{"id":1516,"date":"2014-04-17T20:23:18","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T03:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a-mountain.com\/?p=1516"},"modified":"2014-04-18T19:25:09","modified_gmt":"2014-04-19T02:25:09","slug":"a-little-nostalgia-for-siberia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/?p=1516","title":{"rendered":"Ten hits from Irkutsk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"humpty-dumpty\"<\/a>\"russia-putin.jpeg5-1057x960\"<\/a>It appears Putin is nostalgic for the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and wants to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. In this case it appears all the Putin\u2019s horses and all the Putin\u2019s men might at least put some of Mssr Dumpty\u00a0back together again.<\/p>\n

I get a little nostalgic over the USSR myownself. The stats for this blog brought to mind a trip I took. The\u00a0stats show\u00a010 hits from Irkutsk, a city in Siberia about 16 time zones to the east of here. It lies on the shore of Lake Baikal, the biggest, deepest and probably coldest fresh water lake in the world. More than 30 years ago, I boarded the Trans-Siberian Railroad in Irkutsk and began a 36-hour trip to Novosibirsk.<\/p>\n

We had a compartment. It smelled of dirty rags, strong tea and piss. \u00a0The dirty-rag aroma came from the linen \u2014 if you want to call it that. Babushkas were stationed at the doors at either end of car, and I think one had a samovar. The alleged toilets accounted for the pissoir-heavy air.<\/p>\n

\"images-1\"<\/a>In the bar car, we read \u201cZima Junction\u201d by the fine poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko. We were on the way to Zima, northwest of Irkutsk. Yevtushenko was born there.<\/p>\n

It is a not a political poem, but Yevtushenko became popular in the West as he danced around the Soviet iron fist. He did not even approach the Western celebrity status of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the unmercifully boring\u00a0 novelist whose \u201cThe Gulag Archipeligo\u201d attracted great notice in the West.
\nThe luster of his heroism dulled for me when the boys in the politburo allowed him to leave mother Russia and eventually settle in New England. After spending much of his life \u00a0bitching and moaning about oppression in the Soviet Union, he bitched and moaned about rampant materialism and decadent values in a free society.<\/p>\n

From Zima:<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to see the old familiar pines,<\/i><\/p>\n

the witnesses of the old-old\u00a0 bygone times,\u2028<\/i><\/p>\n

when great-granddad, along with other peasants,\"images\"<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

were banished to Siberia as rebels.\u2028<\/i><\/p>\n

From far away<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 to God forsaken place,<\/i><\/p>\n

through mud and rain, deep in disgrace,\u2028 <\/i><\/p>\n

along with their wives and kids they were driven,\u2028 <\/i><\/p>\n

Ukrainian peasants, from Zhitomir region.\u2028<\/i><\/p>\n

They\u00a0 plodded,\u00a0 trying to forget about<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2028the things they treasured most of all, perchance…\u2028<\/i><\/p>\n

The watchful convoy guards on the look out\u2028<\/i><\/p>\n

would look askance at their heavy veiny hands.\u2028<\/i><\/p>\n

The corporal would be playing cards as night would fall\u2028<\/i><\/p>\n

while great-granddad, absorbed in thought all night,\u2028<\/i><\/p>\n

would skilfully\u00a0 pick up a piece of coal\u2028<\/i><\/p>\n

straight from the fire, to have a light.\u2028<\/i><\/p>\n

It is about going home again, a nostalgia piece from 1955. If Yevtushenko\u2019s nostalgia yet lives, he\u2019s not saying, at least publicly. He seems to be content out of the limelight with the Cold War a distant memory. He\u2019s in his 80s and lives mostly in Tulsa. It was reported that he refuses to criticize Putin. And there is nothing about his views on Putin\u2019s undisturbed waltz into the Ukraine, land of his grandfather.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t suppose I want to see Irkutsk again. And I certainly don\u2019t suppose the Stink Train still runs. Moreover, I\u2019d guess Yevtushenko doesn\u2019t want to return to Zima Station. When you get to a certain age, nostalgia isn\u2019t all it\u2019s cracked up to be. Nonetheless, thank you dear Siberian readers for sparking a memory \u201cfrom far away.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears Putin is nostalgic for the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and wants to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. In this case it appears all the Putin\u2019s horses and all the Putin\u2019s men might at least put some of Mssr Dumpty\u00a0back together again. I get a little nostalgic over the USSR myownself. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,85],"tags":[190,191,192,193,189,188,194],"class_list":["post-1516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-places","tag-aleksandr-solzhenitsyn","tag-irkutsk","tag-siberia","tag-trans-siberian-railroad","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-yevgeni-yevtushenko","tag-zima-junction","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1530,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions\/1530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}