• There was a brown-lacquer, glass-door cabinet in the lounge; and behind those doors, there was a treasure trove: the traditional porcelain teacups and saucers; crystal glasses and bowls for jams; and dishes for salads and fish. Most of them were only there to be displayed and were used only on special occasions; in fact, some of them were never touched at all because they were considered to be too precious (though I don’t think any of them really were). That’s why it was such a nightmare for my grandmother when grandad Kolya would let me open the doors, saying ‘take anything you’d like to play with.’ The first thing I’d always grab was my favourite tiny, yellow-glass bowl—it looked as if it belonged in a doll’s house—with its carved metal base and ornamental flowers. Then a doll-sized spoon that was far too small to be called a “tea-spoon.” Then I’d take several cups, saucers a d plates that I’d sneak into the kitchen where I would grab some flour and sugar, as well as a few biscuits, so that I could organise a tea party for my doll, or pretend to be running a café, or a corner store, while granddad would pretend to be a friendly and polite customer who would visit my shop to buy something for his home, or sit to enjoy an ice-cream at the café.
• ‘Again, you let Olya play with the food,’ a very strict inspector would say as she appeared from around the corner. My grandfa her and I quickly shut up shop.
• My grandmother was horrified to see me playing with food. The older generations always hated to see food going to waste; they ever threw anything away, just as they struggled when they saw a half-empty plate on their table. They expected that a meal would be eaten to the very last crumb. A lunchtime soup—always with bread and butter—was a must. Like so many Russians of their ge eration, they had endured suffering and starvation. So, for them, food wasn’t just food, it was the sign of a good and peaceful life. And to throw the food away or to play with it was to shake the foundations of family stability.
• Perhaps that’s why when I think of my grandmother Valentina (or Babushka Valya, as I called her), I find myself embraced by the aromatic memories of sweet dough and compotes of fresh berries. She was always busy, making pirozhki or blini in her heavy, old, iron frying pan—dipping half an onion into the sunflower oil before wiping it around her pan and pouring in a practised measure of her creamy dough. Her pancakes always had a hint of onion smell about them.
• I used to sit beside grandad, enjoying the wafting aroma that drifted from the kitchen, then I’d sneak off for pancakes. I loved to eat them straight from the pan, steaming hot, burning my fingers, when the dough still felt a bit raw, before they had a chance to finally set. Grandmother always let me steal at least one or two before telling me to wait.
• Their kitchen was so small that there was just enough room for a table for two, positioned about a metre away from the stove.
• Once the pancakes were made, gran would drop a large dollop of butter on top of the last one and I would sit there salivating, watching as the butter slowly melted. Her pancakes were proudly placed at the centre of the table. Grandmother would set out the plates, spoons, sour cream, and a crystal bowl of home-made strawberry or raspberry jam; while grandad found space for the ex ra tabourets that were needed, squeezing us all around the tiny table. And then the feast began.
• As a child, I loved to sit in the kitchen, half-listening to the adult conversation around me and watching my grandmother whipping eggs, sifting flour, rubbing butter. I would made my mental notes; that’s how I learnt to cook. So, as I stand in contemplation before my own oven and make the necessary sign of the cross, it’s gran’s voice I hear, ‘Hopefully, it will be fine, hopefully, it won’t fall.’
• Babushka Valya was such a strong woman but also caring and loving. A truly Russian woman who didn’t have time for words like “ ired,” or “enough,” or “calm down.” They weren’t part of her vocabulary, at least not until her very end. A week before she died, she told mum that she was tired; that she wanted to move on. She battled cancer for some years.
• My grandmother came from a farming family. She was born in the mid-1920s, in the village of Baburino, in the Tula region. You’d struggle to find the place on a modern map. Where the village and houses once stood, now there’s an empty overgrown field of dried-out grass the occasional tree, the ruins of an old church, and the grave of Nikolay Gerbel.
• Babushka Valya attended elementary school for just three years. Every day she would walk the six or so kilometres to school in the neighbouring village; she learnt to read and write, and how to count and multiply, and then her parents decided that she’d had enough education for a girl. So, she spent the rest of her childhood helping her mother to look after her younger siblings and doing chores around the house. But she was a wise woman. Her wisdom was shaped by her life’s experience. And while her handwriting was always childlike and full of grammatical errors, she instinctively knew right from wrong and never judged anyone. A kind and thoughtful woman who listened to her heart. Which reminds me of the story she once shared about the Great Patriotic War: she would have been around sixteen when it started.
• ‘It was early morning. My mum, little brothers, and sisters were still asleep,’ that is how grandmother always began this story that I often asked her to retell.
• ‘I always woke before everyone else,’ she would say, ‘to feed the animals. And to get the water for us and our neighbours; and for old granny Lena who, even though she was blind and weak, still did a lot around her house. But because of her sight she was worried about getting her own water. So, I helped … every day.
• It was as I was walking back from the well that someone shouted, “Stoy.” I turned around and saw a German soldier standing no more than three metres away, his rifle pointed straight at me. Oh Lord, what shall I do, I thought. He will kill me now. I felt so angry, what right did he have to kill me? Why should he kill me? If he killed me, who would look after my brothers and siste s, my mum, the house? No, I was not going to give in. So, I put my water bucket down on the ground and walked towards him, shouting, “Why did you come here? Go away, go to where you came from, you bastard! We don’t have anything here, there are only children and old people in this village, there are no partisans, no weapons.” I didn’t know where my braveness came from; I was hoping that neighbours would wake up from me screaming.
• The young soldier was staring at me, confused and horrified. He put his rifle down and mumbled, “Mlako … mlako?” I looked at him. He was so young, like my older brother Nikolay who had been killed in the third month of war: so thin and hungry. I felt pity for him. I don’t know why. I could chase him away, but what if he killed me? I was terrified. But I got him some milk and a bit of bread. He took it, thanked me and wandered off. No one in the village saw it. And I never told a soul.’
• It was only many years later that I came to truly understand the humanity and courage of my grandmother’s act of kindness towa ds the very people who had killed her brother. In Stalin’s Russia, helping the enemy was a death sentence. My grandmother was lucky that no one saw her good deed that day.
• ***
• Unlike my grandmother, who liked to share the stories of her life, my grandad Nikolay (though, for me he always was Dedushka Kolya) seldom mentioned his past. My mother and her sister never learned much about his life. And sadly, neither did I. I’ve always wondered what drove his determination not to share his stories. I’ll never know. But looking through the old family photos, I see a happy young man, with bright blue eyes and a cheeky smile.
• My grandfather was the dearest and kindest person that I’ve ever met. I loved him so much and have lived to regret not spending enough time with him. I guess I was just a typical teenager, with other things to do. But this is what I do know.
• Grandad Kolya was born in 1931 in the village of Izvekovo which is in the Smolensk region. Both his father and his older brother were killed in the Second World War, within the space of two years. While there is not much information about the death of his father, Vassily Mikhailovich Bogachëv, there is some about his older brother Mikhail. He was a Lieutenant of the 28th Infantry Nevelskaya Red Banner Division of the Armed Forces of the USSR; Mikhail was killed and buried in Jelgavas aprinkis, Dobele, Latvia, on the 10th of January 1945, just a few months before the end of the war. Grandad never spoke about them, or about the wa . Sometimes I wonder if he considered himself lucky to have survived both the war and the repressive Stalinist era that followed. I can only guess how devastating it would have been for my grandad to lose his father at the age of twelve, and two years la er to lose his brother.
• My grandad lived in a village that was at the centre of the German occupation. The German soldiers moved from village to village murdering thousands of civilians as they went. It was only as I worked on this memoir that I discovered that one evening my grandad had woken to the smell of smoke that filled their family home. Even now it remains unclear if the house had been set on ire by German soldiers or by accident. He had rushed to wake everyone. It was only minutes later, when everybody regrouped outside, that his mother, Maria Egorovna, suddenly began to scream, shouting her daughter’s name, while struggling to get back into the burning house. She never forgave her son for what had happened—for the death of his youngest sister, Galya—and, shortly after, threw him out the house.
• Which is how grandad ended up in Moscow. He arrived in the Soviet Union’s capital in 1946, and was taken in by his maternal grandmother, Marfa Savel’evna Arsukova. She lived in one of the communal apartments in the city’s centre, not far from Paveletsky railway station. She seems to have been a very kind woman who never believed that my grandad was to blame for his little sister’s death. I don’t know how long it took him to settle into his new life, but eventually he enrolled at the 46th Vocational Technical College; he graduated as a lathe operator, in 1949. Following his graduation, grandad worked at the 47th Factory for six months; then he was conscripted into the army for three years of compulsory military service. They sent him to the Caucasus’ border between Turkey and Georgia, where he spent his first year as a sniper, and the following two years as an army motorcyclist. He adored Georgia, its culture and magnificent nature—until the end of his life, he used to like to listen to Georgian music and always had a great respect for all things Georgian. He also fell in love with a local Georgian girl, however, luckily for me, her parents said no to his proposal. Of course, grandad eventually got over his broken heart and returned to Moscow. He met my grandmother and in 1954 they married. If life were only that simple; it never is. Which is why—whenever I take a moment to reflect on all those seemingly insignificant events that affect the course of a life—I often get a shiver up my spine.
• My mother once told me that when she was about five or six they went to one of Moscow’s ponds to spend a family weekend there. And while mum and her older sister (my auntie Olga) went into the water, my grandparents—grandad was in one of his best outfits: beige linen suit, tie, a brand-new fedora hat—sat on the bank and kept an eye them. Suddenly, mum, having been caught by an undertow, got into trouble; auntie Olga unable to do anything, started panicking, screaming out. In a matter of seconds grandad tossed his new fedora hat toward grandma and dove into the water. Knowing my grandfather as I did, I’ve always been able to imagine the drama of the situation, as if I had been there: grandad emerging sopping wet from the water, his suit clinging to his frame as he looked towards his water-logged watch and laughed at his destroyed tie, my mother and auntie, one in each of his arms, a smile of relief across his face.
• That’s how I always think about my grandfather: a brave and kind man whose world was his family. I remember the echo of his happy voice and our conversations “about everything and nothing,” the image of him sitting at his usual place, on the red-fabric armchair next to the balcony window in front of my grandparents’ black and white TV, his daily newspaper and crosswords that he would be meticulously working through, resting on the small coffee table beside his chair, and a cup of strong, black tea, or sometimes his favourite glass of port, or a beer and a piece of rye bread sprinkled with salt, fresh spring onion and topped-off with a few bits of sardine. He always used to sit there, occasionally looking beyond the window, off into the distance, towards his future or past. After grandma died in 2002, he hardly ever moved away from the window. He would sit there, keeping an eye out, as if waiting for her to come home. ‘I’ll see her again …,’ he would say. Three years later, I found him there, alone and beside his chair.
• Soviet Union—England
• 63 years old
• In the UK since 2003
• [Sofia and I are sitting at a small table in Sheffield’s Virgin Money lounge, drinking coffee and talking for the third time.
• It’s a balmy day. Through the large window I can see people standing at a bar chatting. It seems like everyone has decided to grab an opportunity to enjoy the sun and warm weather. Sheffield has been welcoming to me. It is my first time in the city and the first time that I have met Sofia face-to-face. She is blonde and wearing very little make-up. She is dressed in a white and purple crochet top and white straight cut trousers. She is talking to me about her past and her first husband in such a light manner that one wouldn’t believe that this woman, a successful primary school teacher who was happy in her work, inspiring young children, used to come back home from school to be given her daily helping of punches and harsh words.]
• ***
• Many people in Russia look differently at domestic abuse; my ex-husband was a great manipulator—everyone liked him. For a long time, I had listened to his promises that he would stop, that he would change. I spent so much money on taking him to doctors. All in vain.
• In the end, I didn’t have any love for him. But I don’t regret anything other than my lost health.
• When I finally realised that nothing would change, that I was living an empty life with an abuser, I packed my few belongings into a small suitcase and left Alyoshino village, where I had lived for the previous thirty-five years. I quit my job and moved to Samara, where my father lived.
• I needed a break from everything, from marriage, men, my old life … But even when I left my husband, he didn’t let me live my ew life, he refused to let me go. He stalked me, followed me everywhere. Sometimes he would break the streetlamp so he could wait for me in the dark. I was working at a new job, at the local orphanage. I was being paid the smallest of salaries; the money was a joke—almost nothing. Sometimes, I couldn’t even afford to buy sanitary products and had to rely on the local church’s charity donations.
• But the last thing I wanted to do, at the age of forty-six, was to move in with my dad. So, I rented a tiny room. I only had a bed and a bedside table, which was placed tight against the wall beneath the angular ceiling. But I was happy there, happy to be rid of the past.
• It was winter when I finally went to see my father. I brought him some gifts and spent a fabulous day with him. I took the las bus home. It was freezing cold, even inside the bus. The year was 2002, and Samara was about as backward as a city could be. The bus was a wreck and rattled along the bumpy road. I looked out into the darkness beyond the window, shivering from the cold, thinking soon I will be home. Home? What home? That little closet? I was so happy to be going back there. Then I realised I was a cosmopolitan. I could make anywhere my home.
• ***
• I was born in December 1955, in Sovetskoye village. My mother was from Western Ukraine, and my father—a military officer—was f om Samara.
• My parents met at the end of the Great Patriotic War as the Soviet army freed Ukraine. They went on a date to the local dance club, and then on a second. They had arranged for a third date, but the army refused my father leave, so he passed her a note via a friend, “Liuba, will you marry me?” They were married and moved back to my dad’s place, where they lived together until my mother’s death. She passed away during a hospital operation when she was sixty. My parents had two kids, my older brother and myself. Because of dad’s military profession, we travelled a lot. As a child, I do remember constantly moving around the Samara region. I changed schools so many times. Maybe that’s why I never feel attached to a place. My father was a true communist, who believed in the Communist party and in our Soviet leaders. And while my mother wasn’t a well-educated woman, she was wise. All the “right” things I know about life come from her wisdom, from what she used to share with me. She worked at different assistant jobs, like in libraries and offices. I inherited my mother’s Ukrainian accent.
• After I graduated from the Samara State Pedagogic University, my first job was as a primary school teacher at Alyoshino village. I was good at what I was doing. I’ve never had children of my own, but I love kids. Although, oddly enough, I never liked my schoolteachers or my time at school. I was a good student, though. If anybody had told me that I would be a schoolteacher when I grew up, I wouldn’t have believed them – not for a moment. But I became a teacher despite those terrible school experiences. They made me the teacher I am. I became a different type of teacher, I worked hard to be the best teacher I could be, and I was. People gave bribes to the head of school, so their kids were guaranteed a place in my class. Not that I ever saw any of the money; that all ended up in the pockets of the head and deputy head. Regardless, I loved my job, and I loved my pupils most of all. They were a family to me.
• I didn’t really want to move from Alyoshino. My life was there. My first love, my husband. My grandmother and parents are buried there, and my older brother too … I still feel guilty that he died. He was only fifty. He came to visit with his eldest son. He suddenly became unwell. I knew something was seriously wrong, so I called an ambulance. But they refused to come, simply because they didn’t have enough petrol. So, I ran to the neighbour and pleaded with him to drive my brother to the nearest hospital. And what did the doctors do, when we arrived? They offered him paracetamol, even though I begged them to do something, to help him. But they only shrugged, like what can they do if there isn’t the medication to help … It was the nineties, an awful, poor time … Maxim died there, of a heart attack.
• ***
• [I asked Sofia, ‘How did you feel when you first arrived in the UK?’
• ‘That’s how,’ she says, handing me a photo of a smiling woman, in a bright red turtleneck jumper, her arms spread wide. It was as if she wanted to embrace the whole world. She was definitely happy. I wonder if she felt herself finally free.
• She then tells me how it was that she came to live in the UK (or, more correctly how she came to meet her British husband).]
• It’s not something that upper-class people will do. It is not very popular, perhaps, better not to talk about it … We met onli e. Almost every week, when I finished my work, I used to go to a kiosk and buy a newspaper to read on the way home. I saw adverts about foreign men who were looking for Russian wives. And one day, I thought, why not… Russian men weren’t interested in me, I was too old and too poor for them. As soon as they heard that I didn’t have my own apartment, that I didn’t have a good job, they disappeared. I mean, they were happy to have some fun. But they weren’t interested in a serious relationship. So, after being on my own for about three years, I decided that I wanted to get married again. So, with that thought, one day, ten minutes before the kiosk closed, I bought a newspaper and saw the advert about the Samara Bridal Agency Natasha and Steve. My first thought was, will I be able to register if I don’t speak English? But then, I saw a little note explaining that they would translate letters and help with further communication. So, I went to the agency and asked them to register me.
• ‘Please, don’t get me wrong,’ said Steven, ‘you’re pretty, but you’re too old; you don’t stand a chance of finding someone. Usually, the men want younger wives.’
• ‘How about I pay you for the registration?’ I asked him. After that, of course, he changed his mind. He asked for a hundred US dollars, which was a huge amount for me, my monthly salary. Normally, there’s no charge for females—the men who register on the site pay for everything.
• ‘Okay, where do you want to live?’ he asked me.
• ‘It’s not about where; it’s about with whom.’
• I felt overwhelmed by the thought that I might move somewhere one day. Steve smiled, and what is more, he agreed that I could pay by instalments.
• After I registered with the agency, I began receiving letters from all around the world: from New Zealand, China, USA and Canada. It felt quite surreal, to receive the first letters and then to write replies. Then, one day I received a letter from the UK.
• I exchanged several emails with my husband-to-be. He told me that his grandparents were from the Baltic, that they were Russia s. Of course, they weren’t Russians, maybe they had spoken some Russian. They would have been Lithuanians.
• After exchanging several emails, we agreed that Leo would come to Russia so that we could meet in person. At our first meeting—I showed him Samara, we went for a walk in the park—we hardly spoke, simply because I barely knew English. Instead of words, I used gestures and smiles. I’ve always believed that if two people truly want to understand each other, they’ll always find a way.
• I had been living in the UK for six months before I wrote to my father to tell him that I’d moved and re-married. Unfortunately, my father has never met my husband; they have only spoken over the phone. Shortly after I emigrated, dad was diagnosed with cancer. I didn’t want to bring him to the UK (only because I knew he wouldn’t like it here), but I did find a good carer for him, and I regularly sent him some money. I was so glad that I could do this for him because I know if this had happened when I lived in Russia, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything—I wouldn’t have had the money needed to help him.
• I decided to leave Russia because I wanted to start a new life and not because I wanted to prove my doubters wrong. I was going to be with someone, to be somewhere. This is why, I suppose, I was able to assimilate myself so quickly into my new life abroad. I had never thought, not even for a moment, that my life would be as fulfilled and happy as it is. My husband hadn’t told me that he had a car or that he owned a nice big house in Sheffield—he grew up there. His wealth—these added benefits—came as a real surprise; I just liked his company. I’m so grateful to God that my life was changed, so much for the better.
• I’m sixty-three now, but I have kept up with learning English, which has given me the courage and belief that I can keep learning more. My own self-development has always been so important to me. And it is satisfying, especially given one of the teachers in Russia once told me that I was wasting my time even trying to learn English at such a late age, that I never would be able o speak English and that I would never be able to adapt to a life abroad. That was the typically Russian mentality—“I know what is right and wrong.”
• Shortly after I arrived, I enrolled in a course to study English. You know what they say: you need to work hard when you live in the village. Well, it’s the same when you emigrate. If you want something, then you need to work hard at it. So half a year later, I found a job as an office cleaner at an NHS hospital.
• Then I also began volunteering with my husband at Sheffield’s Cathedral—we were living in South Yorkshire at that time—helping homeless people. My husband saw an advert that a charity was looking for Russian-speaking volunteers, so I began working as an assistant. It was quite empowering as I felt that other people also needed me: I was helping the homeless who didn’t speak English. I used to go with them to the foodbanks, GPs, and local councils. Six months later, the charity asked if I’d like to take a training course to teach English as a foreign language. Looking back and thinking about my standard of English at the time, I eally shouldn’t have taken up the offer, but I didn’t think twice—it was like an adventure and extremely challenging. Still, I completed the course and got my certificate. And I’ve been teaching English ever since. Currently, I teach English twice a week at the Muslim community centre. Yes, I am a Russian Orthodox, while all my students are Muslims—from Pakistan, Chechnya, Ukraine—but I’ve never felt any conflict of interest because of my faith. On Saturdays, through the Hope for Justice programme, I teach English to a guy from Poland who told me he never wants to go back there. I don’t know his background, but he seems terribly lost and has real problems with alcohol.
• Of course, my friends in Russia can’t understand why I got into volunteering; and they were shocked to hear I’d been doing this work for free. But for me, volunteering was simply the right thing to do. It helps you a lot. If you don’t know what to do, if you can’t find a job, go and do some volunteer work. At a minimum, it provides you with those much-needed references that are so important here.
• So, the teacher back in Russia was wrong; because not only did I learn English, but now I’m also teaching the language to refugees and immigrants.
• ***
• When I left Russia, I didn’t miss it. I don’t know why. I missed the people but not the place: I missed the new group of friends I’d made in Samara. Of course, I had relatives who lived there, not that I could call them close. They just tolerated me when I visited.
• Anyway, my new friends were different; they were so kind to me. During my first few weeks in Samara, I became ill, but I could not go to a local GP because I didn’t have my city registration. Fortunately, though, when I told my new friend, Larisa, without saying a word, she took her wallet, went to the pharmacy, and bought me what I needed. It really meant so much. Maybe it sounds stupid, but my new friends were a tremendous support to me. We talked a lot. Larisa was wealthy, but she spoke to me as if I were an equal. They all became my close friends. And, even now, we still see each other whenever I visit Russia.
• I also missed the children from the orphanage where I worked. I felt so sorry for them. It’s impossible to explain how those kids, brought up without ever knowing their parents, felt. I grew up in a happy, steady family. Those kids were lost.
• It was some time before I learned that my husband was brought up in children’s shelter. I knew something wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t know what ... Eventually, he opened-up and told me that his biological parents had given him away because they’d thought of him as a financial burden. So, after what I’d experienced in Russia, I could understand him. I don’t think our marriage would have been happy if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d previously worked at the orphanage in Samara. I simply wouldn’t have understood Leo. Life as an orphan is such a traumatic thing.
• ***
• Everything looked so strange to me when I first moved to England. Given it is such a multicultural place, I was so curious about what other people thought about life in England. It seemed the British thought that if you didn’t speak English, then you were an idiot who wouldn’t be able to comprehend what was going on around you. In fact, I understood people very well, just as I k ew what was happening in the offices that I cleaned.
• I never thought of myself as an immigrant before until I stumbled across the word about five years ago. It was only then that I wondered if I was an immigrant. Obviously, from the immigration services’ perspective, I am. But it certainly isn’t how I defined myself. I came here to be happy. So, the rest is nothing but semantics.
• Of course, I know that I will never be like the locals—my English will never be like theirs. And although my husband’s academic friends were all so friendly and polite when he first introduced me, I always suspected that that was only because I was with him; and they would never have accepted me into their circle if I was on my own. After all, I look quite different to them: I like to dress nicely, like a pretty girl. The British females would never choose to wear the outfits I like—they would consider them flashy. While well-educated females are usually slim, they generally don’t seem to care about how they look; they don’t dress up or take much care with their hairstyles.
• Britain is a “me-culture.” People are private here; they don’t like to talk about themselves in the terms we used to talk abou ourselves and others in Russia. Russians are different. If we don’t like someone or something, we won’t hide it; we say what we think straight out, unlike the British, who would prefer not to say that they don’t like you. They’re more tolerant, in that egard.
• This reminds me of something that happened shortly after I arrived in the UK, when Leo and I were standing in a queue at the supermarket’s checkout. There was a Pakistani or Indian woman in front of us and an old English-looking guy behind, who unexpectedly said, “There are too many people in this country.” The Asian woman in front of us instantly turned around to angrily stare at him. “What’s your problem?” she said. I don’t remember what he said in reply, but what I do recall is that his original comment hadn’t been targeted at her, it was just a rhetorical remark. However, what surprised me was how my husband simply chose to ignore the angry exchange.
• So, I’m different; occasionally I can be overly emotional. Still, having lived here for as long as I have now, I’ve learned that in such a cosmopolitan and culturally diverse country, it’s best to accept life the way it is and for what it is, rather than offering-up opinions and advice. After all, if I can’t accept England as England, then I should go back to Russia.
• However, when I do go back to Russia, I don’t ever feel embarrassed by my behaviour. Although, I have noticed that I do tend to feel different now: I’ve stopped criticising many things as England has taught me and I keep most things to myself. And while I’m grateful to my motherland for everything that it’s given me, the way they treat you in Russia can still be very annoying.
• ***
• I know Russian women who arrive in England often want to grab their chance. What chance? Many think that good fortune is meeti g and marrying a rich guy; they don’t understand that they won’t necessarily be happy. It’s an illusion. They think that if they can get to the UK, they’ll be treated like queens. But that’s not how it works. They need to understand that despite that for une, it will still be a fresh start. If they understand this, then they stand a chance.
• Everything that has happened to me seems to have happened for a reason. I never even dared to imagine that I would end up as happy as I am and living comfortably in England one day.
• I grew up as an average child. I didn’t have any particular talents, or if I did, they remained undiscovered. But I’ve always een a dreamer, even though, where I come from, that was always frowned upon. Not that it stopped me. I knew the world was bigger than my district, than Moscow, and even than Russia. I used to fantasise, inventing stories about my future adventures. I grew up with the desire to travel, to explore the unknown, and to meet other people—even if I didn’t know what I wanted to do, job-wise, to realise my ambitions.
• And like many of my generation, I was a latch-key kid who, during the summer months, was sent off to my grandparents.’ I don’t remember exactly how many times I travelled to my paternal grandparents’ home in the Urals, though what I do remember is my last summer there, when I was just six.
• My grandparents, Galina and Nikolay Korolkov, lived in Zakamsk, one of the neighbouring suburbs of Perm. My grandmother was a proud woman: proud that they lived in their own, ground-floor apartment, unlike many of her relatives and friends who still lived in older style homes without a bathroom or toilet. She always looked after her home, the rooms were always clean, with croche ed shawl bed covers that sprouted from beneath the luxury of the layers of large, puffed pillows. And while their home wasn’t large—it was a standard one-bedroom apartment with a lounge, separate kitchen, and a small rectangular-shaped hall—it was cosy. My favourite piece of furniture there was a small, wooden-lacquer cabinet with a mirror; its shelves were filled with all kinds of soap bars. I would spend hours sniffing them and studying the pictures on the paper covers. I have no idea where my grandmother discovered them. I assume she used to buy them or maybe she was even given them as gifts.
• I have to say she was also a practical woman, and never one who had to count her pennies from one month to the next, or who needed to knock on the neighbours’ door to borrow a cup of sugar or a pinch salt. For as long as I can remember, she always had food in her house and cash in the bank. And while I don’t know if it was always that way, what I do know is that her practicality and her need to stock up on food and goods was a result of her having lived through the war years, touched by persistent hunger and deprivation.
• She had two brothers, Vasiliy and Konstantin, and four sisters, Anna, Vera, Alexandra, and Serafima. As is so often the case with families, they all ended up living in different places, apart from each other. Vasiliy stayed at the place where the family lived—the small village of Kukushtan, while Konstantin somehow ended up in Sillamya, Estonia. Anna moved to a village simply known as South. Alexandra and Serafima ended up living in Dzhambul, Kazakhstan. While Vera found a home in a small port village in the Khabarovsk region.
• Having never seen these people (except in photos), I did grow up hearing stories about them. I remember how once, when dad came back from a trip to the Far East, he brought gostintzi—a sport bag full of salted sea-fish and huge jars of red and black caviar—from Aunt Vera that we enjoyed eating for the next few months. I always wanted to visit dad’s Aunt Serafima’s place, but never did. There was something magical and exotic about the way Dzhambul sounded. It reminded me of the Arabian Nights.
• ***
• That last Ural summer of mine is full of flashes of unfinished images, like a jigsaw puzzle with so many missing pieces that I’ll never been able to hang the completed picture on my wall of childhood memories.
• For me, a typical Ural day started with me waking up alone in an empty apartment: my grandparents having already left for work. My grandmother was a doting woman—I was the only grandchild she had, and she looked after me as she would have looked after my father, her only son. She was a head chef and administrator in the canteen of one of the largest Perm factories and would have been responsible for feeding thousands of people every day. So, on weekdays she used to leave the house around six in the morning. In fact, her day began even earlier—she would wake up at about four to bake fresh pastries, which she would leave out for me in the kitchen every morning before she headed out to work.
• Left home alone, I would get up, eat my breakfast and go outside to play with my friends in the yard next to the apartment block. Most of the kids who lived there were local, so they were always curious about my life in Moscow, probing me with questions: had I ever been to the Kremlin, or seen Lenin at the mausoleum?
• Then, at around noon I’d toddle across the neighbourhood, making my way through the old garages and across the various building sites, to see my grandmother. I loved visiting gran at work. I would play with the large scales and weights and was allowed to use the giant spatulas and shovels to scoop the flour onto the scales. My favourite place was the room where they kept all the leftover bread because I was allowed to grab as many square pieces of dark rye bread as I wanted, which I’d sprinkle with salt and eat until I couldn’t eat any more.
• My grandmother was a great cook and was proud of the fact that she never cooked separate meals for workers and the senior managers. For her, they were all equals. My father once told me a story about a group of government officials who had come to visit the factory. My grandmother came to local fame when she refused to cook a separate meal for the visiting officials, saying that if her food was good enough for the workers then it should be good enough for the Communist Party representatives. At the time, everyone feared what would happen to her, but it seems that not only did the officials enjoy their meal, they enjoyed it enough to announce that they could see why the workers were so happy to be working there.
• I would always eat lunch with grandma and her co-workers, and then we’d wander off home, stopping somewhere along the way for an ice cream, or some other treat.
• Then, one day, grandma decided to send me off for a few weeks to the village of Galiyani, situated on the banks of the fast ru ning and treacherous Kama River. She had always believed in the benefits of children spending time out in nature—perhaps that’s why she thought I’d enjoy staying at her cousin’s home for a while, which had a large traditional wooden house, with a huge ga den full of fruit trees, and a small farm with cows, goats, and chickens.
• As soon as we arrived, gran’s cousin welcomed us into her home—the table was full of tasty, homemade food with fresh-baked bread, milk, soup, and pies—it was the first time I’d met my second cousins, Alina and Katya. Alina was a year younger than me and Katya was a year older.
• Having spent the weekend together, grandma, satisfied I’d be happy and safe and well looked after, headed back to Perm. But, as soon as she vanished from sight, so did the tasty food—and out came the plain bread and milk staples that were to be their substitute. We also were forbidden from picking the garden’s fruit and vegetables, from playing indoors or being around animals; so, for much of the next few weeks, my cousins and I would head down to the river, where they taught me to swim without a caring adult in a beige linen suit and a brand-new fedora hat to watch over us.
• I remember one of the days when my great auntie told us to go into the forest to collect wild strawberries for her—my favourite berries. She gave each of us a metal jar with a handle and strict instructions not to eat the berries as we picked them. ‘You will eat them later…’ she said. And to my surprise, Alina and Katya did what she told them. I didn’t. I ate them because I loved them. After all, they were right there, next to me, fresh, ripe, red, tasty berries. Why shouldn’t I? She wasn’t my grandmother. And I suspect I’d already guessed what was coming.
• ‘How come you’re not eating any?’ I asked Alina and Katya.
• ‘Because granny said not to.’
• ‘But she can’t see you now.’
• It seemed so obvious. What did they think: that she had her own telescreen watching over the forest? What did it matter? By the time we got back, despite having eaten plenty, I had still filled my jar to the top. As soon as we walked back through their grandmother’s door, she took our jars and said, ‘You will enjoy eating them in the winter … a homemade jam.’ I felt so sorry for Katya and Alina. There was no reward for them in their grandmother’s promise.
• Alina and Katya shared a small bedroom at the back of the house, while I slept in the spare room with its tempting view, out over the garden. The apples and pears dared me to climb beyond the sill of the quietly opened window in search of my reward; some nights it would be an apple, on others a pear, and occasionally—when I was exceptionally hungry—both. That was until that nigh , in my second week, when the sounds of my rummaging must have woken my great aunt. Her small beady eyes—they had looked me with suspicion and accusation on that first day—peered from her window, trying to search me out as I hid, scared-to-death, aware o my every breath as I shrunk behind a bush, fearful of what would happen if she discovered me. To this day, I still can’t remember her name. What I do recall—vividly—is her sour face and her short, stumpy figure, her crooked back and dark brown hair that she twisted into a tight bun.
• Eventually, she seemed to decide that it was the restless animals that had disturbed her, so she went out to feed them and the went back to bed. I quietly climbed back into my room, desperate for my grandmother’s return.
• By the time my grandmother Galya finally returned, there was no way she could miss the fact that I’d lost weight and was looki g at her through hungry eyes.
• Grandma would tell me later that she had considered letting me stay for a few more weeks, but that after seeing me looking so skinny and hungry, she knew she needed to take me back to Perm immediately. She was furious with her cousin and even angrier with herself. As soon as we were back in Perm, things returned to normal: pancake stacks and freshly baked bread.
• I only ever knew one side of my grandmother—kind, supportive, and welcoming. She was always happy to see me and always wanted o make me happy. A short, stocky woman with greying hair and dark eyes, who always looked so serious (even in our photos from he zoo and the theme park). But she was wonderful, at least with me. She would tell me jokes and funny stories. And best of all, she’d sing her rhyming songs that I can recite, even now. Especially the one about a Japanese family: ‘Once there were three Japanese guys … and they married three Japanese girls … and they all had three Japanese sons ….’ The funniest and most challenging part of this song was the characters’ names, as each subsequential character had an extra name added to them; so by the time you reached the end of song, the last son’s name was way too long to remember. Yet, I still do.
• ***
• So, this was about my grandmother. Grandfather was another thing. I don’t like to think or write about him.
• I didn’t know much about my paternal grandfather. That was until I began to do the research to write this memoir. What I discovered about his family background, terrified me nearly as much as he did. Those tiny bits of information don’t change anything when it comes to my memories about my grandfather; what they did do though was help me understand why he became the man I remember. His father was arrested and executed by the Bolsheviks; other family members were arrest and sent to Solovki.
• I’m struggling to think what kind of place I held in his life. For me though, he remained one of the first people who showed me that life is not always fair: how sometimes you can be so unimportant to others; and that people might not like you, may not love you, even when you want to love them. For them, your happiness means nothing; so to take something from you is like breaking a wing of a hummingbird—easy.
• All I remember about him are just snippets of some events: him sitting at the table, eating soup with bread, and criticising my mother for something; him outside the apartment block, drunk, arguing with neighbours; him searching in my bag for a perfume that my friend gave me as a gift … to my dismay I found the bottle empty. And then there were also two episodes which stuck in my memory forever.
• It was one morning when I woke to the sound of snuffling and squealing that I jumped from the bed and lay down on the carpet, wrapped in curiosity as I peered into the darkness of the hiding space beneath the chest of drawers. Musya, my grandmother’s cat, had given birth to six little kittens. They were crawling over each other for warmth, with short, high-pitched meowing as they snuggled in against her teats. It was such a strange feeling to hold something as fragile as a newborn kitten. I watched them for almost all of the next day. They were all so cute, my little buddies. And of course, while I adored them all, I did have a particular favourite: the little ginger-grey kitten.
• I was still sitting in the room when grandad came in.
• ‘Which one do you want to keep? Choose one,’ he said. The tone of his voice was powerful and demanding.
• ‘I like this one,’ I said, showing him my precious ginger-grey.
• ‘Okay, keep it.’
• When he came back, he was holding a large iron bucket that was kept for the summer, for the period when the local government turned off the water for annual maintenance.
• He grabbed all the kittens, all but one, and dropped them carelessly into the bucket. I can still remember their blind cries as Musya stared at grandad. Did she already know? Was it terror that held her there, or was she as naïve as I was?
• ‘What are you going to do, grandad?’
• ‘Drown them.’
• I’m sure I had no idea. I don’t think I even knew the word. What it meant. To deliberately kill something by submersing it under water.
• ‘It’s my job. I always have to do it. We can’t keep them all.’
• He killed them in the bathroom.
• Musya always kept her distance from grandad. But until that moment, I never knew why.
• So, that’s how I came to have a kitten—with such beautiful, thin, light fur: as light as a feather. My Little feather, who grew up so very fast. Within a couple of weeks, I was playing with him in the yard, taking him to the park, feeling happy that he had survived.
• ***
• The day all the precious colourful pictures of my early childhood vanished was when my grandfather, drunk as he so often was, ried to kill me. Now when I think about the Urals, I always find myself caught by the same memory. I am sitting alone in the kitchen in front of a small bowl of hot porridge. I stare at it without eating. He snatches up a huge kitchen knife and walks towards me, shouting ‘Eat it, eat it or I’ll kill you…,’ while I’m begging, ‘Please, grandad, I will….’
• I’ll never forgive him. It’s a strange feeling that I’ve always wanted to erase from my memory. It was as if my childhood had come to an abrupt end that night, and I was forced to suddenly grow so much older.
• Soviet Union—England
• 39 years old
• In the UK since 2015
• ***
• I once considered writing my autobiography as, I believe, I have had quite an interesting life. I was born in the Soviet Union in 1980, lived through Perestroika and the collapse of the USSR. I grew up in Volgograd, living in—as was typical at that time—a communal flat, right up to my adulthood. That was not the happiest period of my life—alcoholic neighbours and my sister’s first boyfriend was not a particularly good man … It was one of the lowest levels of life one could imagine, awful and difficult. Which is the reason I choose not to remember it.
• I was fourteen, and a member of the youth orchestra, when I realised that I didn’t really want to live in Russia. The director of the ensemble had organised a trip to Italy, where we were to take part in the local music festival. And, of course, besides participating in the festival, we had the opportunity to go out on excursions, to walk about the streets of Italian cities. So, unlike most ordinary Russians, I got to see how Westerners lived their lives. And, after I had, I didn’t particularly want to go back home.
• I found it motivating. I believe if you are motivated, you can do anything. You can change your life. I have been through different periods in my life: there was a time when I went to church, meditated, talked to followers of Hari-Krishna, didn’t eat meat, went for regular runs. But after graduating from Volgograd State University with a degree in engineering, and because I didn’t have any other choice or the money needed to avoid the period of obligatory military service, I went to the local recruitment army office and joined the Russian army. And all my idealism ended abruptly—I began drinking vodka and, among other things, gave up on my vegetarian diet.
• But I got lucky. An officer asked, ‘Does anyone know how to deal with the computer?’
• ‘I do,’ I said.
• ‘… and is there anyone here who can bring a computer from home to use it in the office?’
• ‘I can.’
• We had a chat, I explained who I was and what I could do. So, they spent the next three days sorting out my paperwork to ensure that I wasn’t sent somewhere else. Then I spent the next half year sorting their spreadsheets and fixing all their computers, including the private home computers of the officers. Then, when they provided me with two weeks leave, I worked at home to develop a charger for the tanks’ accumulators. That was something that I wanted to do of my own free will, from the bottom of my heart, for the benefit of the army.
• That was how I spent my year in the army. And I usually say that, having spent a year in the army, I’m now able to feel happy and comfortable anywhere else. Why? Because there was no hot water in the building where we lived. During the day—once you’d made your bed—you weren’t allowed to lie down, and for the rest of the day you were only allowed to walk, or stand, or sit on a chair. You got your food according to a timetable…. And there weren’t any decent meals. So, I came to understand that even if I had to go back to my communal flat to live, I would be able to survive there because there are far worse places in the world than a Soviet kommunalka.
• Once I got back home, I got married. Like me, my wife, Irina, is from Volgograd. Both my parents had passed away: dad died in 999, mum in 2005, and in that same year my sister was tragically killed in a car crash. Soon after their deaths, Irina and I moved to Moscow, where we lived for ten years. Our daughter, Olya, was born there.
• ***
• In 2008, Russia was in economic crisis. My salary was thirty thousand roubles, out of which fifteen were paid as official “whi e” salary, while the other half was unofficial, “black.” The apartment we’d rented at the time cost twenty thousand. It was a difficult period in our life. And for that reason, I desperately wanted to find a new job. But there were very few job opportuni ies. Eventually I got a call asking if I would be interested in an interview with a company that specialised in computer electronics. I got through the interview, spoke with the director, and then with the company’s owner. They offered a good salary and opportunities for business trips abroad. So, by December, I had moved to a new office and doubled my salary. Then, in March 2009, the company sent me to Taipei.
• At the time my English was at a pre-intermediate level: I could read and write, but I struggled to communicate. My counterparts, who met me at the airport, took me to the apartment that the company had rented on my behalf, showed me around the workplace place and the surrounding area, and then they left. I had no idea what to do. I kept silent for the first day, not knowing what to say to the people around me, or how to effectively communicate with them in English. What I did get though was that I needed to show them that I could work, as the last thing I wanted was to lose this job: they paid me a good wage, covered my travel a d living costs, and on top of that, I also received an extra eighty dollars per day for personal expenses. So, the next day I had no choice but to speak English.
• After I’d travelled and worked in so many countries (I spent a year in Taiwan, a year in China, and then a year in Germany), I got to the point where it became difficult for me to identify myself. Instead, I opted to think in simple terms and use phrases: ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it.”
• In Germany, I liked their approach to work, their pedanticism, their roads and cars. The food was cheap and tasty, the portions were huge. I liked German beer and the fact that I always had a car waiting for me. After spending a lot of time behind the wheel, driving from one place to another, I became familiar with their motorway system; it almost felt like I was on the MKAD.
• What I do recall is feeling under pressure—that was in January 2015. I’d arrived in Germany feeling ill. I had bronchitis and a high temperature. And I knew I should be resting. But I couldn’t as I had an enormous amount of work that I needed to do. So, I kept pushing myself. In my free time, I read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and Nikonov’s book about the Great Patriotic War, which helped me to understand that I didn’t owe the state, or any powers, anything. That I don’t owe anything to anyone.
• ***
• Thanks to Irina’s ambitions, education, and profession—she worked in accounting—we moved to the UK. Irina had been learning English since she was a child, so she was fluent in the language, unlike me. While we were living in Moscow, Irina began looking for job opportunities in international companies. She applied to four big accounting firms and received offers from three of them. After we had talked and looked at their packages, she accepted the job offer from Ernst & Young.
• After our friends and neighbours discovered that we were going to move abroad, they began to pepper us with their patriotic speeches, telling us why we shouldn’t go to England: ‘It’s a boring country …,’ ‘There are homosexuals in the UK …,’ ‘You are too old …,’ ‘They’re going to leave the EU …,’ ‘There are so many immigrants there, you will be treated as a half-class citizen.’ While others said, ‘Everything will be fine, don’t come back.’
• In October 2015, we arrived in Reading, where Irina’s new job was based. I remember it was a sunny day. A golden autumn. And I often felt that I was in Germany, not in England. There were so many different people, polite and smiling, on the streets.
• Irina’s company put us into temporary rental accommodation while we looked for our own place. And then the usual routine began: learning that we couldn’t open a bank account without a proof of address, not being able to rent an apartment without the prerequisite bank account. Fortunately, Ernst & Young were able to help Irina open a bank account. And as soon as she had, we were able to rent an apartment in the city’s centre. Annoyingly, I wasn’t as lucky. I took my Council tax letter to HSBC, only to have the bank tell me, ‘We don’t think it’s necessary for you to open an account.’ I told them, ‘I don’t need a credit card; I jus need a debit card.’ But they refused to let me open an account. Since then, I really don’t like HSBC. Anyway, I simply wandered to RBS bank, provided the same documents, and opened an account. No questions asked. A week later my bank card arrived. And I’ve been a loyal customer ever since. Even though I also opened another account at Barclays. Two bank accounts and one wife.
• After we sorted the required paperwork, I flew back to Moscow to fetch our daughter and my mother-in-law, who stayed with us for a while. She helped us to look after our daughter.
• In January, Olya joined a pre-school, full-time, from eight in the morning until six in the evening. Of course, she didn’t realise how far from Russia we were, and was so upset that she refused to go to school for a while because no one understood her. But her teachers were good and quite helpful. Apparently, only about fifteen per cent of the kids [at the pre-school] spoke English as their first language. Most children were immigrants: Polish, Ukrainian, Russian etc. But the teachers were doing a great job with them; kids arrived from all over the world, speaking a variety of different languages, and then they were sucked into he fundamentals of the great British educational standards. By March, Olya had settled and began speaking fluently in English. She speaks proper English now. While at home, we speak only Russian. And during the summer, Olya goes back to Volgograd to spend time with her grandmother.
• The thing that does amuse me here is city life: from Monday to Friday afternoon everything is ideal in town. But from Friday evening until late on Saturday, the city centre becomes home to teenagers and gopniks, predominately drunken females who do drugs and shout. So, I don’t risk going outside. Not until Sunday which is more like January the first in Russia—the streets are emp y and silent. Only street cleaners are busy litter-picking. And then, by Monday, everything is clean again, everyone is sober and polite … but only until Friday evening. It reminds me of Russia; the only difference is, in Russia, this is what happens eve y day. Besides that, I don’t see many similarities between the two countries—England and Russia.
• It’s the reason I like England. There are beautiful houses, the air is clean, the weather is good and everyone speaks English. While I’ve always liked Germany, I prefer England. It’s more comfortable. In Germany, there is a term ordnung, meaning an order, perfectionism in everything, the need to live within the rules, to have a particular life regime. It’s part of German culture. There are formulas for how you’re meant to behave, to interact, but it’s overwhelming. In England, there is a balance. There is a structure too: on the one hand, people follow the rules, on the other, they don’t care and live as they want. I think people are more relaxed and open-minded here.
• ***
• My first year in the UK felt like a business trip. I often found myself worrying that I’d have to go back to Moscow. I felt u settled, even though I knew I’d bought a one-way ticket and wasn’t going to go back to Russia, that I’d have to find a local vacancy.
• I started to applyitsya everywhere. But without any luck. I couldn’t understand why—I have a broad level of skills in electronics, fifteen years of international work experience. Why weren’t they interested in me?
• I showed my résumé to one of my friends who said that my CV looked like something out of the Soviet Union, that you couldn’t see the individual behind it. So, I spent a month editing it. And it worked—I started to get calls. But that simply let me move on to the next hurdle: the phone interviews, the local accents and my inability to understand half of what was being said or asked. I found a tutor who agreed to twenty pounds per hour to help me with my English. It took three months of lessons to get to the next stage—of being able to successfully negotiate the phone interview … all the way to the point when they’d ask … ‘Do you have UK work experience?’
• ‘No…’
• ‘Okay, goodbye.’
• By the time I’d been refused by three companies, I’d become pretty sceptical. Simply because I couldn’t understand what was wrong. Until I had a chat with some Scottish guy from HR. He said, ‘Yuriy, your CV is brilliant, they like you… But, you see, they’re worried that you’ll leave…, or that your visa will be cancelled..., or that there’ll be some force majeure situation, and you won’t be able to carry on… and… off the record, you are Russian. You are a Russian engineer … as soon as they hear that, they’d prefer to find someone with local experience.’
• I didn’t see this as discrimination … more just as local rules. I arrived in this country, so I must obey their rules. I could ’t defend them, but I did understand that they didn’t want to employ people of other nationalities. Simple as that.
• Eventually though, I got lucky. At the beginning of 2017, I zaapplayelsya and received two offers: one was from a company in the south of England, the other was up north. I successfully went through all the interview stages. The northern company was specialising in digital electronics that I know everything about, but the southern company was a more complicated and more creative project, however the salary was five thousand less. So, I had some extra meetings, then took about a month to think about it. Because the southern company looked more attractive, I asked them if they could offer me ten thousand more. They took about two weeks to consider my request, and in the end, I got what I wanted. It had taken me a year, but I’d secured my first job and got my first salary. I also felt confident that they wouldn’t sack me.
• After I’d worked for the company for a while, I learned the reason for them taking me on: they had another office in LA that had employed a Russian IT guy, who was doing such a great job that they wanted to recruit another IT specialist from Russia for their UK branch—me. Apparently, they’d run all sorts of security checks on me, even checks by the FBI.
• So, I’ve gotten used to the authorities always asking me lots of questions. No matter where I am: at the airport, waiting to board my flight, sipping on my coffee, I always seem to attract the attention of the police. And it’s no different when I arrive, it’s always me that they decide to give an extra check.
• Which reminds me of a story. Once, I agreed to catch up with a friend of mine, from Germany. He’d come to London for a few days. I was waiting for him, not far from Hyde Park Gardens Mews, when it started to rain, so I found a place under one of the arched gates and… a police car pulled up right next to me.
• ‘What are you doing here?’
• ‘I’m standing ...’
• ‘Why are you standing here?’
• ‘Because it’s raining, and I don’t want to get wet.’
• ‘Could you move somewhere else? Some people are worried about your standing here.’
• Then they asked what I was waiting for precisely and found out that I was waiting for my mate.
• ‘He is Russian as well, but he lives in Germany,’ I told the police. ‘We are meeting up here to go have some beer at Victoria.’
• ‘But Victoria station is far from here,’ the policemen said, confused.
• ‘I know, I’m talking about the Victoria pub that is over there.’
• Situations like this seem to happen to me all the time. Of course, I do understand why: I’m a Russian IT specialist with a passport full of stamps… the type of guy who the authorities and security forces have begun to pay more attention to, because they’ve probably flagged me as a potential security risk and put me on their “dangerous” list. I understand. Because, if it was my choice, I’d make even more detailed checks on the people who applied for a visa.
• After working in the company six months, I got a raise, as well as an end-of-year bonus along with an unexpected treat. The thing was, I decided to buy myself an expensive car. Life is too short and I wanted to have a big car. But after I bought it, the director called me into his office.
• ‘Yuriy, is that your new car in the car park?’
• ‘Yes.’
• ‘Did you buy on a lease?’
• ‘Yes.’
• ‘You see, we are thrilled with the work you’re doing and want to thank you for your hard work. How about we cover your down payment and pay half of your lease costs?’
• ‘Would it be taken from my salary and bonus?’
• ‘No, it’s just to do something nice for you.’
• That was great! I was so happy with my job.
• The downside is that I had to relocate to Paignton, as it was not practical to drive every day from Reading to the south and back. But I like it there, it’s a comfortable place to live, right next to the ocean. I like my office, my colleagues, my job, my salary, even though I still have to travel a lot: every week or so to see my wife and daughter because Irina couldn’t relocate with me due to her five-year contract with E&Y, and Olya had already started school (and, of course, we didn’t want to move he from one school to another).
• When I travel, I often give a lift to people (usually to complete strangers) as I like to have company and I like to talk to people, to listen to their stories which are sometimes even cooler than computers. We’ll talk about all kinds of things; for example, with Indians, we often talk about corruption, which I find interesting because it’s obvious that there are the same corruption problems in India as there are in Russia.
• Then I also know this guy whose life is miserable. His parents moved to the UK from Nepal. They live in Reading, so I often give him a lift when I go to see my family. He was born in the UK and grew up here; he has a good education and has graduated from the local university with a degree in medicine. He’s a doctor who works in one of the NHS hospitals. He’s a British guy who looks Nepalese, but they don’t treat him like a British citizen. They treat him as if he’s a foreigner. They give him the most difficult jobs. He says to them, ‘Guys, I’m British…’
• ‘Sorry, mate, maybe you think you’re British, but you’re Nepalese.’ He is very upset about it.
• ***
• After we migrated, many people asked me about the UK. Of course, I always say it’s not like living in paradise. Life in the UK isn’t better or worse than in Russia; it’s just different. But if you are happy where you live, why move.
• I don’t want to change anything. Everything is fine for me here. I believe you need to live to be happy. All negative stories are personal faults, while all positive stories are personal happiness.
• Like all other normal people, the things that make me happy are having a job, knowing that my skills are needed, having enough money to buy good food, and being able to afford to take holidays any time I want, along with knowing I live in a stable country. Although, I do understand that everyone has their own perception of happiness. I just think that a comfortable life and the ealisation of achievements are essential.
• Yet, I do worry about my daughter’s future. If you had asked me about ten years ago if her future would be good, I would undoutedly have said yes, but now I simply don’t know. I expect there will be many revolutions in the future. The world is rapidly changing. I think our society doesn’t understand the real power of the Internet. The generation of the 2000s got used to the Internet; they grew up being plugged into it. It does worry me. With technology changing so fast, soon we won’t need people in many fields; machines will replace them. And there are so many people living on the planet, many of whom will probably become redundant; they won’t have an opportunity to find their place in this world. I was simply lucky because from an early age I was told that science is cool; I’m fortunate that I have a higher education. But I predict that in about fifteen years even my professio will be discontinued, it will be replaced by robots.
• But for now, I want to say, quoting the character from the Brother-2 film, ‘I’m staying here…’
• In the summer of 1995, I found myself stuck in Moscow.
• I suppose it must have been tough year financially for my parents, given we didn’t go on holiday. Of course, it was pretty sucky being stuck in Moscow during the summer months, when all the other children were either at their family dachas, enjoying their holidays under the chaperoning eyes of their grandparents, or were off at summer camps. And a summer camp was not an option for me, as after the collapse of the Soviet Union I lost interest in doing all things Soviet. I’d once dreamt of being a pioneer, of going to the pioneer summer-camps and wearing a red scarf around the collar of my crisp white blouse, and a hat emblazoned with the communistic red-star. But when I’d come to realise I would never be a pioneer, never carry a red flag in my hands across the cobbled pavers of Red Square, would never sing the communist songs because Communism was now dead, I felt cheated. It was as if everything I’d ever been told, was a lie. At kindergarten I’d grown up with the patriotic songs and poems that we learnt; I knew the stories of our leaders, and I had always believed that I would be at least as good as all those other patriotic Soviet people: would carry on my duties—with pride. But then, suddenly, and quite inexplicably, we didn’t need to be proud or good anymore. Everything I’d learnt, believed in and done was suddenly pointless, valueless, because now we were free. We could do whatever we wanted. But what was I free to do? The country where I was born, where I grew up, didn’t exist anymore.
• So, there I was in Moscow. Dad was busy working, and mum was helping grandmother Valya: she had been diagnosed with breast cancer earlier that year and had had a mastectomy followed by some chemo. So, the days were going by, one after another. I’d watch TV, read, pop out occasionally to buy an eskimo. That was until the day when I had the bright idea of phoning a girl from my class, Galya, just on the off-chance. It appeared that she was also stuck in Moscow, so we decided to catch up. Galya lived a few apartment blocks away from mine, on Voronezhskaya Street, about five-or-so-minutes’ walk.
• It was a hot and sunny August afternoon, and we’d agreed to meet not far from our school. We hung around the empty playgrounds for a bit, until we got bored, which didn’t take that long. So, in search of some adventure, we set off to the Shmelevsky ravine across the road from Galya’s house. The ravine was large and deep and circled almost the entire district. It expanded out towards the Moscow region. And, as children, we often went there without any thought of the dangers. The only thing I feared was the stray dogs—when I was six, I’d been attacked. It was my dad who saved me on that day.
• We ran down the hill and then noticed a massive tree, old and twisted, its roots pulled from the earth where it had once lived. Its thick trunk bridged the quick-flowing water, from one bank to the other. I took off my sandals and climbed onto the tree; the rough bark beneath my feet, my shoes clutched in my left hand, a branch in my right, I moved confidently above the water. Galya, giggling, was talking about what we were going to do if one of us slipped into the water.
• ‘I’ll save you, Galya.’
• ‘It’s not that deep here; I just don’t want to get wet,’ she said as we made it to the middle of the river.
• My left hand instinctively grabbed for a branch as I lost my balance and lurched forward; one of my dropped sandals snagged on a twig, the other pirouetted in the air and then splashed into the clear, fast-flowing water.
• We were both in hysterics, but I knew I’d have to rescue it, for two reasons. I didn’t have any other summer shoes, and, even more importantly, to arrive home and to confess that I went to the forest alone with a friend and lost my shoe there was impossible. Drowning would have been preferable to having to admit to my stupidity.
• So, Galya and I clambered quickly back onto the riverbank and chased my sandal’s trail, climbing through the undergrowth, all he while keeping an eye on my poor sandal.
• ‘There it is, I can see it,’ Galya yelled excitedly. My sandal rising and falling with the ripple of waves, then pitching sideways as it was caught by the river’s growing current.
• ‘Oh no…’
• ‘I am sure it will stop somewhere!’
• Galya was running much faster than me. Stupid me, trying to be careful—worried I’d stand on something—the jagged, dry earth, sharp and unpleasant, stabbing at my feet. Our ravine wasn’t the cleanest place. It was littered with junk: empty food cans, beer bottles, cigarette butts, plastic bags, and old car tires. Galya’s white cotton dress was already dirtier than when we set out. My relief was palpable, unmistakable, when I caught sight of my sandal snagging on a branch of another broken tree, safe but well beyond our reach. I tried to fetch it with a stick. No luck. The only option was to get into the water. Galya suggested she would go in, but I didn’t want her to get wet. It was bad enough that her beautifully embroidered dress now looked as shabby as it did; I knew her mother would be unhappy if she came home dirty and wet.
• As I stepped into the river, I realised it was deeper than I thought and, despite the season, the water was freezing.
• Galya, jumping about on the riverbank, cheered me on. ‘Come on, come on, Olya … there it is … you are nearly there … be careful ….’
• My imagination was buzzing; even though I knew I was in an old Russian ravine, only a kilometre from home, my fantasies were wading through the warm waters of the Nile River, wary that at any minute I might be attacked by a crocodile, or worse a giant hippopotamus. My feet were treading carefully, one cautious step at a time. The water grew deeper and deeper and soon reached my orso. ‘I’ve got my sandal; here it is!’
• As we finally emerged from the forest, I was shivering from the cold and my shoes were wet through and swollen; I could hear the sandals’ squelching sounds of water with my every step. But I felt so happy. It had been such a fantastic day that it laid the foundation for a friendship that would, sadly, last for just three more years.
• ***
• The very first time I saw Galya was on our first day of school, in September of 1991. And I was at once struck by, even jealous of, her Caucasian beauty. And when some years later I read Lermontov’s Bella, it felt to me that he was describing the Galya I had known—“Tall and slender, with the black eyes like a mountain gazelle, that looked straight into your soul.” That passage astounded me with its rustic truthfulness. It was an unintended description of Galya’s face, straightforward but magnetic.
• Even now, I often wonder why it was that we didn’t become closer friends earlier. It was almost as if I hadn’t noticed her for those first three years of school, not beyond the beauty of her features. Perhaps it was because she was a good friend of my neighbour Katya, a girl I’d never liked. Still, after that summer, I got to know a whole other side of Galya.
• A day or two after the dust had settled on our forest adventure, she invited me over for tea. They lived in a one-bedroom apar ment. There was nothing special about its decor, the place was like all of the other flats I’d been to. When I walked into the lounge, I saw a photo of Galya, dressed in her brown school dress beneath a pretty, white apron, and with two large, fluffy silk-ribbons in her hair; she was standing beside her parents. The photo had been taken in the schoolyard on the first of September. Yet, regardless of the beauty of her appearance, and the expensive gift she carried—a bouquet of flowers for the teacher—Galya looked terribly unhappy.
• ‘Your mum looks so beautiful in that photo.’
• ‘She’s not my mum,’ Galya said as she disappeared back into the kitchen; we were baking a strawberry cake together.
• ‘I was six when my mum died,’ Galya said quietly, without looking at me. She had taken a seat at the dinner table and was staring through the oven’s glass door, watching as the dough rose. ‘I wish she’d died earlier, so I wouldn’t remember her. But I do.’
• She told me that her father had remarried shortly after her mum’s death and that she had started her first year at school being brought by her new stepmother. I guess that’s why, when I went back into the room to take another look at the photo, I found myself thinking the woman didn’t look nearly as beautiful as I’d first thought. There was something cold and strange about her.
• Over the years Galya’s relationship with her stepmother worsened, to the point where they couldn’t stand each other. Galya often arrived at school in tears and would often call me to talk when her stepmother wasn’t at home. She would share with me the details that were the tragedy of her home life, all the arguments they had when they were alone; she shared how the woman, who called herself mum, behaved so differently when Galya’s dad wasn’t around. He never got to see any of it: the slaps across Galya’s face if she dared to talk back, the insults and crushing remarks. He had no idea why it was that his nice, sweet, little girl was becoming so rude, so argumentative. He didn’t have a clue, and worse, he took the side of his new wife.
• Just two years after our summer adventure, Galya decided to move out to live with her parental grandmother in the north-wester district of Moscow. I don’t know why her father didn’t try to stop her. Of course, her decision shocked me, even though we promised each other that we’d keep in touch and that we’d make sure we always met.
• A few weeks later, on the 10th of June 1997, I agreed to meet up with Galya at the Arbatskaya underground station. Our plan was to spend the day hanging around the city centre.
• I stood in the centre of the metro station, my eyes picking their way through the faces of passengers, waiting, waiting and waiting, checking my watch every ten minutes, every fifteen, then every half an hour. I watched as each train arrived, all the while trying to find her dear face amongst the crowd of strangers. ‘Why is she so late?’ I wondered, ‘… something must have happened ….’ It was a thought that scared me so much that I wanted to run straight home and call her. I didn’t ... another train arrived. And then another. Train after train. For three hours, I waited. Eventually I accepted that she must have cha ged her mind.
• Tired, disappointed, upset I made my way home. And no sooner was I through the front door, that I called Galya:
• ‘What happened? Where were you? I’ve been waiting for you for ages!’ I felt angry. I needed to have a good reason for being le down like that.
• ‘I was going to ask you the same thing. I was waiting for you in the centre of the station, as we agreed.’
• ‘Can’t be … I was there. I was there for three bloody hours. I didn’t move, I was searching for your face in the crowd, I didn’t miss a train … .’
• ‘So did I … .’
• ‘It’s impossible, if we were both at Arbatskaya why didn’t we see each other?’
• ‘Which Arbatskaya were you at?’
• ‘What do you mean?’
• ‘There are two Arbatskaya, one is on Arbatsko-Pokrovskay line, the other is on the Filoyvskay line.’
• ‘Oh my Lord, of course….’
• ‘I thought you would guess, given we were going to hang out in the city.’
• ‘But you live on the Filoyvskay line, a few stops from Arbatskaya, that’s why I went there. That’s why I thought you meant tha station.’
• ‘No, I didn’t … .’
• That day was like a sign that our lives would never cross again. And although we agreed to catch up soon, in a week or so, we ever did. It was another year before I saw Galya again. But by then she was a different person, unhappy and troubled, addicted to drugs. Her boyfriend was ten years older than her. She said he’d made her pregnant but that she’d had a miscarriage, that he grandmother had started annoying her and that no one understood her but her boyfriend.
• She seemed to be the girl whom life treated unfairly. And even though so many years have passed since that day, I still often ind myself thinking about Galya, wondering how she is. Is she even alive? Did she ever find happiness? I hope she did. There aren’t many people in my life whose disappearance has hurt me as much as Galya’s did. And while I know she would be a different person now, with an unfamiliar face, for me, she will forever be that eleven-year-old girl with eyes glowing like two hot coals.
• Kazakh Soviet Socialistic Republic—England
• 40 years old
• In the UK since 2001
• [I agreed to meet Anastasia not far from Shepherd’s Bush tube station. It was a hot afternoon. When I left Birmingham that mor ing, it’d been okay, but by the time I arrived in London, the sun had come out and I was roasting in my skinny jeans.
• Anastasia—round calm face, with not a lot of make-up, her thin brown hair tied in a ponytail—has patiently stood waiting for me outside the shopping mall. She was slightly shorter than me, wearing a yellow chiffon dress with a tiny blue and white flower print and low-heeled sandals.
• We walked through the large automatic glass doors of the shopping mall and turned left, into a café. There was hardly anyone i side, which immediately made me think that it would be an ideal place to sit and talk. To my dismay, the customers, perhaps feeling the freedom of the open-plan space, talked so loudly that my recorder captured not only my conversation with Anastasia, bu nearly every other voice within the place. Two women were chatting about a friend who’d just given birth, a waitress was taking someone’s order for a smoothie ... Anastasia, most of the time addressing me as Olechka, ordered two coffees, insisted on paying for them. She had brought a packet of whole-grain crackers with her. ‘Olechka, please, have some ... did you have lunch?’
• Before we talked about her life journey, she showed me an album that was full of random family photos. ‘I haven’t touched it for years,’ she said, ‘I don’t even know what’s there ....’ The pictures of aunties and uncles, nephews and nieces, parents—her life captured between Kazakhstan, Russia, and the UK—scattered beneath the old cellophane pockets.
• As I listened to Anastasia’s softly spoken words, I often caught myself wondering if she was on the verge of tears. A little bit more, I thought, and she’ll cry. She didn’t. But her voice was full of emotion: sorrow and blame. Under every word was the sound of guilt.]
• ***
• I call England my spiritual home because it has given me more than I could ever hope for. If I’d stayed in Kazakhstan, I don’t know who I would have become .... For a long time, I was trying to answer, who am I?
• I was born in Astana in the Kazakh Soviet Social Republic, in 1978. Until I turned five, we travelled a lot: Nizhnevartovsk, Tolyatti, and then back to Alma-Ata, where I lived until I was twenty-one.
• It seems I came from a family of immigrants who were destined to move from one place to another; it was a way of life that sta ted with my great-great-grandparents who in 1904 voluntarily agreed to relocate to Kazakhstan from Ukraine. My great-grandfather built their first hut there, in the place where they lived with their nine children. My mother, half Ukrainian, half Kazakh, was an epidemiologist—she’s retired now.
• My father, who died in 2004, was a pro-Soviet man, a real communist. A mechanic who could turn his hand to any job, he worked as a carpenter when we lived in Nizhnevartovsk. Then, when we came back to Kazakhstan, he drove a cab until the end of his life. It’s heartbreaking to think that at the end of his life he got so ill. His roots were Belarussian; his mother was from Tatar, and he was mixed-blood. But I never learned how it was that dad’s family came to live in a small town, not far from Astana in Kazakhstan.
• I have two sisters: the older one, Natasha, and a twin-sister, Elena. My family were atheists. The exception being my grandmother, who brought us up. She had denied religion for most of her life, only when she got older and was terminally ill, she turned her face to God. Babushka was such a nice cook; I still remember her pirozhki with beetroot and carrots. My mum’s also a good cook, but for whatever reason she never shared her culinary skills with us. She could cook all sorts of dishes, from Ukrainian and Kazakh cuisine to Korean and Chinese. So, most of my childhood was easy and simple; we spent lots of time playing on the st eet.
• Natasha moved to Germany in 1992. But before my older sister decided to emigrate, our grandmother had insisted that we be baptised as Russian Orthodox—it was important for her and being baptised didn’t worry me. I was rather ignorant when it came to religion. So, you could say, that I came to be an Orthodox Russian via the backdoor.
• The early nineties were such strange times ... In 1994, some fifty members of our extended family moved to St.Petersburg. People were fleeing uncertainty: regime change and the local government’s oppression. The collapse of the Soviet Union had brought turmoil to the country and chaos to my soul. We were all in such a panic. I was in shock as I came to terms with realities of this changed life. I loved everything about the USSR ... I still do: the architecture and culture.
• In 1995 my twin-sister and I finished school. Then I graduated from Kazakhstan State University as a philologist, specialising in Russian literature and language, but I’ve never worked in my professional field. I don’t speak Kazakh. During the Soviet era nobody spoke the local language; it was considered shameful. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never discovered an appreciation for the language—all I know are a few words.
• I eventually left Kazakhstan in 2001, while my parents moved to St.Petersburg in the spring of 2004. And after I moved, I neve went back, not until 2018 when mum and I revisited Alma-Ata. It was an overwhelming trip: we went to see the house where we’d once lived, my grandmother’s grave. I even caught up with my best friend and saw our childhood playground, my school, our neighours. It was all so very special. I felt as though I’d revisited my past. It was towards the end of the second week that I came to understand that until that moment I had no real idea about how much I’d lost, when I lost my father ... how much I missed him. It was a time that was gone forever, that I could never get back. I had mixed feelings about the place. I missed the weather, the city. But, other than that, there was nothing there for me, no one was waiting for me to come back.
• Of course, I like to travel—but I prefer to go to counties that have some connection with Russian culture. I used to go back to Russia a couple of times a year, now it’s more like once in every two years. Having lived in England for eighteen years now, I still miss the Russian culture, the language, and nature ... it’s all so close to my heart. I love the Russian spring. In Kazakhstan, the temperatures go from minus forty in the winter to plus forty-five in the summer. While in St. Petersburg—where I discovered my passion for ballet, theatre, opera; not that I understand them properly—you can enjoy all four seasons. That’s what I love about Russian nature, the opportunity to live through and enjoy the different seasons.
• ***
• By the time I’d decided to move to the UK, my father was already unwell and anxious about my sister and me moving away. But there was chaos in society and no jobs. My twin sister—she eventually asked me to join her—was the first to go when she moved to London in 2000 to study law at the University of Westminster. So, we both ended up in a place that we didn’t know. She married a d lived in the UK for ten years before moving to Tallinn.
• Not long after I arrived, in September 2001, I met Taren, on a dating site. He was seven years older than me. To cut a long story short, I got pregnant, and we got married in July 2002. Before meeting Taren, I’d had a few unpleasant experiences with men, dreadful situations. I didn’t understand men and still don’t.
• The first time I met face-to-face with Taren, I thought, here is my future husband. But ... my affection for him wasn’t sincere. I never fell in love with him—I simply wanted to stay in the UK. Back then, if you were married to a Brit, you only had to live in the UK for two years before you could apply for British citizenship. And I wanted to stay. Even if it meant committing to a relationship for two, five, or even ten years. If that was what it was going to take, so be it, because the thought of having to go back to Russia was simply frightening. We’d been shackled by the collapse of the USSR; I still remembered starving without food, and there was no way that I wanted to commit to a rerun of the experience.
• My sister and I had a bet about whether I’d be able to get Taren to propose. And I won. Although, in truth, the pregnancy was ever part of the plan. I was twenty-four when I found out that I was pregnant and the thought terrified me—what would I do, what would my parents think, what would people say? It was shameful. Still, Taren made me believe that everything would be okay—he asked me to keep the child and said he would marry me.
• But we were both lying to each other ... When I finally confessed to Taren that I’d never really loved him and that I’d simply married him so that I’d be able to stay in the UK, he admitted that he hadn’t married me for love either—apparently his mother had been diagnosed with late-stage cancer, just before we met, and he needed someone to support him through the crisis ... . I suspect he just wanted to have a child and to be a father.
• So, that’s how my married life began. And I certainly wasn’t ready to be a mother, or a wife. I couldn’t express my feelings. I lacked any real wisdom. And I guess I was too proud. But then life took another turn. Taren seemed like a nice guy. Relaxed. Nothing ever made him angry. He didn’t want much from life, neither helping me with housekeeping nor interested in helping to look after our daughter, which was an issue for me. He preferred to spend his days laid out on the sofa, watching films. While I wanted our daughter to be an active child: I took her to many clubs, workshops, and parks.
• Whenever we had problems, or argued, Taren would pack his bags and leave. He’d go and rent a hotel room for a few days, and then come back without saying anything.
• I wasn’t a good mother—I made so many mistakes with Nika’s upbringing. I always thought of her as an extension of myself. I have never treated her as an individual. I was tough on her, and sometimes too harsh. I’d hit her when she was little. When Taren found out, he was so angry. Now, I worry that I’ve damaged her future, that she’ll be incapable of dealing with her own family’s conflicts.
• Eventually, Taren came to understand that I wanted to end our relationship. He never tried to stop me. I think if he’d tried to stop me, I would just have gone. While Nika was still a little girl, I took her to Russia to see my mum, planning not to come back to London. So, as soon as I arrived, I cancelled our return tickets. But then, realising that I would lose my job, that so many people would be disappointed in me, I went back to the airport and bought new tickets—that mistake cost me four hundred pounds.
• Taren was always nice to me, he treated me well. But I can’t say the same about myself, I wasn’t a good wife. It’s all my faul … I was, and still am, a lazy person. I never liked cleaning our home. I’m a terrible cook with a dull repertoire of a handful of dishes. In Russia the way I’ve behaved would be impossible. Here though, it was okay. Still, I’m sure that it’s never bothe ed Taren. And, if it has, then he’s never said anything ... but I know it’s not right. I’ve screwed up his life.
• It’s my fault—I should have spotted that he was a drug addict. I eventually learned that he had started smoking marihuana when he was about sixteen. And that his mother—she was an old hippie—supported it. The whole of Taren’s family smoked marihuana. For them, it was normal. But when I found out, I tried to help him ... to stop his addiction. I went to church and prayed that he’d give his drugs up. What I didn’t do was take him to the doctors. We went through so much at the time, that soon I began feeling like a drug addict too.
• We separated when Nika was three. Taren moved out. He left me his apartment—but nothing else. I knew that he lived somewhere outside of London for a while. And then that he’d got a new job in Ireland.
• To be a single mother in England is a disaster: the only support you have is government benefits, but not any real help. No one cares about you. I was the only Russian-speaking person at the bank where I worked. They didn’t care that I was trying to bring up a child by myself. They discriminated against me. They gave me so much work that I couldn’t even take a break during the day; they didn’t want to listen to what I wanted to say. The message was clear: if you don’t like something, you can resign. But I couldn’t, I needed the job.
• The thing that helped me though was the church. There was a forty-three-year-old woman from Finland, a member of a Charismatic Church, who visited us every day. She told me she gave all her life to Jesus. She used to bring the children’s Bible over to my home and read to Nika. She helped me a lot.
• After Taren left, I tried to sort out my personal life. I was in a relationship with a Latvian guy, but that was a disaster. He didn’t love kids, it was difficult. When Nika was nine, she suddenly packed her bag and told me she was leaving. I understood that I needed to make a choice and ended the relationship.
• By the time Nika had finished primary school, Taren had come back. He’d lost his job and didn’t have a place to live. So, he k ocked on our door and asked if he could stay. I said, ‘Yes, but on one condition—you won’t use drugs.’ He agreed. I know it was tough on him, but he agreed, for Nika’s sake. And for mine. I thought, once you helped me, now I need to help you. Besides, I was struggling financially. And Nika, who was due to start secondary school, didn’t get into any of the schools of our choice. Fortunately, when Taren found out, he said he would put her into private school and pay for her education. I couldn’t say no.
• Now ... I’ve known Taren for seventeen years, but we’re more like neighbours: he pays for Nika and for groceries while I cover the cost of the mortgage and the utility bills. He doesn’t like to talk about anything, especially problems. I only came back to our relationship for Nika’s sake. She needed an authority figure in her life. And that’s her father. She listens to him. He spends a lot of time with her: they go on actual holidays, to good hotels. Taren took Nika to Disneyland; they always have fun together. They have a good relationship. I feel I’m more like an assistant. My heart hurts when I think about her. I don’t think I was a good role model. As I know I can’t change anything now.
• Really, I’m so appreciative of Taren’s help, so grateful to him ... God willing, I will stay in this relationship with him. Af er all, neither of us have family here. And he worries about Nika as much as I do; she is the bridge that connects the two of us. Taren isn’t demanding. Which is great because I’m not interested in sex, or in relationships with other men. I don’t understand why we need men …
• I know there’s no more room in my life for mistakes—for my daughter I will tolerate anything. Nika is in her GCSE year now, and Taren said he wants her to go to a state school, as he’s already invested about eighty thousand pounds into her secondary education and doesn’t want to pay for her A levels. I don’t know what will happen next.
• Nika wants to study Russian; I think she could be good with languages, but I hope she will do something creative; I hope she won’t choose to work for the corporates, at an office job.
• I do worry about my daughter ... Nika’s the only motivation I have in life. I told her that until she understands who she is, and chooses a career, not to marry anyone. I hope she keeps her virginity until she is married. I don’t want Nika to migrate anywhere. God willing, she will meet a lovely man and be a better mother and wife than I ever was. I hope she will marry a Russian because people need to have the same background, roots, heritage, faith, language. I haven’t seen many examples of families where Russian women live happily with their British husbands. Maybe because it’s easier to blame their husbands for their misfortu es.
• ***
• I’m not sure if it’s right to be an immigrant. I think it’s important to live where you’re born, where your family’s roots are. I wanted to secure my life in the UK so much, but the price I ended up paying was too high. In 2004 I still had my Kazakh passport and indefinite leave to remain in the UK, while my mother had Russian citizenship that she could pass on to me by descent. But I didn’t bother to check out the legal requirements for acquiring my Russian citizenship. I simply gave up my Kazakh passport and applied for British citizenship. It was sometime later that I discovered I’d done it back-to-front. That I wouldn’t be ale to apply for my Russian citizenship unless I gave up my British passport. I think it was a punishment—it’s such an irony how everything has turned out for me. Now I can live in the UK, but I can’t go back to Russia, not without a visa.
• Of course, life in England has shaped me.
• Over the years I came to notice that I became more and more self-indulgent. I was spoiled by the opportunity of being able to do what I want, to buy what I want. In comparison to the USSR, I live very well.
• I bought so much stuff: food (I still buy more than I need). I began spoiling myself—finally, I could afford to treat myself o lots of things. I argued with mum and my sister, calling them poor beggars. My mother likes second-hand shops, and that made me feel embarrassed. I told her, ‘Mum, can’t you go to a decent shop and buy yourself something there.’ I was ignorant. I really upset mum with my words.
• Taren likes to buy good food, nice clothes—most Westerners do. They’re motivated by money. I’m not. At least I’m not anymore. I’ve come to realise that the more you have expensive things, the more problems you have. That you become obsessed by your wealth and spend ever more time fearing that you might lose it. There’s such a difference between rich people and poor people in the UK. My views began to change when I joined the Russian Orthodox Church. Now I only worry about my soul rather than the material world. And I regularly thank God for bringing the people I know into my life.
• I like people. I like my clients who come to the branch where I work. Financial problems are second only to health problems. People want to talk about them. They will often share such exciting and sometimes intimate stories about their lives. So much so that listening to them can be embarrassing. Especially as most of our bank clients live in the same neighbourhood. I know a lot about them. I can walk down the street, look at someone’s house and know, ‘Ah ... this is the house that belongs to so and so ...,’ or ‘that one is struggling with debt ...,’ ‘and that one has got a solid credit history ....’
• Mostly though, my clients will make suggestions about what to do, places to visit. I have compiled a large folder with their tips ... ‘if you come to Wales, go and see this place ....’ One person even gave me advice about what church to go to. I like British humour, and their attitude towards life and education. I think most British are like diamonds, they are very nice people. They have a collective common sense. Unlike me—I am so emotional.
• Lots of Russian-speaking people live in Ealing. I like my Russian accent, occasionally I will even emphasise it—usually when I hear people speaking with an Eastern European accent. People tend to like it. And I often find that it helps them to open up. Some people come and try to make friends, while others don’t want to deal with me. I suspect it’s because Russians don’t like the idea that I will know about their finances. Often if they find out that I can speak Russian, they don’t want to work with me and ask for another supervisor.
• I’m not sure that I’ll ever feel truly settled in England. Even though I have assimilated myself into British culture, there a e still things I struggle to accept about UK life. Still, for me, it’s no longer a question—do I like it or not—I’ve learned to live here.
• When I first arrived in the UK, I was surprised to see how people treated each other—the equality of rights. None of the women at the bank where I work wear make-up. So, when I first started, my looks received plenty of attention from the men. However, now I’ve lost all interest in trying to make myself pretty. The only time that I ever feel like a real woman, these days, is whe I go to Russia, or to Kazakhstan.
• I do find it difficult here because, even though I’ve been working in banking since 2004 in various positions and gained various skills, I still don’t feel appreciated for what I do. I like that in Russia they value your work and appreciate people’s long service, and celebrate birthdays and anniversaries together; your colleagues, they are more than just colleagues, they become riends. I don’t have any friends here—it’s impossible to build friendships. It’s sad.
• Even though I’ve always maintained a good relationship with my work colleagues, I’ve never felt that I’m part of a team. Which is the reason that I suspect if anything ever happened to me, I doubt any of them would even bother to try to help. There is, however, one lovely girl who often bakes muffins and brings them to work to share with us. But most of our conversations are superficial. Like me, they work there because they need to pay their bills. Sometimes I feel like I’m a soldier, I just need to turn up and do my duty.
• ***
• Once I told someone at church that I wanted to leave and go back to St. Petersburg; he said, ‘It doesn’t matter in what country you’re trying to save your soul.’ I thought about it for a long time but understood that I still wanted to go. My life isn’t interesting—I’m a worthless woman. I don’t have any hobbies. I’m only good at my job—I think I’ve turned into a workaholic living through Groundhog’s Day. I have my husband, colleagues and a million clients.
• At the same time, I don’t think I will ever leave England. At least, not until I see that my daughter has grown up and is standing firmly on her own feet. Then, maybe, I’ll move back to Russia. Although I don’t know what I’d do there ... professionally. It’s not that I’m afraid of any job. I just know I won’t be able to work within the Russian banking system or within teaching. Here I’m a good specialist, I like my job, the stability it brings.
• But I still have dreams that remain unfulfilled. I really want to learn to cook properly, to invite guests to my home. It’s why I’m always thinking about enrolling in some baking classes. I don’t want to be that grandmother who doesn’t know how to bake. It’s one of those essentials for a woman. So, if I ever go to Astana again, I want to learn how to make manty. Of course, the women there will think I’m mad—it’s just embarrassing to be a Kazakh woman who doesn’t know how to make manty.
• Perhaps, it’s doesn’t matter what I dream about. The truth is I need to be a realist. Only God knows what the future holds for me.
• As I neared the end of my project, Russian troops began to roll across the Ukrainian border and my writing stopped. I felt emp y. There were no words.
• I’d begun to write about my Crimean memories in 2018. “There will be more wars, more killing, more innocent lives lost, more i justice; these are the realities that span and impact our lives, from cradle to grave,” I wrote. Yet, four years ago, if I hoped for anything, it was that I hoped to be wrong. WAR—I detest this word with my entire soul, and all it encompasses. The inhuma ity of WAR. Beyond the multinationals who profit from the weapons sales, there are no winners; it is simply an indecent, malicious political game. So, I cry for all those lives which have been lost in beautiful Ukraine, that I remember from my childhood summer of 1996 when I was twelve and there were no fences, no sides, and no painful choices to make.
• ***
• There is always something special about a long train journey: the buzz and commotion of the train station; people moving to and fro, carrying heavy luggage; goodbyes and farewells, laughter and tears; someone—in the best tradition of the genre—racing along the platform, shouting, ‘wait… wait,’ while the locomotive is gathering speed as he lurches and leaps for that last carriage door; doting mothers or wives offering their words of wisdom, some parting advice—dabbing at their eyes, a worried look—‘I’ve put a chicken and some boiled eggs in the dark-blue bag; there’s a soup in the thermos, make sure you have it first—before it ge s cold; and wash your hands; say hi to everyone for me; don’t forget to visit my second aunty and great-grandmother or they’ll be upset, and don’t forget to give the parcel to uncle Tolya, and …;’ kids running with excitement, only to hear ‘For God sake, Misha, stop running, it’s not a playground;’ two shrill blasts as the oscillating sound waves escape a whistle.
• It was sometime after midnight when mum and I finally left Moscow’s Kazansky railway station. The next morning, I woke to the passing countryside. The window was like a picture frame of captured light and colour that drew my eye towards the distant horizon: fields of rye, forests, rivers, livestock, homes.
• As the afternoon arrived, so did the heat of the day; we were beginning to melt. The coach filled with the rancid smell of sweating bodies and leftovers, so—as we stopped at the first of our long stops—we headed for the doors, desperate to stretch our legs and to fill our lungs with that fresher, slightly cooler air.
• For me, some of these long stops were to become my most treasured memories; they were like micro voyages into the unknown. Places where I’d sometimes bump into other kids my own age. Usually they’d be selling food, or cigarettes and newspapers. We’d stare at each other through probing eyes, studying each other’s outfits. I’d often find myself feeling envious of their life: selli g the food that their mothers or grandmothers made; their freedom, their joy as they laughed amongst themselves; how they were allowed to stay out late as they waited for the next train; that they got to spend their days talking with travellers who were heading south towards the resorts of the Black Sea, and to listen to their stories.
• It was only years later that I realised that I was the lucky one, and that their curiosity had nothing to do with my appearance. They simply wanted to understand what it was like to be able to go to the sea; and to know what it was like to be on the train and not waiting for it.
• ***
• After almost two days of travelling platzkart class, we finally arrived in Simferopol where we’d agreed to meet my dad’s dista t aunt Polya: she was going to give us a roof over our heads for the summer. She never did—maybe because mum decided against it, or perhaps aunt Polya never showed up—because we ended up renting a small place from a stranger we met at the railway station. It was a common thing to do in those days. Holidaymakers would arrive at their destination, and as soon as they stepped from the train—lugging their bags, tired, grubby, and sweaty as everyone was after nearly forty hours of train journey—they were immediately attacked by a cacophony of voices: ‘Sea view, dear … we’re only a few metres from the beach;’ ‘I have a lovely garden, sweetheart; your child can eat as many cherries and mandarins as they want … I’ll hardly charge you anything, unlike those stingy traders from the food market.’ (meaning ‘I’ll only charge you three times more’); or ‘Why do you want to rent those ramshackle cottages? I have a wonderful one-bedroom apartment right in the heart of city. You’ll have a private toilet and bathroom, you’ll be able to live like a queen, my beauty.’ (These were always the most attractive of offers, yet we all knew that the water would have been turned off for the summer maintenance period in the apartment blocks); ‘Look, my dear, your child is tired, you’re tired… you don’t need all this hassle, I’ll drive you there in my car, my wife has the house ready for you and your daughter—it’s a lovely place; I am offering you the best deal in the whole of all Crimea, a private house, not far from the sea, a nice garden … but you’ll need to make up your mind quickly. It’s getting late. I want to get back home. Yes-No?’
• Mum had already made up her mind; she opted for a house in the small resort town of Sudak, located on the southeast Crimean shore. It took about two hours to get there; so I was about as tired as I was excited, desperate to see the sea. But we seemed to be driving away from the shore, winding our way through small sleepy villages. The only signs of life were the occasional dim light glowing in some house or other, and dogs barking at our passing. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly inviting about the Crimea that night: the empty roads, zigzagging in the dark, trees and shrubs. The most notable thing about the place though was the smell that so welcomingly embraced you—like a dear old friend—the moment you climbed from the train: oranges and lemons, pears and dogberry, cypress trees and the saltiness of sea air.
• As we pulled to a stop, our host’s smiling wife appeared on the terrace. ‘Follow me,’ she said flicking on the garden lights. The incandescent glow called to life a swarm of maniacal insects that flew at us from every direction as she stepped onto a narrow gravel path that wound its way down towards a small timber structure at the bottom of their garden. The shed that we had ren ed—it was certainly several rooms short of being something you could call a house—was located near Sudak’s famous Genoese fortress.
• I woke early the next morning—in discovery mode as I lay in bed, listening to the sounds of this new world: birdsong. Our hut—or luxury apartment as the owners would refer to it—was a small, square-shaped box with a lampshade that hung from the ceiling. Our room had two wire-sprung, single beds that rested against opposite walls, a chest of drawers with its top hidden beneath one of the many plastic covers that adorned everything around. A table for two—a pair of folding chairs tucked tidily beneath its top—was placed beside the single window: our room with a view. So, while our box wasn’t extravagant, it was a place to rest our heads, and a place to call home as we wiled away our summer months.
• Excited, I sprang from bed, pulled on my light denim dress and canvas shoes, then stepped outside. The garden looked far large than it had the previous night. There were two huts, similar in size to our little wooden box tucked along the garden’s border, to the right of ours. A larger family lodge—it would have squeezed in four or five people—was nestled at the bottom of the ga den.
• The huts and the lodge—with their neatly made beds—all had a single window that looked back over the garden. What they didn’t have was a kitchen or toilet. But what did I know or care, weren’t all holidays like this? What did I know about three-, four-, and five-star hotels abroad with en suites and all-inclusive dining? I’d discover those for the first time the following year.
• On the very first day, the host’s wife (I think her name was Nadya) told us about the best, cheap places in town. ‘It’s not a good year for us. Life’s been callous. Everyone here is trying to live off their summer rent. Even though hardly anyone comes here anymore … they’re all going overseas to Bulgaria and Turkey. They all want better service for their money,’ she said, somewhat pitifully.
• ‘What about in other years?’
• ‘They were better. Before perestroika everything was great; we even managed to buy our car out of money we had made during the summer, and the food was cheaper than it is now. Now I’ve got to make my own bread rather than paying through the nose for that disgusting cardboard stuff that they sell in the shop.’
• During our stay, mum and Nadya would occasionally find the time to talk, when mum was cooking something—her ingredients patien ly waiting on the worn, light-blue, plastic tablecloth beside the small, portable electric hob—outside in the guest kitchen; or when she was hanging the washing. Nadya would always return to the difficulties of life in modern Crimea, or to her memories o her wonderful Soviet past. She was typical of that older generation who disliked everything that had happened to the country: the government, the inherent flaws of the new educational system, the inability to change anything in their lives. Her husband was an engineer who—as was the case for a significant portion of the working population after perestroika—had lost his job and had to make do by doing whatever he could to make ends meet. So, as soon as the holiday season began, he would spend almost every day driving to the railway station hopeful of being able to coax some tourists to spend their summer in one of their “wonderful beach houses.”
• ***
• Mum and I spent the whole summer in Sudak. Our typical day started with breakfast, then we’d head down to the beach: it was where we’d spend our mornings and evenings; every second day we’d make our way to the food market, which was a place that I thoroughly enjoyed: the aroma of fresh fruit and vegetables that clashed with the disgusting, unforgettable smell of cheap, stale tobacco, wet packaging, sweat, the sour milk they poured out under the stalls, and rancid, home-made cheeses that had gone off in the heat. The market was always jam-packed: housewives, salesmen, loaders, old grannies, and curious tourists in search of a snack. So, the best time to go was when hardly anyone was there—when the market looked like a different place—during the early morning if you wanted the freshest food, or later in the evening if you were hunting for a bargain.
• The rows of metal stalls, full of juicy watermelons and apples, pears and nectarines, dark-red cherries, peaches and strawberries, moist cucumbers, large ripe tomatoes, courgettes, eggplants, fresh home-made pastries and sweets. The colour palette captured the vast array of spices and herbs.
• The local grannies were like homeopaths—they knew which herb you should take for a particular ache or pain, if you’d caught a cold, or had spent too much time in the sun, or were suffering from a hangover. ‘Take this, add some hot water and let it sit for twenty minutes; try it before you go to bed … you will feel better’; or ‘If you mix this up and leave it overnight, you will orget all about your health problems.’ They’d happily sit there and give you their time as they explained how best to prepare the herb before they plucked a ready-made newspaper cone from their stack of prepared packaging, their old wrinkly hands reaching out to exchange their cone of remedies for the pittance they had charged. ‘Remember, don’t forget to drink it … first thing in the morning. Before breakfast,’ you’d hear them shout. Their voices chasing after you with a last set of instructions.
• And if we weren’t at the beach, or at the market, then we were probably on one of the excursions that mum would book—she took me to so many places. It was as if we got to explore and discover every corner of the Crimea: the villages of Noviy Svet, Alushta and Alupka, and the cities of Sevastopol, Yalta, and Levadia, as well as the summer palace of the last Russian tsar, Nikolai II. But the one place that left an indelible mark on my memories was Bakhchisaray and the surroundings of southern Crimea.
• I was grumpy and moody when we set off to Bakhchisaray early in the morning, giving my mum a hard time, saying, ‘Where are we going now?.’ I was fed up with my mum’s unquenchable thirst to introduce me to all-things Crimean: the history, heritage, architecture, culture, and geography of the place. I was almost a teenager and just wanted to go to the beach, to eat some chebureki, and mostly to chat to our two new, handsome neighbours. What I didn’t want to do, was to go on another bloody trip. Why did we need to get up so early to drive to see someplace that hides the words “watermelon” and a “shed” in its name? This bloody shed etter be something special.
• It was already steaming and nearly the afternoon by the time we made it to Bakhchisaray. And while the bus ride was at best a it bumpy, we’d stopped along the way at a small, shabby, roadside café where we ordered manty. It was one of the yummiest foods that I tried that summer. The portions were enormous. And mum and I were both surprised because the quality of the food was simply outstanding. So, by the time we arrived—and even though there was no shade to find anywhere—I’d more than calmed down.
• We walked into the Khan’s palace and listened to our tour guide, who, probably for the millionth time in her life, was talking about its historical significance and the famous interior courtyard with its fountain that was the inspiration for Pushkin’s saddest, most beautiful of poems, The fountain of Bakhchisaray. And, I must admit, I felt as though I was on the dullest of dull school trips. That was until, on the way back, we stopped at the observation point with its scenic view out towards the White Mountains. Mum, having already had enough, left me to wander about as she grabbed her opportunity to sit in the shade. The view out towards the large, white mountains beyond the canyon was mesmerising.
• And as I half-listened to a tourist guide telling another group about the famous films they’d shot in the mountains, and the t agedies of mountain climbers, and lives lost, my imagination began to run wild with images. There were cowboys, their horses racing over the rocky roads, billowing clouds of white mountain dust, and Turkish merchants holding tight to their carts—filled to overflowing with their cargo of expensive aromatic spices, rose oils, gold, and silver—as they made their way over the treacherous mountain terrain. There was a camel caravan with its prized haul for the Khan’s harem—the concubines, their faces behind silky shawls—winding its way towards the royal court.
• Not unusually, the observation point didn’t have any barriers, so I was able to wander to its edge, where I stood in amazed silence and stared, for some time, towards the grandeur of the White Mountains. They seemed to stretch out towards forever, for as far as my eyes could see. The magical grandeur of their permeance, versus my insignificance: a passerby. They appeared endless as I held my breath and lost myself in my emotions.
• The only other time I have ever experienced similar feelings of immaterial impermanence in this world, and the power of nature, was as I stood at the top of Cape Reinga’s cobbled viewpoint, watching the heavy waves of the Pacific Ocean collide in a battle of wills with the Tasmanian sea. They have been the only two occasions in my life where that next step towards infinity felt so tantalisingly close. The only thing that stopped me making that step was knowing there is always something else beyond that horizon, something that you could only understand if you took the time to look, and to explore and experience the life you have, until its end.
• That was the last time I visited Crimea. However, that languorous summer of 1996 will forever stay in my memory as one of my sweetest and dearest moments of my childhood.
• Soviet Union—Latvia—England
• 35 years old
• In the UK since 2005
• [The blue Skype logo showed on my laptop’s screen under repeated sounds of tu-du-tu … After a few minutes of anticipation, the connection was made, and Alex’s pixilated face appeared for the first time.
• ‘Hi, Olga. I’m using my old phone; sorry if it’s not the clearest of pictures,’ he said in Russian.
• ‘It’s okay. Are you at work?’
• ‘Yes, I’m in my office now and have plenty of time to chat.’ He laughed while fiddling with the camera’s focus.
• Finally, I could see Alex clearly. Athletic looking, in his company t-shirt, his dark-blond hair lightly combed, he was sitti g in his office chair, relaxed as he occasionally rocked from side to side. The room looked more like a shed, full of random stuff—rusty machinery and tools, plastic bags, boxes, paper scattered over shelves. Through the slightly ajar door I could see people walking; I could hear voices, shouts. It was almost ten o’clock in the morning, sunlight was streaming into the space, a busy but slow-moving day.
• He said, ‘Do you mind if we use the informal “you”? I think it’s easier.’
• ‘Sure, no problem. Although, I’m so used to the formality of conversations with Russians in England, let me apologise in advance if I still address you by “vy,”’ I said, somewhat amused. ‘So, when did you move to the UK?’]
• ***
• I arrived in England in 2005 with sixteen pounds in my pocket, a rucksack on my back and an EU passport in my hand. That’s it. I came here as a migrant worker, speaking no English. And I got a job on a farm, picking strawberries. I met my wife, Katya, here. And we got married in 2006. And I’m still here. But now I’m responsible for everything from managing the workers to ordering the stock; I’m a manager, an agronomist, and grower. And this is my story in short. Of course, if it was a novel about my entire life, it would be a thriller.
• I was born in a small military town, not far from Baikonur, in 1984. My dad was an Army guy. But after the collapse of the USSR in 1991—at the age of thirty-nine and healthy as a bull—he retired, upped sticks and moved to his homeland town, Daugavpils. Of course, I don’t really remember my first few years in Russia, but I’ve always considered it home. Russia is my motherland. It’s where my family roots are. My parents are Russian. Even though dad was born and grew up in Soviet Latvia, he was assigned to a job in Russia after graduating from the Army Academy. While my mother—she is from Balashov, Saratov Oblast—was also asked to elocate to a new place when she finished her studies as a patisserie chef. That’s where they met. Likewise, my wife’s parents are from Belarus, but ethnically they are Russian.
• The neighbourhood I grew up in had a kind of criminal atmosphere; we listened to lots of rap and blatnaya pesnya. This music was always around and respected. We even had our own gang and wore rap-style clothes. I’ve never listened to classical music or opera. I still don’t get it. And now I tend to listen to Russian rock, rap, R&B. Whatever. Sometimes I’ll even tune into somethi g that’ll bring memories from my youth flooding back.
• But unlike my older sister Lena, I’ve always found Latvia to be an in-between country, even though dad was born there, and I spent a huge chunk of my life growing up there. Although Latvia gave me my education, my friends, along with a European passport and free passage to the UK, I’ve never thought of it as home. And in truth, I just don’t like the place. I’ve certainly never regretted leaving. I don’t feel I owe the place anything. Latvia has always been anti-Russian, and anti-Soviet. Even though the majority of the population are Russian, or Russian-speaking. For me, life in Latvia, compared to any other country, is a nightma e. People don’t live there; they survive.
• I was nineteen when I graduated from the Agricultural college in 2003. Then I enrolled in the faculty of Physical Culture and Sport at the Daugavpils Pedagogy University. But it wasn’t for me, so I dropped out and headed for England. I wanted to make some money. And I’m glad I did because all the guys who were studying with me, on the same course, ended up with nothing. By the time they’d graduated, I was already on a decent wage. Of course, mum was a great support. She told me, ‘If you want to do it, do it.’ She has always been such a kind person. While my father—you know, he is a Lieutenant Colonel of the Air Force and he does ’t think he is always right, he knows he is always right—he had an altogether different view about it. In his eyes, anyone without a higher education degree is a loser. He was determined to stop me from going.
• ***
• My father is an utter asshole. He is a tyrant. We always used to do only what he wanted.
• I didn’t get any real holidays in my childhood. Other than the few times I went to pioneers camp, I always worked. From about he age of seven, my father always gave me a list of jobs to do around the farm.
• I suspect he didn’t think kids should have a childhood. And my guess is the foundation of his approach to parenting was laid down during his own early years. He was an orphan. And by the second year of primary school, he was already working at the kolkhoz to earn his food ration. He went through an awful lot. Yet, he considered himself a well-educated man. The only problem was, he also thought, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
• His view was if you want a holiday, go make some money. I always worked on the weekends. Yes, we celebrated New Years, birthdays, had dinners together, but even then we just ate at the same table. My father, mother, grandmother, sister, and me. There wasn’t anything special about it. And looking back it was all a bit surreal. We weren’t a happy family—we were five people stuck u der the same roof. And the only reason we lived like that, was him.
• Dad was impossible to live with. It’s not that he wanted rid of my sister or me, not at all. But we certainly wanted out. Lena got married, it was an easy way out. She’s a good woman, who’s built a strong family unit with her husband and their seven children.
• I started to argue with dad during my teenage years, but not because I was a difficult teen. It was more to do with dad wanting control. But given that it had always been that way, at the time I didn’t see anything wrong with it. It was just normal.
• Now though, I feel disappointed. His dictatorial ways have stayed with me. He was intransigent. Inflexible. And his philosophy that I grew up listening to was simple: if you didn’t have a higher education degree, then you were an illiterate bastard who would die homeless and having nothing. And that was his motivational mantra that shredded my dreams and ambition.
• Actually, I’m not a dumb idiot. In fact, I’m a quick learner, I’m good with languages. But the way he dealt with me, made me not want to do anything. And, all these years on, I still have no idea why it was that he treated me like that. I’ve had people tell me that I should forget about him and move on—but that’s easier said than done. I don’t want to simply sweep it under the carpet. It’s not my style.
• Anyway, I’m extremely motivated, doing the things that I enjoy doing. And I’m determined to achieve more and more, so that I can prove my father wrong. I want to show him that I’m a decent man. He was always adamant that I’d end up uneducated, that I would be a nobody. I want him to see what I’ve managed to achieve.
• The last time I saw my father was in 2014 when I went to Latvia. I’m not planning to go there again. And he doesn’t want to visit us here; his excuse being, he doesn’t want to go to the enemy’s country. I even tried to push him by suggesting that maybe he could come here as “a spy,” to take a few photos… but he doesn’t want to.
• And, while mum wants to visit, she can’t because she’ll be in trouble. So, we keep in touch by phone and email. But I noticed mum never writes much because dad reads everything, just as he listens in on her phone calls. She has spent her entire married life in an abusive relationship and couldn’t do anything about it. Even now when he’s old. She knows he’d make her life miserable if she argued with him.
• So, he has never met his grandson, Addy, who is four years old now. And I suspect, as my son grows up, he’ll start to ask ques ions, like: Where are my grandparents? Why doesn’t my grandad want to see me? I’m not sure what I’m going to say. What is there to say … I’m not going to lie. Probably I’ll tell him they live in Latvia … that they have other interests … other grandchildren. Addy doesn’t deserve that.
• I can’t imagine that if my own son moved to another country, that I’d never want to call him, to visit him, to hold my grandchildren.
• What kind of bastard do you need to be not to want to see your own son? The son, you haven’t seen since 2014. Your son and you grandson.
• The only good time I remember having with my father was when he occasionally took me hunting, or fishing. It’s the only fond memory that I have about my life with him. That rare but special bit of father-son time. It’s the one happy memory that I hold on to.
• I grew up on a farm surrounded by firearms; we had about twenty-seven hectares of land—full of wild animals, lakes, and a forest. So, there were some things I didn’t even need to learn as they were regular daily events.
• Dad taught me a lot. Before the break of dawn, he would wake me up, and we would leave home, walk a few kilometres through the dark fields. Then he would stop abruptly and say, ‘Now you get us back home.’ He taught me field orientation, how to survive if I ever got lost in the forest, how to make a fire, build a camp, find my way back by following the stars. He knew it all and was keen to share it with me.
• I was about seven when I first held a gun in my hands. And by eleven I’d learnt how to shoot. Dad taught me everything there was to know about safety in the forest: ricochets, how to shoot over the water. He would bring me to the marsh, and we would be shooting, from different positions—he would be on one side of the marsh, while I would be on the other.
• ***
• I’ve hunted in the UK for quite a few years now. It all started in 2011 when I popped into the repair shop where we usually fix our machinery. The owner of the shop was there, we chatted. I noticed the stag antlers on one of the walls, so it wasn’t long before our conversation drifted onto hunting. I told him that I used to hunt a lot in Latvia, and that I was interested in wood carving and pottery. Over time, we became good mates, and that eventually resulted in him inviting me to go hunting with him. I was quite overwhelmed to be able to go hunting again, after all those years, it felt like I was finally able to enjoy a proper weekend.
• At first, it was just a hobby, then it turned into a semi-pro business as people and private companies began to approach me to carry out a cull: deer, rabbits and the like. And then, I started to get calls from Russia; people would ask if I was interested in organising English hunting expeditions for them. So, I started to arrange trail hunting tours around the UK; and then I added hunting trips for pheasant, partridge, fox, rabbits, deer and the more classic deer stalking. I go hunting about two or three times a week now. Ultimately, it’s become a money spinner: I’m able to sell wild meat and game to restaurants and my mates. A d, in addition to establishing a YouTube presence, over the last five years, I’ve also been able to publish articles in several Russian, British and Ukrainian magazines. Now, I have clients from across the social divide and from a variety of backgrounds. So, one day, I hope that I’ll be able to hang up my farming gumboots and put all my time into the hunting business.
• Of course, the hunting world is a small world. But I must admit, there aren’t many Russians in England with the selection of firearms that I have. I’ve also got one of the UK’s highest qualifications—I’m a range conduction officer—which gives me the right to manage firing lines of up to a hundred-fifty people. It’s fair to say that I now have a well-established profile in England—they call me ‘Russian Alex.’
• That said, it hasn’t all been roses along the way. There’ve been times when people prefer to think of me as one of those Russian guys who doesn’t know what he is talking about. Like the time when I was in a field with a high-ranking officer who’d come to hunt. He simply refused to follow the rules, preferring instead to argue. It was like talking to a brick wall, so eventually I gave up, got onto the walkie-talkie and got hold of someone who was able to deal with him.
• ***
• What do the British know about Russians? They know about Putin, Berezovsky, Abramovich. For some reason, they often expect tha because you’re a Russian you’ll know them too, that you’re likely best mates with Vladimir Vladimirovich. That he’s invited you for tea at the Kremlin. There are so many stereotypes about Russians: we’re strong, stubborn, we keep our word. I suppose people would see me as a typical Russian. But I’m certainly not a tall, big-chested Russian bear.
• Still, I’m proud that I’m a Russian, while, at the same time, I’m proud that I’m British. I became a British citizen in 2017. Yet I still considered myself Russian. I always have. You can be a citizen of any country, but your ethnic background doesn’t change. So, I’m a ‘Russian person who lives in England.’
• In terms of how people comprehend the word ‘homeland,’ I can’t say I have it. The fact that we left Russia and because no one asked me if I wanted to go (although I understand why they didn’t, I was too little) still bothers me. I suspect that’s why I still sometimes wonder what my life would be like if we’d stayed in Russia. Perhaps, I would’ve followed in my father’s footsteps and joined the army.
• When I went to Latvia, in 2008, to visit my parents, I brought the photographic negatives of my friends. I’ve never gotten around to having them printed; I’m not sure why. But sometimes, when it’s a sunny day, I’ll still find myself sitting outside the house, and holding the old negatives up to the sun, remembering my past. It’s cool being able to see how I looked all those years ago and compare it to how I look now.
• Occasionally I get in touch with my old Russian friends … it can make me quite sentimental. I know that when my son is about ten, I want to take him to Russia, I want to show him Red Square, the Kremlin, and to take him to see the white nights in St. Petersburg. It’s just nostalgia.
• ***
• What I do like about the UK is that there are loads of opportunities here. I have a life that I wouldn’t have had if I’d stayed in Latvia. I have a good house. And while I don’t live in luxury, I certainly enjoy a better than average lifestyle.
• If I worked on a farm in Latvia, and even if I’d been promoted, like here, to the senior role, I would’ve still been just a fa mer in everyone’s eyes. But here, as a farmer, I feel like I’m a fully-fledged member of British society, a respectable man in the UK.
• England, if you’re prepared to work hard, gives people a chance. If you work hard, if you do the right things, you can make something of yourself. No matter, if you’re self-employed or working for someone else, you’ll have the chance to succeed. In Latvia or Russia, if you’re self-employed, people will simply think that you’re poor and incapable of getting a decent job. In Engla d though, people are more likely to think that you’re passionate about what you do and are making a success of it. In Russia, Latvia, in all the former Soviet Union states, it’s all but impossible.
• But I’ve also noticed all the changes that have begun to happen in this country over the past decade.
• Brexit has been divisive. I know people who voted Leave and others who voted Remain. I voted Remain, simply because I know the UK can’t survive without immigrants. Traditionally, most of the farm workers have come from Romania and Bulgaria. So, what’s happened since Brexit is that we’re now seeing more seasonal workers from non-EU countries, like the Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, and Bangladesh.
• But given the sensitivity around the whole Brexit issue and that I work with many people who have different views about it, I keep my opinion to myself. And if I’m pushed for an answer, I simply agree with them. As my father used to say, ‘you always need to choose where to bite and where to lick.’ Over the past fourteen years, I have met many people and heard so many different stories. So, I do understand both sides. Had I been in a similar position to the poor English, I would understand why they wanted to leave.
• So, Brexit I get. But what I really don’t understand here is the endless propaganda in support of gay relationships. How to explain it … I’m a grown-up, I know what I like and dislike … but children!? I’m worried about my son. Children are young and innocent, they believe anything. And this is happening despite the fact that so many parents are against their children being exposed to sex education within a school from such an early age. And regardless of the public view, they still passed the needed legislation.
• And that’s what I really don’t like about this country. The minority rule over the majority. And the government supports it. They tell us that you can think and express your opinions, but as soon as you say, ‘I’m against this gay propaganda,’ people will tell you, ‘You can’t say that.’ Why is that? Why is it that someone can say, ‘I support gay propaganda,’ but I can’t say, ‘I’m against it’? Isn’t this a democratic society? The fact is, there is no democracy here. If I say that I’m against it, I’m simply told that I’m wrong. Regardless that I have the right to not agree with it. People used to fight for their freedom of speech, it seems not any more.
• I can say the same about those green activists. The reality is I don’t just hunt for pleasure. It’s often about animal welfare and safeguarding the farms. But those activists have no boundaries; they seem to think, they can say what they want, and that it’s just their view that counts. They can walk into a restaurant and tell me I’m wrong because I’m eating my steak.
• Democracy is good, but it needs to be sensible and accept there are two sides to every argument. Here, everything is upside down; sometimes, it feels absurd.
• ***
• When I arrived, I was simply happy that I managed to get a job. However, given I didn’t speak a word of English, I thought, shit, my father was right. We are a reusable product for them. They don’t care about us. We’re nothing more than immigrants for them.
• But as the years have gone by, I’ve seen the transformations in our industry: the seasonal workers have gained more rights and protection under the law. Unlike when I first arrived, when my manager or supervisor would say what they wanted, how they wanted … an expletive here, an expletive there, shouting angrily, at the top of their lungs: it was normal. They weren’t doctors or lecturers; they were farmers. And I can’t say I was shocked. Now it’s gone to the other extreme. You’ve got to consistently think about everything: workers accommodation and payments, the way you talk to people, make sure you’re polite, professional, info mative, and rational. It’s the new world of human rights. Everyone’s got so sensitive that before you even consider making a comment about the poor quality of their work, you need to make sure that what and how you say it doesn’t offend them. What do they care if I lose money, if because of their shoddy work I won’t be able to sell the fruit they’ve damaged?
• Luckily, I’m a calm person. I’m not one to argue, and it’s difficult to make me angry. And I’m also happy to take whatever time is needed to explain things. But, yes, sometimes the odd swear word escapes me. With people who’ve worked on the farm for years—who I’ve known for a long time—I don’t need to worry about choosing my words. I often think the people who complain and talk about the verbal abuse are just trying to get something out of you. People became aware of things; they don’t complain ‘just because…,’ they complain because they need something.
• What can I say? We work with big companies. They regularly run health and safety checks that are conducted both by the government and independent bodies. We follow the required procedures; we comply with the laws against human trafficking and modern slavery. I have never come across illegal immigrants or trafficked people. In the farming world that I work in I can’t even believe that it’s still happening in England. There’s so much paperwork, who on earth would want to do something illegal? What’s more, we know the agencies who supply us with our seasonal workers. It’s really not that difficult for us to check their work, to see where the people arrived from, what their contracts state. Perhaps some small scam agencies promise people the world and then don’t pay them, but they’re not the types of businesses we work with.
• ***
• I believe it could be challenging to be an immigrant, but we’re the ones who make things difficult. I am not afraid of challenges. My father once told me, there isn’t any situation that you can’t find a way out of; it’s just sometimes we don’t like the choices in front of us.
• Over the years, I’ve been lucky to have met all kinds of people from various classes. And I’ve always been pleasantly surprised by the way strangers here treat me. Sure, I’ve got caught up in the occasional fight. Of course, there was trouble ... when my mates and I used to go to pubs and clubs, there’d always be some young British guys looking for a fight. But I don’t drink any more and don’t really go to pubs—that’s all in the past now.
• Although I still know guys who are stuck in their local Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, Latvian communities, still doing all the same things together. Their minds are caught-up in their tiny worlds. They don’t want to become locals. You can think of them as forever immigrants.
• The first sign that you’re talking to a typical immigrant is when they say, ‘Back home is not like that … .’ It’s a phrase tha I finally stopped using about eight years ago. For them, though, it’s always ‘back home.’ What home? For me, my home is here, in England. I usually just say, ‘My parents live in Latvia … in Latvia it’s ....’ They’re the type of immigrants who always look backward; everything they have—a house, a car—is there, in their past, back home. England is simply where they live, but it’ll never be their home.
• Even so, it’s not that I’m trying to lose my heritage, but I do want to do everything necessary to become part of the local society. And I certainly don’t think of myself as an immigrant. For me, the immigrants are those who get up in the morning, have breakfast, go to work, and come home, hoping that one day they’ll make enough money to be able to get back to their motherland. They won’t. Or if they do, they’ll lose the money they made here in five, six years. They’ll quickly spend it trying to live the kind of life they lived in England: an expensive car, going out to the pub a few times a week, to restaurants, weekend barbecues with friends. So, soon enough, everything they’ve saved they’ll quickly fritter away.
• ***
• If I had a choice, I’d live in Russia, Belarus, or Latvia, but I can’t afford to live there. I know I’d never find a job like he job I’ve got and that I’d never be able run a business like I do here or earn the same money as I do here.
• Of course, I’m here because of my family. Some years ago, I received an offer to move to Australia. It came with a good package, but I refused, as we already had Addy. Australia seemed too far away from everything, from Europe, from our family.
• But more importantly, I don’t want Addy to suffer the same fate as me—to be born in one place and grow up in another. My fathe took us out of Russia when I was little; it was stressful for everyone. Now, Katya and I want to focus on our son’s future. He has far more opportunity in the UK. Katya has done a great job with our son: Addy is already ahead of many of the kids and he’s confident. Of course, I spend a lot of time with him too. On Saturday, I take him to gymnastics, then he goes to a drama school, and in the evening, I take him swimming at the local pool.
• So, I’m a happy man. I have my family, I’m successful. And I’m a realist. I always say that if you wake up in the morning, it’s already a great day. My life motto is that your happiness is in your own hands. I’d rather do everything that I can to achieve something, rather than lose time thinking about why I haven’t done. I always work, and seldom take days off.
• Besides, I feel settled here. All the important events of my life have happened here. I can’t imagine moving somewhere else. But the future will tell.
• I belong to the last generation of Soviet children: to that last generation who were indoctrinated by Soviet culture, to that generation who suddenly found themselves spewed out of that “all-encompassing” ideology. Just as I was part of the generation left to make their own way in this brand-new country: the Russian Federation.
• Perhaps that’s why, even now, I often feel amused whenever I’m asked to select my place of birth from a list that doesn’t include the USSR. It seems there’s no getting back to the USSR. Was my destiny—to be born and grow up in one place only to find myself living somewhere else, entirely different, without even needing to pack my bags—sealed, way back then?
• Sometimes I envy the seventies generation: they were already adults—with their own opinions and views—by the time the USSR collapsed. They knew what they liked and disliked, unlike us kids of the eighties. We didn’t have a clue. Our lives were in flux, shaped by Soviet dogma and propaganda that we were told to erase from our memories and replace with those hurriedly rewritten wo ds, that new dictionary for our Newspeak era.
• The “New Russia” seemed clueless about what path it was on, so it simply resorted to replicating Western thought while fortuitously grabbing at any opportunity to leverage the most hideous aspects of Western culture. So, while everything still said “Made in USSR,” and while we watched Soviet films, we got fed American comedies and thrillers; and while we tuned into the same Soviet music stations, we also hunted the market stalls for those sought-after American and British albums; and even though we ate the same Soviet food we craved Western tins and wore strange outfits: a mix of old Soviet clothes with cheap foreign labels.
• Like many children of my generation, I dreamed about “life abroad.” So, when I was little, one of my prized possessions was a German catalogue; it was similar to one of those UK Argos catalogues. Although, how the catalogue came to be in our home remains a mystery to me; my parents had never visited Germany. Still, it didn’t matter, because flicking through its pages of toys, clothes, and jewellery was always like magic to me. I’d never seen so many beautiful things in one place before and used to spend hours imagining how, once I grew up, I would be able order all of those things in the catalogue that I really wanted. Like all hose lucky people in Germany who could order everything they needed from the catalogue.
• Then, in 1993, when so-called Russian democracy and freedom finally came to our streets, I—like a thirsty and starving child—began absorbing everything I could about this new cultural era. It was now full of “all things Western.” For me, it was an incredible time. It was no longer quiet on the Western Front. And then, of course, that really special day arrived on New Year’s Eve when dad took me shopping at the first shop where you could buy things for US dollars. It was mind-blowing, all these beautifully wrapped things: colourful tins with Danish biscuits, Swiss chocolate, French cheese, Italian salami, American chewing gum and sweets … Who cared at that time if it were healthy or not, what did it matter that some of the items were nearly out of date. The only thing that mattered was that we finally had them, that we were being Westernised.
• We even got McDonald’s, which I visited with my dad to celebrate the purchase of my camera: a point-and-shoot Kodak. We ate at the corner of Gazetniy pereylok and Tverskaya street, unaware that we were sitting just a few metres away from the home of Vladimir Orlov, a Soviet and Russian author, and a professor at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. Some years later I would become a student of Vladimir Orlov’s.
• Anyway, I ordered a Big Mac, large strawberry milkshake, large fries, an apple pie, and a caramel ice cream. It was such a feast… not so moveable, though. Would Hemingway have been able to understand the emotions of an eleven-year-old girl, out on the town with her father, buying the coolest foreign camera and eating the coolest food … ever? We sat outside at a silver metal table, enjoying the warmth of a sunny Moscow day.
• But, of course, breezes blow both warm and cold. This Western one whistled in a changing Soviet society that occasionally turned our streets into war zones. Our once safe world began to crumble—our news suddenly filled with the stories of sex crimes, street fights, gangs, and criminals.
• So, dad, wanting me to know how to protect myself, began teaching me boxing and judo, how to physically hurt someone using simple things such as a pen or a pencil, where to hit to knock someone out. It’s fair to say, I have never used those skills, but these memories are always with me; I know how to fight, and how to cause physical harm. What he didn’t do was provide me with all those essential emotional skills for life: how to mend a broken heart, or how to protect myself from being hurt by those I loved and trusted the most.
• ***
• After Galya departed from my life, I became friends with a crowd from a completely different circle—which I know horrified my parents for a long time; ‘How could our Olya become interested in THEM?’
• “THEM”: Zhenya—she was a year older than me and got dropped into my class to retake the year, a short girl with long dark-brow hair and Spanish facial features; Lyuba and Sveta—they lived across the road from each other and used to do most things together. They bought the same clothes, coloured their hair the same colours and copied each other in every way, yet they never looked like the identical twins they wanted to be simply because Lyuba was taller, stockier, while Sveta was short and petite— they were both in the year above.
• Then there were the boys, whose presence would often fluctuate according to Zhenya’s wishes and commands. There were the boys rom the neighbourhood next to ours, two Sashas, Alexey, and some others whose names I can’t recall now. And there were the boys who lived in my apartment block—Vitalik, Roma, Denis, and Ashot who were about a year or two older than us. The first lot were far more interesting than the second; they liked to talk about journalism, engineering, and politics and planned to apply to Moscow State University and other prestigious universities. While Vitalik and Co were known as the local gopniks. At any time of he year, you could find them sitting either outside the apartment block (right next to the main door entrance) or at the building’s back stairwell: a cheap bottle of vodka in hand, a soft drink of Buratino, or, on a good day, 7UP or Fanta, along with their must-have companion, a guitar. They would pass their plastic cup of vodka around, followed by their bottle of fizz while talking about the misery of this world—za zhizn’—hopelessness, rich guys vs poor guys. It was as if they already knew, at their young age, that most of them would do nothing with their lives, that their presence in this world was irrelevant.
• The boys’ main topic of interest was their fast-approaching military service; or—more correctly—how to dodge it.
• ‘My father won’t pay to get me out of the army … too many bucks,’ Vitalik, a tall, dark-haired boy, said once. Then, having taken swig of vodka and a sip of Buratino, he grimaced and went back to playing the guitar as he added, ‘So, I guess I’m going to the army.’
• ‘What’s about a white ticket? You can con them,’ someone suggested.
• ‘You’re such a dumb fucking idiot.’ Vitalik smirked, contorting his face and body, pretending to be disabled as he spat on the ground and then slipped a smoke into his mouth. ‘White ticket costs money… and do you know what’s after that? No driving licence, no decent job. Your life will be fucked up forever.’
• ‘Won’t it be anyway?’ I asked.
• ‘What d’ya mean?’
• ‘What do you think, your life is going to look like?’
• ‘Olya, again you with your fucking philosophy ….’
• ‘No, seriously, what do you want to do? You can go to university; that will stop you going to the army for five years, then you can continue your studies, which will buy you another three.’
• ‘University is not for me. We are simple guys here, not as smart as you, who wants to have a rich life.’
• ‘I have never said I want to be rich; I want to have a good life.’
• ‘Same thing. You are the one who always talks about this shit: brands, cars, white chocolate with blueberries.’
• ‘What’s wrong with the chocolate?!’
• ‘You just don’t get w’at I’m talking about.’
• ‘Maybe.’
• Very soon, Vitalik found a job as a barman at one of the summer pop-up bars in the city centre. ‘You should come to catch up with us after your lessons,’ Zhenya said, over the phone. ‘It’s such a cool place.’
• That summer, I’d started attending evening English classes in the city centre, and usually finished around eight-thirty, so, i was around nine by the time I strolled down Tverskaya street, and then made my way across the cobbles, up the slight incline from the Metropol Hotel to Revolutionary Square; an alley, beneath the dark arch, branching off towards the GUM backstreets. A b ight light beckoned me onto the artificial lawn that wrapped around the white kiosk, Vitalik’s smiling face behind the bar’s counter and plastic tables and chairs spread across the lawn. The venue was nothing like I’d imagined. But, despite its aesthetically unpleasant look, it was trendy; the cheap plastic tables were full of predominately female customers. Zhenya and some other mates were already there, sipping on drinks. My arrival was noted by the eyes of the strangers who watched as I walked to the able.
• Chatting away, I noticed the girls who sat at the tables nearest us—they were all so young: underage, like me. Most of them we e strikingly dressed, their expressions hidden behind the pretence of their nervous happiness that seemed to shuffle between uncertainty and fear. Their eyes, as one, turned towards the two older-looking men, burly and hard-looking—tough guys—who strolled with an air of arrogance.
• As the two men closed on the tables—like the owners of dogs calling their bitches to heel, with a whistle and the click of their fingers—they clapped their hands and shouted, ‘Up.’ Their command was instantly obeyed as the girls, in one perfectly choreographic movement, sprung to their feet and formed themselves into an ordered line for inspection. The men moved around them, with sleazy hungry eyes, like a couple of hyenas stalking their prey. Searching out their preferred piece of meat: nothing too old, too tough. A girl, with beautiful platinum-blonde long hair, and wearing a spotless white dress, suddenly started crying, begging them not to select her. ‘It’s my first time,’ she pleaded. An older woman lashed out with a slap to put the child back in her place with a whispered apology and an offer of compensation: the men, satisfied with their bargain, walked off in the company of three girls. The other girls retook their seats, aware their time would come.
• Horrified, I finished my lemonade and left. I had a home to go to.
• I never went back to the bar, although I did hear, sometime later, that Vitalik lost his job and left without ever being paid.
• I’ve never been able to work out what it was that I found exciting about the crowd I hung around with for several years. Not that I could say that I was really ever one of them. Yet I learned their jargon and mimicked their behaviour; I learned to hide behind a mask so that I could fit in. And while my school teachers were shocked by my new choice of friends, and even more so by my sudden change in my behaviour, they were never in a position to do anything about it: I remained an A-B student. And while the Russian school system was such that our teachers knew us well, pupils well-being and pastoral care were never part of our school system.
• I suspect it was just curiosity with which I looked at their life and listened to their thoughts. The foundation stones of their world were despair and pity. If they’d ever held any dreams, desires or aspirations, then they’d been stolen away, long ago. They looked at their lives through plain, bored eyes, disinterested in the world beyond their neighbourhood as lost and patriotic residents of the South district of Moscow.
• To my parents’ relief, one day, all of this came to a logical and inevitable end when I enrolled into a preparatory law course and became occupied with my studies from early morning to late in the evening, six days a week.
• ***
• In 2008 while visiting my parents, I bumped into my one-time friends as I walked down to the shop. Vitalik and his mate, both in their tracksuits, were sitting in the children’s playground—smoking and sipping beer—watching their toddler sons playing with each other.
• ‘Hey Olya, long time no see.’
• ‘Hi … yes, I guess it has been. I don’t live here anymore. I’m just visiting my parents.’
• ‘Ahh … so where did you move to?’
• ‘New Zealand.’
• Soviet Union—France—England
• 43 years old
• In the UK since 2006
• ***
• At school, they would tease me for being a beanpole. Yet, for as long as I can remember, I’d always dreamt of becoming a model. And when my closest friend Polina came over to play, we’d fantasise about being models, imagining ourselves on the catwalk strutting our stuff. However, after graduating from school, I enrolled in a branch of the Moscow Finance and Economics Institute, located in the centre of Tyumen. Despite my desire for a higher education, I had never stopped dreaming of modelling; so, when a scout from the M-Start modelling agency came to my home town, looking for the next new face, I jumped at the offer to join the agency.
• So, I became a protegee of Mikhail and Nonna Zvezdinsky. I moved to their Moscow modelling school for a month and a half, lear ing to walk on a runway, to pose for photos, present myself, and even talk. Mikhail would say, ‘You are talking like a country cousin. People will laugh at you; they won’t understand you. You need to learn to talk properly.’
• It was during my second year at university when I won the Russian Super-Model contest. And soon after I received an offer from the famous and prestigious Parisian Modelling agency, Mariline Gotie. At the time, they were managing super models like Kate Moss, Eva Herzigova, Niki Taylor. I was ecstatic, unlike my auntie Shura, who a few weeks before my departure came to visit us.
• ‘How could you let her go,’ she was shouting at my mother, ‘… she is so young and naïve. You have no heart to allow your child to go so far away. It’s a different world there.’
• ‘It’s not me … it’s her father. He signed the contract,’ my mother replied. It was her standard line of defense when anyone criticised her for letting me go.
• Though the truth was both my parents supported me. As did my university teachers. ‘Go to Paris, Alyona,’ they said, ‘go and see the real world, give yourself a chance.’
• So that was my chance. I knew I had no future in my hometown. Who would I become there? A teacher, an office clerk, scrimping a life while living day-to-day on a subsistence wage. I wanted a good life.
• Having moved to Paris, I soon came face to face with the realities that I wasn’t ready for. The first issue was the language barrier—I didn’t speak French. I did know enough English to get by, but to be successful in this business you needed to be on a sociable footing with bookers, and in Paris they only spoke one language—French.
• It took me a year to come to grips with the language, and that crucial time to build relationships within the business was los . Still, the agency did promote me, just not to the same extent as the other girls. But I was never without work.
• The other thing that I had no idea about was how the contracts worked. The agency put me up in a chic apartment, right in the heart of Paris, and covered all my living expenses, as well as my flights back home. What they didn’t tell me though, was that my new and glamorous lifestyle wasn’t free, which was unfortunate, because by the end of the year I was thirty thousand dollars in debt. So, they sent me to Tokyo to make up for the money they’d already supposedly invested in me.
• When I look back now, I can’t say I could complain—I did pretty well as a Russian in the modelling industry. In fact, the people at Tyumen still talk about my picture being splashed across the pages of all the Russian magazines, my TV-commercial appearances. But what I didn’t manage to achieve was the same level of success as a model on the international stage. I could have achieved a lot more, but I lacked the required courage, the craziness and sex appeal. I guess, my parents brought me up in a different way—I was too prudish. I couldn’t bring myself to do nude photos or anything explicit. And while I was invited to all the same parties as the other models, where they used to grab their opportunity to meet with the rich and powerful, I couldn’t imagine myself doing the same.
• Like the time when Petya Listerman invited me to Monaco for a ball in celebration of Steven Seagal’s birthday. I remember Petya telling me, ‘Go on, girl, don’t be stupid, it’s your chance.’ I was in the lift with Steven when he pushed me against the wall and tried to plant a kiss. I tried to stop him. I told him I wasn’t interested, that he was too old for me.
• It was only later that I learned that while my manager was waiting for me in the car with the Princess of Monaco she joked, ‘I think we will be waiting for a while; I heard Steven was having fun with some Russian prostitute.’
• When my manager finally got around to telling me what the Princess had said, I didn’t just feel shocked and offended, I felt ashamed. Curiously though, I also remember asking myself, ‘What stopped you?’ The reality was I wanted to marry a man I loved, I wanted to have children and a real family. I was a modest girl, who simply believed that I just needed to work hard and make my own money, if I was to find success. I didn’t want to experience the same trouble that some of the girls I knew had had with their wealthy companions: one girl received a Rolex as a gift, another a broken leg. And while one lucky girl got to marry her oligarch, another found herself in difficulties with the Russian mafia … .
• Still, I’d never criticise these girls. Especially now, knowing how much these girls really need to invest in themselves: portolio, food, their looks—it requires a massive amount of money. So, if they don’t have it nor a sugar-daddy, then they often have no other choice than to work as an escort or prostitute. But a woman is still a woman, no matter what she does. Sometimes we’ e just pushed by fate into doing stupid things.
• When people ask me what I think of modelling and that “other” side of the job, I say, ‘You should try it—then you wouldn’t need to ask me.’ You’d soon learn that it’s a tough business that prepares you for any future life troubles. You get used to being ready at a moment’s notice. You learn to care for yourself and how to present yourself. You always want to look your best, which, of course, is essential for a woman.
• The truth is, I loved my life in France. It was fun. The French are easy, they know lots about us Russians and our culture. Which, perhaps, is the reason they were so welcoming. I met my first husband in Paris, Erick. He was a former dancer at the Théâtre des Variétés. I didn’t tell my parents that I’d gotten married. And when I finally got around to telling them, ‘I’m married,’ they were shocked. Mum simply dismissed it as a first step of adulthood and said, ‘It won’t last long.’ She was right—we didn’t even make our first wedding anniversary. But we’ve remained good friends and are still in touch.
• The end of my modelling career came unexpectedly. All of a sudden, it no longer had any meaning—when mum was diagnosed with leukemia, it became pointless.
• ***
• I cancelled everything and flew to Tyumen.
• When mum found out that I’d left the modelling agency, she was disappointed and upset. But knowing that mum was unwell, I didn’t see any point in working. I knew I had to be with her. I owed her my life. She was everything to me, the one whom I wanted to keep going for. For both of my parents, of course. But there is no one now in this world that I can call on the telephone as I used to call my mum. We used to talk for hours. There is no one whom I want to see as much as her.
• Chasing hope, I took mum to Paris to see a specialist who predicted she would live for fourteen years. That moment I realised hat the clock was ticking … only fourteen years left, and with every minute time disappeared.
• Now that both mum and dad are gone and I’m alone, here in London, I often think about my childhood, my life in Tyumen, our family.
• Other than knowing that my grandfather migrated to Tyumen from Odessa, while his wife was from Voronezh, I never really knew much about my paternal grandparents.
• What I do know is that my mother was born in the middle of the war, in 1943 in Krasnoyrka village. She was from a big farming amily and had nine brothers and sisters. But when her father came back from the war—an amputee, with a head injury—the whole family moved to Tyumen where grandad worked at the Tyumen Transmash, so that my mother could continue her studies. They all lived in a communal flat. And when she grew up, she moved to Moscow, to follow her dream of being an actress. She enrolled in a leading drama school and even received offers to act in several films, but she was naturally shy and too innocent. She told me she was quite overwhelmed by the unwanted attention of men, so she left the city and came back home, to Tyumen.
• Although my parents studied at different universities, my mum ended up at a students’ party where she met my father. He was an engineering student at the Engineer-Polytechnical Institute who had recently returned from the army: handsome, solidly build and very popular with the girls. Yet mum managed to get his attention. She was a very beautiful woman, though I think she had issues with herself, she lacked confidence. I think that she always felt that she didn’t deserve my dad – she was a village girl, while he was an uptown boy.
• They were married in 1970 and had their first-born, my brother Sasha, in 1971, and then five years later, me. My brother and I had a great childhood; we grew up happy and optimistic, surrounded by mum and dad’s love and support. We were involved in many after-school activities; I attended a music school where I learnt to play the accordion; and then there was the chess club, a basketball club and a ballet school. Then, from the age of 12, I spent my summers at pioneer camps; that was where I met my best friend Polina—we are still in touch. I was a straight “A” student until the last year of school when boys became somewhat more interesting than school, which was when my grades began to fall. But only as far as a few “Bs.”
• Sasha has never travelled outside of Russia; he’s a true patriot. He graduated as a psychologist and has been twice married. A d then, shortly after dad died, Sasha had a heart attack; sadly, his health isn’t as good as it used to be. That’s why sometimes it’s tough for me to be here in London. I always want to be there with my family to help them. But at the same time, I’m not sure if I ever want to move back to Russia; my life is rooted here—in London.
• ***
• It’s a bizarre story the way I ended up in London. It was while I was in Japan, I met a British guy, Simon. He was a nice man. We had a great relationship, and one day he asked me to marry him and move to the UK. So, I applied for a fiancé visa, and in 2000 we arrived in the UK. Everything was going so wonderfully until the day when we went diving in Devon. We had a huge argumen : something about my letters to him. Something stupid, as I see it now. But that day I told him it’s over; I packed my suitcases and took a train to London. I was wandering about London trying to find a hotel when a man stopped me and asked if he could be of any assistance. He offered to carry my bags to the hotel. That’s how I came to meet Navid, my husband. We’ve been together for twenty years now.
• We got married in 2004 after more than a few difficulties. The Home Office refused to believe that I’d arrived in the UK to ma ry one man only to re-apply to marry another a few years later. They thought it was a fraud. Navid stayed in the UK, working with his lawyers, fighting my case, while I was in Russia with my parents. Of course, he flew in a few times to meet them – and I’m happy he got to know my mum before she died. And I’m sure, meeting a foreigner must have been such an unusual experience for her but a delightful one. She really loved him. She welcomed him into our family and would make all sorts of Russian dishes for him. I suspect though, she was mostly happy for me.
• By the time my papers were finally sorted, I felt exhausted. Maybe that’s why my new life didn’t start as I had thought it would. I thought I would be happy, but having spent two years away from Navid, I realised that I didn’t know my husband. And that I was struggling to understand his culture, while I knew he was struggling with mine. It is odd though that I’ve never been to my husband’s place of birth, Tehran.
• Compared with my move to France, everything in England seemed so different. In France, I had felt excited like a child: it was the middle of winter, but it wasn’t snowing, and there were leaves on the trees. People were welcoming and charming even though I spoke no French. Or maybe I just felt that way because it was my first foreign trip. This time, I was 29-years old and my initial impression of London was that it was bleak. The city seemed cold: people would express irritation with my accent, while the beggars would ask me for a fag and then shout at me, ‘go back to your country, you bloody foreigner.’ I had no friends. And my Iranian husband’s family weren’t particularly enamoured with me either. I was alone and found myself calling my mum all the time. I’d cry down the phone and say that I wanted to go back home. Mum would reassure me all the time: ‘Stop it, you live in a civilised country. You live better than anyone in your home town. You and your life in the UK are the envy of everyone here.’
• The first person I considered a friend was a Korean woman from the grocery store next door to our home. She would always ask me, ‘How are you?,’ or ‘Where have you been?’ if I hadn’t popped into the shop for a while. She was lovely, and the only person that I’d talk to for months and months; that was until I met a few other people. Although even then, I don’t think I would have ever considered those others as friends. I’d taken on a manager’s job at the beauty salon where I met Larisa and Irina. And for a while I thought that we’d become reasonably close—that was until I understood that people here aren’t really interested in you. They’ll happily party with you or go to a restaurant, but, beyond that, they’re not interested. When my father died, neither of them bothered to offer their condolences, or express any concern, or even provide a bit of support. Living in London is tough for Russians; Londoners don’t care that much about anyone but themselves. Their souls are rough.
• Nevertheless, I love the vibrancy of the city. I like the idea that you can find a job here or get an education, that there is justice, that you don’t need to bribe anyone to get the papers you need. But I still missed my home so much. It took me some years, more anti-depressants than I want to remember and sessions with a therapist before I managed to settle into the place. Dad used to call me a woman of the world. But perhaps I’m just a person without a particular place—I’ve been living in London for more than fifteen years now, but, because of my accent, the locals still consider me a Russian, while in Tyumen they see me as a stranger.
• Most of my friends in Tyumen think that it must be great living in London, but only because they have no idea how difficult lie can be here: that you need to be tough and careful; that you won’t have any close friends; and even with your relatives, the conversation will be limited to small talk about work and the weather, never anything personal. I matured morally here—I learned to deal with the reality of day-to-day life and rely on myself. In the eyes of British people, my life is average, but I appreciate everything I have. I like the charity shop where I work at the moment; I like my colleagues. On Fridays I clean my house, on Saturdays I treat myself to a home-spa day, on Sundays I attend the Catholic church at Sloane Square. And I’ve continued studying English. That said, I would prefer to move back to France if I could. On the other hand, I feel horrified by the idea of moving somewhere else and starting all over again.
• I feel good now, my wings are growing. Does anything upset me? No, I am a happy person; I have everything I want. Everything … except my mum. [Silence].
• When I was fifteen—and having absolutely no idea about how the modelling world worked—I decided to give it a go. For me, those models with their perfectly tanned bodies and mesmerising looks were the lucky ones; they got to dress in luxury designer outfits, and to smile from the covers of glossy magazines.
• It wasn’t that I felt assured about myself or my look; I wanted to be a model because, somewhere deep inside, I hoped that life would give me a chance, that the agency would notice my height and my goldish hair—even though I’d recently had it cut into a pixie style, just a few weeks before I heard about the Elite Model Look casting event that was being organised by one of the most famous modelling agencies in Moscow, Red Stars.
• So, while I am totally usure about where this idea of modelling had sprung from (“Don’t all girls want to be models?”), I suspect it may have had more than something to do with me wanting to prove to myself that my friends were wrong and that I wasn’t the ugly duckling. Zhenya, Lyuba, and Sveta devoted a considerable amount of their time to telling me: ‘You’re far too tall’; ‘Your legs aren’t the right shape’; ‘Your skin is full of blemishes.’ While Zhenya, whom I considered my best friend, would typically add, ‘You know men don’t like tall women; tall women are for work, and short women are for love.’ They were jibes that had egun to shake my confidence. So, maybe it was that I just wanted to show them that like everyone else I deserved to be loved; and that not only could tall girls get a job, but they were qualified, in all the right ways, for the best of jobs—as a supermodel.
• That pixie haircut I had had really worried me on the day of casting. I’d heard that they liked models with long hair. Never mind—I would still try, I told myself. It was early morning—but I had to dress as if I were going to a party: a little black dress, a pair of high-heels—I was off to Slava Zaytzev Fashion House for the casting.
• I arrived there, and I could hardly believe my eyes: hundreds, if not thousands, of young and beautiful girls, were queuing ou side; blondes, brunettes, red-heads. All, it seemed, overflowing with confidence and—to my dismay—far better prepared for the event. They’d arrived with their bags stashed full of clothes and shoes, their hairbrush sets and make-up packs, shimmering bronzers and body lotions. And there was little me—with my handbag, and a bit of face powder, a lip balm, and a volume of Dostoevsky.
• As the other girls twittered like birds about the casting and fashion, while throwing occasional glances towards the men who passed by, I read the magnificent White Nights, a favourite novelette of mine that follows the miserable life of Dostoevsky’s Dreamer. And while I read, the girls in the queue, shrouded by a cloud of hairspray, readied their sun-kissed looks by lathering their bodies with lotions; some flicked relentlessly through the pages of Cosmopolitan, or that latest must-read magazine that had only recently hit the Moscow shelves: Vogue.
• It took more than a few hours to make the front of the queue. Not that I had even the slightest idea about what I was supposed to do now that I’d got there. Ten seconds later, it was over, I had walked down the red-carpeted catwalk, to the very end where the powerful trio—the owner of the Red Stars agency and a couple of unknown faces—perched in judgement. I stopped at the end, looked at them—confused—waited for the questions that never came. That’s it? And then I turned to follow the others back from where I’d just come. Until that day, I never knew that “thank you” could sound like such a verdict of failure.
• Later, I hung around for some time, almost hoping for something. The other girls wandering, dazed, back through the exit, looking as confused. The same question written in bold across their forlorn faces—Why not me? What’s wrong with me?
• And then, miracle, a man and a woman introduced themselves as the representatives of a modelling agency and handed me their business cards, along with an invitation to meet at their office—a triumph.
• I arrived at the agency, bright and bubbly the next day, only to hear: ‘You need to lose weight’; ‘What do you think about sex?’; ‘Erotic photographs?.’ And as my dream crumbled, my hope of ever becoming a model began to fade. That was until I received a casting invitation for a well-known fashion brand.
• Given that I needed to be in another part of Moscow by seven-thirty, I left home that morning at half-past five. All I could think was, thank God, I wasn’t asked to wear some hideous mini skirt and tiny top—I could imagine the looks if I strolled about the metro dressed like that.
• The venue occupied some floor space in a massive building—people were hurrying about, in and out of the lifts, talking—but not an entire floor. I had absolutely no idea where I was supposed to go, until I saw a crowd of tall, leggy girls waiting beside closed double doors. Their disinterested glances in my general direction were enough to suggest I was of no concern. They looked like stick insects who never ate. Their overt height and slimness further accentuated by twelve-centimetre heels. Is that what they meant when they told me to lose some weight? I wondered, remembering the advice.
• I sat on the floor and opened my book. A few hours on and desperate for a coffee, I approached a group of girls, who looked at me with what seemed to be pity.
• ‘How much longer will we need to wait?’ I asked a girl with long blonde hair; her skirt was so short that it looked more like a belt.
• ‘Usually, about two or three hours. Are you new? I haven’t seen you around before.’
• ‘Seriously? So, why did we have to come so early then? Haven’t they started yet?’
• ‘No, not yet … They never start on time. It’s always a wait.’
• ‘And after the wait?’
• ‘They’ll take a quick look at you. And if they like you, they’ll take a few photos. And, if they like the photos, they’ll give you a call and make an offer. And while you’re waiting for their call, you can do some other castings.’
• ‘Another casting?’
• ‘I have five today.’
• ‘And … if no one likes you?’
• ‘You’re funny, you need to keep going … Someone will always like you.’
• ‘Do you do this all the time?’
• ‘Every day, apart from the days when I’m engaged in a photo shoot or doing catwalks.’
• I must admit, it wasn’t quite the modelling world that I’d expected to discover. Anyway, I waited for what felt like an eterni y, only to be advised that the casting had been moved to the afternoon. Upon hearing the news, the blonde girl, quickly calculated that she would have enough time to squeeze in another casting, while I thought, enough is enough. I could either stay in this ugly building and read another hundred pages of my book, sitting on the cold concrete floor in expectation of another heartless “Thank you,” or I could do exactly what I did—I headed off to Kuznetsky Most, to my favourite bookstore, bought a new book a d found a seat next door at the Coffee Bean Cafe. Both stores are no longer there, and now exist only in my past, like the memories of my never-to-be modelling career.
• Soviet Union-England
• 38 years old
• In the UK since 2014
• [I was standing outside Reading’s shopping mall on Broad Street, where we had agreed to meet, looking both ways, not knowing f om which direction Anna would approach. Then I saw her walking towards me, holding her son’s hand. Anna began smiling once she noticed me. She was a tall woman with very short dark-blond hair, dressed in navy-blue jeans, red-and-white sports shoes, and a sporty jacket.
• ‘Sorry, we’re late.’ Anna’s round face glowed with the warmest of smiles. Her voice was light—high pitched—as if she was excited about something. ‘We live about twenty minutes from the city centre, but it was a long journey for us … Reggie had to stop to see the ducks, to count the rocks ….’ Her three-year-old son hid behind her and glanced with general curiosity in my direction.
• We set off for the coffee shop—a former coaching inn, that was first mentioned in 1423—that Anna hoped I’d like. I loved it. I could see why Anna picked it—its atmosphere was quite different to the modern café chains. It was both charming and quirky at the same time: next to the entrance was a stack of large hessian sacks with brown label-stamps printed on their fronts, pottery and some plants on the shelves, a chalkboard on the wall and an iron wheel next to the counter. It was like a merchant’s treasure trove. Everything appeared worn, old and rustic: from the dark wooden furniture that was scattered about the place to the white walls and the old oak beams and small square leaded windows. There were a few chairs, but we chose to sit on the 50 kg coffee bags instead, either side of a low unpolished coffee table. If not for two modern coffee machines that stood on the far wall ehind the counter, the cashier, and the sound system I would have thought that I had been transported back in time, to some nineteenth century tavern. The only thing that was missing was the noise of someone’s horse carriage arriving in the courtyard.
• Having ordered two large lattes, chocolate cake and juice for Reggie, we sat sipping coffee and chatting about Anna’s great-grandparents.]
• ***
• /
• Figure 2. Anna’s archive.
• My great-grandparents, Alec and Tilly Deitelman, lived in a small Belarusian village of the Russian Empire. They were members of the General Jewish Labour Bund; and if it hadn’t been for the anti-Jewish riots, they probably would never have considered moving elsewhere. But when they saw their friends and neighbours being imprisoned and murdered, they decided to flee. I don’t know the exact dates, but it would have been in the early nineteen hundreds. So, they gathered their modest possessions and set off for the West, hoping to reach London, where Tilly’s sister—who had married a London Jew—lived.
• Eventually, they arrived in London where they were welcomed into the Whitechapel home of Tilly’s sister. Alec quickly secured a job at a tailor’s shop at 103 Jubilee Street, where he worked as a machinist, while Tilly found factory work, in Spitalfields, alongside her sister. Every evening Alec would meet Tilly outside the factory; they would walk home together and stop along the way to buy a liver pie. These were the memories that Alec would hold dear to the end of his life— about their time together in London, and those pies, the tastiest that they’d ever eaten.
• On the thirteenth of September 1917, their first child, Sam (his name, seven years later would be changed to the more common Russian Semyon) was born at the Mother Lady Hospital.
• But even having found in London everything that they ever wished for, Alec had never stopped hoping that maybe, one day, they would be able to return to Russia. It was while he was dealing with the new realities of fatherhood in London, that he heard about the Bolshevik Revolution, and thought that it was time to head back home.
• Tilly and Sam, however, remained in London until 1924. By the thirties, when Stalin’s regime came to power, my great-grandpare ts had already resettled in Kazan, where they lived in the old Jewish quarter at 18 Telman Street. Alec worked as a shoemaker, while Tilly (or Tanya as she was called in Soviet Russia) became a housewife. They had two more children, another son and a daughter. Tilly didn’t like anything about the “new” country. And even though she was fluent in Russian, Yiddish was the language that she’d always spoken—but would never be able to speak again. For the family and her own sake, she had to erase her native Yiddish alongside the memories of their past “life abroad.” She burned all the papers that they’d brought from the UK. She knew they would be dangerous possessions to keep. As it was, the NKVD searched their apartment on three separate occasions but never ound anything; they even tried to coerce their neighbours into giving evidence against my great-grandparents, but they were lucky because no one said anything wrong about them. It was a miracle—they were never arrested. Sadly though, they lost communication with Tilly’s sister, who soon migrated to America. Great-grandad—not yet sixty—died in 1944. Great-grandma outlived him for more than a decade and died in 1957.
• I know even less about my ancestors on the maternal side of the family. What I know is that they were from Tallin, Estonia. My great-great-grandmother was half German, and half Estonian, while her husband was Russian. They both could speak Russian, but predominately used German at home. They had seven children, one of them was my great-grandfather, Vsevolod. So, he was fluent in German as a child; unfortunately, over the years he lost the language. Although, what was quite miraculous is that in his later years he was still able to recite passages from Goethe’s Faust in German.
• When Vsevolod was seven the family moved to Orenburg Oblast, Russia, but my understanding is because of their ethnicity they were prohibited from living in Central Russia. Which maybe explains why, when the Revolution came, my great-great-grandparents decided to join Kolchak’s army. I suspect they were hoping to be able to migrate to Harbin. Yet, somehow, they ended up in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Most of Vsevolod’s brothers and sisters lived around Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. His older brother, Boris, was accused of counter-revolutionary activities, arrested by the NKVD and was sentenced to twenty-five years of the gulag. His name was finally cleared only in 1958. Unfortunately, we haven’t kept the connections with the extended family members.
• ***
• [While we were talking, Reggie decided to explore the café: he climbed over the coffee sacks, then he jumped down and disappea ed behind the counter.
• The tall blond waitress, obviously surprised to see an unfamiliar face, said, ‘Oh young man, you can’t be here ….’
• Reggie—his curly dark hair spread around his face and with a mischievous smile—somewhat disappointed, made his way back over towards us and sat on back down on the sack beside his mum.
• ‘So, what do you remember about your childhood?’ I asked Anna.]
• The first thing that flashes in my mind is that I’m standing in front of a mirror in our Kazan flat, in a little red dress with white polka dots, and my grandmother is plaiting my hair. My belongings weren’t anything extravagant; some clothes mum used to buy and others she made. I especially remember a grey pencil dress with a white collar that mum sewed; I didn’t like it at all, but I wore it.
• My parents both worked at the State Institute of Applied Optics (a secret plant that back then didn’t even exist on a map) at the other end of the city and next door to my kindergarten. When I was little, my dad would take me skiing around the lake; it was about six kilometres there and back. And when I got tired, dad would give me his ski pole; I would hold onto it while he pulled me home. Dad left us when I was eight—and my world fell apart—I saw it as a betrayal. He had another family.
• But the dearest memories are about my grandmother’s dacha. I really miss the atmosphere. Those leisurely mornings, when I would get up, have some tea and stare through the window while I was talking to grandma. Then I would do something till noon; I’d have lunch, enjoy another cup of tea, and some more chit-chat. And then, as the evening slowly approached, we would sit outside o the porch, chatting away as we ate an apple pie and drank what seemed like bottomless cups of tea. I can’t even explain what we used to talk about—about everything and nothing, all at the same time. I really do miss those never-ending cups of tea and talks on the veranda.
• When I was a child, I dreamt of being a chef. But mum told me that everyone would pinch my bum, so that idea very quickly drif ed from my radar. It was replaced with thoughts of becoming a doctor. But then I realised I would have to deal with my relatives and the relatives of other people, with young children suffering from various illnesses and that I wouldn’t be able to save them all, especially those who became terminally ill. And I didn’t want to be in either of these situations. Besides, I always liked literature and wanted to study it. So, after I had finished school, I enrolled in the philological department of the State Kazan University, from where I graduated in 2003. And then I joined a part-time PhD programme at the Department of Foreign Literature, researching Oscar Wilde’s works.
• Then, in 2010, I moved to Moscow to teach English and to work for several private institutions. Eventually, I found work as a ranslator with a large international company, which was how I met Steve, my husband. We were colleagues who shared a friendship for the first few years. Then the company offered me a two-year contract at their UK office, and I thought, why not. This was exactly the type of opportunity, as well as the “freedom” I’d been hoping to find before I settled somewhere. Not that I had any real idea where that somewhere would be. What I did know, is that it wasn’t going to be either Kazan or Moscow. Still, I never dreamt that one day I would end up living in the UK.
• ***
• On the eighteenth of January 2014, I arrived in Reading. It was a bright sunny day. I had two bags of luggage with me full of andom stuff: my Braun food processor that I took thinking that I wouldn’t find anything better in England (it’s still working, even though some parts have been replaced), my massager, a candlestick, my laptop, a camera and the Tao Te Ching. I chose Reading because a few of my colleagues were already living here—so I thought it would make it easier for me to get used to a new life. And it did, they were very helpful, although Steve was the only person who agreed to join me on my outings to all the cultural places.
• It was while I was looking for a place to rent that my relationship with Steve began. We married in 2015. I’m his second wife; Steve had divorced several years before we first met. He has two daughters from his first marriage. And even though Steve is twenty-eight years older than me, it’s never been a problem for us, yet I’m sure that’s not the case for everyone.
• Of course, no one has ever looked me straight in the eye and asked, why did you marry a man who’s so much older than you, but sometimes, by the way someone makes known their opinion, I guess their thoughts. It seems that they know what motivated me to marry Steve: for his money, for a British passport, but never it seems for love and a normal human relationship. Still, people are people. They can think what they want. But the reality is, in Russia, I certainly wasn’t struggling; I had good career prospects and a very good salary. I’ve never thought that you simply get married to fix a problem. It’s about commitment to love someo e who is special to you, and who you want to make happy. As it’s about a relationship that you’ll need to spend your life nurturing, that is, if you’re going to make it work.
• The same year Steve and I got married, I was diagnosed with cancer. It came out of the blue. It was a time in my life when I began to have a few female health issues—cystitis. They prescribed me antibiotics, but that happened too often. So, they referred me for an ultrasound scan, which was how they discovered what was a sizeable ovarian cyst. I was put on a list to have an operation on the fifth of September. There was nothing to worry about. So, Steve and I went to Russia; we had a fantastic holiday: we went to the lake, forest, mountains. I had no problems at all. Then we came back to the UK, my operation went well, and a few weeks later, I went back to the hospital to have my stitches out. Which was when the doctor said to me,
• ‘I have two bits of news for you, one good, one bad.’
• ‘Let’s start with the bad,’ I said, ‘so we can finish with something positive.’
• ‘The bad news is that what we have cut out was not a cyst; it was a cancer, but not any cancer, but a rare type of cancer. I see patients with ovarian cancer regularly, about three times a week; I’ve only seen this type of cancer twice in my entire professional career.’
• ‘That sounds great. And what’s the good news?’
• ‘I’ve already booked you for an appointment with the specialist.’
• That’s how it all started… Of course, the most difficult thing was telling my parents. I didn’t know how to tell mum. I felt guilty about being ill. And even though I knew it wasn’t my fault, I still felt like something was wrong with me.
• So, I went to see the specialist, who advised me that this type of cancer is more common for women after menopause, which is why the standard treatment is to cut out all the female reproductive organs. But given that I was still hoping to have a child, the doctor said that he would try his best to save what he could. I simply said, ’Okay.’ What else could I say? I wanted to have children, of course, but even more, I wanted to live. … The operation went well, and I was even luckier – I got pregnant ten weeks after my surgery. Everything seemed to go back to normal; we were delighted.
• In 2018 I went back to Kazan to visit my family, and mum insisted that I go and have an MRT at the local hospital. I knew she was anxious; because soon after I’d become ill, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. And then my father. He was only fifty-eight. But because he was diagnosed at such a late stage, they couldn’t do anything. So, my mum was pushing for me to go and have a check-up. I even remember accusing her of carcinophobia. But to reassure her, I went. Shortly after my visit, the doctor called me and asked to see me, as he noticed the difference between my previous results. They’d done a laparoscopy diagnostic, and he’d found the tiniest of growths, it was so small, a scan would never have picked it up.
• And given that that it was such a rare type of cancer, they had no idea if the chemotherapy would help or not. They simply did ’t have enough research.
• When I first heard the diagnosis, I was in shock. I cried. I was scared. But now, after the months of treatment, I got used to it. I’ve never paid as much attention to my body as I do now. I know that in the first week of chemo, I will always feel sick, blind. And I’ll forget stuff and will really struggle to concentrate—on anything. I’m like a young child who can only do the simplest of tasks. While the second week is dreadful, it’s an emotional week; I’m usually hit by wave after wave of depression and aggression. I get annoyed by the smallest of things. I seem to have so much anger inside of me that I want to smash everything. But at the same time, I’m filled with a huge fear—will I ever be able to get back to my normal life and to my job, will I still have food to put on the table to feed my child? It’s like Pandora’s box. And then I always seem to be able to look positively towards the future.
• I’m not scared of death. I know that I won’t need to worry about anything. Though I feel sorry for the people who will. Except for the suffering of pain that comes from knowing that you’re about to be separated from the people you love, death is a relief. But I know, I can’t die … I’m not allowed. I have to be here till Reggie’s eighteenth birthday. I have to live.
• ***
• I suppose I’ve changed over the years that I’ve been living in the UK. Although not that I’ve necessarily noticed the changes, but mum has. It annoys her that I’ve started to ask, ‘Are you okay?’ all the time.
• My preferences have changed as well. Given that my grandparents were from Samarkand, I’d grown up with the Eastern-Asia way of welcoming and entertaining guests—large tables would be set to overflowing with a variety of dishes. But living here, I’ve stopped doing that. Now I simply put on the table what I’ve made, and that’s it.
• I’ve stopped bringing Russian food back to the UK every time I visit Russia – instead, I now buy Russian children’s books. I have discovered a great little Polish shop nearby where I get all my childhood favourites, but even though I’m from Russia, I don’t only cook Russian cuisine. I learnt to cook in Kazan: my grandmother taught me how to make manty, mung bean porridge; while a good friend of mine showed me how to prepare a few Armenian dishes, like dolma, and another woman I knew—our neighbour—taught me how to make Tatarian plov with chicken or smoked haddock. American friends taught me to make pasta pies. And after I moved to Moscow, I took several cooking masterclasses and learnt how to cook Indian, Thai and Italian cuisine. So, at home, I tend to pick and mix. Steve always laughs, saying, ‘You Russians, when you are cooking, you seem to have an answer for everything—it’s called adding a good dollop of sour cream, and the dish is perfect.’
• I don’t suppose that my accent has changed much, although I have never had that distinctive Russian accent. When strangers hea my accent, they often think I’m from one of the Scandinavian countries. People react differently when they find out that I’m Russian. There is propaganda and hatred against Russia and Russians. What else can I say. When the British tell me that there is ’t any real freedom in Russia, I disagree. We’re not suppressed. And, from my perspective, the reality is that there is more freedom in Russia than in the UK. In Russia, anyone on the street can tell you what they think of you (right or wrong); in the UK, people are more tolerant and don’t want to interfere with other people’s lives.
• We often hear about discrimination against gay people in Russia; I’m sure it exists as it does everywhere. The fact is, some o my closest friends in Russia are openly gay but they’ve never experienced any type of discrimination, or suffered abuse on the streets, or odd looks from passers-by. They live together and have never felt the need to hide their relationships.
• People tend to see life in Russia through jaundiced eyes; because they’re fed by a biased local media that typically presents a one-sided narrative about Russia and Russians, they have no idea whether it’s accurate or not. Of course, some of the criticism is fair, some of it isn’t. From my perspective, I don’t think there is a big difference between Yeltsin, Putin and Navalny. Navalny came out of the Nationalistic Party. I don’t like people who don’t like other nations; I had enough of this in Kazan. During the nineties, we had lived through so much national discrimination. There were strangers on the streets who would approach you and say, ‘You’re Russian why don’t you go back to your Russia.’
• I can say the same about anti-Semitism; I could migrate to Israel, I’ve been there, but I really didn’t like it, in particular because of this constant message that everyone hates us. Yes, of course, the harassment and discrimination of Jews exists, but people don’t hate Jews—full stop.
• That said, when I was twelve or thirteen, I went to the local pioneer camp, which was where I first learned what the word “kike” meant. I’d heard the word before, but I thought it meant greedy. I had no idea about the humiliating and derogatory meaning of the word. I was absolutely distraught. My father was half-Ashkenazi Jew, and I’m a Jew, and Tatar, and Russian—I have a hell a lot of different blood running through my veins. So, I know what it means to be “mixed”—mixed race, mixed religion, a different nationality. It doesn’t make me bad or good; it’s just who I am.
• ***
• To be honest, I’m suffering an existential crisis and feel extremely self-conscious about my professional status in the UK. I don’t feel confident enough to apply for an academic job here. Who would want to have a Russian lecture on English literature? Utter nonsense.
• And I don’t have any close friends here, all my close friends are in Kazan and Moscow.
• To be a close friend, you need to have shared experiences: good times and bad—sadness and happiness; you need people who will e there for you—no matter what. You need to be able to sing the same tune. And the only person who fits that bill is Steve. Still, I’m an open person, and if I do make friends, then I’m looking for an honest relationship; I don’t have time for pretense. Of course, I do have a good relationship with my colleagues and some neighbours. Even if I can’t ever imagine sitting around with them over a pot of tea to chat about anything and everything, as we do it in Russia, I still enjoy their company.
• Although there was one exception—I became friends with a Russian woman on Facebook, Anya. Her daughter was four months older than my son. We exchanged a few emails and eventually decided to meet up. We became really good friends. And, in truth, Anya helped me a lot, especially in 2018 when my husband suffered a heart attack. While Steve was in hospital, I visited him every day, hanks to Anya offering to babysit Reggie. She was a huge help. But then, soon after that, Anya and her husband went back to Russia.
• Except for Anya, most of my friendships with Russian females are not particularly enjoyable. Also, what I find most curious is how Russian women in the UK tend to treat each other, like some sort of disposable item of entertainment, especially if you’ve just met. There was this one time that I took Reggie on a visit to the home of a Russian woman I’d become acquainted with—we’d agreed to catch up for a play date for our kids; we were chatting away when her phone rang. ‘I’m out with Anya, a woman from Russia, she has a son, Reginald … it’s a British name, because his father is British.’ Of course, I understood that her interlocu or must have queried why my son has such a name. And that she was now being given the full run down of my bio. It was only after she’d hung up, and picked up our conversation where we’d left off, that she felt the urge to explain that her mother, who was living in the UK, had also married a Brit for the sole purpose of staying in the UK. So not only had I been the topic of their conversation, I had also been found guilty because of her mother’s sham marriage. Obviously, that was my last visit.
• ***
• Most of the Russian mothers in the UK get acquainted because of their kids—it’s our mission to keep the Russian language alive with our next generation. I remember, my grandmother used to teach me Tatar, trying to turn me into a bilingual child—she knew Russian, but till the end of her life she always spoke to me in Tatar. It was her mission and desire to help me to appreciate Tatar literature and culture.
• I do miss my grandmother; she died in October 2016. I wasn’t even able to say goodbye to her as I was in my last months of pregnancy with Reggie, and not allowed to travel. He was born in September, a month before my grandmother’s death, so there wasn’t enough time for me to apply and receive a Russian passport for him to travel on; and then, shortly after my gran passed away, my father died—in November. And while I wasn’t very close to dad, I’ve always known he really loved life. You know, we Russians, we’re all a bit pessimistic (caught by that what if, what if not dilemma), but not my father. He was the most optimistic man I have ever known. The only other optimist like him, that I know, is Steve. It was tough not being able to say a last goodbye to them.
• I also miss the snow very much. I still remember one morning when I woke up, and I said to Steve, ‘It’s snowing.’
• ‘How do you know?’ He asked as he gave me the strangest of looks. We were both still in bed, with the blinds pulled, so there was absolutely no way of seeing what was happening outside.
• ‘Listen … You can’t hear a sound? It’s silence.’
• He obviously didn’t believe me, because he felt the need to climb from bed and open the blinds and look out of the window to validate my remark—everything was covered in beautiful white snow.
• That’s why I really like going back to Russia. But I want to travel—to visit Georgia, Italy, Samarkand, Bukhara. I want to show Steve the Golden Ring of Russia—Yaroslavl, Suzdal, Uglich—Lake Baikal, and the Kamchatka peninsula.
• On the other hand, I’d like to stop worrying about the future as much as I do. I want to go to Kazan, to see my mum and our dacha.
• [As it was time for me to go back to my train, Anna picked up an extremely tired Reggie and put him on her shoulders. And as we passed by the mirror, I caught a look at their reflection—a happy mum, an exhausted child, holding tight to his mother.
• I had left Reading with mixed feelings that evening. I couldn’t help but think what a circle of life. If it wasn’t for Anna’s great-grandparents deciding to return to the Soviet Union, they would have had an altogether different life. Anna’s father may never have been born, and she and her sister would never have existed. It would have been a different story, and one that I may have never had the opportunity to write.]
• Natalie
• When I had just arrived in the UK, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that most people were “foreigners.” I was never made to feel like an “alien in New York.”
• On the other hand, I don’t like the way the government pretend to have free secondary education and healthcare. We and everyone we know have private health insurance and send kids to private schools. So, the high taxation level coupled with a bit of a welfare state is annoying.
• It’s a great country to live in: fair, kind and proud without being full of itself. The famous dry sense of humour is a bonus. I don’t miss Russia and would never consider going back.
• This is a normal, stable, and comfortable life, which isn’t the case in the country that my husband and I were born in. The only complications here are the ones that have to do with life itself, not with location.
• Konstantin
• I have been living in the UK since the 30th of June 2007. The first thing that stunned me, in comparison with Moscow, is the way people behaved towards each other; there was no place for rudeness or negativity.
• The most unusual thing that has happened to me here is that I’ve entirely changed my profession. I very much doubt that this would’ve been possible in Russia. Although now I can see all the things that I don’t like: the xenophobia and bureaucracy. Yet, despite all of that, I don’t miss Russia—at all; regardless of Brexit, Great Britain is a more comfortable place to live than Russia. Of course, it is home.
• Maria
• I left the USSR in 1991, so my home is where I am, where I build it.
• Before migrating to the UK, I spent 14 years in Toronto, Canada. Unfortunately, that country and its mentality felt like another planet to me, which was one reason for moving to the UK.
• The things I liked about the UK when I first arrived were: the services, transport, the almost non-existent bureaucracy, and the ease of finding a job. I don’t think there is anything that I dislike about the UK. The politicians sometimes infuriate me. But have you ever known of an ideal politician anywhere?
• I was lucky to meet fabulous people. I want to clarify, I am not talking about immigrants or ex-pats. I’m talking about the English, the Scottish and the Welsh. They were kind, compassionate and ready to help me at any time. London is absolutely my city, and I don’t have any other plans for relocating.
• Tatiana
• Currently, I’m based in Nottingham. Although I’ve lived in the UK for the past 15 years.
• There are lots of things here that I don’t like, starting with the weather and finishing with the people. I often feel like I’m living in an open-air prison.
• I miss my homeland. Still, I suppose that it’s right that I live here; I arrived and I live here, so be it. It doesn’t matter if your life is good or bad, every day should be like a breath of fresh air.
• Of course, I did try to settle here and to build a family with a guy who had a completely different mindset to mine—my hope that everything would be sweet was a mistake.
• Anonymous
• I really love my country of birth. Sometimes I even dream about returning, but my home is already here. I like the friendly people and the fact that I had an opportunity to study at a university, and the way the teachers treat their students. I don’t like the weather, knife crime, or litter in most of the parks.
• Inna
• Recently I’ve been promoted to a new position of union secretary within the bus depot where I’ve worked for many years. I won he election by a landslide. It absolutely stunned me as I didn’t expect to win. In a male-dominated field, to vote for an immigrant woman … I’m probably doing something right!
• Irina
• I’ve lived in London for seventeen and a half years. When I first arrived, I was amazed by the number of parks and their mesme ising landscapes.
• What I really don’t like now is the amount of dirt, the full bags of rubbish and the plastic bags on the streets that the locals are absolutely tolerant of.
• I’m happy with my kids’ schools and the culture that they’ve grown up in.
• And giving birth to my child here was an interesting experience; there is such a close social circle of mothers who suddenly appeared in my life, almost at the moment that I stepped out of the maternity hospital’s door. I thought it was a miracle. And the experience of getting divorced in Britain was incredible! Instead of the lawyers trying to grab all the money they could, they focused on ensuring there was a fair division of the matrimonial property and that the kids were provided for.
• Daria
• I’m based in London, but I have lived in various UK cities for 16 years.
• I like the fact that people respect your privacy, but at the same time, I have found it problematic that the British are so indifferent. London is definitely my home—the more I tried to move somewhere else, the more I understood that this is my sweet home.
• The happiest day of my life was when I found “my people” —the Belarussian diaspora.
• Nataliya
• I like the politeness of the older generation but dislike the dirty streets that are full of rubbish, the loudness of people talking, the low education levels, the xenophobia and the unprofessionalism of managers and the way they lie to you if they don’t know the answer.
• I finally understood the meaning of the phrase ‘An English woman shits on you.’
• What I really want is to stay here until retirement and then I’ll go back home. Although, what I’ve learned after living in the UK is to be calm in any situation and accept things as they are.
• Now we shall be two together. Now, whatever happens to me, we will never part.
• — Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights
• ***
• At some point my teenage adventures came to their logical end, and my life journey took another turn followed by some years of travelling, immersing myself in other cultures, meeting new people, writing … and finally meeting my husband-to-be.
• (PART 1)
• December 2007. I was in my early twenties and well-travelled when I arrived in New Zealand with my husband and two children. But even today, when I recall these years, I cannot help but think that my move to New Zealand was not something that I was ready for.
• The journey from Auckland’s International Airport was uninspiring. There was absolutely nothing unique about the scenery—indus rial warehouses, a smattering of tree, cars and trucks, buses, workers off-loading goods, graffiti on the bridges, small dreary houses in the distance. It was like any other city road from the airport.
• As we pulled to a stop at the traffic lights, I noticed a dark-skinned woman with curly black hair waiting for the bus. She was dressed, head to toe, in white: a pencil skirt that highlighted her curves, a fitted top that showcased her enormous breasts. Her hand held tight to a young barefooted boy who toyed with a little red car. He couldn’t have been much older than five or six. Why wasn’t he wearing shoes? My eyes were already searching the bus stop for that essential item of misplaced apparel. There was no sign of them on the seat or beside him on the ground. The woman wasn’t holding them, and her handbag was too small to fi a pair. They were nowhere. Non-existent. Was that normal here? Had they been in such a hurry, the woman so worried about something, that she forgot them? Or did she give in to his protesting the tightness of his shoes, his sore feet? Maybe he’d lost them on the way as I once had—in a river? There had to be an explanation. Why the hell didn’t he have shoes?
• I soon learned that barefoot Kiwis were not an unusual sight: in the shopping malls, banks, libraries, parks, the sea-front caes. My logical Russian reasoning collided with reality. After all, it was the summer, and it was hot. It seemed reasonable. But then, after we’d moved south—on the coldest of days, in the middle of winter—I saw another mother with a child walking down Ch istchurch’s main street. She had wrapped herself warmly in a coat and knee-high boots while her young son was running alongside her in a jumper, light cotton shorts, and barefoot. I never learned to understand it.
• We had rented a spacious house in St. Heliers with a huge terrace and a swimming pool. Our view was out across the rooftops and the water of the Pacific towards the volcanic island of Rangitoto. At first, I liked the idea that we lived in a detached house, in a cosy neighbourhood. But after a while I began to feel trapped—real life appeared to end at the end of our driveway; nothing was within easy reach. Or at least, not within easy walking distance. So, without even realising, I began to do what immigrants so often do, I started to compare everything to things back home. And of course, it quickly became a negative sum game.
• Perhaps that’s why, even now, when I hear someone getting overexcited about the idea of moving down to New Zealand, I find myself almost overwhelmed by an urge to say, ‘Just don’t.’ Of course, I never do—everyone needs to find the place that’s right for them, that piece of the world where they can be happy. For some Aotearoa is that place; it never would be for me.
• So, the local way of life was just that … local. Auckland, a city of some two million felt more like a small town where everything, to my dismay, would be closed by eight on a Sunday evening. And where the only coherent conversation on offer, with few exceptions, was about rugby, a game that locals call “football,” which I only found out when I tried to show off my modest knowledge of the game as I shared a potpourri of names: Beckham, Ronaldo, Zidane. What did I know about their precious All Blacks?
• I was so looking forward to a continuation of my Moscow creative life, to making New Zealand home. But I soon learned that beyond the cinema, an occasional visit to one of the not-so-many art galleries, the odd opportunity for a theatre experience, and the ever-present haka, the cultural highlife was pretty much non-existent. And, while it would be unfair to suggest that the city was devoid of artistic expression, Aucklanders, and more generally New Zealanders, seemed to simply live their lives in anticipation of the weekends and summer holidays: barbeques and beaches, rugby, horse racing and beer.
• Wellington—we had spent a few weeks in New Zealand’s’ capital upon our return from Hong Kong—however, was different. There was a sophisticated air about the place—a city where the theatre and art stretched beyond the mere offer of entertainment, a night out, a show. There seemed to be an artistic, jazzy, and inventive cultural depth to the place that challenged you to interpret he deeper meaning of life and to explore your inner thoughts. So, if I were ever to go back, it would be Wellington that I’d go back to. Perhaps if we’d gone there first, it would have been a different experience for me. Maybe I would have fallen in love with the place. It’s a big maybe.
• ***
• But of course, there were also special memories about Auckland too: my first ever Christmas celebrated on a hot summer’s day—our house, full of guests, bottomless prosecco, a real Christmas tree that during those steaming hot days seemed so out of place—fish and chips on the beach, monster burgers, watching the Pacific Ocean, and hearing Russian speech for the first time in New Zealand.
• It was my 2008 birthday party.
• There was an older guy, Charlie, who was in his eighties; his short black hair was touched by only the slightest of grey streaks. He was the husband of my mother-in-law’s friend, and he immediately reminded me of my wonderful grandad Kolya. During lunch—and beyond his initial and polite hello—he simply sat quietly listening, taking everything in. He was one of those guests who goes almost unnoticed unless you talk to them.
• I was doing something with the cake or balloons when he found his moment to stop beside me. And then, without saying a single word, he began to recite by heart, the opening lines from Eugene Onegin in Russian as I stared at him, speechless, trying to understand how was it possible? I was unable to speak as seconds became a minute or two. Until the spell of that moment was finally broken as Charlie suddenly stopped.
• ‘I am sorry, I don’t remember what’s after that.’
• ‘That was wonderful … .’
• ‘It’s Pushkin, isn’t it?’
• ‘Yes. How do you know it? Do you speak Russian?’
• ‘Not really. I used to. I learnt it when I was in Siberia. But I’ve not spoken Russian for a long time.’ He smiled, ever so wa mly.
• I later learned that Charlie was Polish. And that, as a young boy, together with his older brothers and father, he had been ar ested and sent to one of the gulags as a forced labourer: to mine the gold. That was until his father managed to build a raft and pushed his sons off, down the river towards the Sea of Okhotsk and their unknown fate. I’m not sure what happened to his bro hers. He never said, and I never wanted to ask for fear of touching a raw nerve. Charlie, however, ended up in New Zealand. His life was spent as a mechanic and then a taxi driver who regularly attended the local Polish Club, and, when no one was watching, the local racing track where he’d place a bet or two. And, having found the safety and security of his new, New Zealand home, he never again ventured overseas. He died in 2019 and was buried in Auckland’s Waikumete Cemetery.
• After that almost surreal Eugene Onegin episode, I wasn’t to hear anyone speak Russian again until 2009, not until after we moved to Christchurch.
• ***
• While I never really experienced a language barrier—I spoke English well enough to hold up my end of a conversation (only occasionally missing the point or failing to comprehend the meaning of some unfamiliar word, or colloquial term)—interpreting the cultural code, those local nuances, was the one thing that I found really tricky. All those countless “how are yous” and “lovely” that I would hear daily from people I didn’t know: from women behind a checkout, hairdressers, taxi drivers, strangers walking their dogs, dry cleaners, a multitude of unknown voices that overwhelmed me with the insincerity of these hollow expressions. The glib and meaningless of ‘You look lovely…,’ ‘That’s a lovely spot ...,’ ‘What a lovely outfit you’re wearing…,’ ‘…lovely shoes…,’ ‘what a lovely dog…,’ ‘isn’t the weather lovely today…,’ ‘that’s a lovely coffee shop....’ New Zealand has become a count y of “loveliness.” So, in my head, I’d sometimes scream: Shut up … it’s not lovely.
• For a long time—and because I had grown up in a society where the only words that mattered were words that added meaning, and where “small talk” didn’t exist—I simply struggled to comprehend the unimportance of these phrases within a cultural context. Which was probably why, in my first half a year in New Zealand, I never really tried to make myself “at home” with English; it felt like a language bereft of genuine emotion. English, back then, was simply a necessity. A means for communicating with people, and for getting on with my daily life. Russian, however, was solace and warmth.
• Perhaps, that’s why I struggled to settle in Auckland. And why, when in May of 2008, when I headed back home for a few weeks—I still considered Moscow my home during all those years in New Zealand— I felt so happy. I could hardly wait for the moment that I’d be on the plane, knowing that I’d be able to dress up and go out without ever having to think that I might somehow look and feel overdressed. And even better, I’d understand every single word that was being said to me: I’d be able to speak the same language, to easily read the emotional cues, without ever having to try and fathom whether, or not, they were just being polite. I could hardly wait to dive into the city’s buzz, its luxury and restaurants, art galleries, theatres, and its busy, non-stop twenty-four-seven life.
• Soviet Union – England
• 40 years old
• In the UK since 2013
• ***
• There is nothing that I like about England.
• The idea of relocating to the UK had appeared on the horizon in December 2011, when my husband and I first visited London. Of course, we had a great time: we were flown over on a private jet and a waiting limousine whisked us off to a five-star hotel. But despite the luxury, my first thought about London was that it would be a great place to work, but not to live a creative life. I didn’t connect with the city. It seemed safe and functional.
• But I knew my husband wanted to move. He had, for a long time. I didn’t. I had everything I needed in Moscow: my life was busy, my career was thriving. I’d graduated from Moscow State University with a doctoral degree in psychology. I had my private practice and lectured at the university. I had a great bunch of students and was supervising ten doctoral dissertations that were as exciting as they were different. My work has always been important to me. Did I want to leave all of this?! Was there anything else Britain could give me? No. I knew my children’s future wouldn’t be any better or worse if they grew up in England. And I’ve never been someone who believes that “a child’s better future” should be the motivation for relocating. If you migrate, you don’t do this for your children, you do it for yourself. It’s a decision you make for your own personal reasons, and you bring your children with you.
• Still, after a few years, an offer to relocate arrived on my husband’s desk, along with an attractive salary and other benefits.
• When my parents first heard that we would move to the UK, they found it difficult. Of course, they didn’t say, ‘Why are you leaving us?’ But it was a sad moment. They are both retired academics. And while I wouldn’t call our relationship close, it is an important one. So, I was worried about my dad as he’s pretty old. And because apart from me there wasn’t really anyone else, o her than my stepsister, on my father’s side, with whom I occasionally exchange phone calls, to say hi and talk about dad’s health. But I don’t have any other siblings. So, I knew they were going to be left alone, and I felt guilty leaving them.
• After sharing our news with my friends, I felt ambivalent. Their responses were binary: either we were the lucky ones, or we were betraying our motherland. I’ve heard it a lot from the people I’d have never thought I’d hear it from. A close friend, who lived abroad, was extremely supportive. Another told me that she would miss me terribly, but that she understood our decision. I desperately needed to know that our friendship would continue—even at a distance. Sadly, some of our old friends simply cut us off.
• I had a close friend (or so at least I thought) who, I was sure, I could count on. But our relationship quickly broke down once I moved to the UK. She chose not to congratulate me on the birth of my daughter and eventually she asked me to stop calling her. I couldn’t understand why. A year later, when I finally managed to get hold of her, to simply ask, what was going on, she said that my relocation had hurt her feelings, that she found it too difficult and too depressing, that I’d thrown away our friendship. She accused me of not wanting to listen to her problems. I was so upset by her words. Especially as I’d needed my friends’ support during those first months when I felt like I’d lost everything. Even my husband failed to support me; instead, he turned to me for help. Everything was on me. I had to deal with finding schools, shopping, a new home. The only help I got at that time was from my remaining friends and my therapist.
• ***
• I was 38-weeks pregnant when we flew to the UK. But until the very last moment, I stayed in our dacha outside of Moscow. Our tickets were booked for the 17th of July, but I was still busy packing right up until the 16th. I didn’t listen to my friend who said, don’t take anything, you will buy everything you need there. I wanted to pack all the necessary things: clothes, lots of kids’ clothes, my son’s toys, all his Lego, things I thought I’d need for the baby. I guess that busyness, that idea of grabbing everything I could, was how I dealt with the situation. I didn’t want to leave.
• When we arrived, everything annoyed me. Which, of course, was due to a mixture of things: a new place, pregnancy. Then I was alone with a newborn and a six-year-old while my husband was spending large chunks of his time in the London office. I was simply trying to survive.
• I didn’t particularly like the place that we were living in. I thought its low-rise structure looked peculiar, though I liked he idea of living in our own house rather than an apartment. But so many of these houses needed upgrades; they looked shabby and unappealing to the eye. I knew Greater London was known as an excellent place to live, but it wasn’t a city, and at the same ime, it wasn’t a village. There was no forest, no fields where you could go for a walk. So, if I wanted to enjoy a quiet walk or indulge myself in culture, I still needed to hop in my car or jump on public transport.
• Everything seemed so strange: the way women dressed; a single playground for the whole district; the fact that I have to go to see a GP with a temperature of thirty-nine degrees (in Russia, the doctors would come to you); and the suggestion to give birth just with the assistance of a midwife (Thank God we had private healthcare insurance that provided me with a doctor); grocery shopping—I could never find what I wanted, and I was shocked to learn that shops closed so early. I simply couldn’t understand how people lived here?
• It took us a long time to get used to their bread. It’s embarrassing to say, but I couldn’t find any good cooking pots. I looked everywhere, but they were all ugly, too heavy, or not what I wanted. I ended up with something from M&S that wasn’t too heavy and looked okay. Yet, half a year later, I flew back to Moscow, and I brought back with me my old Soviet enamel pot with flowe s on its front. I also remember that when we went to Crete, I bought lots of pottery that I liked to collect—little dishes, plates, bowls. After I brought them, I felt some relief.
• British food, in my opinion, is a sad thing. Their fish and chips are okay if they are made fresh, but it’s not healthy food. Overall, people don’t follow a healthy diet here; they feed kids with chicken nuggets. Their tomatoes… gosh, I still don’t like them. In the first few years, I remember dying to get a large juice tomato, like those from Azerbaijan or Armenia. On the other hand, there’s a diversity of cuisines—Indian, Thai, Turkish—although I’m not a big fan, and I don’t like curry.
• It took about a year before I understood that the relocation had had a significant impact on my son. He became aggressive towa d his school friends. There was too much happening in his little world, so everything became such a challenge for him: my husband had initially moved to the UK ahead of us, so he didn’t see his father for a long time. Then, after we moved, he found himself stuck with his baby sister and me, without any friends. And even though we’d met a few other Russian children at the playground, they soon all disappeared at the start of a new school year, which was another mini-drama in itself because we’d missed the application deadline for enrolment, so it took ages to find a decent school. And, whenever I took him for a walk, someone would always ask, ‘Why aren’t you at school?’ It was so annoying, mainly because we had no idea how long we would have to wait for his school place, so I’d find myself, yet again, having to explain why my son hadn’t started school yet.
• Then he was offered a place at an awful school that was too far away. We refused it. And, when he finally started school—about three weeks later—I struggled to find the right jumper with a school logo, so I think he felt out of place for a while. He was a latecomer in the English-speaking environment, wearing the wrong clothes and didn’t know much English. It was a very tough year for him.
• And for me too—I found the school system strange. I was stunned to see children wearing socks in the winter months and sitting on the floor at school, while it was odd that kids walked straight into the classroom from outside without changing their shoes. There was no homework. The length of the school year—it felt like a personal tragedy, like “they’d stolen my three months of summer holiday from me.”
• ***
• An old man lived next door to us—he is still living there—he would often stand outside his house to say hello to everyone who passed by. Once when I was walking back home with the kids, he said ‘hello’ to me, to which I replied ‘hello.’ After that, for a few weeks in a row, we exchanged polite hellos, but then, one day, we engaged in a conversation. He certainly liked to talk. As the days went by, our conversations became longer and longer, sometimes so long, that I would find myself looking for a polite excuse to leave. The funny thing was I only ever understood about thirty per cent of what he said. I remember we once talked aout the Lake District, but I had absolutely no idea what he was going on about or even how far this thing was from London. All he kept saying was, it’s a nice place to go on holiday.
• And other thing was, I never did get to know his name, although later—when I received a Christmas card from him addressed “For the lady with two kids”—I understood that, likewise, he didn’t know mine. Still, “lady” sounded rather charming.
• For a long time, I felt a bit embarrassed and shy among the British. I never wanted to initiate a conversation. I was worried about the language barrier. My English was okay, I used it for my work, but there were some situations when I realised that my English wasn’t good enough to communicate—in the pub or at the school gate with other mothers. Using properly constructed gramma ical language has always been essential for me. When I realised that I couldn’t structure my sentences correctly in English, I felt extremely awkward and tended to simply say nothing. And of course, if I’m at the pub, when everyone is so loud and shouting, when I can’t hear anything, I can’t say anything. I feel lost. Like I did with the mothers at school. Although perhaps it’s because I don’t want to talk about kids all the time. “How was your weekend, holidays, children’s problems at school ….” I hate it. I don’t want to be stuck at this level, like some of the other women who are destined to spend their entire life talking about their kids. That’s not for me.
• Yet, the situation changed a bit the last year when my husband left his high-paying job to run his own business, which caused some financial difficulties. It brought me to the realisation that if I kept sitting around, worrying about my English, I wouldn’t have food to put on the table for my children. So, I got busy networking and began working with English-speaking clients. Of course, I made mistakes with the language, but they understood me and appreciated my approach, and importantly they accepted me as a professional therapist.
• Socially, the situation has improved as well, for the better. I even made some oladyi that I took to my kids’ school and, much to my surprise, one of the mothers—an Italian—asked me for a recipe and added, ‘Why is it Russians have so many recipes that include sour cream?’ I’d never thought about it before, but there are.
• I soon learned that most of the mothers of the kids in my daughter’s class are second-generation immigrants, although I consider them proper British. They have no accent. While, in my son’s class, only two out of the ten mothers I know are British. All the rest, like me, are foreigners. One of them invited us to hers for a round of drinks. We had such a great time; yes, we did chat about children, but we also talked about life abroad, psychology, even about male striptease. [Laughing]
• ***
• Though, despite everything, I’ve never connected with British culture. I continue to struggle with how they raise their children. There used to be a culture of childhood in England, but it’s gone. British children don’t go to play in the parks or outside of houses any more. Of course, this “playground culture” has been disappearing in Russia too. But unlike here, it still exists, just in a slightly different form. In England, though, it’s all too organised, constrained by the rules of who goes to see whom, when, for how long. I understand that by having a structure, you know what time you’ll arrive and leave; it’s great, but whe e’s the fun in it.
• I like only a few things about life in the UK: there are many vegetables and greens in the grocery stores. There’s a high level of specialists across various fields and a reliable post office service. As for anything else, it’s that I either don’t care, or it’s something that I simply don’t like. I may respect it, I may even understand it, but it’s not for me. From a professional perspective, the relocation to England was great for me: I got UK confirmation of my qualifications and significantly expanded my professional network and grew my client base. From a personal point of view, though … well, that’s another story.
• England is not my home. Not at all. Moscow is.
• I miss Moscow winters. When I was a child, we used to go ice-skating; there was always such a tremendous amount of snow on the streets that we’d use to build snow-castles, with large rooms and tunnels. Summers were always spent at our dacha. We had our own gang—a group of cool kids—which is why dacha life was always full-on, with so many fun things happening. We played hide-and-seek, Cossacks-robbers, tag, badminton, lit fires, stole potatoes from our neighbours, went off on imaginary treasure hunts. I’m still in touch with many of my dacha friends. My best friend moved to Provence. Two of my other friends live abroad as well: one is in the US, the other is in Germany.
• I like going back to Moscow, to see my friends and relatives. Especially in the winter, it’s simply marvellous. We last went to Moscow in February of this year—I remember it so vividly—we were at our dacha, the soft white snow lay quietly on the ground, we were walking through the forest, birds chanting, kids running in front of us. There was a hint of the coming spring in the air. I felt it was a moment of pure happiness. I have never experienced anything like this in the UK.
• Our migration to the UK absolutely destroyed every ounce of creativity in me. What I have now, I’ll never call it happiness. A the same time, I am not entirely sure if we will ever go back to live in Russia. If I’d been asked this question a year ago, I would have said “yes” without any hesitation. But now I really don’t know. My feeling is, it would be difficult to adapt emotionally, especially for the children.
• When I first arrived, I felt unhappy. And that remained the case, probably for about two years. But that began to change a bit when I attended a seminar. As part of the seminar, I went to a musical workshop, and someone took a photo of me sitting playing the drums. Later, when I saw it, I thought, ‘Apparently, I can smile.’
• In spring 2008, my husband had to go to Hong Kong on a long business trip. So, after a dull and relatively monotonous New Zealand, we moved to the city where poverty coexisted with such ease alongside wealth. The disowned and the disabled, the beggars and the homeless who were everywhere, the tragedy of Hong Kong—they were so unlike all the other homeless people I’ve come across in other countries—seeming to accept their lot with humility and humbleness. Down and out—ragged and worn—they perched in hope beside high-end stores and exclusive boutiques yet were never frowned upon or chased off.
• A local women explained to me that in Hong Kong, people looked at life differently: if you were sick, or didn’t have relatives to look after you, if you hadn’t saved for old age, then you only had yourself to blame.
• Hong Kong, wrapped in a hazy yellow fog, buzzed like a farm of busy interconnected beehives: skyscrapers, humidity, heat, and lue sky. Nature provided an almost unseen background to life, a landscape sketch, that contributed nothing to daily existence. The skywalks and underground passages and alleys were the most unusual aspect of the city; they connected the lives of the millions who remained hidden from view behind the sweating walls of concrete and steel towers, as if hiding from some ever-present but unseen danger—safe from the sticky chaos of the world of scurrying hawkers and carts beyond their walls. I had never seen anything like it before. It was, and remains to my mind, a place of never-ending high-rise structures, and the myriad of faces that grew from the fog.
• We lived in a serviced hotel suite on the 27th floor in the city centre, near a corner where a chunky, one-armed woman with da k, sweaty skin could nearly always be found behind her fruit-laden folding table. Her days were spent fanning herself with a colourful but well-used plastic fan as she chased insects of various kinds and sold her fruit. And when someone came to the table to buy fruit, she had to put the fan aside to collect the fruit into plastic bags. Then she would also slowly take the money and hide it in the pocket of her apron, before getting back to her fan, while saying something funny to her neighbour, who would immediately burst into laughter. Despite all the ugliness and squalor around them, they both seemed so happy. Perhaps that’s why, whenever I passed them, I’d find myself wondering what it was that they found so funny.
• We often went on “blind” unplanned walks around the city, exploring its hidden corners and side streets. Once we stopped for lunch in a shabby looking street café, tucked away off the small street. There was a row of cheap, white, plastic tables that reminded me of the smelly—and to be avoided at all costs—eateries near Moscow’s food markets where the local alcoholics, thieves, and tramps congregated to eat the uneatable. You could always find trouble and a fight there. But my husband convinced me that it would be a great place to stop and eat: ‘It looks popular with the locals.’ So, we sat at a table, not far from the road: motorcycles and cars rushing past; overlooked by “rat poisoning in progress” signs and the drying laundry overhead. A couple of minutes later our food was on the table: so delicious and fresh that I had to agree it was a great place.
• In Kowloon, we found ourselves in an empty back alley with endless back doors that opened off the kitchens of some of the city’s better restaurants. My eye was caught by the movement of an old man who squatted on the pavement as he slouched over his work. Was he old? Or was it just life? His face was wrinkled and dry, reddened by the sun. The claustrophobic air of the dimly lit ally was sticky and heavy. In fact, it was so poorly lit—the only light dripped from a partially opened door—that it was almost impossible to make out what he was up too. I thought that he was struggling to find his feet, that he was perhaps unwell. But as we came closer, I became aware of a distinct sound that pounded through the air with uninterrupted precision: the beating of something weighty against the asphalt. The axe in his hand was just visible in the creeping light—the butchered carcass of a large animal. Its discarded skin was heaped beside his bucket of bits: brain, offal, feet. The alley where he worked was awash with blood.
• Briefly pausing in his effort, the old man lowered his axe to stare at us with no curiosity. The cigarette that hung from his mouth was pulled clear as he smiled—sparse, crooked, and rotten teeth—and pointed towards the restaurant: beckoning us in.
• I simply shook my head—the horror, my disbelief, and my turning stomach hidden—as we hurried away; a collage of black-and-white movie clips were flashing though my head: Dali, Fellini, and Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia. An ugly man with bloody hands, a severed head, the alley strewn with blood and guts, the air heavy with the smell of freshly butchered carcass and cooked food. Insane.
• Minutes later, the luxury shops appeared with their bright neon lights lined-up in front. And that back street—as if it had never existed—disappeared back into darkness. Though, whenever I think of Hong Kong, that face of an old man—his cigarette stuck between his lips, his almost toothless mouth—remains with me.
• Despite being unable to comprehend many things about Hong Kong, for me, life there was idle. I don’t remember writing much or doing anything important. It was as if I needed this break, an opportunity to absorb the city’s energy, to observe this fascinating, puzzling life around me as we readied ourselves for our next move to Firenze: unaware, as we were at that time, that we would instead end up back in New Zealand … and this time, for much, much longer.
• Belarus – Italy – England
• 43 years old
• In the UK since 2018
• ***
• Both my parents are from Russia. They met at BAM (Baikal-Amur Mainline), you know, those famous Soviet construction sites. They have been married for fifty-five years. Dad, he is seventy-eight now, had worked as a builder and a welder. After my mum graduated from the Pedagogic Institute, they relocated to Belarus due to her job placement. She worked with children all her life a d became the head of the same kindergarten where she had started as an assistant.
• I had a simple Soviet childhood of a simple child, nothing extraordinary … Street … River …
• I was the third and youngest son in the family. My parents didn’t have enough time or energy for me. They were about forty whe I was born. I felt mother’s support, not so much father’s. The family was not well off. But you didn’t feel it in those days; everyone was in the same boat. School? No, I didn’t like it. I couldn’t get it: why I should go there, why I needed to study ma h, science. The only subjects that I was interested in were the ones that I did well in. The rest, I hated. Now I understand, it was partly my fault—as much as the teachers.’
• I spent about two years in a volleyball club, then tried a photo-club, athletics, boxing. But I was after a quick result. Many years later I understood, I go off like a gun—I get excited quickly and give up quickly too. For instance, if I felt like I wanted to go to the mountains, okay. The next day I would already be on the train, without the months of preparation, or the need or any special gear. And, probably dressed in my best shoes. It’s just me.
• ***
• In the nineties, I was a teenager. It was a difficult time. Frankly, I was a bad boy; I fought a lot, especially with all these “goody-goody” kids with violins. “Sex & drugs & rock & roll” was the motto of those days. I began smoking and drinking when I was thirteen years old. My parents tried to deal with it, but by the time I turned about fifteen-sixteen they had given up. It’s life. Thank God, I didn’t get into drugs—by the time many of my friends had become addicted I was in the army. Out of my six mates, two are drug-addicts now, another one has already died, the others are okay. But it depends on everyone’s destiny. I was alking to one of my mates. He told me, ‘I know my son would never try drugs. He wasn’t born to be a drug-addict.’ You know, it’s like some things are written into your future: while one person would definitely try it, another one would not touch it, no matter what. And you can’t change it. It has already been stitched into your fate.
• In the army everyone was asking me, ‘What are you going to do when you’re demobilised?’ I used to answer, ‘I will be a salesma .’ I didn’t know what I would sell, but I haven’t seen myself doing anything else. So, it happened; I had my own business for twenty years in Belarus, had a good apartment in the city centre, a big house in the country. But then my wife suggested that we should emigrate.
• ***
• So, we settled on Sanremo, Italy. We deliberately didn’t want to move to a big city. Sometimes people move from a small town to the city, and they can’t understand what’s wrong, why everything is so different. It’s that their new home—the big city—is squeezing them. Sanremo’s population was similar to Zhlobin, our hometown. It’s a really cool city to live in … that is, if you are older than sixty-five. It’s a great place for a holiday, but not to do business in. It’s difficult to deal with Italians. My wife thinks differently.
• The relocation took a long time. I knew it would be better to move to Germany. There are plenty of opportunities in Germany, you can make money there. But no, she was after all this nonsense like the sea and good weather. She was telling me how amazing it would be to live somewhere nice and warm. I said, ‘Okay, you need all that claptrap, your bloody sea – then you must have it.’ No one would have thought that I was on a long leash, letting myself follow her ambitions and dreams. She had done everything very carefully: smart.
• Actually, at the start everything was fine. I went to Sanremo for a bit. For a “trial immigration.” I spent about a month the e, exploring the area: I went to a local council, met a few people, talked to them. I don’t speak good Italian but can understand a bit. For everyone who decides to immigrate, I recommend visiting four places: a public toilet, a cemetery, a local pub and a council office. You can see the real city and people’s lives there. You need to understand how they communicate among themselves.
• The whole family moved to Italy in 2015. We rented an apartment and all those nice and important things appeared: caffè, dolci, mare and other shit. I tried to start an online business, but it failed. So, I tried again. But again, it failed. So, I tried for a third time, and a fourth. Nothing worked. I found myself sitting at my computer, a heavy weight on my shoulders. I couldn’t do anything. Nothing had worked, I didn’t know why, but it was bloody disappointing.
• My wife said, ‘You’re not working, so I won’t either.’ She was an accountant, but she didn’t work, she was just a housewife.
• Everything was difficult. And soon enough the problems arrived—the money was disappearing fast.
• I began doing yoga, started reading psychology books, went to church. I am a Soviet person. It was challenging to my mind to a tend the church. But if not for the church, I think I would have committed suicide already. I thought about finishing my life at least four times.
• I thought it would be better to go to Milan or Genoa, but we went to Liguria, because of weather, weather, weather …
• Everyone likes Italy and the French Rivera, but I am sick of it. I have a mate who lived in Italy (he is from Belarus too), he couldn’t stay there either. It’s another world. The people, smells, buildings are different. It’s a different life. Everything is different. Even if you buy dumplings in the Russian shop, it won’t be the same. You know, it’s like an autumn forest smell; at home, you go to the forest once a year or sometimes don’t go at all, but you know it’s there, on the doorstep. I don’t give a damn about the forest, but there is no Russian forest here. I am not Esenin; I don’t suffer from nostalgia, or a need to go to cuddle birch-trees. But you can’t lie to your soul.
• I know what my mistake was—I arrived in Italy thinking I would win at once. I had so much energy, I thought everything would be great—I will screw them all, make my money. That was my mistake. I arrived there as a Knight Templar on a horse, but you mustn’t arrive as a winner, just as an ordinary kind of guy. It would be best if you moved with the clear understanding that you will be nobody there and to be ready to go work as a toilet cleaner. If you really can and are ready to do so, eventually you will have success, and you will achieve something. I came with different things in my head, but I failed.
• I got into debt. I realised that I needed money. I tried to go to America, but they declined my visa application. I didn’t wan to go to Australia. I opened a map and saw London. So, I said, ‘Then it will be London.’
• ***
• In November 2018, I arrived in London, having taken a cheap low-cost carrier flight. I only had my hand luggage with me: a few photos of my family and friends, religious icons, bed linen and a few items of clothes. It’s all I could fit into my backpack. I’d even left my ukulele at home.
• Before the arrival, I agreed with some woman over the Internet that I would rent a room from her. She had a strange name that I couldn’t pronounce, she was from Beirut. So, I told her that I would call her Nadya. She said, ‘okay.’
• Unsurprisingly, it ended up that I got lost and arrived very late. I guess because it was my wife who always used to organise all our trips, so I ended up struggling to find the place.
• Worse, when I rang the doorbell, a guy opened the door. I said, ‘I need Nadya.’ ‘There is no Na-da here,’ he answered.
• You know, my English at that time was at the level of ‘Hi, mazer, fazer ….’ I had no chance of explaining what I needed. Still, after some time, we came to an agreement. I paid a hundred pounds for a room and the same amount for a deposit. It was a decent enough place, nice and clean: tiles, plants. I couldn’t complain. Maybe because, at that time I had no idea about London’s distances and how huge the city is. I lived about an hour and fifteen minutes from the city centre.
• I liked London, but I didn’t get high on it. What else could I say, it is a big city. That’s all.
• Having arrived in London, I was ready to fight for my future. Yet at the same time, I understood that I needed to wait, to get used to my new life. Really, it doesn’t matter where you are, the important thing is who you are. I wasn’t looking for a bad side to the city, I didn’t pay attention to what’s wrong: homeless people, dirt, dog shit on the ground. I had set my sights on a different thing. I enjoyed good weather, enjoyed the city’s architecture, people. Still, I had a tough time at the beginning, I couldn’t get rid of the past. I think the army or jail would be easier than this past year in London. Life was challenging. Still, I’ve got the result I wanted. I’ve got a job on a building site, paying a decent wage.
• I became a different person in London. I’m not sure why: perhaps it was my age, or even the understanding that one day we will all die. Probably though, it was just London itself. People always complain, the city is dirty, the food’s no good, the wages aren’t enough. But it’s not the city or the money, it’s you. You chose to arrive here; you chose your path. It’s not that the ci y’s dirty, it’s that you are in the wrong place in your life. So, if you don’t like it, then you need to find another place.
• It was the same for me, I didn’t like some things here: London is too large, there is a problem with communication here, not e ough sun and so many immigrants. Once you are in Zone 4-5, there are only immigrants there: Romanians, Poles, dirty and rude. Everyone is fighting for their place on a tube, on a bus. That’s what I don’t like. Which is maybe the reason I soon realised that I needed to focus on my own life.
• Another thing I am struggling with here is food. I only eat Russian food. I don’t like British food or any other cuisine. I prefer healthy food, things like porridge, buckwheat. Every autumn I have an urge to eat herring. Likewise, in the summer I have to eat corn, a kholodnik. Here, in London, I once walked into a café, and the waitress offered me soup, saying,
• ‘It’s not a soup really. It’s just a name on the menu. Actually, it’s borsсh.’
• ‘How do you serve borsch?’ I asked her.
• ‘With pumpushki, of course.’
• ‘And perhaps you have sour cream?’
• ‘Yes, we do.’
• That was a real borsch. It was so nice that I felt overwhelmed. But it’s difficult to find good Russian food in London. The reality is I can’t live without it, I need Russian pelmeni, kissel, sushki and sukhari, condensed milk. Do you know that fantastic feeling when you eat three-day old cabbage soup? You can’t stop enjoying it, it’s delicious. The food is part of our culture—i ’s who I am.
• In my hometown, I simply needed to walk out of my house 750 metres to the nearest cafeteria. It opened back in 1964. The women who work there are typically all big and rotund, and dressed in their white lab-like coats; they prepare all of the food every morning and it’s all fresh. But if you’re living there, you simply don’t think about all these things. That’s until you emigrate to places like London or Milan, and you suddenly come to understand how much you miss it. You soon realise you can’t simply call your friend or pop over to mum’s for some of her homemade pancakes, or get out and play football with your mates. All those hings are gone. The things that usually seem so unimportant to others. But they are the things you can’t live without.
• ***
• Nearly all my friends here are immigrants. Although I cannot say I have a close friend, still they are good mates. The British are different from us. They can’t understand us.
• I’ve been working on building sites, and I have yet to meet even one happy man. It seems that people don’t come here in search of happiness, they come here for the money. I suppose that’s why every one of them misses their home: Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia. And why, when they go back to their countries for a summer holiday, they come back happy. They all hate London, they don’t like their jobs, their life. But on the other hand, they can’t do without their jobs either. Men need to be busy. Even these shitty jobs help them. When I talk to them, and ask how they spend their weekends, they all say, on social media. They’re all screwed up, they’re not living the lives they want, but the lives they’ve been taught to live. They all took mortgages out and had kids. There wasn’t any thought behind it—it was as if they were meant to do.
• I asked one guy, ‘How long have you been here?’
• ‘Eight years … but it’s temporary,’ he answered, before telling me, ‘But I want to get home, I just need to make some more money, and then I will go back.’
• But he’s not alone, some of the others have already been here for twelve or nineteen years. They’ve given away a huge chunk of their life to a country they don’t like. Every day I hear from them the same phrases, ‘fuck this work,’ ‘fuck this country,’ ‘it’s all shit.’
• But when I ask what’s stopping them from going back home—it’s always about the money: if only they could make five hundred or a thousand, they will get back home.
• Another guy told me, ‘Moscow is much better. Women are easier there, they’re chattier.’ I think it’s fair enough. It’s importa t for a man. A man needs a decent wage and good company. Nothing like this is possible here.
• Russian women in London are different, they are careful. Their relationships seem to be based on consumerism. My typical dialogues with females online looked like,
• ‘What do you do?’ she would ask.
• ‘I work on a building site.’
• ‘Hm ... what do you do there?’
• ‘I am a builder.’
• At this point most of the women would simply finish the conversation; although a few might continue,
• ‘So, do you think that your wife or girlfriend should work, or not?’ they usually ask.
• ‘I need an independent woman. It doesn’t mean that she should have a job, but she should do something. She shouldn’t just stay at home and rely on her husband’s wages. I’m after a relationship based on equality. Without that, I wouldn’t respect her.’
• People are different here. I’ve met more than a few immigrants who have lied. They’re usually the ones who want to try and get something out of you. Or they’re the ones who will offer you the chance to make some easy money.
• One guy said I could get into the “charity business” – you collect unwanted items from houses, pretending that they will all go to a charity store. But then you sell them as second-hand stuff. Another one offered me the opportunity to bring cigarettes from Belarus. One time a Romanian guy, he was working on the same building team as me, approached me and said, ‘I’ve heard you’re from Belarus, how about you help us to bring some girls from there. We will rent them a house, they will make good money here, you will have your half.’ I said no. I didn’t want to deal with criminals.
• ***
• But all of that began to happen much later.
• When I first arrived in London, I was a married man on the lookout for an opportunity to make enough money to support my family. My wife, Irina, and the kids stayed in Italy because she didn’t want to go back to Belarus and didn’t want to come to London.
• She still wasn’t working when I left Italy—not that Irina was looking for a job—so as soon as I got a job, I began sending them most of my wages, leaving myself only enough to pay my rent, and to buy the food I needed to survive, along with an Oyster-card. I lived simply on baked beans and pasta. But, for all those months, the thing that kept me going was knowing that I was supporting my family.
• It was summer 2019, when Irina told me she had managed to get some money. I thought she’d found a job—but no, in fact, she’d borrowed some money from her friends and run up a huge debt. I had always thought I had a strong family unit, that everything would be great. I only realised I was wrong at the beginning of October 2019, when Irina asked for a divorce.
• Later, I had deep thoughts. I spend lots of time re-thinking my life, trying to understand what my place within my own family was and what was my wife’s. She was dealing with all of the family matters. Irina made all the decisions. She was like any wise woman, who lets her husband think that he’s in charge. But I understood it too late … very late.
• ***
• My life in London was simple. I spent the whole year studying at the weekends to get my professional badges, while I also studied English. I went for walks. And on Sundays, I would go to the Russian Orthodox church and then on to the city, usually to a museum or a cinema. During the weekdays, I would usually wake up at around five o’clock every morning, I’d do some sport, and then listen to recordings of native speakers while having breakfast. On the way to work, I’d read a book. I bought Trump’s book at my local church. It was what I needed then; it was well structured.
• I asked the guys from work, what would they do if there were only three days left to live. I like to challenge people with such questions. My friend said, ‘I would take all my money and spend time with three prostitutes.’ But three days later, he came back to work, looking glum. My guess, he was still considering his options.
• What would I do? On the first day I would take a flight to Brazil to spend time with Miss Universe; on the second day I would spend time with my mates, drinking, clubbing, maybe even fighting with someone; and on the last day I would like to spend time with my family, being all together.
• The reason I mentioned Miss Universe, is because I am terrified of beautiful women. The last time I talked to a strange girl o the street was about twenty-seven years ago, so I simply don’t remember how to do it. And it’s the reason I decided to challenge myself to introduce myself to strange women, on the streets, at shops, on the tube, anywhere. My first conversation with a woman in London was like, ‘Ah….hmmm…. skuz-mi…..hh…,’ like I am a deaf-mute. It was difficult at the start. I had to watch some videos on how to talk with women. Predominately, I tried to talk only with Slavic women, not British. Some would talk, others would give a wrong telephone number, and others simply said—not interested. But for me, it was like learning a new skill.
• Until October 2019, everything was going fine: my job, courses, money. But I felt I would never be happy here. For the whole year, up until the 25th November, 2019 I always believed that I was going to continue living in London. However, I understood that I wouldn’t be able to stay here. I bought a one-way ticket to Belarus; for some reason, I didn’t buy a return ticket. I didn’ know why. I couldn’t explain it to myself why I hadn’t bought the ticket to fly back. Then I realised that it was time to move on.
• I think, if it wasn’t for losing my family, then I would have stayed in London. Why? Because my brain was telling me that I needed to stay here; even if my heart and soul were telling me that I needed to get back to Belarus. I remember that in October and around the beginning of November, I wouldn’t have ever thought about going back; for the summer—great, to see my parents, to spend a few months, but not permanently. But that all changed after my birthday.
• I understood that I wanted to help poor and homeless people, that I wanted to help them to learn to socialise, and to learn how to use a computer. Some people can’t adapt to a new life, they need to learn new skills. I like helping people, that is why I want to go to work in some charity programme.
• Irina and my son kept quiet about it. My daughter supported me. I had a birthday on the 25th November, so she wrote to me, ‘Dad, I don’t care what you do in your life. I love you, and I always will.’ That was one of the triggers too. I know I did something right. I just want to be happy.
• That’s why I’ve decided to go back to Belarus.
• (PART 2)
• Having returned to New Zealand and travelled for a few weeks across both islands, we settled in the Christchurch suburb of Merivale.
• Whenever I think of those years in the South Island’s largest city, I know that I could never add an “unhappy” sticker to them; they were some of the happiest years of my life, filled with joy: I was watching my children grow. I quickly understood what an ideal place this was for young kids: a happy, secure, and steady environment, surrounded by marvellous green parks, and a good primary school with a swimming pool and a large playground, and a sports field. Our semi-detached home was within walking distance of Hagley Park, the tranquility of the Mona Vale Gardens, and the all-important city centre amenities: shopping malls, modern cafes, and restaurants. You couldn’t wish for a better location. But I did.
• As I look back now, I know my disconnect with New Zealand had everything to do with the fact that as a writer and journalist everything I created, I created for somewhere else. Shortly after I graduated, I dived into journalism and travel blogging for the Russian market. I also wrote my first two novels for a Russian speaking audience, just as I would do with my third and fourth. My blog was about a Russian girl living at “the edge of the world” and was targeted at Russian speakers who were maybe thinking of holidaying in New Zealand or exploring their options for a more permanent move. Other than my family, nothing connected me to the place.
• Unsurprisingly, given its rural roots, the people of Christchurch—Cantabrians—lived a communal kind of existence; they gave the impression that everyone knew everyone else, and that if they didn’t, then they would certainly know someone who knew you. What they never learned was that my husband’s family were some of the first settlers to arrive in the Canterbury region in the nineteenth century. So, for quite some time, we remained on the fringes. Regardless, the Christchurch crowd were always as pleasantly friendly as they were nice, and always keen to try to get to know you.
• During the hot summer and the early autumn, when there was still a warmth in the air, the local JDV café was always full of people. This was where I liked to go, to spend my mornings writing, enjoying my latte in a tall, thick glass with an occasional slice of cake.
• I would sit outside, next to the large windows, with my pencil in hand and my notebook open, observing life and passers-by, making notes about the usual faces that collected here, along with those exciting characters who’d appear for a first time. I wrote so many notes back then, although, it was only after I escaped New Zealand for France that I was able to turn my notes into something larger.
• What shocked me about Christchurch was that people were disinterested in moving elsewhere. Beyond buying a new home or settling next to a good school for their children’s benefit, the idea of moving their lives in a different direction never seemed to occur to them. Even the thought of a holiday in Australia seemed something extraordinary for them. I remember talking to some old fellow who said he was born and bred in Christchurch and had never been outside the city.
• ‘Haven’t you ever wanted to see the rest of the world?’ I asked him.
• ‘No, not really. I have everything I need here.’
• Was he wise or silly? Perhaps, one day I’ll have the answer to that question. There were many people in Christchurch who, like that old man, didn’t see any point in going anywhere else; they were planted, like sturdy oak trees that had sunk their roots deep into the ground, making it all but impossible to move—that was without the intervention of some external force.
• Victor, an Israeli who had married a New Zealander, was another JDV regular. He’d lived in Christchurch for ages and had pretty much lost his accent. He seemed old, almost ancient; his rough suntanned skin was covered in sunspots, and his movements were slow and considered. It was as though he wanted to weigh up the pros and cons of his every step. When he wasn’t moving from his car—it was always parked within a few metres, no more than ten, of the JDV tables—he would be sitting outside, sipping on a black coffee, or an occasional glass of wine. A cigar was typically held in one hand, with his handcrafted, redwood walking stick within easy reach. He’d wear a light-cotton khaki jacket and hide his eyes behind the dark opaqueness of his photochromic lenses. He was always economical with his words, and—like a Cold-War spy in a John Le Carré novel—more inclined towards probing than o being probed. I always thought there was something cold and untouchable about him. Yet I could never work out what it was, or why; suffice it to say I never felt comfortable in his presence.
• After a while the topics for conversations with my “co-Cantabrians” slowly began to move beyond the weather, rugby, racing, and beer, though those mundane topics always remained local, safe essentials, to be called upon whenever the going got tough. Our next-door neighbour, an ex-army woman named Nicky, struggled to talk about anything else. Now an enthusiastic referee of the women’s game, she had covered her bedroom’s walls with poster-sized pictures of a smiling Richie McCaw. Not that I spent my days peeking through her windows. It was just that they were difficult to miss, especially when the late-afternoon sun began to stream through her curtainless windows: Richie’s Colgate-enhanced grin glowing bright. Which I suspect was why she was so delighted when I told her that I’d seen her All Blacks’ star, patiently standing in the queue, beside me at the local supermarket. Not tha I’d immediately recognised him, at least not until the women behind the tills suddenly became far friendlier than usual, which was at about the same time as the shoppers around me began to let go of their shopping trolleys and baskets, pointing their moile phones in my general direction. Had they mistaken me for someone else? Someone famous? I had no idea that I was standing beside the All Blacks’ captain. Not until I heard the whispers through the air: ‘Richard … All Blacks.’ Ah, I thought, as I leaned over and glanced into his plastic bag. It was a rather simple meal choice: a large pack of crisps, a pizza, and a soft drink. ⤀
• ***
• I’ll never forget the day I discovered several stands, four or five shelves high, of Russian books at the central library: Nabokov, Pushkin, Paustovsky, Kuprin, Turgenev, Tolstoy—they were all there! It felt like a refreshing breath of air on the hottest of summer days. If these books were there, then there had to be a Russian community too. Not that I was looking to make new Russian friends. I wasn’t. But still, my discovery was enough to make me consider that, maybe, Christchurch wouldn’t be a bad place to spend the rest of my life. Though I quickly reminded myself the last thing I’d ever want would be to stay living in New Zealand. It was still far away from the rest of the world, from my parents and Moscow friends, but mainly it was too far from being “a perfect place” for me. Yet I knew I was beginning to look at my world differently. Was it that I was now on the wrong side of twenty-five? Or was the place beginning to grow on me? Unlike that old man from JDV, the last thing I wanted was to be stuck here forever, in one place. But life in Christchurch was beginning to feel more and more like an inescapable sponge that was sucking me in. It was a terrifying thought.
• Then I met some Russians. A Russian woman whose son was my son’s classmate, Nina and her husband had arrived in New Zealand from Vladivostok in the early 2000s. They had two sons; one of them—the youngest, Sasha—was clearly their hope and joy of a prosperous future. He was heavily involved in tennis and attending coaching sessions almost on a daily basis. His weekends were spent travelling the length and breadth of the country to play in any tournament after tournament. Perhaps, because Nina was a “tennis-mum,” or maybe because our life views were poles apart, any thought of friendship soon withered on the vine.
• And then I met Katya in Hagley Park—she overheard me talking to kids in Russian and approached me. She had a daughter who was a similar age to my daughter. We exchanged phone numbers and met a few times in the park, but, unfortunately, we didn’t have a chance to build on our budding friendship as nature—always unpredictable—shook the very foundations of Cantabrian life.
• ***
• On the 21st of February 2011, I slowly wandered home—in my white-and-blue dress and beige platform shoes (I was still silently protesting over the comfort of New Zealand outfits)—with two heavy bags of groceries in my hands, bemoaning my stupidity for buying so much stuff on my own.
• I passed the house of a man—I never learned his name—but we often exchanged polite hellos. He was a lovely, childlike guy who would mutter about the weather. And in the evening he would wash his driveway, the footpath out front, and the length of road that ran parallel to his fence. I saw him and said hi. To my surprise, he said, repeating, ‘It will be sunny tomorrow; it will happen; it will be sunny tomorrow; it will happen.’ ‘Yes, sun,’ I replied. ‘It will be sunny… it will happen ….’ I still could hear the echo of his voice behind me as I wandered up the road. My arms were almost dead when I arrived home and realised, I only had ten minutes to sort myself out before the obligatory school run.
• I felt so frustrated—the day was almost gone, I had no work done, I felt tired and angry—as I dropped the shopping bags by the front door. I’d had enough… I felt like I wanted to blame everything and everyone, but mostly New Zealand. I was fed up with this place … I didn’t want to live there anymore…. I wanted to move! And with that thought, I opened the door, walked in, stashed the food, and then dashed off to collect the kids, having already erased my ridiculous wish from my mind—the kids were settled and happy; no one could wish for more; why move … and to where?
• The next day, I was enjoying a coffee with my husband—we were on Victoria Street, sitting beneath the overhang of a building when the ground began to suddenly shake with great ferocity; the large window behind us cracked, and then shattered into thousands of shards of glass as we dashed for safety, struggling to keep our feet. We held on to each other tight. The old nineteenth-century buildings around us collapsed, one after another like children’s building blocks that someone had knocked over.
• At 12:51 that afternoon, the second, more devastating Christchurch earthquake occurred. The damage to the city was unbelievable. Our home was not safe to live in. We grabbed the kids, put what was left of all our furniture and belongings into storage, packed our bags and set off first to Auckland, then Kuala Lumpur, and then France.
• And just like that my New Zealand page was finally turned.
• Soviet Union—England
• 49 years old
• In the UK since 1991
• [I met with Masha in Glossop in July 2020, a few weeks after the lockdown restrictions had been removed. We were sitting outside the local Pico Lounge, a cosy spot not far from the train station. ‘I used to come here a lot when I was writing my dissertation,’ Masha explained while we were waiting for our food order.
• She gave me some photos that I would spend the next three hours studying—I already knew a bit of the detail about her and her amily’s background and wanted to connect the stories to the faces.]
• ***
• When I was young, I wasn’t that interested in my family history. It’s only now that I realise how important it is. That it’s essential to know where you come from. Perhaps that’s why I sometimes feel guilty about not staying in touch with my extended family. I never thought I needed to call them. But now, maybe because I’ve become a proud grandmother myself and want to show my g anddaughter off to everyone, it feels necessary.
• I was born and grew up in Moscow. Both my parents worked in the nuclear-physics field. Mum and dad divorced when I was little, but they stayed in touch with each other, even though dad remarried. I have an older sister who lives in Helsinki and a thirty-year-old half-brother in Moscow.
• I was brought up by my mother and grandmother, Tanya, the kindest woman I have ever known. She was born in 1902 and lived to be ninety-four; a small quiet woman who, until the day she died, was always busy around the house. She was a fairy Godmother who looked after everyone. As a child, I felt myself wrapped in her love and affection. I didn’t know what hanging my school uniform on the coat-hanger meant; I would come back home from school, drop my school uniform, and, as if by some miracle, my uniform would reappear the next morning on my coat hanger, cleaned and fresh.
• Yet, I know my grandmother had a hard life. I was told that her parents were either executed, as enemies of the state, or perished in one of the gulags. That’s why we know almost nothing about them, not more than a few crumbs of information. We know that they were originally from Belarus and that my grandmother attended a gymnasium as a young girl. So, we assume that given only wealthy families, back then, could afford to send their girls to schools that perhaps they were well off. My great-grandfather’s name would have been Saveliy, as my grandmother was Tatyana Saveliyevna. But beyond that, we don’t know anything. My grandmother has never spoken about them, in any detail. And, if you didn’t talk about your parents in those years, it could only mean one thing: they were deleted from your memory by order of the state. So that trauma must have sat within Grandma Tanya her entire life. On rare occasions, she would call her mother’s name and would then sit quietly crying. More often though, she would shout out in her sleep, howling. As a child, I was often scared awake in the middle of the night, by her wailing [Crying].
• Grandma Tanya met my grandfather at a Belarusian Conference for Young Teachers. He was older than her by about four years. But having had a pleasant chat and having discovered that they liked each other, they decided to take the same train home. However, when it came to my grandmother’s stop, she realised that their compartment had been locked. According to my grandmother’s sister, whom she had confessed to—it isn’t a story that my grandmother has ever told me—he abducted her. When they arrived at his station, his brothers were apparently already there, waiting, with a horse carriage. They whisked my grandmother away, back to grandad’s village, where they were married.
• ‘How could you live with him?’ her sister asked.
• ‘I cried for a bit, and then I got used to it.’
• But she obviously began to love him because when my grandfather and his family were arrested—they were kulaks who secreted away some of their crops rather than giving them to the kolkhoz—and sent to exile in Siberia, she chose to follow him. That was in the thirties. Of course, she could have divorced him, and finally freed herself from the forced marriage, but she didn’t. Instead, she followed him to the camp and either lived in a nearby village, or at some other camp. I’ve never been sure about the details of this story and have always wondered how it was that she wasn’t also arrested. My great-grandparents and my grandfather’s brothers and sisters all ended up in Siberia. And most of them either froze or starved to death. From what I’ve heard, only one of his sisters survived.
• My grandfather was never allowed to return to his homeland or travel, even after he’d served his sentence. They sent them to Minsk. And then, when the Second World War began, grandad joined the army, which helped him a bit, as he was eventually pardoned by the state. Again, my grandmother was left alone with their children.
• She gave birth to a baby boy just as the Germans entered Minsk. So, knowing she needed to get out of the city, she set off with her children—a sixteen-year-old son Arkadiy, a twelve-year-old daughter, and a newborn—on foot, for Smolensk, under fire and constant bombardment, with a few modest possessions. Along the way they were given a horse-cart with which Arkadiy—while my grandmother and the two youngest children took cover in a ditch—would stay on the road, holding the horse, as the bombs and bullets whistled through the air. He was the only man I have known in my life who hit his grandchildren with a belt—he became such an aggressive man.
• Tragically, the baby didn’t survive. But eventually, they did make it to Smolensk, and from there they were evacuated to Siberia.
• Towards the end of the war, my grandad became sick with typhoid fever, so they sent him home to die. Luckily for me, however, he survived the bacterial infection, and by the end of the war my mother was born.
• My grandfather died when I was four, which was when my grandmother came to live with us.
• ***
• [Masha showed me the photos of her father’s side of the family.
• Her grandfather, Joseph Koghen—dark hair, well-dressed, looking straight into the camera—immediately reminds me of Gaito Gazda ov, the same handsome look with deep thoughts behind his gaze.
• In her youth, Masha’s grandmother looked like a poetess or the muse of a bohemian writer, but in later years, she became a serious and powerful woman. ‘She was a bit bitchy towards my mother, especially, after my parents divorced. Still, she was always nice to my sister and me,’ Masha says.]
• On my father’s side, my grandparents were Jews.
• My grandfather and grandmother lived near Gorky Park. They had a huge library. Perhaps that is why I grew up as a bookworm, reading British authors like Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. When my grandmother died, grandad went to live with my father and my stepmother. He died a few years after my grandmother passed away (when I was twenty-seven) and was buried in Moscow.
• My grandfather was a good-looking man when he was young, a real James Bond type. He spoke perfect English and, having spent some years in the French colonies of Africa, was fluent in French. He also worked in Turkey. So, my grandparents tended to use Turkish at home when they wanted to hide something from my sister and me, like sweets or ice cream. Yet, it didn’t take us long to work out that dondurma means ice cream in Turkish.
• So, grandad could get by with the language, although he’d sometimes forget the occasional word or get a word muddled up. Like he time he was in Istanbul and had to make an urgent dash to catch a flight. He jumped into the cab, and shouted, ‘fast… to the airport… quickly… hurry …,’ all to no avail. The cab driver gave him the oddest of looks while grandad persisted, shouting ‘hu ry… faster.’ But the cab driver did no more than look at him again, somewhat astonished as he slowed down. It was only later that my grandfather discovered he’d got his words wrong and had been pleading with the driver to drive slower. I don’t remember i he ever managed to catch his flight, although I’m sure he told me.
• In the forties, after they had returned to Moscow, grandad worked for the NKVD. He would eventually head the department with responsibility for managing the Cambridge spies. An important man with a dangerous job, given he reported directly to both Beria and Stalin.
• Shortly after the war ended, grandad and the whole family—my father was born in 1943—were transferred, as part of an undercove assignment (the family were codenamed Kolesnikov) to the US. He told me that he attended the first United Nations meeting and was recognised by the Turkish Minister of culture who shouted to him, ‘Joseph, so nice to see you again.’ My grandfather prete ded he didn’t recognise him and told him that he was mistaken before quickly disappearing.
• In the end, grandad was dismissed from his services because he was a Jew. Thank God he wasn’t arrested or killed. I remember looking through his personal archives. He kept all sorts of papers: telegrams, letters, theatre tickets, an invitation to a Kremlin ball, postcards, photos, medals—and I stumbled across a list of his colleagues who were arrested and executed, around the time when he lost his job. He, instead, received a letter that thanked him for his outstanding services to the NKVD. It’s fair to say, though, that I don’t know everything there is to know about his years in NKVD … And I’ve never wanted to dig the truth out …
• Later, he worked as an editor-in-chief of the Social Sciences and Modernity magazine. And, according to what dad told me, the last time I visited him, my grandfather wanted my dad to work with him, as a translator. ‘The only thing is, just one foreign language on your CV isn’t going to be enough to get you in, so let’s say that you know English and some other rare foreign language … something that we never receive papers for,’ suggested grandad. So, they added that dad knew English and Portuguese. And dad got a job at the magazine. But to his misfortune, some months after dad joined the office, they received a packet of documents—there had been a conference in Brazil—to translate from Portuguese and publish in the magazine. Of course, soon after the documents arrived, dad left the magazine.
• Grandad also helped with my enrolment into a state school that specialised in English. I was six years old when I went to sit he entrance exam. They had asked me a question, ‘Why is a cow considered to be a home animal?’ I thought, ‘It must be a trick question. Of course, cows live with humans. But surely, it can’t be that easy. The answer should be more complicated than that.’ So, I said, ‘Because they can’t bite.’ Of course, the correct answer was the one that I originally thought of. They smiled, but I still got in. I later discovered that that was thanks to my grandfather—he’d phoned someone at the school. Not that I wasn’t good enough or smart enough. It was simply that not everyone got past the school’s selection process (I didn’t know that it was an elite school), and that grandad didn’t want to risk me missing out. And while I can’t say that I was happy to learn that s rings had been pulled, on the other hand, thanks grandad, I now have a great education.
• So, I never thought of my grandfather as a spy; for me, he was just a grandad, a wonderfully kind man. It was only later, afte I decided to move to the UK, that I learned the truth. Grandad found it amusing that I was going to live in the country that he had once spied on.
• ***
• I have always adored English literature. Most of my teachers were British or otherwise Russians who had visited England on numerous occasions to practise and improve their English proficiency. And then there were the regular meetings that we had enjoyed with visiting foreign students. They all seemed so different, compared to Russians. My boyfriends also tended to be foreigners: one guy was from India, another was French. Perhaps that’s why, as a schoolgirl, I had fantasies about marrying a foreign prince. My husband, however, fell somewhat short of that mark, although dating him was very romantic.
• I was nineteen, studying biology as an extramural student at the Biology Institute, while also working at the Moscow Zoo’s aquarium, when I met Daniel. I was the only person there who spoke English, so the administration asked me to show him around. Daniel’s specialism was lizards, so we had many things in common and, as such, we spent a lot of time talking before our relationship developed into something more serious.
• I went to the UK to visit Daniel in December 1990. And then he came back over to Moscow and stayed with us—grandma, mum and me—for three months, so my parents got to know him. Better still, they liked him and were supportive of our relationship.
• I never thought of Daniel as my escape route out of the Soviet Union, although I did get pregnant. When I told Daniel about it, we had a huge argument, and I was not sure if I even wanted to be with him any more. He went back to England, leaving me without a final decision. Then the putsch happened, which again impacted on all of our plans. The situation in the country was unstale. I remember my father, who was never keen on the idea of my moving abroad, telling me, ‘You better leave this country; it’s all crazy here.’ So, I talked to Dan over the phone, and he said, ‘Okay, come to England.’
• /
• Figure 3. Rushnik.
• [‘This is a rushnik. My grandmother’s or grandfather’s aunt gave it to me before I moved to England.’]
• I left Moscow in September 1991, just after the August coup d’état. I used to be a patriot, not a fanatical one, but I had a portrait of Gorbachev hanging above my bed. I used to go to demonstrations and parades. I was interested in politics and believed there was the chance for a better, democratic future for my country. Unfortunately, as has often been the case, it ended up in a mess and with a different kind of dictatorship.
• That was the year that so many of my friends fled the country. So, most of the people who I knew were positive about my decision to leave the USSR; no one tried to stop me. Apart from one of my mum’s friends, but then she always was an obnoxious sort of woman. For my part, I was more scared than anyone around me, unsure about whether it was a good idea. However, once I’d moved to the UK, I understood it was absolutely the right decision.
• I arrived on a visitor’s visa, not as Daniel’s fiancée, even though I knew I was moving in. Because I was coming to the UK as a visitor, I was limited in the number of things I could take. Still, I managed to bring a few of my favourite books: Kuprin, Tsvetaeva, Matveeva, as well as several books on zoology.
• So, I hopped on my flight to the UK shortly after a friend of mine—she was going to join me on “holiday”—went for her interview at the British Embassy. They asked her, “What is the purpose of your visit to the UK?” She responded, no doubt enthusiastically, ‘My friend is getting married.’ So, I was stopped at border control—they interrogated me for two hours. What shocked me most was that they smiled at me the entire time, while probing with all kinds of the nastiest of questions. At first, I thought, ‘they’re smiling, they like me, they’re not going to do anything mean.’ Yet, all the while they were threatening me and asking such pointed and intimidating questions. It was so very different from the Russian culture; I still struggle to understand that duplicitous nature of the English—that ability to smile as they dig at you with their twisted words. Fortunately, my friend was smart enough not to tell them that I was pregnant.
• Daniel met me at the airport, and we grabbed a taxi. I asked him to buy me a kiwi fruit as I’d never tried one before but had always wanted to. So, we pulled up beside a shop, and Daniel bought me a kiwi fruit. I sat in the cab and ate it with the skin. And, even now, I still eat my kiwis with the skin on.
• I instantly fell in love with Glossop. It was absolutely my sort of town: not a village, but not a huge city either. We got ma ried shortly after I arrived. Of course, the authorities said we’d done the wrong thing to hide our true intentions, but back in 1991 the immigration rules weren’t that tough and, eventually, they left us alone.
• At first glance, England looked great. Of course, many things seemed so unusual, like the amount of food available at the small local grocery store where I shopped. It was a tiny shop, but I felt so overwhelmed by the selection of food they offered and the mix of aromas. I almost felt sick.
• I was also shocked to discover that people don’t have books at home. Most of the people whom I socialised with, at least at that time, were Daniel’s friends. When they invited me to their places and showed me around their homes, I couldn’t help but think, where are all the books? Don’t the English read anything? And, then there were the separate taps for hot and cold water—I still wish I could change that.
• When I married Daniel, he was out of a job, so we were young and poor. Still, he tried to entertain me. Like the time we took a bus to London to spend a few days there. As I was getting off the bus, I expected that he would take my bag. Not only didn’t he do it, he didn’t even look in my direction.
• ‘Are you going to take my bag?’ I asked, feeling absolutely stunned.
• ‘What for? I have my own.’
• ‘But I’m a woman!’
• ‘And so? What’s the difference?’
• I was Russian. Russia, unlike England, hasn’t undergone the same types of social changes. While a British woman might take offence if a man offered her a helping hand, in Russia, we’d take offence if he didn’t. We like our gentlemen. I’ve never been a crazy feminist. But what we’re seeing now is that British men are losing their identity as men, their role as a protector and provider. It’s unhealthy. There needs to be some balance. For me, the idea of a man sharing some of the responsibility for cooking and housework is great. I think it’s good. But at the same time, I don’t see that there’s anything wrong for a man to pay a woman a compliment. Hopefully it will sort itself out one day.
• Soon after I arrived, our daughter was born. So, I stayed at home for a while and occupied my time with a distance learning course in gardening. Then we moved to Aberdeen because Daniel wanted to study there. Even though I didn’t like the place the same way I liked Glossop—it was too grey—I found the Scottish were more interesting and easy-going than the English. But I still preerred Glossop. Regardless, I went on to do a BSc Hons in horticulture.
• It was while I was studying that Daniel and I decided to get divorced. Of course, our daughter was little, so I struggled to keep up with the typical student life—I didn’t go out much. Also, most of the students were way younger than me. And even though I did try to make friends with some of the other Russian mothers, it didn’t work out: I didn’t like the way they constantly cri icised Scotland, it was awful. I thought, ‘if you dislike the place so much, why are you here? Why don’t you go back to your homeland?’
• Still, most of my friends were immigrants: a guy from Costa Rica, a girl from Belgium, and various people from other countries. For some reason, it was easier to befriend other overseas students and immigrants than it was the locals. The only Russians I got acquainted with were two women – we keep in touch, but we aren’t close friends; one lives in the Arab Emirates now. I know hat a few Russians live in Glossop, but I’m not that fussed about getting to know them.
• I spent seven years in Scotland but then, when I was about twenty-nine and looking for a job, the only suitable vacancy that I could find was a position as a gardening instructor in a male prison in Kent. I had never considered working with people, as I was quite introverted and struggled in a social setting, but I accepted the job, regardless. But when my contract ended, I came back to live in the Manchester area. I got a job working at a female rehabilitation centre, which is where I discovered my abiding interest in psychology. So, I began reading around the professional literature and then returned to my studies. Now I’m a therapist.
• ***
• Most of my clients are British and German. I did have a few Russians too, but I learned that I prefer not to work with Russians as they tend to be rude and demanding. So, after several unpleasant experiences, I decided not to take on any more Russian clients. I don’t feel comfortable working with them and often find myself feeling rather unsettled by their intimidating behaviou . I know I shouldn’t say this, but I find myself prejudiced against any potential Russian clients. So, I usually refer them to my colleagues. That said, I do have two Russian-speaking colleagues who I supervise—and I do feel comfortable working with them. I suppose it’s because they have lived in England for a long time too.
• My circle of friends has similar jobs and educational backgrounds; they are psychotherapists, healers, other professionals. We tend to talk about our professional issues and, of course, about our personal lives too, but only when we have similar views about life. If people simply start chatting about their kids’ or personal achievements, or favourite TV shows, I tend to quickly switch off.
• My colleagues generally have an interest in Russia; they used to, and still do ask me about Russia. But I’ve lost touch with the country and their way of life: I don’t watch Russian TV or even read the Russian press. So, when people ask me about the current state of affairs in Russia, I usually don’t have much to say.
• I have never regretted my decision to leave Russia. Yes, I missed my family and friends, but I didn’t miss the country, unlike other Russians who are desperate to hold onto their ties with the country. Perhaps, they’re right. Perhaps, I should feel the same way, but I don’t—I’ve never wanted to go back.
• I was twenty-one when I settled in the UK, so I have spent more than half my life here. And I do feel more British than Russia . And probably that’s why my cultural values are fundamentally British. Things like diversity, equality, human rights, they’re integral to who I am. When I visit Russia, my parents might tell me a joke about black people, for example. They don’t see anything wrong in their expression of humour. They seem incapable of grasping the fact that their jokes are offensive, even though my best friend is a black Afro-Caribbean woman. From their perspective, it’s their culture.
• Mostly though, what I detest about the Russian character—a bit clichéd perhaps—is how they believe they’re absolutely right about everything. Russia is full of people who can’t wait to give you advice, whether you want it or not. I remember how, when I took my daughter with me to Moscow, someone would always say, ‘Why doesn’t she have a hat on? Why is she sucking her thumb? Why is her jumper so thin? ….’ It was bizarre. Strana Sovetov.
• ***
• I don’t have any Russian souvenirs at home; I used to have a collection of khokhloma dishes, but because they weren’t practical I gave them away. I also have my forty-year-old, red address book; it’s full of names and telephone numbers of my old friends and other people, whom I don’t even remember now. I don’t know why I kept it; it’s a bit sentimental, although generally speaki g, I am not the sentimental type. I am, however, passionate about books. Especially the books from my childhood; I still have my old Karlsson-on-the-roof book that I want to pass on to my granddaughter.
• I’ve always felt a sense of pride about Russian literature, music, poetry; I like to watch old Soviet films and listen to Soviet bards. And once I even organised a concert by my favourite rock band, Aquarium. I had been a massive fan of Boris Grebenshikov, the band’s leader, since I was twelve. I’d been to his concerts in Germany and London. And I so wanted them to come to Manchester to perform that I wrote to their manager and offered to organise a concert. Of course, I had absolutely no experience of organising such events. And it was some time before I got a response. But then, out of the blue, I received an email, saying tha they would be in Scotland, then in London, and if I was willing to sort it, they’d do a Manchester gig. I was over the moon. I started looking for a place—and found a lovely monastery where they host various musical events. Luckily, I had some spare cash from selling our old dacha. So, I paid the venue’s deposit, booked their hotel, invited a professional photographer to cover the event, went and bought about thirty cushions to provide some seating near the stage and found a sound-system engineer. The place could hold about three hundred people; sadly though, I only managed to sell a hundred tickets. Still, I was terribly excited about the upcoming concert, that was until the very moment that Boris arrived at the venue, prior to the concert and moaned, ‘This is madness … the only thing that would be worse than this would be playing at the train station.’ He behaved like an absolute diva, ‘I don’t like this… I don’t want that ….’ My partner had worked so hard to entertain him, the whole day—he showed him around the town, took him to their hotel and then for a meal.
• After the concert, people—Russians and British interested in Russian culture—approached me and said thank you for organising i . While others wrote to me to express their gratitude. But I felt so upset—as they say, never meet your idols. That evening put an end to my craziness, my idol worship for all things Grebenshikov. I lost money (I even had to put my hand in my own pocket to cover their royalties) and my respect for him. And when, some years later, I found the cushion that my boyfriend had asked Boris to sign for me, ‘To Masha from B.G,’ I threw it away—why keep it?
• So, apart from Russian language and Russian culture, there’s nothing else that I value about being Russian. It’s as if I’ve disowned everything else. Maybe, if I had done a bit of self-analysis, I’d be able to find the point in time when I flicked my Russian switch off. What was difficult for me, was when my daughter refused to talk in Russian as a teenager. When she was a toddler, her first words were in Russian, but then, over the years, English began to dominate, and by the time she reached her teens, she rebelled against the Russian language. Of course, she regrets it now, as she struggles to write or read in Russian. And even though she still understands Russian when I speak to her, she will reply in English. I guess it’s the reason that when my granddaughter was born my daughter asked me to use Russian whenever I spoke with her. My daughter also asked me to teach her to cook a few Russian dishes, which was always going to be challenging for me, as I don’t know that much about Russian food, and given I’ve never been much of a cook. For me, Russian food amounted to a roast chicken with baked potatoes and a bottle of Sovetskoe Shampanskoe. Still, we looked through the recipes and agreed to learn how to make a plov, which isn’t authentically Russian, but it was close enough.
• What I most like about the UK is British politeness, calmness, and gallantry. Importantly, I feel safe here. I know that if anything happened to me here, they would protect me and do their job. I like British bureaucracy—when you need some paperwork, you can get it. Unlike in Russia, where everything has an extra cost. I had gotten used to the constant need to bribe someone: the countless boxes of chocolates, flowers, money, smiles. All their nonsense: ‘The stamp on this document should be of a triangle-shape, if it’s not a triangle then it’s the wrong stamp, we won’t accept your document.’ Even in the local Russian Embassy, as I waited for my passport, I found myself standing there terrified, wondering if they were going to arrest me.
• This is in contrast to here; like the first time I contacted the HMRC, worrying that I might have got something wrong with my eturn, and some lovely woman took the time to explain everything. She was so nice to me. Not that I’m saying the British system is perfect. As would be expected, given I work with so many people, I know of cases when nobody helps when they should. It’s a shame. But, in the main, the British system works, and there is always a positive atmosphere about it.
• ***
• I was last in Moscow in 2019 as I needed to sell the apartment. I do like going to Moscow, it always takes me back to the dearest memories of my childhood. In some small way, it feels as if I’ve come home. It’s nice to see the beautiful places: Moscow’s parks, the underground. But there’s also something so very uncomfortable about the place. I have never felt safe there. I feel like I want to hide. I always have the feeling that if something were to happen to me, or if I were arrested, no one would be there to protect or help me. Logically I do understand this isn’t about to happen, but emotionally I can’t do anything about it. It’s not that I fear the people, I fear the whole system. There is a feeling of lawlessness to the place. So, really, I do prefer it when the family come to visit me here, in the UK.
• I know that I should be closer to my Russian heritage than I am. But I guess, because there was so much sorrow in our past, I’m not. ‘Sorry, I want to cry.’
• Perhaps, it’s because it was so sad, there were so many difficult things that have happened—that’s mostly why I try to avoid Russia. It’s easier not to be part of it. Because, if you truly want to be close to a culture, then you need to know everything about it, both good and bad. So, while it’s important for me to know everything, I’m not ready to discover anything bad. I don’t want to know about it.
• It’s certainly why I don’t want to know more than I already do about my grandfather’s past. And why I’m afraid of getting in touch with any official Russian organisations. I don’t want to have to deal with them any more than required.
• From a psychological perspective, I know this dissociation from Russia isn’t healthy. Even if you positively decided to leave—as it was in my case—you still will have this idea of losing something. The loss of one’s country and culture is a big thing. Metaphorically speaking, Russia was like an abusive parent. “Motherland,” “Fatherland”—they are powerful concepts. So, when you have a tough parent who punishes you at will, you want to escape. But still you will always feel as if you’ve done something wrong. I grew up feeling scared. I was scared of my teachers. Scared of the system. Of repression. Guilt.
• [Later in the evening, when I was standing alone on the empty platform, waiting for my train, and looking out into the distance, I felt my head buzzing with thoughts and flashes of the dialogues I’d had with Masha.
• And I knew, if I ever had to find a title to describe our meeting, then it would be “a trauma of generations.” We talked a lot about the Soviet past that day. About the events of the twentieth century that every Russian had to suffer. There couldn’t be a single family across Russia who didn’t lose somebody during the Second World War, or the years of starvation, or Stalin’s purges. Literally, not a single family. So, when people say ‘I don’t know… I don’t think so …,’ it’s likely because they were never told of the family secret, concealed beneath a large thick paraffin stamp that was put on top of these words “unknown, unrelated”—Russians soon learned that not only was it better not to talk about this person, but it was also best not to remember them at all, to erase them with the invisible rubber, to pretend they didn’t even exist.
• This was just one of a few meetings that left me thinking how critical it is to know where you came from.
• And looking along that bare, old and rusty railway track, I thought that it is impossible to escape our past. Isn’t it one of life’s ironies—to know what we don’t want to know, to not know what we want to know, to want to know what we never will know? That Dali-like circle of the known and unknown, the truths and the lies.
• As the months went by, I kept thinking about Masha’s grandfather. Eventually, I contacted the NKVD archive, but have received o response. Then Masha sent me a link to Yury Modin’s book, ‘The life of spies. My Cambridge friends.’ It contained a small passage in which Modin talks about his day-to-day job: the enormous amount of photographic negatives he received, writing summary otes and his various reports that he had to take to his head—Joseph Koghen—who would examine them, make amendments and approve them before asking Modin to make sure his notes were sent to three recipients. Even though Modin didn’t give the detail of the addresses, it’s easy enough to guess: Koghen’s head, Beria, and Stalin.
• In the Spy Catcher, Peter Wright—a principal scientific office for MI5—identified Modin as Philby’s controller.]
• Years before I could breathe in the Pyrenees’ air and walk down the streets of provincial French towns and villages, I’d dream of France—and, of course, it all began with books.
• My teen years and adulthood were immersed in French culture: literature, films, songs, and art. Red and Black was the first French book I ever read: I was fourteen and fell in love with its protagonist Julien Sorel. Then—because I couldn’t get enough of that je ne sais quoi of French literature—there was Molière and Beaumarchais, Rousseau, Zola, Maupassant, Flaubert, Sand, Camus, Sartre, Cocteau, along with all those “foreign French residents” Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Anaïs Nin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Remarque, as well as a plethora of Russian émigré authors and intellectuals from the first wave of Russian immigration. It was my own Midnight in Paris.
• Not having been to Paris before, I journeyed there with each of them and their eccentric, melancholic, and lost characters. I knew their faces well, and was more than familiar with the Parisian night roads, and the boulevards, with their smelly and cheap hotels—the last point of hope for many—where all sorts of lodgers lived, in digs with grubby corners. The never-ending indigna ion of life. I always felt as if I was in one of the Montparnasse cafes, taking in the vista, out across the streets, watching as passers-by—the down and out—tried to scrape together a few centimes to satisfy the café’s owner with a purchase of the cheapest cup of coffee—enough to claim a seat where they could sit and write on the paper tablecloth.
• I was so envious of those writers’ lives, even though I knew the roaring twenties and thirties had been difficult for so many as they struggled to find the money needed to exist for another day. Regardless, that was my dream—to go to Paris, to live in some shabby hotel, to be poor, and to write, to live.
• ***
• Unlike the unfamiliarity of New Zealand, France was like my pen-pal and had become one of my closest friends; so, as I boarded the flight that would take me from Kuala Lumpur to Paris, I was all but bursting with the excitement of knowing I was about to finally meet my distant friend.
• Of course, as is so often the case, when you meet someone you’ve been looking forward to meeting, you often can’t escape that ouch of disappointment when you realise they’re not quite what you’d expected. In my case, it was a group of African guys who harangued us at Orly’s airport, attacking us with their intrusive offers of help as they snatched at our luggage trolley. They were so pushy as they jabbered away in their charming French that it was easier to let them “help” rather than argue. I’m delighted to say, that was the only unpleasant incident during our six months stay in France. And that like the Cheshire cat I couldn’ stop smiling as we drove south.
• It was around five in the morning when we pulled into a motorway café. It looked exactly as they did in the French films that I had watched as a teenager: white-and-red tablecloths, old tarnished wooden panels, and a TV screen in the corner that pumped an endless stream of news across the room. Behind the bar’s counter, a tall man looked like a version of Gérard Depardieu with a bushy moustache. My modest French was good enough for an order of two black coffees, four croissants (hot and fresh, just out of the oven), and two glasses of fresh orange juice.
• As a schoolgirl, I’d taught myself a bit of basic French, mostly in protest at having to learn English at school. And I’d continued to dabble in French when we arrived in New Zealand, not for a moment suspecting that it would come in as handy as it did. My husband, for all his travels, is a well-practised monolingual man. So, while I knew France and French were always going to be a challenge, I also knew that everything would be fine.
• Having bumped our way south through the countryside and forests we eventually arrived at our destination in Pl. de l’Eglise in Laas early the next morning. The first thing I spotted was the white fountain, the village’s focal point; to our left was a restaurant simply named “Fountain” and a signboard on the wall proclaiming the village as the place where Bridget Bardot had lived caught my eye as our satnav said turn left. A minute or so later we pulled to a stop in front of the property that was to be our temporary home for the next few days.
• Shortly after we arrived—within hours—my husband had to take a flight from Bordeaux to London and then onward to Cape Town on his next business trip, while I got on with settling in with the kids, relaxed and confident that I would be fine. All going to plan, we’d spend the next week around the house, exploring the local château and surroundings, while enjoying the haute cuisine of the Fountain.
• By that time, I had got used to our moves from one place to another; even though I knew it seemed strange for many people, including our family and friends. But I felt it was so natural and was glad that my husband’s job allowed us to travel around the world and live in different places every few years. Yet, I expected that it was all going to stop one day and we would settle somewhere on a more permanent basis, but where this place was going to be, I had no idea. But this time I knew there was a half a year in France in front of us.
• So that afternoon, after my husband set off to Bordeaux, the kids and I walked the short distance to the restaurant for lunch, excited by the prospect of our first local dining experience. And as we enjoyed our meal, I teased the kids ‘What are we going to do if I can’t pay for the meal?’ The children were amused by the idea that we might have to do the washing-up. That was until I came to the till and discovered that my New Zealand card had been declined—at first, stunned to silence, the realisation that I had no other way of paying for our meal fixed me to the spot.
• ‘Je suis désolé,’ I said to the woman; she had short, wavy, blonde hair and was smiling at me. The restaurant was full of locals—I understood she said something to them about me. Some of them got up and moved closer to the till, staring at me. She had tried my card a few times, only to see that flashing word “refusé” on the screen: repeatedly. I was as embarrassed as I was shocked and confused. All I could think of was the children, wondering how we were going to survive for the next couple of weeks, with empty cupboards and no access to cash. ‘Je suis désolé,’ I repeated and, without being able to hold onto my emotion for a moment longer, began to cry. ‘Oh, she is really upset,’ I heard someone say (great, I could understand French in such a pathetic situation, I thought). After I explained that we’d just arrived this morning and were renting the house up the road, a woman asked, ‘Do you need to go to the bank?’
• ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with my card, I have money in my account, but I need to log into my account to check it.’
• ‘Listen, the restaurant will close for a break before dinner. I’ll take you into town, so you can check your card there.’ She was so kind, wonderful, that all I could do was thank her, profusely, as I gave her our address.
• It was an unusual introduction, but that was how I came to know Susan—the owner of the Fountain restaurant—who arrived in her little car outside our gate at five o’clock. We drove to Salis-de-Bearn, a charming town some twenty minutes away from Laas; I stuck my card with some relief into the ATM, and then wandered back to the car to explain to her that my card had been blocked a d that I would need to contact the bank online or call them, but that there was no Wi-Fi at the place we were renting. And because I’d wrongly assumed it would be easier to pick up a sim-card in France, I hadn’t bothered to set up roaming for my phone.
• ‘Okay, my husband will be waking up soon for the evening shift,’ Susan said, ‘So you can sit in my room and use my computer to sort out your banking … Do you have any food at home?’
• ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.’
• ‘Okay.’ And with that simple word, Susan drove to the nearest supermarket, parked her car, turned towards my kids and said, ‘How about you come and help me do my shopping, because it seems that your mother doesn’t know if you have food or not.’
• I will never forget Susan’s kindness and generosity, or the warmth of her smile. For each of my ‘No, thank yous, we don’t need it, we’ll be fine,’ she looked at my kids and put something else into the trolley.
• ‘I’ll pay you back once my card is unblocked,’ I said, expecting that we had just bought groceries worth about sixty or seventy euros. To my surprise, the entire shop came to about twenty euros. And that was, even after Susan had added—by that time—several much-needed bottles of wine to calm my nerves, which she paired with the cheese, and olives. I could not believe my eyes whe I looked at the slip. ‘One euro for a kilo of brie; how was it possible?’
• Thanks to the car rental firm—they’d blocked some ridiculous amount on my only card—it soon became clear that it was going to ake several days to sort. So, with no cash, two kids, and all but alone in Laas, in the middle of rural France where they didn’t even have an ATM, I couldn’t help but laugh. What else was there to do? Still—thanks to Susan’s trusting generosity—I at leas had enough food to get us through the rest of the week.
• In the morning I woke to the sound of the car; ‘It’s from Susan.’ I heard a woman call out from behind the politest of smiles as she noticed me looking out from my window. There were some freshly baked baguettes, croissants, and two glass bottles of fresh milk. I literary wanted to cry.
• Anyway, eventually, it all sorted itself out. We moved into the large nineteenth-century property we had rented: it was located about an hour away from Laas. However, if I’d thought Laas was a bit of a one-horse town, the place where we were to spend the next six months didn’t even have a hitching post. It did however have the prerequisite Mayor’s office, a church, a cemetery, a d an intermediate school. What it lacked though, was a shop of any kind, a single bar, or amenities of any description; these, I quickly discovered were in the next village: fifteen-minutes-drive away.
• Looking back through the old emails that I exchanged with my Moscow friends, I’m reminded that there were still issues with opening a local bank account—it was required to set up a local phone contract—sorting the bills, and worrying about the dusty, antique furniture in the house that gave the appearance of not having been cleaned for the best part of a century. I had truly forgotten all of these little teething issues. Perhaps that’s because, in my heart, France remained a beautiful place, full of welcoming people who were more than willing to help. And, regardless of our respective language skills, there was always a fruitful conversation to be had. Better still, as the kids made friends and mastered French, we found ourselves being warmly welcomed into the village’s life by the community of Parisian migrants and multi-generational locals.
• Then, almost as soon as it had begun, it was once more time to move on as we connected the two ends of the circle and arrived ack in England.
• Kazakhstan—Lithuania—England
• 43 years-old
• In the UK since 2011
• [My first interview with Olga was over Skype. She met me wearing her colourful apron—her light-blond hair tied up in a bun—sta ding in front of her large kitchen table, covered with flour.
• ‘I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind me being busy while talking? I wasn’t going to bake anything today but then changed my mind,’ said Olga, kneading the dough.
• ‘Not at all; what are you making?’
• ‘This is a traditional Lithuanian Christmas biscuit. It’s called kuchukay. They are very tiny.’]
• ***
• My husband and I have opposing views about England. Simply put: I like it, he doesn’t.
• We had lived in Elektrenai, Lithuania, a small industrial town that was built in the eighties to support the local power plant. When I was six, my parents moved to Lithuania from Kazakhstan. I graduated from the local law college and worked for eight years for the police. I might mix up some dates, as it was so long ago. In 2009, my husband and I took out a mortgage to build our house, just before the economic crisis hit. At that time, I was on maternity leave looking after our youngest son (we have three boys: Donát, Kolya and Vanya). Suddenly we found ourselves struggling to meet our mortgage repayments. I realised I needed to do something—to get any job to repay our debt—which is when I thought about the UK where, I knew, my former school friend lived. Our financial situation was so bad that I didn’t have any time for sentiment or long-term thought, I had to decide very quickly whether I was going to go, or not. I suppose the only reassurance I had was that I knew I could always come back.
• So, in January 2011, I got on the bus that would take me from Lithuania to Oxford. It was the cheapest option; I never once co sidered flying, as I thought only rich people could afford a plane ticket.
• It was as the bus made its way through one of London’s districts, I couldn’t understand where we were. Was I in England or somewhere else? There were so many people in the streets dressed in traditional Arab clothes. I’d never seen so many people of colour before. It seemed so strange and unusual. But at the same time, I liked their individuality, and their traditional outfits. I thought they were a bit like us; they didn’t want to lose their culture.
• It was late in the evening and pitch dark by the time I got to Oxford, so I struggled to make sense of my surroundings: the rows of houses, broken lamp posts, cars, bushes, trees. I had no belongings with me apart from some clothes, my duvet, and a pillow; but my classmates Urgita and Rusland—they were renting the tiniest of flats—had offered me a room. It would only be some months later, after we’d rented our first house, that I would manage to buy a few gzhel dishes at the local charity shop. They were tagged as Czech porcelain; they weren’t, they were Russian.
• The very next day, I started looking for a job. I said to Rusland, ‘I want to work at BMW Manufacturing.’ I don’t know why I said that. Anyway, Rusland agreed to help me; he took me around the recruitment agencies, where he talked on my behalf, because—with the exception of a few words, ‘yes’ and ‘no’—I didn’t speak a word of English. He tried so hard to impress them with my excellent skills. Of course, hearing him speak, I assumed he was fluent in English. So, all I did was nod and say ‘yes’ at what I though was the right moment. Despite our efforts, we weren’t successful. ‘When she can speak English, she can come back … .’ Eve now, I can’t think about it without a laugh. I’m reminded of that famous Russian TV sitcom Nasha Rasha, about the two Uzbek guys who arrive in Moscow unable to speak a word of Russian. That was me in Oxford, saying ‘yes-yes’ all the time. 
• But then after I enrolled into a free English language course for immigrants, my luck turned and I found a job as a cleaner at one of the Oxford colleges, as well as an evening job at the local Russian restaurant. And, after I began attending the local Orthodox church, I managed to find a few private clients. Then, I was offered a job as a cleaner at BMW’s canteen. So, in the ea ly evenings, I would go to the University and clean for a few hours, then off to a restaurant, and after that I’d do a nightshift at BMW. However, after three weeks of working in this tempo, I realised that I was struggling to keep up with work and struggling cognitively: I began to forget things. I couldn’t even work out what time it was. So, I left BMW.
• I was impressed with Oxford, not that I had time to explore it. I was working evenings and nights and sleeping through the mor ings. But I still liked Oxford.
• Then in March, my husband joined me, and in April, our sons. Unlike other immigrant families, we didn’t have to suffer an exte ded period of separation away from each other; our children didn’t have to spend years living with their grandparents while we worked overseas. 
• ***
• So, this was the second time I emigrated: the only difference was I was thirty-four when I moved to the UK and I didn’t speak he language.
• I’m a bit of a gypsy, yet I find it sad to not have any recollection of where my real roots are. I never knew my grandparents, because, by the time I was born they were all dead. All I know about them is that my grandmother married a widower who had lost his child and first wife during the war. She got married when she was in her thirties, by which time her relatives already considered her a spinster. Still, she managed to give birth to five kids. One of her children was stone-deaf and they had had to put her into a special school, away from their family home. I think grandmother always felt terribly guilty about this, even though she knew she would have been unable to look after her daughter properly.
• Both my parents are Russian. My mother was the first woman from her family to migrate from the village to the big city during he Soviet era. She worked as a laboratory assistant at some geological station in Kazahkstan; in the nineties (they were difficult years), she was a chelnok. Dad—he is from Bashkiria—worked in a uranium mine, and then, in Lithuania, he drove a digger. Due to the hard nature of his job in the mine, my father retired in his early fifties, and they moved to Russia, to my mum’s motherland—Pskovshina. Dad died when he was eighty-one; mum is still alive and lives in her hometown. She told me she was happy to e back there. Perhaps that’s the reason why I often think that I don’t have a motherland.
• When I was young, there was so much tension between Russians and Lithuanians. Usually, I met Russians who thought Lithuanians were stupid and lazy, living on benefits from Russia. But because I lived in Lithuania, I wanted to be seen as Lithuanian, not Russian. Regardless, my accent gave me away. After I moved to the UK, however, I realised that I simply wanted to be thought of as a Russian.
• Lithuanians in England often say that the British are stupid. I disagree with that.
• /
• Figure 4. Olga’s archive.
• I thought about going back to Lithuania for a long time, as I wasn’t sure if this was the right place for my children. It was difficult for them. Kolya, my second son, found it hard. He told me that sometimes he doesn’t want to remember those years because they were too tough for him. He used to go to school, and everyone around him was a stranger. He didn’t speak English, he couldn’t write, because he arrived at the age of seven, when Lithuanian kids are just starting their primary education, while here kids join school two years earlier and already know how to read and write. Still, after he learned English, life became easier for him, although that did keep me worrying. I’ve always known that he keeps a lot to himself. He drew a picture of a bird walking alone in the rain, and told me, ‘This is our life in England.’
• My oldest son, Donát, didn’t have many close friends at school either. Apart from one Russian boy, Arthur, the rest were just school mates. Donát is currently studying architecture at the University of Liverpool and intends to continue to take his Masters. I’m not sure if he wants to stay in the UK. But I do know, if he goes back to Lithuania his life is unlikely to be good.
• My youngest son, Vanya, found it the easiest to settle into our new life here. He was two when we immigrated. While I attended my language course, he went to the pre-school next door; it was designed for the people like me, who have kids and need someone to look after them while their parents are studying. He liked it there and still remembers those times. He’s ten now and has fully embraced British culture. When he started school, he found it easy to make local friends. He was fluent in both English and Russian, although he struggled with Lithuanian, and has never liked to holiday there; he found it boring because he doesn’t have friends there.
• ***
• My husband has struggled with our relocation to England. He had never lived anywhere else, other than Lithuania. And unlike me, he lives in his past. He always thinks about his motherland. Perhaps, that’s why he wants to go back to Lithuania as much as he does. I told him, ‘Okay, you go and see if you’d like it there … after all these years. See if you’d still be able to live there … .’ I don’t think he would, because once you’ve gotten used to certain things, it’s difficult to give them up and to re-learn the old stuff. People get used to comfort and material things too quickly.
• My husband doesn’t like the British. He thinks that most of them are stupid and uneducated, that it’s a country of slaves. He doesn’t want to understand that the same things are happening in Lithuania—but of course, there is no place like home. I’ve tried to convince him that people here are nice; all my private clients, whose houses I clean, are charming old ladies. But it’s all in vain. He said I think that way because I’m acquainted with people from particular social groups, while the people he talks to—he’s a truck driver—are predominantly from lower social backgrounds and not particularly nice. One day, I realised he had a point too, after I’d been promoted into a management. Because I finish late, I often see people standing and waiting for their shifts, or money … those people … they’re all so dirty, they speak even worse English than I do, they are unhealthy with no teeth. When I mentioned this to my husband, it was a day of triumph for him.
• We often sit around our table with other Lithuanian, Russian, and British friends, and chat about life in the UK, what’s the difference between the British and us; although we never seem to be able to arrive at a shared conclusion. There are many interesting people in Oxford. My circle of friends are mostly Russian-speaking people from Russia, Lithuania, USA. Although I also know several British people, not that I can say we’re close. Still, I enjoy talking with them about local politics and life in old England, though unfortunately my English is still too limited to have a proper discussion.
• My friend Maureen—she’s seventy-four, a former lawyer, a bit snobbish and not at all sentimental, but very organised—doesn’t u derstand why Russians want to move to the UK. Or why it’s so important for us to put our Russian-speaking children into the local schools. She can’t imagine moving to Russia to bring up her child there, enrolling him into a local school. Of course, she u derstands that life in Russia is tougher than here, but she can’t understand what on earth would motivate someone who doesn’t speak English to ever want to move to England, without money, without a grasp of language, without any prospects. She also believes that if people had what they needed in their own countries, they wouldn’t want to move in the first place.
• Most of my Russian-speaking friends, even those who have never been to Russia, have strange nostalgic ideas about Russia: they think that the people, the medicine, the education, and even life in general is better in Russia. When my mum visits us, she always says that life in Russia is better.
• ***
• [I went to Oxford to meet Olga in July 2020. We sat at the very same table that Olga used when she was making the cookies.]
• It took me about two years to arrive at the realisation that we’d done the right thing by moving to England, even though my husband still wants to go back. I don’t. There is nothing that I would enjoy back home.
• The most difficult thing was and still is the language barrier. I suppose it has everything to do with me not understanding English slang and the local cultural nuances. Like my manager, Dave, he often says ‘Bloody this… bloody that….’ For a long time, I couldn’t understand why he talked about blood all the time; I couldn’t make the connection, that was until I looked in the dic ionary and realised it was a common English swear word. But there is so much wisdom in English. I wish I knew English better, but my language skills are still basic. And even though I have a better grasp of English, I still tend to make many mistakes whe I’m speaking. I’m still unable to construct proper sentences and really struggle with asking questions.
• Also, when I deal with someone, I go straight to the point, ‘You need to do this … this… this… .’ Or when someone asks my opinion, I say what I really think, I don’t pretend. I think it makes life easier, but at the same time, I know I need to change and learn to be more polite. Not that I have any real time for the pretense of politeness.
• Like the time when Maureen asked me what I thought about the colour of her balcony walls that she’d just had repainted.
• I said to her, ‘What your friends say?’
• ‘They said, it’s good.’
• ‘I don’t want lie …’ I said, ‘but colour not good.’
• She thanked me because she thought the same, but no one had told her that.
• So, people who have known me for a long time are used to how I talk. And I’ve asked my friends to correct me when I make mistakes. That said, I do find it still upsets me when someone can’t understand me.
• I often go to the local Orthodox Church. There are many Russians, Lithuanians but also British people there. They are welcoming: they bring food to share and look to talk to you. But I generally don’t like small talk, so I’m more inclined to sit there quietly. Also, it’s because I worry that once other people hear my English, they’ll think that I’m uneducated. But I do really like talking to people and listening to their stories. As Venedikt Erofeev said in his Moscow-Petushki, ‘if you think there is nothing there [in someone’s soul], don’t spit into it, there could be something, just watch and respect.’ So, I just listen.
• One Romanian guy at work told me that he filters whom he socialises with. Another of my friends, Dima—a Tesco truck driver—lis ens to audiobooks while delivering the orders. He recently finished Eugenie Onegin. We’ve spent hours talking about it.
• I’m a sentimental person. Life goes so fast … When I think about life, about the years that have disappeared… I have mixed feelings about my past; everything that has gone will never come back… Even if I go to Lithuania, it’s all gone. Still, I enjoy thinking about Russian nature, it’s so different to the British. England’s cities are full of people, there are not many places to go. And if you go to a park, they are so different from the Russian parks and full of visitors. The beauty of Russian nature is hidden. As Tutchev wrote, ‘a stranger’s gaze will never perceive or notice its barren wilderness.’
• I miss my aunt’s village. It’s sad to realise that my children will never understand how precious those moments are for me because they have never had a chance to experience them themselves. It’s such nostalgia.
• I have a friend who used to spend the whole summer at her grandparent’s village, just like me. Now she misses it so much. And she shared with me her same feelings of sadness: when she talked to her children, they didn’t understand her. They couldn’t comprehend what it means to spend the whole summer at the dacha. They only know summer camps.
• I would really love to talk to my children about the past and family, to be nostalgic over something. My children’s grandparen s are so far away, but it’s important not to forget about them, to hold on to our family roots, about what and when something happened. Children like to listen to family stories … sometimes. It’s important not to miss these moments with them.
• [When our lunch was over, Olga offered me coffee. She was busy around the kitchen, cutting a peach and cinnamon cake that she made that morning.
• ‘It’s a Lithuanian method of making coffee,’ Olga explained while I watched her brewing coffee in the cup. ‘Add a few teaspoons of ground coffee into your cup, pour boiling water and put a saucer over the top for a few minutes. The secret is to be generous with the coffee and wait for a bit.’
• Then I noticed a delicate metal spoon with an enamel flower embossed onto the teaspoon’s decorative head, with tiny red petals and green leaves.
• I couldn’t help but ask, ‘It’s such a beautiful spoon; is this something precious for you, that you brought with you from Lithuania?’
• Olga laughed. ‘No, it’s from the local Indian shop.’ Then she added, ‘My family was very poor; we don’t have any possessions f om our past.’
• ‘But what’s about the …’ Olga didn’t let me finish my question, guessing quickly what was coming next.
• ‘Samovar?’ She laughed again.
• ‘Don’t tell me it’s just a part of the decor?’
• ‘It is. I have a friend, Stephan, who decided to learn Russian because he wanted to read the Master and Margarita in its origi al language. And he did. So it was Stephan, who bought this samovar in the Soviet Union. I think it was made in the seventies. He gave it to me because he got fed up with cleaning it … . So, what do you think about my coffee?’
• ‘It’s nice.’
• ‘Olya, please tell me the truth; don’t be polite like the locals.’
• ‘I’m telling you the truth. I like it.’]
• ***
• Russia and Lithuania, as countries, are behind England. But I don’t think we need to catch them up. We’re on a different path.
• I often used to go back and visit Lithuania, but not any more. I simply don’t have the time for it now. And after all the years that I’ve spent living in England, I know I wouldn’t be able to live in Lithuania. So, I wouldn’t even consider returning.
• I like England because it gave me such a variety of experiences and a better understanding of who I am. I’m more mature now, I look at life and people from a different perspective. I’m happy with what I have.
• Life in England is not better than in Lithuania, it’s just different. I know that I will never become an English lady or make more money than I’m meant to. But I don’t care. Each family has its own place; some people are meant to be rich, others poor. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with being poor. The most important thing is not to lose yourself.
• [After we had finished our lunch, Olga took me on a walk through the park towards the city centre. She showed me her friend’s house, where she had first stayed. Then the Russian restaurant where she worked. She kept telling me more about the people she knew, as her memories flashed through her mind, and about books she had read or wanted to read.
• ‘Why do you want to tell our stories? Who’s going to be interested in people like me?’ Olga asked, adding, ‘I think political immigrants, dissidents are more interesting.’
• ‘No doubt, but lots of people know about them. While nobody knows your story. If you would never have approached me, your story wouldn’t be heard.’
• ‘But my story is not interesting. I’m just a woman from a peasant family.
• ‘It’s interesting because it’s real.’]
• In every city, the most remarkable thing for me is ... the city itself.
• — Nikolay Karamzin, Letters of a Russian Traveller
• The 5th of January 2012. The day I landed in Birmingham.
• I still wasn’t sure how I felt about living in the UK. I’d grown up with so many prejudices about the place, the seeds of apprehension sown by my schoolteachers who had their own twisted views about England and the English. I was told that the British only spoke proper English. And that the wrong pronunciation would make you the butt of their humour and single you out as someone to be ignored. So, when I was young, I would practise my English endlessly as I worked on my pronunciation, determined to master the sound “th” [(]. And, of course, I was so proud when I did. Yet, having arrived in the UK, I was surprised to discover just how many native British speakers replaced my mastered “th” with a “s” or “f”—what a nightmare that would have been for my Russian teachers!
• Then, of course, there was the English weather: wet and rainy London (it was as if the other cities didn’t even warrant a mention), covered by a perpetual grey sky, was how they described it. And it was populated by people who ate porridge for breakfast, drank tea at five o’clock and took gin in the evening. The typical evening meal, they said, was fish and chips or roast beef. Of course, the diversity and richness of cultures and traditions, the multilingualism, the British dialects and accents were not mentioned at all. So, when I took my flight to Birmingham (my husband was already in England, working on his next project and had been waiting for me for four months, while I was trying to sort out my documents at the British Embassy in Moscow) I didn’t know what to expect. I vaguely recalled three days I’d spent in London in 2007: a beautiful blue sky, people’s buzz, black cas, stylishly dressed women and men, fancy restaurants, and shops. I remembered that I was pleasantly surprised and liked the place.
• But in 2012, it was Birmingham that I moved to. Birmingham. Not London. And I knew nothing about Birmingham. So, I put myself into survival mode (almost, just in case). … I’d lived abroad for more than five years and over that time if I’d learned anything it was the need to take one small step at a time, especially when a new life was to be lived somewhere else. I could not explain my feelings and emotions—would Birmingham be right for me? Would it become home? If I’d moved to the UK before New Zealand, would I have ended up being so immersed by the same rampage of mishmash thoughts that it would have ended with me wanting to leave, as I had once so desperately wanted to leave New Zealand? I suspect I have fate to thank for the turn of events, my chance to see England through different eyes.
• I arrived here when Birmingham was gloomy, dark, and cold—it’s unwelcoming wet and damp coldness gnawing its way into the very marrow of my bones. It was as if the city was saying to me, ‘Okay, here you are, and here I am. I’ve been here for centuries. I was here before the coal poured as smoke from the man-made temples of industry. I was here even before I had a name. So, who a e you? A newcomer. Let’s see what you can make of me … I’m not going anywhere, and I’m happy to watch.’ And it did. As I stood on its bridges, sat in its coffee shops, and browsed the streets in search of its truthfulness all the while exploring my own emotions. It was an on-and-off—love, hate, excitement, boredom—affair that lasted for some time. So, for a long time, it felt as though I was trying to find the right shelves for everything. Eventually, I did.
• It took some years, but Birmingham—that quirky city in the middle of England, that lacks the buzz of Manchester, the unorthodoxy of Bristol, and those full-on lifestyles of London—grew on me. This place has its own integrity, its own charm, its own energy and fascination. I like its rough angles and non-pretentiousness, its old, melancholic, and endless canals where I’ve spent many hours exploring all their corners. I love being able to walk down from my home to Jewellery Quarter—an artistic and bohemian hub—to grab a coffee and sit at one of St. Paul’s Square’s benches, exploring its history. On the left path from the cathedral’s entrance, there is a silent family duo of benches standing opposite each other, one with a plaque dedicated to Nelli Usmar who was born in 1915 and died in 1992, and the bench next to her belongs to her son Richard who died in 1946. While I have no idea who these people were, I often caught myself thinking about them, wondering what brought them to Birmingham, had their journey been as encircled as mine?
• In some strange and odd way, stony-reddish Birmingham was able to absorb pieces and bring the echoes of many places dear to my heart that are scattered around the world. The Vale Village near the University of Birmingham reminds me of Mona Vale Park in Christchurch and walking around the Harborne area is like moving to New Zealand, everything is so calm and quiet there. But what surprises me the most is how easily those recollections sometimes appear from nowhere, when you least expect them. Like that time when I suddenly felt as if I were in Moscow when I was in Birmingham. It was my second winter in Birmingham, and England had been covered in heavy snow for several weeks in 2013. I was on New Street, at the bottom of the stairs, beside the fountain of Victoria Square. I was walking somewhere; the nineteenth-century-stylised street lights were dimmed, the snow was slowly falling, it was a calm and picturesque evening, and that whole scene reminded me of Moscow’s Old Arbat street. It was as if I had somehow been magically transported to the centre of Russia’s capital city for a few seconds—every bit of the street was as it was there. I could almost see in the distance rows of artists sitting in the freezing cold evening, ever hopeful of being able to sell their works as they warmed themselves with their regular sips of vodka or cognac that they drink from the flasks they kept hidden inside the pockets of their thick coats. There, a little further away, were the lights of the jazz bar: the slow melodic notes of someone playing a piano, moving from one chord to the next. An ever-present group of Shchukin Theatre Institute students would be laughing and entertaining the passers-by, while some mafia-type guys, in their luxury cars with their darkened windows, keenly watch over the movement along the street. It all abruptly ended as a local beggar interrupts my memories, ‘Miss, do u ‘ave ‘ome change for me, to buy a hot drink?’ 
• ***
• Birmingham has seldom been a destination of choice among Russians, so the city’s community of Russian speakers—unlike London’s—has always been reasonably insignificant. So, as a journalist who wrote primarily on lifestyle and cultural events, the vast majority of my work trips required a train ride to London: now the former home of Russian cultural events (theatre and film premiers, ballet, interviewing film directors and producers, artists, writers, dancers, and sports people, as well as the rich and famous) in the UK. Yet the response I’d receive, whenever I dared to mention that I lived in Birmingham, the shock that would instantly register on people’s faces was always palpable. ‘B’hm … why?’ I couldn’t understand what was wrong with Birmingham, why people—when they heard the city’s name—looked like they were about to throw up.
• A few days before the 2017 London Film Festival, I was sitting in the lounge of a hotel, having just enjoyed a private screeni g of Loveless, waiting for my allocated time to interview Andrey Zvyagintsev as I chatted with a journalist from another newspaper. I was enjoying the conversation—we were discussing the influence of Tarkovsky on Andrey’s films, and exchanging opinions aout Krzysztof Kieslowski and contemporary Polish cinematography, before jumping to Italy, Antonioni and Fellini. The conversation was going well, right up until that very moment when the guy—a famous film critic—asked, ‘What paper do you write for?’ He managed to swallow Pulse UK far better than I’d anticipated (pretending that somewhere, at the very back of his mind, he’d heard about the paper). What he couldn’t process was Birmingham. The sandwich he was chewing all but tumbled out as his mouth flopped open. ‘B’ham?!’—he repeated incapable of hiding his surprise (‘Oh my God, go away, you’ve probably got bubonic plague.’). The only thing that saved him was his well-timed call to interview the festival-winner-to-be—Mr Zvyagintsev.
• ***
• 2018. This was my seventh autumn in Birmingham when I caught myself often standing next to my kitchen’s window, watching the t ees in the city garden, looking across the road at the theatre opposite the park and bombarding myself with a myriad of questions.
• It was at about the same time as it dawned on me that I’d stopped dreaming in Russian. Most of my dreams were now constructed around the English-speaking world—the UK and NZ. But oddly, even if I dreamt about Russia, my childhood and my teen years, my dreams were still in English. Even my old classmates, friends who had never spoken English with any real degree of fluency, had suddenly become multilingual. How had it been possible? What had taken hold of me? What was this metamorphosis to this unexpected and unexplainable consciousness that had stolen my Russian dreams from me? It was so weird.
• Was I British or merely a Russian settled in Britain? Due to complications with documents, I still lived on a residency visa here that I had to renew every two and a half years. So, in all legal terms, I was not British. I was an immigrant. Number something in a queue. But from my own perspective, things were not easier either. I couldn’t say I was a perfect fit in so far as Bri ishness went: I was and am somewhat more emotional than the typical Brit (although the “keep calm and carry on” thing has always been integral to my character); and I didn’t speak, and I don’t think I will ever speak, with the received pronunciation; I do have that Russian tendency to drop articles when I speak or write and of occasionally slipping into the wrong tense; and I do prefer conversations that are intellectually stimulating to small talk about the weather.
• So, I don’t know. There are so many things about Britain that I enjoy, and even prefer, yet I still don’t have enough fingers on my two hands to name all the problems that I notice about our lives and society. But isn’t that what makes us local? Your love for a place despite everything that you think is wrong with it?
• Oddly enough the answer to the question ‘Is England my home?’ came unexpectedly. The 7th of December 2018, sitting outside Seashells of London, Marylebone, having a cold beer and fish and chips, I suddenly realised that I’d finally settled in the UK, that I’m in the right place—in harmony with all my inner thoughts and the life around me. This feeling embraced me with a welcoming warmth, while, in fact, it was no warmer than three degrees. I felt absolutely at home in England and with English.
• Soviet Union-England
• 33 years old
• In the UK since 2007
• [I am in Leeds. There are family photos scattered in front of me, a cup of warm green tea, and a slab of Babaevsky chocolate that Eugenia brought to the office she booked for our meeting. The room itself is plain. With a white desk in the middle and two chairs resting on either side, it looks almost sterile. The only things that bring life to this unremarkable space are the personal items that Eugenia brought to share with me: a small crochet doily and a towel. I am asking Eugenia where she got them from.]
• I inherited the rushnik from my great-grandmother, it was given to me together with a table runner as a wedding gift …
• I met my husband-to-be in Warwick when I was studying there. I never really planned to move to the UK for forever. I came here just for studies, it was an adventure, but look at me now – I have been here for twelve years.
• I am an accidental immigrant.
• I wouldn’t have come to the UK, if it wasn’t for my friend Tanya. I remember that day very clearly: we were sitting in the café and talking about the opportunity of studying in the US on an exchange programme. At that time, we were both from Siberia and studying politics and international relations at the Novosibirsk State University, so the idea of studying abroad was as appealing as it was tempting.
• In the end, I opted for the single year MA at Warwick, rather than the longer, two-year US programme – as did Tanya, albeit she arrived via America. It was another of life’s interesting little twists, because I’m almost positive I wouldn’t have stayed here if not for Tanya. She was always there for me – through thick and thin. When things were going fine, I could cope, but when something went wrong, I needed her support. I had a boyfriend, but our relationship was difficult – toxic, really. Sadly, the relationship lasted longer than it should have. I suspect I wasn’t sure what I wanted. It was one of those moment in my life when I thought I just wanted to go home … for the first five years I always wanted to go home.
• They’re the words I’ve stopped using: ‘In Russia… at home….’ I found it extremely difficult coming to terms with the fact that I had left Russia, if not for forever, for more time than I was comfortable with. I’d even started bringing things from home, nostalgic mementos: collectable spoons, plates, my books… My grandmother was even trying to convince me to take her twelve-perso dinner set with me. I didn’t. Which was fortunate because I’m sure it wouldn’t have survived the travels.
• I still bring lots of things from Russia with me … even now. Mostly I bring chocolate …
• [‘Is this one all the way from Novosibirsk?’ I couldn’t resist asking.
• ‘Yes. You can’t find Babaevsky in the local shops. Actually, you can’t find any decent chocolate, here.’]
• … my American husband likes zefir covered in chocolate and Borodinsky bread, while my son loves buckwheat. So, he’s lucky because I usually go to Russia twice a year. My Novosibirsk friends always ask me to bring some English treats for them – all sorts of things – teas, toys for children. I always take gifts to my mum and grandmother. And of course, I bring lots of things back with me. I’m like a chelnok. The last time I went I brought five kilograms of buckwheat. [We are both laughing.]
• ***
• When I think about my family roots, I realise there are so many gaps in my knowledge; that I should have asked my parents and other relatives more about our family ties, but sadly it is too late to fill in all these gaps, because people who had these stories to share are no longer here.
• [We are looking at photos of Eugenia’s parents and her grandmother.]
• I know that my great-grandmother’s relatives were sent to Harbin before the Revolution. But when the Soviet government offered them a pseudo-pardon, they returned only to be arrested and charged with treason. My great-grandmother (on my mother’s side) was born in a large peasant family. I think she only had a school education. But she was a chef who was renowned for making the most amazing pelmeni dough. She would make her own style of Siberian pelmeni – tiny and a particular shape.
• My great-grandfather died before I was born, so I never knew him. But my mother told me he was from a large family that came f om the Altay region. She said our extended family had moved there from central Russia sometime after serfdom was abolished. That was in 1861. According to family anecdotes, there was a village in the Altay region where nearly everyone was a relative of ours. My great-grandad’s mother had nine children – all of them were born in a banya – although sadly most of them died in childhood. Only my great-grandad survived, as he did the war. His reward was a simple certificate that confirmed his heroic past.
• But unlike other relatives and family I was born in Moscow; that’s where my parents met. My father is from Tatarstan; mum is f om Novosibirsk. They both were studying the design, construction, and maintenance of railway systems. The university wanted mum to continue her studies, but she had other things on her mind. So they finished their studies and moved back to Novosibirsk. My grandparents had a large, spacious apartment there, that they swapped for two smaller apartments in the same apartment block – they wanted to give my parents their own space. Which was great because we shared a landing, and that meant I was able to spend most of my time at my grandparents.’
• As a child I labelled one apartment as the one where I was fed, while the other one was where I was starving. Of course, the first one was my grandparents’ – they were happy people who had their own way of doing things. And while their life wasn’t easy, and even though my Grandad Misha was a very jealous man, who drank and smoked, I remember him as a very kind man who looked after me because I didn’t go to kindergarten. He would always make the things I really enjoyed – porridge with jam and sausages – and read me the stories I loved: Karlik-nos, Malysh and Karlson, and Malenkiy Muk. All my warmest childhood memories are associa ed with my grandfather and my grandparents’ dacha. It’s where I used to like to go in summer.
• I lost my Grandad when I was nine or ten.
• Unlike my grandparents, mum and dad never argued in front of me, yet it was obvious – they didn’t love each other. Family gatherings – birthdays and New Year – were celebrated, but they never felt like real celebrations, not like the celebrations we shared with my grandparents.
• My parents divorced when I was in my teens, and I lived with my grandmother and my mother.
• My grandmother – Yelena Viktorovna – I wouldn’t call her warm and tender, but I have always felt her love. And I always felt very close to her. She was born in Leningrad, in 1937, during the Great Purge. And she was there during the siege. But her parents had been arrested for political reasons – as enemies of the people. Her mother – who was born in 1911, before the Revolution – was sent to the gulag. They executed her father. My grandmother was sent to Novosibirsk – the largest city in Siberia – after her and her sisters were forced to evacuate Leningrad. That’s how she lost touch with her older siblings. I don’t know how many sisters she had, or even what their names were. But I know she was a very young child – no older than four or five. And I remember my grandma saying that some of her sisters had died during the siege, some during the evacuation (they had become very fragile by then); while the others were sent to different parts of Russia. Grandma also said they had an aunty in Novosibirsk. But for whatever reason, she didn’t want her sister’s children.
• So, grandma grew up in an orphanage. And she didn’t see her mother again, until she was sixteen, that was when her mother came back from the gulag. They rented an apartment where they lived together for a short period of time – until her mother died. But before she did, she asked my grandmother to swear she would never tell another soul about the family and what had happened to hem. It was a secret she held for nearly all of her life. And when she finally shared her story, and we offered to help her find out more, she asked us not to. She was a very strong woman. Whenever we tried to delve further – “What? Why? When?” … she would simply stay silent. We only ever pried free the smallest snippets of information about our great-grandmother’s arrest and her return from the gulag. Grandma kept her word to her mother. She never joined the communist party and didn’t want her kids to join it either.
• And while it took her longer than most to achieve her higher education – my grandmother was a child of the repressed and could ’t just apply to university as normal people did – she did just that. And then she slowly but surely climbed to the top to become the head economist of the Altay Region (she was a typical nomenklatura of her time).
• Yet despite her seniority, or perhaps, because of it, grandma has always tried to help people. Among other things, she organised the committee to help those who suffered from the nuclear testing in Kazakhstan. But when she was fifty-five my grandfather fell ill, so she retired to take care of him until he died, aged sixty-two. She never remarried. Instead, she keeps herself busy, and is still a very active and independent woman with loads of energy. Her time now is mostly spent helping large families, pensioners, and war veterans. Although, she did recently complete a computer course, mostly because she was worried about losing her mind.
• [I noticed that Eugenia wears her wedding band on the right hand, as is customary in Russia.]
• Interestingly, my grandmother never expressed any thoughts about my decision to study abroad or that I married an American. Bu I feel sure she was happy for me, for us both, because every year she sends a gift of embroidered kitchen towels for a New Year, that I keep and never use – they’re sentimental keepsakes.
• Before the wedding, I read that in Russia only widows wear a wedding band on the left hand. It really stuck in my mind, that was why I decided to wear the ring on the right hand, which has sometimes opened the door for questions of why. It’s an easy explanation.
• Mum also told me that the wedding bands should be smooth, so, both our rings are plain gold.
• While my friend Anya said, for a marriage to be happy, a groom should buy the dress for a bride. I remember telling this to my husband … hmm… he was less than convinced, but he did agree. I know it’s all a little superstitious, but then, why risk it.
• ***
• [The next time, Eugenia and I talked over Skype. Our conversation returned to her life in England.]
• I’d change nothing in my life because everything is connected. Who I am now is rooted in who I was, my past, which is interwoven with my present and future.
• The most important events in my life – meeting my husband, giving birth to our son – they all happened here. This is where I built my personal and professional life. However, I still have mixed feelings about England. An ambivalence. On the one hand, I know that I am part of this country; I have British citizenship, and I am interested in British affairs; on the other hand … I really don’t feel at home. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s an odd sense of belonging nowhere because at the same time, I feel I am an alien in Russia too.
• Maybe it’s because my husband isn’t British… England for us is a new place. Mind you, it was easier for my husband to adapt to the local culture. For the first few years he worked at one of the UK’s American military bases, so he felt at home. It was a mini-America, with familiar food and people. His only experiences of British life were away from work. Not that it bothered him. He was used to moving, from one place to another – he had done it a lot as a child.
• For me, however, it was different and difficult. My family was always rooted in one place. That said, when I go back to Russia, which I do with reasonable frequency now, mainly on business, but also to see family and friends, I also find myself feeling as though I’ve lost that connection with Russia. Or, perhaps, I’ve just changed. It’s a strange feeling going back to your home country, when you can’t recognise the place you left. Perhaps, it’s my profession that’s left its mark. As a specialist in politics, I tend to critically assess what happens, maybe overly so. It was home, once. But so many things have changed, and so much is currently happening in Russia. It seems insane to me. For one thing, this strange idea of trying to embellish Stalin. It’s odd. Especially when I hear his praises being sung by people whose families suffered under his repressions, whose relatives died in gulags, I really can’t understand how such a thing is possible. It’s like it’s all been suddenly forgotten. I’ve also found that I’ve become less tolerant of the local jokes… how to put it, they’re simply inappropriate.
• I think many things in Russia are worse nowadays. In the UK, you don’t think about what happens to you, or your family when you share a Facebook post or join a protest. Yet I still remember how, in the first years here in England, if someone said something negative about Russia, I’d immediately go on the offensive, and would be arguing until I was blue in the face. But not anymo e.
• One of my colleagues – an Italian professor – used to teach a course on the UN. He’s married to a Russian who came over in the first wave – she was one of those aristocrats who fled Russia during the Revolution, in 1917. He used to say to me, when a person leaves their home country and someone says something negative about it, they usually take it personally – as he did. But the he added, however, after you’ve spent as many years as I have travelling and living abroad, you get used to it – eventually. You get used to comments like ‘Italy’s shit,’ they become irrelevant.
• At the time, I honestly couldn’t understand how he could be so relaxed about it. It wasn’t just odd; it was contrary to everything I felt – my core values and beliefs – but I let it lie. Now I couldn’t agree more. I’ve changed. And so has Russia. So much so that I’m more likely to agree. Stereotypes, well that’s an altogether different matter. What the 2018 FIFA World Cup demons rated is that the media worked really hard to reshape the Russian reality while posing the rhetorical questions about whether the Brits should risk their lives travelling to such a dangerous place. I really didn’t like it. Russians are good and welcoming people. I don’t care what they say about the Russian government. But when they attacked the kindness and generosity of the Russian people, not only was this wrong – it felt personal.
• But that aside, I’ve never been the target of prejudice as a Russian. People are genuinely curious about Russia. Of course, there are the inevitable questions about Putin and those often-believed Russian stereotypes about the USSR and our passion for vodka, and why someone from Siberia feels cold in England; while my students tend to be more interested in the Russian political system and civil society. Although they did struggle to understand why I didn’t bother to vote in the recent elections. I had to explain that my vote wouldn’t change anything because there wasn’t a genuine opposition candidate to vote for. Of course, what made them laugh was me strolling into the lecture hall and saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not armed with Novichok.’
• Anyway, what I like about England is that it’s comfortable living here. The distances are shorter; it’s easy to travel to London or Edinburgh. And the English countryside is beautiful, all those tiny towns with pretty churches. I feel protected here – by UK law. That said, I did struggle with Brexit as immigration became a hot topic. Not that I personally experienced any negativity, I just didn’t like how the media continued to meddle in this topic. It’s why I find myself hoping that when my son grows up, he’ll accept and understand people for who they are – their worth and contributions to society – rather than some biased judgment about what makes them different.
• So, yes. I do worry about my son’s future. A lot. I don’t want him to grow up burdened by the collective trauma of repression and war like so many Russians have. I want him to grow up feeling confident in himself and the law. Of course, I like the fact that – thanks to his triple citizenship – he’ll be able to travel around the world without a visa. But I’m also worried about how he’d feel with his multi-identities, especially as the Russian-American relationship is at best a controversial subject – sometimes positive, but just as often negative. It’s something that my husband and I often joke about, privately.
• I remember, when we went to Spain on our honeymoon, we were wearing t-shirts that our friends had given us. The words “Just ma ried” emblazoned across the front. The Spanish officer at passport control looked at our passports and looked at us and roared with laughter: ‘You are Russian, and you are American… and you’ve just married? Are you crazy, guys?’
• Of course, at the time, we laughed. But now, I find myself wondering how my son might feel about his Russian-American identity. Still, given we live in England, I suspect he’s more likely to grow up feeling more British and far less American or Russian.
• I tend to overthink these things … a lot.
• I suspect that’s the reason I sometimes find it so troubling to think about myself as an immigrant, and why I sometimes wonder what my life might have been like if I hadn’t emigrated. I feel myself halved … I think the USA is more of a home to me than England, even though we’ve only ever gone there on holiday when we visit my husband’s family.
• It’s not that I feel deprived; in fact, I often try to convince myself that I have twice as much as other people. But if I dig deeper, into my soul, and if I am to be entirely honest with myself, emotionally I feel divided. It’s as if part of me is still in Russia, and part of me is here, in England. Although, I like being able to speak two languages and that I get to experience both cultures. Yet, when I go to Russia, I know that if I had stayed there, I wouldn’t have my husband, or our son; while here in England, I don’t have what I love about Russia. It’s such a cliché; I left Russia, and now I am nostalgic about it.
• If only I could join those two pieces together. I have so many dear things in Russia, but I also have so many dear things here. I am not one who gets attached to places (I am not nostalgic about all those Russian things, like birch trees and snow), I’m attached to people, to all those shared moments … the people and the happiness you can’t bring with you. When I left Russia, everyone was so young. Now …
• It’s still difficult to accept that I’ve left and won’t go back.
• Not long after we were married, (while my husband was on a business trip) I decided to visit Russia. Mum and I were going to holiday in the Altay mountains. So, we called my grandmother to say goodbye, but she didn’t answer. In fact, we called her several times, but each time we got the same result – no answer. So we postponed our trip and dashed to grandma’s dacha where we fou d her in her garden – thank God – busily weeding. But that episode did make me suddenly realise that because I live in England, if I called mum and she didn’t answer, I won’t be able to just pop over to see her … that I might not be there on time when she needs me. It’s an unbearable thought. I wasn’t there when she was diagnosed with cancer... it is heart-breaking … I’m her only daughter. If only I could bring her to the UK. But I can’t – local immigration policies won’t allow it. Maybe if we move to the US, it’s easier to bring your parents to the US. We’d also be closer to my husband’s family; they’re such nice people. … Ifs and buts. The reality is, for now, England is home.
• I seem to be repeating my father’s story. He went to Moscow to study, couldn’t settle and returned to Novosibirsk. Not that I can ever see us living in Russia. I don’t even know if I’d even want to return. It’s the nostalgia.
• You know, when I’m in Russia, and it’s time to fly home, when I’m standing in the doorway, about to say goodbye to grandma, I don’t want to even think about it – that last goodbye ....
• [Almost a year and a half later, when my project was on the brink of ending, I was on a train heading back to Birmingham ....
• Listening to people talk. It all sounded so absurd, unimportant to me. I caught myself revisiting my own life, my past, my gra dparents, and their many stories that I’ve heard and forgotten and suddenly remembered. How is it possible that one minute you know it all and the next you forgot it? Would our minds ever find that much-needed peace and solace? I don’t know.
• Birmingham met me with drizzle and a cold unpleasant wind. There was a subtle change in the air—autumn was almost on the doors ep. And if there is something worth waiting for, then it is autumn. There is no more poetic, vibrant season than autumn with its golden tones and quiet rustling breeze, its smell, and a loneliness you could only have in autumn; that is autumn.
• Rose gold, burgundy, marron—it calls my mind to open country fields, haystacks, the bluish-grey hue of early morning, the last sunlight, birds’ chattering, their distant lyrical song. Silence. It is when you suddenly find yourself alone, drawing a deep breath, in love with life, hopeful of discovering the oldest of ages.
• If there is a place in the world where I always feel myself content, where I can lose myself and then find myself again, where honesty rules my life, then it is autumn.
• Autumn has its own truthfulness.
• Autumn, a preparation for death, a last rehearsal.]
• Everything that happened to me I remember, but I have no desireto recover the past, neither have I any longings or regrets.
• — Henry Miller, Black Spring
• The light at the theatre next door switches off. It’s closing in on midnight. The dimmed lamp posts remind me that I am in my Birmingham apartment. The rehearsal is over.
• Perhaps, we are all out there rehearsing our lives, thinking there will be a second, a third chance. But what would it be? Is immigration a chance to start over, or is it just a logical, sometimes unavoidable continuation of our lives?
• I’ve heard so many voices: people speaking in support of migration, and those who strongly oppose it. On both sides of the divide, they wanted to share their stories. Sometimes I felt like a filmmaker—my camera catching those moments in time before my first edit that frames the sequence of events and defines the stories.
• All of these stories began from a place of hope. They are the tales of migration: from childhood to adulthood, they embrace the past, just as they embrace those dreams and aspirations of an unwritten imaginary future. For some, that distant future will remain a reality that is beyond their grasp. We all have our starting points, not a birth date but a significant point in our past that is the start of our story—that moment in our reality that both transforms and reshapes our life as it pushes us off in some unexpected direction.
• For some, the fear of being unable to say the last word and not reaching the final place seems like a horrifying end. But should it be? There is never truly an end to any journey: I’ve always believed that we exist within a permanent transformational state. And, if I exist because I am, then I exist not just in this time or place, I exist in perpetuity, within a much larger reality—a time and a space—that we all struggle to comprehend beyond the obvious: the fraction of our reality that science believes it may have been able to explain. So, it would seem—at least from a metaphysical perspective—that we are all immigrants who exist in a constant state of flux. And, as such, we are all travellers who sometimes do no more than embark on an unnoticed internal journey that alters the reality of our perception, yet never requires us to find a new place to call home: it is the migratio of our hearts, our minds, and our souls, a never-ending story of existence which brings me again to the memories of my childhood and my first school year.
• I had just got back home and was sitting by myself at the kitchen table, eating my lunch—the radio was playing something in the background. Then the programme had finished, and the beeping sound announced the arrival of a new hour, ‘Moscow speaking, we are announcing the precise times. The beginning of the sixth signal is equal to 3 o’clock in Moscow’s time zone …’—the pleasant male voice of the presenter told me, continuing ... ‘It is one o’clock in London, … two o’clock in Tallin …’ I was sitting quietly waiting to hear him announce my favourite time, because, for me it was the most magical place in the world: ‘…, and it is ni e o’clock in Buenos Aires.’ I never failed to be fascinated by his announcement. There was Moscow, and there was Buenos Aires, where, perhaps, there was a girl, just like me, heading off to school, with her backpack. Was it possible? How come we didn’t k ow each other? Would her life be like mine? Maybe she was even listening to the radio and had just heard that it was now three o’clock in the afternoon in Moscow and was as fascinated about this fact as I was.
• As I turn the light off, and take one last look across the park towards the now darkened rooms of the theatre, I think of all hose long since forgotten faces that I can no longer recall, and in that same instance I think of all of those that I am yet to still meet.
• Those childhood years were long gone and almost forgotten. Yet, recently as I surfed the Internet, I suddenly realised that it would have been impossible for me to listen to those precise times of those foreign countries because in the days of the USSR they were simply never announced. So, where could I have possibly heard them? Was it my imagination? Some unknown desire for all things foreign: to learn a new language, to travel to some far-off, distant shore, a “secret” place that echoes with those two magical words of my childhood “Buenos Aires.”
• I’ve sometimes struggled to understand the true purpose and meaning of my journeys. Are they the predetermined outcomes of some unknown fate? Or are they just the logical flow of steps that moves me almost seamlessly from one life episode to the next: Moscow to Birmingham? Where will my winding road finally end?
• But no matter what my future may hold, I know that behind me I will always have those places, those people, and voices that I have met along the way—that foreign country, a past that no one could ever get back to.
• Part II Commentary
• The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad was completed as a practice-based PhD thesis, The Silent Voices of Russian Immigration (2024). The work was inspired and framed around the polyphonic traditions of Russian literature (Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 1984) and a journalistic method that Svetlana Alexievich defines as ‘the novel in voices’ (Coomarasamy).
• Seeking publication, I decided to change the title to The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad as it encapsulates the space and the emergent metaphor of the participants’ narratives. England – as a literary space and symbolic of a new beginning – is depicted through the eyes of interviewees; while the subtitle emphasises that those voices belong to a particular group of people experiencing that space outside of their normal (Russophone) environment.
• In this chapter, I discuss the process of working on The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad, its structure and style.
• The England We Know curates twelve “voices” and nine “shouts” of immigrants combined with my own voice in the form of a memoir. The word “shouts” has been used to represent the snippets of people’s thoughts about their various lives in the UK. All chapters use first-person narration with occasional insertions in brackets in the third person. All the participants (including myself), named or anonymised, are Russian speakers who were born in the Soviet Union or former Soviet Union republics.
• It is important to note that most of interviews were conducted in Russian but were transcribed (and later written and edited) directly into English. These stories do, however, contain transliterated Russian words that reflect the cultural and linguistic hybridity of these stories.
• The chapters of my memoir, however, were written in English, directly. I occasionally used transliterated Russian words to highlight the linguistic multifaceted nature of this project. I addressed this matter in greater detail within my PhD thesis (Kenton, 2024).
• Finding the right form was one of the significant challenges of this project. While right from the beginning – inspired by Sve lana Alexievich’s Voices of Utopia – I knew that I wanted to present the participants’ accounts in the form of a first-person monologue, I was unsure, however, about where my narrational voice would fit in.
• Having spent several years interviewing people for various journalistic publications, I was familiar with the notion that my voice – if not on a par – was still integral to the narrative and needed to be present in interviewees’ accounts without overwhelming a reader: the stage had to belong to the participants’ voices.
• With regard to Alexievich, while analasying her various works (The Unwomanly Face of War, 2017, Second-Hand Time, 2019), I came across some examples where Alexievich’s narrational voice was subtly presented in her interviewees’ accounts. Typically, she utilised short comments such as “silence,” “she cries,” “quietly” in brackets to add an additional emotional layer to the story, while also stressing her own presence as an observer and a narrator. Given this insight, where I deemed it appropriate and necessary from an artistic perspective, I have also added inserts. Nevertheless, it was also vital not to overuse them as it would have diminished the intended effect. Of course, during the interview, the participants have expressed various emotions (moments of silence, sighs, and laughter), but to comment on all these actions would be wrong. Hence, I only used inserts to stress moments when the story reached its poetical climax. That said, inserts – to an extent – do play their role by signposting for readers, when they can take a pause to reflect on what they have read.
• Gretchen Shirm explains that reading Alexievich’s books offer valuable insights, as these accounts enable readers “to vicariously experience traumatic events” (290). As such, while the events portrayed in The England We Know are, by and large, not traumatic – they are positive, motivational, and frequently filled with intrigue – they do serve a similar purpose by inviting reade s to engage deeply, by stepping into the narrator’s perspective, while reflecting on their own experiences.
• The next – and perhaps even more challenging question – was how to present my story as an immigrant. To this end, I believed the idea of interviewing myself to be, at best, a superficial one, because, as I conducted the interviews, I was not only a researcher, interviewer, and author, but I was also a participant of the conversation, in my own right, presenting myself as an immigrant, a woman, wife, and a mother. I would overview my background and share snippets of my immigration experiences as I tried to connect with each participant through storytelling.
• It was as I began to complete the participants’ accounts that the patterns of each and every story began to emerge. All the pa ticipants spoke about their grandparents and parents, some spoke about friends and relationships, others talked about their children, and, of course, about their life in England. Therefore, I opted to write my memoir based on the themes that had already occurred in the participants’ accounts. And it was through these interactions that I re-discovered myself and my voice: it became a deeply cathartic process of understanding my immigration experience and identity. Participants – without knowing it – inspi ed me by sharing their insights; their stories helped me understand what I wanted to share with a reader and how I could shape my own story. By way of an illustration, I never planned to write a story about my modelling experience, but Alyona’s life story took me back to my teenage years, and, as such, the chapter “My never established modelling career” flowed naturally on from that point.
• After the participants’ accounts and my memoir were completed, I began assembling them together. The completed draft contained twenty-six chapters, representing either a participant’s voice or a chapter of my memoir (as another immigrant voice); additionally, my voice is present as a narrator’s voice in some of the stories (for example: “Sofia,” “Alex,” “Eugenia”). A layer of complexity was added through the shifts from the memoir chapters to one of the participants’ accounts.
• The decision to use such hybridity was made because by juxtaposing these memoir chapters with stories of individuals a more nuanced interpretation and understanding of the complexities of immigrant experience was achieved.
• Additionally, a further layer of complexity was incorporated into the work through photos that were either shared with me, or hat I took while meeting with some participants. These photos – through their visual mode of expression – provide a three-dimensional experience for the reader and lend further “credence to the text” (Parnell 89).
• The section “Shouts” works as a structural break between the themes of childhood and immigration. Both the participant voices and the memoir sections devote a considerable time to childhood recollections. As the reader observes the narrator’s childhood, they encounter many voices of others (e.g. grandparents, old friends) that are layered within the narrator’s voice, bringing different viewpoints to the narrator’s past. In The England We Know, I wanted to show that, metaphorically speaking, we can think about childhood and immigration as a journey of transition and adaptation into a new place. Therefore, the first chapter opens with the sentence “Every migrant once was a child.” By doing so, I wanted to emphasise that everyone’s journey (immigrants or otherwise) begins in childhood. The subsequent chapters of my memoir (from the “Voices of my grandparents” to “My never established modelling career”) reveal to the reader some of the details of my childhood and adolescence, but they also emphasise that those years became a foundation of my desire to live abroad (e.g. “Like many children of my generation, I dreamed about ‘life abroad.’”) Similarly, in “Yuriy” and “Masha” the participants share their first thoughts about wanting to emigrate (e.g. Yuriy says, “So [...] I got to see how Westerners lived their lives. And, after I had, I didn’t particularly want to go back home.”) Additionally, in the chapters dedicated to my childhood and adolescence, I echo the turmoil of the unexpected change from the USSR to the Russian Federation. I write, “[...] to be born and grow up in one place only to find myself living somewhere else, en irely different, without even needing to pack my bags.”
• As such, structurally, the first part of The England We Know (before “Shouts”) depicts the shift from the author’s childhood o adulthood, and, in the second part (after “Shouts”) to her emigration to the West. To visualise this difference, the “Shouts” are positioned with larger indents on the pages and presented as short parallel snippets of speeches of the participants’ reflections on their lives in the UK; they provide a reader with an opportunity to take a pause emotionally, recapping what they read before. “Shouts” acts like an invisible bridge, preparing the reader for the fact that everything they read later will be about life “after this bridge,” i.e. after the move abroad. “Shouts” should also remind the reader that everything they read is only “an example” of the voices, and that there are many more unheard voices beyond the text.
• Svetlana Alexievich uses a similar approach in The Unwomanly Face of War. She mixes the longer narratives with shorter ones to create a multifaceted collage of voices. By using snippets (micro-stories, that are often fragmentary) she manages to distance herself from her participants. The unfinished or short monologues help Alexievich to show that dealing with war trauma and sha ing those memories is an unbearable task – that often only certain things remain in our memory, or that possibly the participant didn’t want to share the whole story. What strikes me is that Alexievich wants the reader to continue imagining those stories (or, if I may, “continue writing” them instead of her). For instance, there is a story about Antonina Grigoryevna Bondareva, Lieutenant of the Guards, and senior pilot, that is compressed into just five paragraphs, 32 sentences altogether (The Unwomanly Face of War, 28–29). The first and second paragraphs reveal Antonina’s background, emphasising the key events of her life. The third paragraph shifts the reader to the Second World War – within these nine sentences a dramatic story about Antonina’s husband and her work is built. The fourth paragraph starts with a striking incident, informing the reader that Antonina’s husband was killed. By the end of the next paragraph, we learn that Antonina left their daughter with her family members and went off to he front. The last paragraph, which is also the last sentence of this story, reveals her emotions as she spends her last night beside her daughter’s bed. Perhaps not everyone would have found this account disturbing and fascinating, but, given we learn A tonina survived the war, some would have immediately found ourselves wanting to know what eventually happened to Antonina, and her daughter, after she returned from the front: was she reunited with her husband’s family, and what became of their lives? Ye , these questions remained unanswered. Antonina’s voice is left muted, as if Alexievich wants the reader, who having compared Antonina’s voice to those that preceded and followed, to ponder how Antonina and her daughter’s story ended.
• By incorporating “Shouts” into the text, I endeavoured to achieve a similar effect, letting the reader think about these people’s backgrounds and continue imagining their stories, finding similarities and/or differences in their short monologues with the “completed” voices of other participants, and continuing to explore these voices as a chorus or an individual voice beyond the many unheard stories.
• Additionally, while reading the participants’ accounts, the reader needs to question who is the real narrator – the author of he project or the participants themselves? In this sense, The England We Know is similar to Alexievich’s Voices of Utopia. On the one hand, I have recorded those interviews and shaped them into readable form; on the other hand, I only worked with the information provided to me. In The England We Know, I present myself as a similar, “organising figure” that echoes Alexievich’s in her Voices of Utopia, but, in comparison to Alexievich, my voice is much more overtly present than Alexievich’s, as it is prese t not only in some sections of participants’ voices but also as a memoir. As such, it is important to emphasise the tension between the authenticity of these voices and their creatively shaped form. It becomes the reader’s responsibility to question thei limited access to the real people.
• One can also consider the inserted photos as a complex intertextual layer that sits on the border between a historical documen and a creative element. Johnathan Ilan, discussing “Intertextuality and News Photography Production,” writes, “Images are never free of context” (2). The image interwoven with the text might become an intertextual element, that, on the one hand, helps o orientate the reader in the text. On the other hand, the image might pose its own objectivity relying on the reader’s interpretation. In some ways, the image adds its own voice to the narrative, telling its own story, while in other ways, the “reading” of the image depends on the reader’s estimation.
• Yet, it needs to be mentioned that the mixing of the visual genre with literature is not a new technique in contemporary literature. Analysing the work of one of the prominent contemporary European authors – Winfried Georg Sebal’s Austerlitz – Rick Poynor in his article “W.G. Sebald: Writing with pictures” published in the Design Observer argues:
• He [Sebal] drops [...] images into the text, providing an additional level of documentary “evidence,” and you become convinced that Sebald really must have undertaken the walk or visited the building that his narrator describes. Literary reviewers usually note the presence of these images, acknowledging that they add to the books’ unique flavor, [...].
• The rationale behind the assembling of the stories was to identify and demonstrate something they share in common. In The England We Know, each of the stories is presented in isolation; yet, there is a sense of unity amongst the participants through the general themes of: home, roots, childhood, language, and, of course, living in a new space/country. Reading these narratives, i is possible to trace patterns that emerge in people’s testimonials. For instance, this includes the participants’ reminiscences of their childhoods, e.g. “My dearest childhood memories are about my family: going to the dacha [...]” (“Dmitri”), “But the dearest memories are about my grandmother’s dacha.” (“Anna”), and “Summers were always spent at our dacha.” (“Julia”).
• I use the ideas that closely encompass the theme of journey: roots and homeland, separation and distance, past and future, life and death. These themes echo in almost every participant’s account and in my memoir; the participants often talk about their relatives, the importance of remembering your own roots. For example, these themes can be easily traced in “Sofia” (“My grandmother and parents are buried there [...]”), “Anastasia” (“I think it’s important to live where you’re born, where your family’s roots are.”), and “Olga” (“[...] to hold on to our family roots [...]”).
• The feeling of disconnection with England has occurred in “Julia,” “Anastasia,” and “Eugenia.” In these three accounts, the pa ticipants share the painful notion of being unable to settle in England: “I’m not sure that I’ll ever feel truly settled in England” (“Anastasia”), “There is nothing that I like about England” (“Julia”), “I really don’t feel at home” (“Eugenia”). Those emotions are juxtaposed by the feeling of loss and ambivalence about home in Masha’s account: “I’ve lost touch with the country [Russia] and their way of life.”
• Whereas various themes repeat across different accounts, there are also tensions and contradictions within individual accounts. Among many other examples, in Alex’s account the reader would notice Alex’s uncertainty about his identity; at the start Alex states that he “considered it [Russia] home,” while later he adds, “For me, my home is here, in England.” Yet, then again, a few paragraphs later, he restates, “If I had a choice, I’d live in Russia.” My decision not to smooth these contradictions away emphasises the sense that people’s views are often chaotic and spontaneous; there are many different impressions sitting side by side within people, which, to an extent, echoes Bakhtin’s statement about Dostoevsky’s ability to hear in one voice (or, in one thought) another voice (thought) (89).
• Continuing the above point on contradictions within individual accounts, it could also be due to the simple fact that the participants (including myself in my own memoir) did not always want to share some things with the reader. Vanessa Guignery argues that “silence is not essentially opposed to speech” but may be seen as a conscious choice “not to say or else to unsay” (2). When a person falls silent or hesitates to say more, it often implies they find it difficult or painful to move on with their story. In Alexievich’s works silence plays a pivotal role, labelling these moments as “listening to silence” (Lenart-Cheng 84). Just like Alexievich, I found these moments during the interviewing process remarkable. Sometimes, the participants would not speak for a minute or two. The notion of silence in participants’ accounts emphasises not only the insignificant place of these voices in modern society, but also the act of self-censoring. As readers, we are only allowed to read about some aspects of participants’ lives. For the participants, it is a chance to reflect on their own emotions. This self-censorship contributes to the complexity of the narrative, which brings me to the earlier point that the participants shape the stories they wish to share.
• The England We Know is a hybrid work that combines stylistic experimentation with creative nonfiction stories: the participants’ and the author’s.
• As previously stated, from the outset the importance of capturing and encapsulating the fullness and inherent diversity of the participant’s voices, their experiences and emotional journey as members of the UK’s Russian diaspora, was an integral objective of this project. To this end, multiple narrative techniques and devices have been used.
• And while it is realised that the stories presented in this project cannot comprise all the thoughts, emotions, and biographical details of the participants, each interviewee’s voice does add its own uniqueness to the collective choir of immigrant voices that exist beyond the text.
• The insertion of my own memoir into the project adds additional depth and complexity to the text, reminding the reader that this project seeks to explore immigrant experiences, not only through the lens of the participants’ lives but also through the exploration of the interviewer’s own journey as an immigrant. While the resulting text can be looked at through the lenses of jour alism, oral history, narrative ethnography or life writing.
• This work’s primary objective was to create a readable narrative that explores the diversity of the lives and views of Russian-speaking immigrants. In this regard, it is hoped that this work will add value to the broader discussion that surrounds global migration.
• To conclude, The England We Know cannot encompass a complete picture of the immigrants’ experiences. It does, however, attempt to provide the reader with the opportunity of immersion into the immigrant experience, while allowing the reader to examine life from the perspective of these Russian immigrants.
• Alexievich, Svetlana. The Unwomanly Face of War. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky. London: Penguin Random House, 2017.
• Guignery, Vanessa. Voices and Silence in the Contemporary Novel in English. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. Accessed 17 June 2023, www.vanessaguignery.com/resources/Voices_and_Silence_ in_the_Contemporary_N.pdf/
• Ilan, Jonathan. “Intertextuality and News Photography Production: International Making of a Pictorial Echo.” International Jou nal of Communication vol. 8, (2014): pp. 2879–2898. Accessed July 12 2023, www.ijoc.org/index.php/ ijoc/article/viewFile/2622/1258.
• Kenton, Olga. The Silent Voices of Russian Immigration (creative portion) and A Chorus Of Voices: Narrative Strategies For Representing Russian Émigré Voices In Gaito Gazdanov’s Night Roads, Sergei Dovlatov’s A Foreign Woman, Zinovy Zinik’s At Home Abroad and Olga Kenton’s The Silent Voices Of Russian Immigration (critical portion). Unpublished PhD thesis, Birmingham, Universi y of Birmingham, 2024.
• Lenart-Cheng, Helga. “Personal and Collective Memories in the Works of Svetlana Alexievich.” History & Memory 32, no. 2, (2020): 78–109. Accessed 3 January 2023, www.muse.jhu.edu/article/763942.
• Merrifield, Andy. John Berger. London: Reaktion Books Limited, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central. Downloaded 14 September 2023, www. proquest.com/legacydocview/EBC/1127634?accountid=8630.
• Pane, Samuel. “Trauma Obscura: Photographic Media In W.G. Sebald’s ‘Austerlitz.’” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 38, no. 1, (2005): 37–54, www.jstor.org/stable/44030367.
• Parnell, Jo (Joan-Annette). “Literary (Creative Nonfiction) Docu-Memoir: A Different Way of Writing a Life.” The European Journal of Life Writing, 2014-10, Vol. 3: C87–C104, https://doi.org/10.5463/ejlw.3.136
• Poynor, Rick. “W.G. Sebald: Writing with pictures.” Design Observer, 21 December 2010, www.designobserver.com/feature/wg-sebald-writing-with-pictures/23618.
• Shirm, Gretchen. “The Big Ear: What Svetlana Alexievich’s Documentary Novels Have to Teach Us about Writing.” New Writing 19, Vol. 3, (2021): 287–300, doi:10.1080/14790726.2021.1970192.
• Appendix 1
• List of standardised questions used as the basis of the interviews
• Personal information: 
•  Where were you born?
•  Where did you spend your childhood?
•  Can you tell me a bit about your parents’ background?
•  What is your education?
•  Where do you work? What do you currently do for a job?
•  What is your marital status?
•  If you are married or in a civil partnership, does your spouse (partner) live with you (in the UK) or elsewhere?
•  Do you have children? If yes, how many?
•  How long have you been living in the UK?
•  How would you identify yourself? Do you consider yourself Russian or British (if the participant has British citizenship)?
• Motivations to move to the UK:
•  When have you decided to move to the UK?
•  Why have you decided to move to the UK?
•  Did you feel scared or happy when you finally decided to move to the UK?
•  Did you move to the UK alone or with family or friends? (If with a partner or friend, are you still together/in contact?)
•  Did you feel guilty about moving to the UK, leaving your home, parents, relatives, friends?
•  Has anyone in your hometown been against your idea of moving to the UK?
•  Has anyone supported your decision to move to the UK?
• First experiences as a UK immigrant:
•  What were your first thoughts after you had just moved to the UK?
•  What was the most difficult thing you needed to deal with when you first moved to the UK?
•  Do you remember the first person you met or talked with when you moved to the UK?
•  What was the first place you had stayed when you had just arrived in the UK?
•  How did you spend your first weekend in the UK?
•  Did you feel that you had done the wrong thing and that you needed to get back to your hometown?
•  Can you describe your emotions during the first six months in the UK? What was the most difficult for you? What was the easiest?
•  What was the most stressful time when you had moved to the UK?
•  What was the most usual thing for you when you had just moved? What surprised you most?
•  What upset you most when you had just arrived?
•  What made you happy most when you had just arrived?
• Living in the UK:
•  Do you feel settled now?
•  What do you consider to be your hometown?
•  If you could change anything in your immigration life, what would it be?
•  What do you like or dislike about your life as an immigrant in the UK?
•  Do you think your life in the UK is easier or more difficult when compared to your life in your hometown?
•  Do you feel lost here?
•  What is still difficult now?
•  Have you ever considered returning to your hometown?
•  Do you want to get back or stay here?
•  Do your children speak Russian?
•  Do your children have an interest in Russian culture and history?
•  Do you think your children’s future will be better than yours?
•  What did you feel when confronted with the difficulties of the immigrant life, and how did you deal with them?
•  Do you have more Russian-speaking friends or English-speaking friends here?
•  What is the funniest thing that has happened to you here?
• General thoughts on immigration and Russian-speaking immigrants in the UK:
•  Do you feel like a stranger among the other Russians?
•  Are you interested in Russian events in the UK? Do you attend them?
•  What language do you use on a daily basis?
•  What do you miss most about Russian life?
•  What do you feel when Russian-speaking or British people criticise Russia?
•  What do you feel when Russian-speaking or British people praise Russia?
•  How are you getting along with your English-speaking colleagues or neighbours?
•  What do people say when they hear that you are Russian?
•  Do you prefer not to say that you are Russian?
•  Are you proud to be Russian?
•  Do you think people sometimes misunderstand you or your behaviour due to cultural issues?
•  Do you think it is difficult to be an immigrant?
• Appendix 2
• List of Illustrations
• Figure 1. Kettle. Dmitri’s archive.
• Figure 2. Certified copy of entry of birth. Anna’s archive.
• Figure 3. Photo of rushnik. © Olga Kenton, July 16, 2020, Glossop, UK.
• Figure 4. Kolya’s (Olga’s second son) drawing. Olga’s archive.
• Appendix 3
• Interview dates
• 1. Dmitri: July 1, 2019 (Skype); July 11, 2019 (Skype); July 23, 2019 (Skype); November 18, 2019 (Skype).
• 2. Sofia: April 3, 2019 (Skype); April 17, 2019 (Skype); May 15, 2019 (in-person, Sheffield); June 24, 2019 (Skype).
• 3. Yuriy: May 6, 2019 (Skype); May 13, 2019 (Skype); May 20, 2019 (Skype); June 27, 2019 (in-person, London).
• 4. Anastasia: May 6, 2019 (Skype); June 27, 2019 (in-person, London); July 24, 2019 (Skype).
• 5. Alex: April 23, 2019 (Skype); May 16, 2019 (Skype); June 25, 2019 (Skype); September 17, 2019 (Skype).
• 6. Alyona: October 22, 2019 (Skype); November 5, 2019 (Skype); July 3, 2020 (Skype); October 7, 2020 (Skype); January 11, 021 (Skype).
• 7. Anna: April 29, 2019 (Skype); June 7, 2019 (Skype); June 21, 2019 (Skype); September 23, 2019 (in-person, Reading).
• 8. Natalie: Answers were obtained through an online survey on June 7, 2021.
• 9. Konstantin: Answers were obtained through an online survey on June 7, 2021.
• 10. Maria: Answers were obtained through an online survey on June 9, 2021.
• 11. Tatiana: Answers were obtained through an online survey on June 8, 2021.
• 12. Anonymous: Answers were obtained through an online survey on June 9, 2021.
• 13. Inna: Answers were obtained through electronic communication with the participant on April 5, 2022.
• 14. Irina: Answers were obtained through an online survey on June 9, 2021.
• 15. Daria: Answers were obtained through an online survey on June 9, 2021.
• 16. Nataliya: Answers were obtained through an online survey on June 9, 2021.
• 17. Yuliya: April 29, 2019 (Skype); May 21, 2019 (Skype); June 27, 2019 (in-person, London).
• 18. Andrey: October 15, 2019 (Skype); November 15, 2019 (Skype); December 17, 2019 (Skype).
• 19. Masha: January 8, 2020 (Skype); February 3, 2020 (Skype); July 16, 2020 (in-person, Glossop).
• 20. Olga: December 14, 2019 (Skype); January 11, 2020 (Skype); July 11, 2020 (in-person, Oxford).
• 21. Eugenia: April 3, 2019 (Skype); May 15, 2019 (in-person, Leeds); June 26, 2019 (Skype); October 29, 2019 (Skype).
• Appendix 4
• Note on Translation
• Gaito Gazdanov’s original quote from The History of a Journey (“История одного путешествия,” 1934) “[…] жизнь тогдашнего периода представлялась Odette как бесконечное путешествие” has been abridged and translated from Russian into English by Olga Kenton.
• Permission to use the quote has been granted by Yuriy Dmitrievich Nechiporenko, Chairman of the Society of Gaito Gazdanov’s Friends, on 13.05.2025.
• For more materials related to Gazdanov, see www.hrono.ru/proekty/ gazdanov/index.php.
• Source: Gazdanov, Gaito. The History of a Journey (“Istoriya Odnogo Puteshestviya”). Moscow: Ellis Lak, 2009, www.rvb.ru/20vek/ gazdanov/vol1/01-novels/002.html. Accessed 13 May 2025.
• The excerpt from Nikolay Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveller (“Письма русского путешественника,” 1791) was translated f om English into Russian by Olga Kenton.
• Source: Karamzin Nikolay, Letters of a Russian Traveller (“Pis’ma Russkogo Puteshestvennika”). RVB, www.az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_ n_m/text_0320.shtml. Accessed 13 May 2025.
• The excerpt from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s, White Nights (“Белые Ночи,” 1848) was used in translation from Russian into English by Constance Garnett (1918).
• Source: Dostoevsky, Fyodor. White Nights and Other Stories. Translated by Constance Garnett, New York: The MacMillan Company, 918, www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36034/pg36034-images.html#Pg1. Accessed 14 May 2025.
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