Irktutsk, Central Siberia.Foreigners were always routed through a special Intourist section of Russian airports. Although the segregation and special treatment was sort of galling, it did make travel a lot more pleasant. The Intourist sections were the Soviet equivalent of First Class lounges, with armchairs, special staff, and of course a snack and drink bar. I never got this woman's name, but she seemed like a classic Soviet matron, and let me take her picture.
Moscow. In the old, central part of town, the privatization of buildings set off a scramble to among those wishing to gain control of as as many buildings as possible. In the process, many small-time crime groups forcibly squatted in buildings until they could organize the paperwork giving them full control over them. This is the head of one of these crime groups, in the basement of one of his buildings.
Moscow. A construction worker takes a smoke break. The sign next to him commemorates a visit by Lenin to the building in 1921.
Kamchatka. On the far East of Russia, 11 time zones away from Moscow, life is lived far more freely and easily. Communism never took root as it did in other parts of the country--after all, the region's business hours don't overlap at all with those of Moscow--and so the change back to capitalism wasn't such a big leap. Here, Mischa Felkov chats with his neighbors as one of his cows looks on.
Nefteugansk, Western Siberia. Oil workers relax at a drill site. Housing the workers in old sections of pipe is standard at the older drill sites. Blazing hot in summer and freezing cold in winter and without a flat wall to hang a picture on, the pipe houses are among the most reviled fact of living out on a drill site.
One morning during this assignment I got up early to take pictures and came across a little old section of town where there were real houses instead of concrete high-rises or converted oil containers. One porch had laundry hung up to dry, which was of course frozen stiff as a board and half-hiddedn in a snow drift. I started taking some pictures and a woman came out of the house and thought it was funny that a foreigner was interested in her laundry. She invited me in.
Her husband was a truck driver for the oil company, driving heavy rigs with oil equipment. But now it was breakfast time, and he quickly set the table: a half-liter of vodka, pickled mushrooms ("picked them myself!" she said) and some black bread. I tried to protest the vodka, saying that I had to work, but he would none of that. He poured a round of big greasy shots and proposed a toast to international friendship. Then he promptly poured another round and toasted to health and long life. I could only think of the correspondent Taylor's response to a similar toast: "Not at this speed, baby," and drank it down. For the last round-my last round, not theirs-I silently toasted to not crossing the street near where he would be driving that day.
Moscow. Boris Fyodorovich in his kitchen.
My neighbor in my apartment building on Ulitsa Schepkina, Boris Fyodorovich, is this ancient guy who keeps stopping by to have me put eye drops in his murky blue eyes. It's been a ritual ever since I moved in. I'm not even sure he has really realized that I am actually a new neighbor. The ritual is always the same; the doorbell rings, and there he is, proferring his eye drops like a slightly stoned job applicant with his urine sample. So I invite him in and he walks into the kitchen and parks himself on a stool and leans back, almost falling over until I brace his back with one hand while shooting some of these drops onto his eyeballs. They are fogged and rheumy, and I wonder what kind of life he's seen. He's about the right age to have fought in World War II.
So how are you, I ask? Awful, he replies. I'm about to die. Oh I say. How's your son, I ask, figuring that he can't be about to die as well. He hasn't visited in weeks and never calls, he answers. I have no idea what to say after that. Well, ok, I say, take care till soon come again, bye now! He toddles off, all short white hair and red suspenders.
A few weeks later I was in his apartment to put eye drops in his eyes and he was so excited about his son. Did I want to meet him? He walked ahead of me into his little kitchen, talking as though to himself. He walked over to the window, gesturing, and just when I thought his son was just a figment of his imagination, he closed the refrigerator door and there, between the fridge and the wall, the son sat on a chair. Slumped, actually. All I saw was his dirty hair, since he was passed out and slumped forward. "My son!" the old man said proudly.
A while later, the old man was standing outside his apartment with several big sausages in his hand was was unconsolable. My son, he said. Dead. He was crossing the street outside the apartment when he was hit by a car. I had no doubt what condition the son must have been in at the time. What are the sausages for? I asked. Oh these, they're for the memorial service.
Two months later, renovation started in his apartment. I asked what had happened to the old guy who used to live there. The workmen just shrugged. Someone new was moving in, and he wanted the place renovated. That was all they knew.
Frolovskoye, Russia. Having outlived the Soviet State with his pre-Bolshevik memories intact, Father Sergei Vishnevsky has returned to reopen the church where he grew up. His grandfather had been the priest at this village parish in Frolovskoye, 150 miles northeast of Moscow. "It was as if I saw someone dear to me mortally wounded," he said of his first glimpse of the church after being away 45 years. He has abandoned his parish in Moscow to return to this remote village to live on his tiny monthly pension (2,052 rubles, about $3 in 1994) and struggle to repair the church to its former glory. "I feel I am contributing to the rebirth of Russia through the church. Restoring this church is a gift from God."