GALINA - Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia - page 77

“We are one family. One family. It is impossible to separate us. We've been together for
a long time. More than twenty years.”
I knew that part of their fellowship came from the pain of being alone. I am treading
delicately: “I guess women need to find their strength, especially after losing husbands.”
Galina and I are now in a stare-down.
“When there is a man, it is easier to live for a woman.” She pauses. “We have all had
different fates.”
Many of these women had fathers who fought and died in World War II, and watched
their mothers make it alone: “There was a war, and the entire burden was laid upon wo-
men's shoulders,” another babushka says. “And so we children had to work too, weeding
the fields.”
Galina: “I have this mark”—she's showing me her hand—“from a sickle. I wasn't even
going to school at that time. I was a child, working in the field, and cut my finger with a
sickle.”
“May I hear more about your husbands?”
We had started the conversation in Buranovo several years ago but didn't get very far.
“I don't really want to talk about it,” says Galina. “My life has been . . . interesting. But
I don't want it in your book. Why write about it? All of it has passed. I will just tell you
there's a saying in Russian, 'I am a mare, and I am a bull. I am a woman, and I am a man.'”
Many Russian women have had to be both in their older years. Until recently the life
expectancy in Russia for men was barely fifty-nine. It has inched above sixty, while the
average woman lives to be seventy-three. These numbers are alarmingly low for a country
as developed as Russia. As my friend Kathy Lally wrote in the Washington Post in 2013,
“Russia bears a staggering load of risk factors for disease, with 60 percent of men smoking
and each citizen consuming, on average, more than four gallons of pure alcohol a year.
Half the population is overweight.” The Russian government has been taking steps—small
ones—to improve the situation. In 2013 they finally classified beer as an alcoholic bever-
age, which brought new restrictions on its sale. Until then beer was considered a food in
Russia.
This is a country where women in their older years know how to go it alone.
I turn to my left, to Valentina, the woman missing her right arm. She has a beautiful
round face, and an infectious, youthful smile.
“Valentina, I remember you started telling me last time about how you lost your arm.
May I hear the full story?”
“I came to Russia in 1984 from Turkmenistan. My husband had started drinking. A lot.
So I went away. My children came with me. He died a long time ago. I had many friends
in Turkmenistan. But after the Soviet Union broke apart, it was hard for them to come to