The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (52 page)

‘It was an act of blasphemy

because Putin is not a true believer,

and now the belt is miraculously

causing the nation to rise up,’ he

said. ‘Whatever Putin does now it is

too late. Business is opposed to him,

the young people too. Trying to

suffocate the movement and turn us

into North Korea is just stupid.’

His delight in what had happened

was overpowering. He laughed and

nodded constantly, convinced that

Putin had succeeded in defeating

himself. He even seemed amused by

the thought that he could be arrested

once more, and sent back to the

camps.

When Yakunin was sent to prison in

1981, he rode in a prison train,

guarded and shackled. When I took

the same line in 2012, I had one of

the luxurious berths favoured by

richer Russians and foreigners. I had

been forced to change my ticket at

the last minute, and all the cheapest

berths were gone, meaning I was

sharing a compartment with a well-

tanned family from one of the oil

towns

of

Siberia.

They were

returning home from holiday in

Italy,

where

the

weather

had

apparently been fantastic.

The

father

of

the

family

discussed

sport

with

great

persistence, but I managed to fall

asleep anyway and in the morning

they were gone, their places taken by

two brunettes and a blonde from

Nizhny Novgorod. They were off to

a training seminar organized by their

bank, but their conversation centred

on a serial killer on the prowl in their

hometown. He prefers blondes, said

the blonde.

This was the famous Trans-

Siberian Mainline, and our train was

heading for Beijing. My fellow

passengers included two French

women, a Brazilian man in tight

shorts

and

at

least

a

dozen

Americans. Everyone disembarked

at every stop and swarmed round the

women selling pies, beer and soft

drinks. The Americans were staying

on the train all the way to China, a

journey that would take them a

week. I, however, reached the city of

Perm that evening, swung my bag

on to my shoulder and climbed

down on to the platform.

When Yakunin travelled from

Perm to his camp, he was locked in a

metal cage in the back of a truck.

Once again I had a more comfortable

time, sitting in the front seat of a

four-wheel-drive truck driven by

Alexander

Ogaryshev,

a

local

opposition

politician

who

had

volunteered to show me around. We

pulled out of Perm through heavy

traffic and over the River Kama, a

tributary to the Volga, and into the

forest that stretches from here for

thousands of kilometres to the north

and east.

Alexander is a Perm native who

trained as a lawyer at the interior

ministry’s

academy

in

Nizhny

Novgorod.

That

is

an

elite

institution, and graduating should

have led to a highly lucrative

position in the police, where income

from bribes can exceed official

salaries many times over. He said,

however, that he had been so

revolted by the corruption, and the

difference between the high ideals

preached at the academy and actual

police practice, that he quit and went

into business with some friends.

‘The corruption was total. They

were just there to serve their own

interests. Who paid more was all

they cared about,’ he had said a

couple of days before we drove into

the forest, as we sat over coffee.

‘If I went to the station, they

were all drinking. They respected

nothing. The police should serve the

state, they should want to be honest

and to help people. They should not

be serving just for the chance to

make money.’

He and his friends owned a

network

of

casinos

until

the

government made casinos illegal in

2009. Casinos still exist, of course,

and there was one disguised as an

internet café opposite my hotel, but

now they are run by corrupt officials

who are immune to the law.

Alexander and his friends moved

into the restaurant business in

response, and he now owned three

venues across Perm. We sat in one

of them while he told me about

winter 2011–12. He had driven all

the way to Moscow to take part in

the protests, a journey of more than

1,000 kilometres. On arriving there

on 10 December, he went straight to

Bolotnaya Square without having

slept.

‘Our hope was that finally

something could be changed in the

country. Previously people just

wanted to leave. I had this sense

there that we could change things. I

can sell up and leave at any time. I

have a friend in Germany. For the

first time, however, there was hope

that we could change things, instead

of this apathy. We need to keep this

going. The protest was like a great

unification. There were all these

creative people with slogans that

they invented themselves. The most

creative

people

support

the

opposition, it was wonderful.’

The Perm region itself did not

see any particular protests against

United Russia’s election. That may

be because the party gained only 36

per cent there, which was down

among the lowest levels in Russia, so

there was not much to protest

against.

The lack of protests is unlikely to

be because Perm residents are too

cynical and apathetic to take action,

however. They are descended from

generations of exiles, and it has been

a favoured dumping ground for the

Russian

government’s

unwanted

citizens for generations. Elmira

Polubesova, a fifty-three-year-old

activist from a liberal pressure group

called Solidarity whom we were

sitting with, boasted that Perm’s

tradition of exile made it an island of

freedom in an oppressive sea.

‘Judging by my own children,

they have a chance to go to Canada

but they say they want to stay here,

they want to create conditions for a

family, to change things. In Soviet

times it was prestigious to be

employed by someone, to have

worked somewhere for forty years.

The situation was such that you had

to stay put, people were scared to

leave or to speak out because they

could lose their pension. But now

people have changed, they work for

themselves. The generation that was

repressed is dying. Even I did not

experience the repression that my

mother had, and when people have

not been personally affected they are

not scared to decide things for

themselves.’

A ten-minute drive from the

restaurant in Alexander’s four-

wheel-drive was the puppet theatre, a

shabby beige building closed for the

summer. In the 1930s it had a

different function: a detention centre

for those suspected of counter-

revolutionary crimes. In almost any

other Russian city, its past would

have been forgotten. In Perm,

however, a group of local activists

had

persuaded

the

theatre’s

management to let them set up a

small museum round the back.

Alexander Kalikh, a lean middle-

aged man, is in charge of the project

and he had agreed to show us

around.

We walked across the courtyard

to a brick annexe, opened a steel

door

and

ducked

inside.

Incongruously, puppets hung on the

walls alongside the displays about

the repressions of the Stalin years.

This was still a theatre after all.

Kalikh said he was planning to

reopen a bricked-up window that

had looked on to the courtyard, and

through which prisoners had once

spoken to their relatives.

‘No one kept here was aware that

they would be taken to be shot but

many people still alive remember

seeing their relatives for the last time

through that window.’

A few officials were even

assisting him in his efforts to

commemorate the past, he said,

including

the

Federal

Prisons

Service, which had provided a

genuine grille from an old window.

He speculated that officials from the

Service might have a guilt complex

through

working

for

the

organization that had imprisoned so

many people.

‘The FSB is different, however.

They haven’t helped us in twenty

years, they must have an order not

to. The local government does help

us a little, but that’s because this is

Perm, you know, it would not

happen in other places.’

Schoolchildren now come to the

building not just for the puppet

performances, but to learn about

how the secret police arrested people

on token charges, penned them up

and then shot them. The museum has

lists of the people who were kept

here, and can always find people

who lived on the same street as the

visiting children.

‘We can show them the route the

prisoners took to get here. That

means for young people history is

before their eyes. They have to sense

that all this happened close to them,

that

it

was

not

somewhere

completely different. And we can

show them that the times have not

really

changed.

Look

at

the

similarities between Stalin and Putin,

now there has been a whole series of

repressive reforms: to N G Os, to

libel, to protest. Whose methods are

these? Your rights mean nothing, we

do not even know what will happen

in a year.’

On the way out, he pointed to a

poster on the wall with a quote from

the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko that

loosely translates as ‘If we forget,

we are cattle. If we remember, we’re

a nation.’ As a slogan, it is defiant

and proud. If you surrender to

officials’ demands to forget their

victims, you are collaborating in the

crime.

The Perm region was home to

three of the last camps for political

prisoners in the Soviet Union. Perm-

35, Perm-36 and Perm-37 were

nicknamed the Perm triangle. Perm

was a major centre of the weapons

industry in Soviet times and was

thus closed to foreigners, which

made it a good place to keep

dissidents.

Its

glorious

weapon-building

past is attested to by a gigantic Order

of Lenin in the centre of town,

awarded in 1971 for its ‘great

successes in the development of

industrial production’. The fruits of

that production are on show in a

museum on the outskirts. Visitors

can see everything from a tsarist-era

cannon to a ballistic missile that

could fly 9,600 kilometres and

deliver a 0.6-megaton atomic device.

More powerful missiles have been

made since, but were not on display.

Alexander Ogaryshev and I were

on our way to Perm-36. Perm-35

and Perm-37 (where Yakunin served

his term) still operate as prisons and

are thus closed to visitors. Perm-36,

however, the last point in the

triangle, was abandoned. Former

prisoners and members of Memorial,

a charity devoted to historical

research and human rights, took it