Stephan Orth - Behind Putin’s Curtain: Friendships and Misadventures Inside Russia

Copyright 2019 by Greystone Books

Translation 2019 by Jamie McIntosh

Originally published in German under the title Couchsurfing in Russland:

Wie ich fast zum Putin-Versteher wurde by Stephan Orth 2017 Piper Verlag GmbH, Mnchen/Berlin

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Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-1-77164-367-2 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-77164-368-9 (epub)

Copy editing by Paula Ayer

Proofreading by Alison Strobel

Cover and text design by Nayeli Jimenez

Cover photograph by Gulliver Theis

Photo credits: Stephan Orth, except for the photos on : Gulliver Theis

by Birgit Kohlhaas and Marlise Kunkel

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CONTENTS

Surprising.

EDWARD SNOWDEN, on being asked to sum up his impressions of Russia in a word

10 weeks

24 hosts

Total mileage 13,411 (21,583 km)

BY PLANE: 7,094 (11,416 km)

BY BUS/CAR: 3,870 (6,229 km)

BY TRAIN: 2,422 (3,898 km)

ON HORSEBACK: 25 (40 km)

ARRIVED

WE ARE STANDING at the edge of a crater; behind the barrier is an abyss 1,722 feet deep. Welcome to the asshole of the world! shouts the director of the Department of Youth and Culture. She holds her cell phone high to snap a few selfies of our small group. Smile. Click. Victory signs. Click. Hands in the air. Closer together! Click. Now, everyone look goofy! Click, click, click. Like kids at Disneyland or in Red Square.

The air smells of sulfur and burnt wood; the evening sun hangs low in the sky, bathing the dusty haze in red light. Romantic sunset, apocalypse-style. On the railings of the viewing platform there are love locks with the names of sweethearts: Yuliya and Sasha; Zhenya and Sveta; Vyacheslav and Mariya. Eternal unions sealed at the gates of Hell; lovers vows at the most absurd tourist attraction in the world.

I dont know the people with whom I am being photographed. They have only just picked me up at a tiny airport where there were more helicopters than airplanes and more junk planes than functioning ones.

They came as three: the cultural attach, the business relations consultant, and the student. So far we havent managed to start a conversation; on the drive from the airport, the music was too loud. In the Lada Priora with Street Hunters emblazoned on the rear windshield, the seats vibrated. The students driving stylehe liked to take both hands off the steering wheel at seventy-five miles per hour to wave his arms around to the musicmarked him out as someone who already at twenty didnt expect a lot from this life.

Where the hell am I?

The answer from Wikipedia: Mirny, Sakha Republic, in the far east of Russia, 37,188 inhabitants according to the 2010 census. Mayor Sergei Basyrov, postal code 678170678175 and 678179.

The answer from Google Maps: ringed by Chernyshevsky, Almazny, Tas-Yuryakh, Chamcha, Lensk, Suntar, Sheya, Malykay, Nyurba, Verkhnevilyuysk, Nakanno, Olyokminsk, and Morkoka. It would be misleading to call these neighboring towns, however, as they are spread out within a radius of 250 miles from Mirny.

The travel guide doesnt mention it. Even for Lonely Planet Mirny is a bit too lonely.

And my own answer? Im exactly where I want to be. Anyone can take selfies in front of Big Ben, and why visit the Taj Mahal when there are already umpteen million photos of it? Ive seen enough beauty in my travels that Im ready for the other extreme. I dont mean the ugliness of a cockroach on the kitchen floor or old car tires in a roadside ditch. Im talking about anti-aesthetics on a scale that makes you faint. Travel as a horror film or post-apocalyptic thriller: Mad Max, not La La Land. Ugliness with a wow factor; ugliness with a past. Its only the median thats boring; the extreme ends of the aesthetic scale are where things get interesting.

The asshole of the world, as the locals call it, is a masterpiece of engineering. It took decades of work and clever structural calculations. Its the second-largest excavation of its type in the world. And it has hidden treasures. So far, sounds like a World Heritage candidate. However, the open mine at Mirny is no feast for the eyes. For decades, diamonds were extracted here, a few ounces of precious stones per ton of dirt. Glittering riches are still hidden somewhere in the morass. Slopes of gray dirt lead downward; a couple of rusty pipes are all that remain of the conveyor system. Beyond the rim on the opposite side of the crater, the eight-story apartment blocks of Mirny look like a Lego landscape.

In 2004, Alrosa, Russias giant mining company, closed the Mir minethe name means peacefor the simple reason that if they had continued excavating, the bottomless pit would have devoured buildings in the city. Now the diamond prospectors have to work underground.

Do you get many tourists here? I ask the cultural attach.

Ha ha, no, actually, just the locals, she answers. Thats why all three of us came to meet you; it was something special. But recently an Italian filmmaker had visited, wanting to shoot a movie here next year. Im going to casting tomorrow; you can come along. But first of all, a tour of the city.

In its best years, Mir was the most profitable diamond mine in the world. The biggest diamond that was ever found here weighed 342.5 carats. It is lemon yellow, as big as a cocktail tomato, and worth a number of million dollars. A sensational find deserves a sensational name, so they called the diamond The 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The 60th Anniversary of Komsomol (200.7 carats) was also blasted here. Not, however, the 70th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War diamond (76.07 carats), which comes from the Yubileynaya mine, further to the north.