Author: A.Daretsky

“Parting is always grief.”
Socrates

I arrived at the central railway station long before the train was due. It was early morning, clear and cold. There was no wind, and the sun was shining at a low angle. The skies were dark blue and the air crisp and fresh, lightly touched by timid scents of the first Siberian blossoms.

The large square overlooked by the station — a long, massive, old-fashioned building — was almost empty. The occasional screechy tram stopped there, in the middle of its emptiness, releasing small groups of hasty people who, like herds of buffaloes, stampeded straight toward the station’s entrance, their breath steaming in the chilly air.

“It is lumber, man — all lumber! 
Throw it overboard.”
Jerome K. Jerom

The next morning, I woke up feeling sick, in a bad mood, and decided to skip school. The morning was dismal, misty and dull, promising nothing but aggravation for those who suffered from a broken heart or rheumatic pains. I was deeply discouraged by my behavior the previous night. Well, it was an understatement. I felt absolutely disgruntled and pissed off. Useless, belated words swarmed in my head. The more I thought, the more complicated and pointless they seemed. I was calling myself all kinds of silly names. The amorous feeling in my chest had been replaced with a dull sensation of emptiness and remorse. 

“The lesser of two evils is still evil.”
King Solomon

The major problem for me was not the voyage itself, but arranging my plans with my parents. I knew one thing for sure — not for love or money, or any other thing of value, would they have let me travel solo through the Siberian forests. One day, I decided to talk to my father about my journey. I started vaguely, telling him a story about a brave man, who had, all alone, crossed the arctic desert somewhere in Canada. When I finished, my father turned to me and said, “What a fool. I hope you’ll never do something like that son, will you?” He had a clever, keen mind, my father. I left his room wondering whom the word “fool” was referring to.

“You can’t wait for inspiration.
You have to go after it with a club.” 
Jack London

I was fed up. Not with the unbridled street crime and the lame Bolshevik economy, but with myself. I was finishing school and had to apply to university in the summer. I was also inevitably approaching my eighteenth birthday — the age of maturity as they say — and felt a bit nervous about that. You can be as nerdy as you want, but you have to respect your hormones. Up to that point, I would not have had much to show for myself if I had had to take part in a manhood initiation rite. You know, the usual Siberian stuff: drinking vodka by quarts, dogsled racing, wrestling with a street bear, and sleeping all night on the bare snow. Sorry guys, just kidding — none of that stuff at all.

“One cannot live in a society
and be free from society.”
Vladimir Lenin

In this story, I will tell you about my reckless solo hike through the Siberian wilderness that took place toward the end of the 1980s. Thankfully, I wasn’t seriously injured or killed during that adventure, but those three days spent in the wild significantly impacted my life and creed. It wasn’t a heroic voyage. Rather, it was a successful but awkward fight for survival, a battle against various natural obstacles and my own foolishness — and I have to say that the latter one probably was the toughest. However, before I begin, I would like to paint a general picture of what it was like to live in the Soviet Union in that period.

I wrote A Siberian Elegy as an answer to my American friend who once asked what life was like in the Soviet Union during the 1980s, when I was a teenager. While working on it, I tried to capture a comprehensive snapshot of those days rather than a chapter of my autobiography. So, it’s a fictional story with fictional characters — but much of it comes from my own memories and sentiments. I finished it in 2018. My friend read it and gave me two thumbs up.