LIUBOV - Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia - page 39

question I asked. Sergei somberly translated for me. I asked Dima about his plans for the
future, and he revealed an inner conflict I found in many younger, more educated Russians
with enough money to consider their options. “I live in this city, and I love this city,” he
explained. “But I want to play in the NHL. It's my dream. Because life is better in countries
like the USA and Canada. My girlfriend, she is twenty-one. I am twenty-one. And we will
be married in two months. The laws are better in those other countries. People are more
helpful. Everything is more comfortable. Why can't we have that here?”
For many young Russians like Dima, there is a desire to leave and see the world, but
it comes with guilt and a nagging sense that a Russian should stay and endure rather than
escape. This view of the world was summed up perfectly by a woman named Ella Strogan-
ova, the curator of the Yaroslavl City Museum, whom I met on my first train trip across
the country. I had asked her why Russians responded to harsh experiences with determined
fortitude and a feeling of inevitability, rather than being spurred into action to find solu-
tions and make things better. Looking for answers, or doing something, she explained, was
simply un-Russian. It was an admission of vulnerability that Russians see elsewhere in the
world. “Progress makes a person absolutely weak,” she told me. “He loses his strength be-
cause he no longer needs to think how to survive.” Some in Russia's younger generation,
like Dima, are escaping this thinking and dreaming of new things and different places. But
as I would learn on this trip, not all young people feel as Dima does.
Sergei and I walked out of the arena, into a light snow. I looked back at the arena, where
a huge portrait of the fallen players hung on the outside wall. I had not seen it going in,
since we were in such a rush. Under the portraits were the words “Our team. Forever.” One
of those portraits was of a young fallen star, Nikita Klyukin.
S ERGEI AND I leave our indulgent digs at the Hotel Rybinsk and find a taxi to go visit
Nikita's parents. Like many Russian cities Rybinsk is a factory town, built around its indus-
trial fortress—an aging behemoth that for years has produced jet engines. The buildings lin-
ing the city's boulevards are beige or gray, the snow is abundant but not fresh, so it's turned
gray, and all this paints a depressing backdrop interrupted every so often by flower kiosks
bursting with color. Bland, dark, and cold as Russia can feel, no society has a deeper love
of flowers, or tsvety . At the end of a workday, on the streets or on the subway, in any Russi-
an city, you will find men and women carrying bouquets. For any occasion—birthdays, re-
tirements, office parties—flowers are nothing short of a requirement. And so without even
mentioning it to each other, Sergei and I know that visiting Nikita's parents means bringing
flowers. We ask our driver to stop by a kiosk near our destination.
“Maybe a half-dozen roses for Nikita's mom?” I say to Sergei.