Sibir (14 page)

There was a brief intermission and then we were treated to a play about Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. This was not one of the most exciting theatrical events I have ever seen and I noted that the audience seemed to feel this way too. The applause was polite, but not sustained.

The third and final part of the program was an oratoria in seven parts composed in the Yakut language and sung by a chorus of forty voices accompanied by the State Symphony Orchestra. It was based on ancient Yakut folk themes … and it was absolutely magnificent! Even Kola, who is a connoisseur of opera and symphonic music, was so moved by the splendour of this performance that, for once, he could find no words to express himself. He was not alone. As the chorus wove its way through the melodic but strangely alien and compelling music, people wept openly. At the conclusion the entire audience came to its feet with a roaring ovation.

I was still somewhat stunned by the emotional impact of the oratorio as we pushed our way through the lobby
and out of doors. The sting of the bitter air soon brought me round. We waited ten minutes for a taxi and by then I was beginning to get worried.

“Farlee, you grow cold?” Nadia asked sympathetically.

“My dear, I’m perishing!”

“Then come with me,” she said sweetly. “All of you come. Soon we all make warm.”

She took us down a dark and unprepossessing side street to an ancient wooden building. Padded double doors led out of the Siberian deep-freeze into a big, brilliantly lit room that was rocking with noise, hazy with smoke, and blissfully hot. This was the Red Star, a combined restaurant and dance hall, and it was swinging to the blare of a ten-piece band. At least two hundred people clustered around scores of tables piled high with festive food and bottles. Nadia led us to a table presided over by a blonde Russian boy and we were welcomed to a party that had, even by Siberian standards, already reached an advanced stage of revelry.

Having been apprized of my dangerous state of chill by Nadia, the blonde boy, Boris, poured me a full tumbler of what I took to be vodka, and shouted out a toast of the bottoms-up variety. I hoisted my glass … and the world exploded. These people were drinking pure alcohol – and drinking it straight! Not even Newfoundland fishermen, the toughest men I know, would dice with fate that way. I never quite recovered from my initiation into what is locally known as White Dynamite, and my memories of the remainder of the evening are hazy. Fortunately Claire stuck to champagne and was able to remember and record some of her impressions.

“Over and over I was amazed by the high quality of Russian music. Even in this small arctic city the dance band was really excellent. It was also curiously folksy because of the combination of two accordions, a balalaika, trumpets, trombones, and a piano.… The dancers were extraordinarily gay, everyone smiling and nodding and laughing at everyone else. People danced close together in a sort of nondescript foxtrot, but in true
Russian style everyone danced with everyone else. It was impossible for any girl to sit out even part of a dance. Somebody would come along and snatch her up.… The clothing of the women fascinated me. Some wore snow-boots of thick felt with rough leather soles; others wore spike-heel pumps and some wore flat-heeled ballerina slippers. There were women with sheer nylon stockings, and others wearing black wool over-stockings. There were girls in informal woollen dresses, others in sweaters and skirts, and still others elaborately turned out in party frocks. A number of them wore aprons, and it was some time before I realized they were waitresses who had simply stopped waiting!

“It was a good thing there were plenty of spare men, because our lot weren’t up to much. Kola was the first to slump into a coma. Yura went to the toilet and never came back. Then blonde Boris fell off his chair and went to sleep under the table. Farley stayed upright but he looked and acted as if he had been pole-axed. When it finally came time to go, we needed help and this was provided by two militiamen. They were both Yakut and looked like characters from an operetta, in their long black overcoats trimmed with red, huge felt boots, and shining leather cross-straps. They did not act like real policemen. They were too small, too round, too shy and far too amiable. It was impossible to imagine them seriously arresting anyone. They helped us all to the door, found our outer clothing for us, helped us get dressed and even tried to find a taxi, but there were none available. The Lena was nearly a mile away but somehow we all survived the stagger home – it must have been because of the anti-freeze.”

I was awakened at 9 a.m. the next day by an insistent rapping on my door. In no friendly mood I flung it open, and there stood a pale and distrait Kola in his siren suit.

“Farley, please be brave! We have been invited to be guests on the praesidium during the parade. Do not
blame me! They will be crushed if we do not go. We have one hour to get ready … and it is Fahrenheit minus 22° outside!”

Sharp at ten o’clock, Simeon Danielov, president of the Writers Union arrived to lead us to our fate. There was no question of taking a taxi; the entire main street was one milling mob of people. We threaded our way to the civic square and to an impressive marble review stand backed by thirty-foot-high portraits of the local Communist leaders. Several of these, in the flesh, occupied a podium in the centre of the stand which was crowded with officials, great and small, stamping their feet, laughing uproariously, and ecstatically embracing old friends. There was none of the grim and paralyzing solemnity which hangs like a pall over Moscow’s Red Square on this date. On the contrary, Yakutsk was vibrant with a feeling of gaiety and warmth which belied the bitterness of the weather; yet did not belittle the intense significance Soviet people attach to the birthday of their Revolution and of their nation.

The Moscow celebration has a hollow, ominous, and depressing character, as if it is conceived and executed by automatons. One reason for this was given to me by a Soviet journalist.

“The Moscow parade is really quite dreadful. I won’t watch it myself. There we show our worst face to the world – a hard, unsmiling face. It is our showcase of power, intended to make our real and potential enemies realize they had better leave us alone. We are a little paranoic, you know, although after fifty years of unrelenting hostility from the western powers, and Japan, perhaps this is understandable. But the face we show in Moscow on November 7th is not the real face of Russia. To know what the Great October Revolution really means to us you must see the celebrations in some out-of-the-way town.”

I think my journalist friend would have accepted Yakutsk as being sufficiently out-of-the-way.

As we stood chatting to some of Simeon Danielov’s
friends (he seemed determined to introduce us to every soul on the stand) there came a distant burst of cheering, followed by the dull roar of engines. My memory jumped sharply back to the night before our departure from Moscow and I braced myself in expectation of seeing the obscene grey snouts of tanks and armoured carriers appear at the entrance to the square. A brass band began to play a stirring march (why the bandsmen’s lips did not freeze to their instruments was a mystery I never solved) and the voice of the Party Secretary boomed out of the loudspeakers overhead:

“Comrades! Here come the shock troops of our Republic! Let us give them the greeting they deserve!”

The roar of engines grew louder, and around the corner came a column of more than a hundred tractors and farm trucks extravagantly decorated with red bunting, representing the state and collective farms from many miles around the city. The people in the square cheered wildly and threw paper flowers at the grinning tractor drivers, one of whom responded by waving a not-quite-empty bottle which may, conceivably, have contained tea.

Apart from a contingent of militiamen and a company of Red Army soldiers bearing no arms, this was the extent of the military flavour of the parade. It was also the extent of mechanization. Only the farmers rode – everyone else marched by on foot. And almost
everyone
in Yakutsk, with the exception of the few thousands in the civic square, and we people on the rostrum, must have been in the march. Someone told me later that the population of the city had swelled to 150,000 for the holiday. After three hours on the reviewing stand, I believed it. I suspect I saw every single one of them with my own eyes.

Contingent after contingent marched by carrying banners and placards, sometimes pushing or pulling floats, and usually preceded by a flag-bearer carrying a portrait of Lenin. Each contingent was greeted by the Party
Secretary, who must have been chosen for his high office at least partly because of his leather lungs and his apparent imperviousness to physical discomfort.

The fact was that the marchers were the lucky ones. They could at least keep warm. For those of us on the stand the affair soon became a deadly serious exercise in arctic survival. I could understand why the reviewing stand was built of marble and concrete. No wooden structure could have endured the pounding of hundreds of feet as their owners bounced up and down in a desperate battle to keep their blood flowing.

Claire, Kola and I would certainly have lost that battle and, tough as the Yakut people are, I think most of our fellow victims would have too, had not a life-support system existed. I first became aware of it when I noticed a steady drift of people commuting between the stand and the city hall which stood a hundred yards in rear. At first I supposed these people were simply going off to relieve themselves, but this did not explain the joyous quality of the smiles they bestowed on all and sundry when they returned to duty.

The truth was revealed when Claire’s face began to turn blue and she began to moan softly. Simeon gave her a sharp glance then hustled us off the platform and into the city hall. The first aid station was in the spacious lobby. It was presided over by six extremely busy waitresses who were serving tumblers full of neat cognac. A quick gulp followed by a volcanic moment of instant thaw, then it was back to the Front again.

We regained our places in time to watch the school children of Yakutsk – every last one of them, I swear – march past in neat platoons. They carried a multitude of signs and banners devoted to the theme of Peace; and the messages and exhortations were not only in Russian and Yakut but in many foreign languages, including English.

The peace theme was not restricted to the children. It recurred on banners and slogans carried by such disparate
groups as a contingent of Aeroflot pilots, and a party of Evenk reindeer herders in native dress accompanied by a dozen of their deer. It was a major component of the slogans carried by students from the State University.

In this remote place, so distant from the eyes of the foreign press (or indeed the eyes of any foreigners except myself and Claire) Peace On Earth, Good Will To Men, was patently something of deep concern to everyone.

I have watched peace marches in North America and they radiated the same feeling of passionate sincerity. The difference was that those marches were undertaken as protest against the government and were greeted with distaste and disfavour by significant portions of the public, whereas in far Yakutia the peace marchers must have had the blessings of their leaders, and they certainly had the whole-hearted support of the people. The loudest cheers at the Yakutsk parade were not for boastful banners describing production miracles accomplished under Communism – they were for the banners extolling the vital necessity of peace in the world.

Professional anti-communists can make what they want of this incident. They can call me a dupe if they wish, but it remains my conviction that the people of Yakutsk are on the side of the angels, in this respect at least.

Many Russian friends assured me that what I saw in Yakutsk was a repetition of what was taking place in most parts of the Soviet Union on that same date. It might be an idea if, at the next anniversary of the Great October Revolution, Western press representatives eschewed the massive military parade in Moscow and dispersed into the Russian countryside. I imagine they would be permitted to do so unless, of course, the inscrutable gentlemen in the Kremlin decided that the passionate desire for peace amongst the Russian people was some sort of military secret, best kept concealed.