Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (21 page)

After Anastasia’s death her mother searched her room. It was strange walking inside without her there. She didn’t really know what she was looking for. A diary, clues, anything. She came across a folder she’d never seen before. There were two “diplomas” that looked like university diplomas, but the name of the institution caught Olga’s eye: the “Rose of the World.” The Rose of the World? What sort of name was that?

One diploma was for passing the foundation course, the other for the advanced course. There were papers with Anastasia’s writing on them—saying how she must transform, change herself, become a different person. There were pages and pages on which she listed the worst traits in her personality: laziness, lack of aims, drugs, the wrong men. And there was a postcard, with a note addressed to Anastasia:

“
When you understand who and what you really are, then everyone around you recognizes you without a word of opposition. Anastasia: you’re on your way. Your lullaby is ‘winter’s end.’”

What did it mean, “You are on your way?”

Now Olga remembered the Rose of the World. A year and a half before Anastasia had mentioned that she had started to attend what she referred to as “psychological trainings” in Moscow.

When Olga asked her what went on there, Anastasia was vague—something about remembering childhood experiences. Telling all your secrets. She explained that she had signed a contract promising not to tell anyone what went on at “the Rose.” But she explained that these courses would transform her, perfect her; if she could pass them she could do anything, anything at all.

Olga told Anastasia she was a healthy girl and didn’t need any self-perfecting. She should stop.

Olga thought little of Rose of the World back then, but now she wanted to know more. After the funeral she took Anastasia’s friends aside to ask whether they knew anything.

Did Olga know Anastasia had spent another year at the Rose of the World? they asked. She’d been going until a few months before her death.

No, Olga answered, she hadn’t known. Anastasia had told her she’d stopped going over a year ago.

Did Olga know how much money she’d spent there?

No.

Thousands of dollars, thousands and thousands. And did Olga know Ruslana went there, too? They went there together. Ruslana stayed three months, Anastasia over a year.

“We think it might be a sect,” said the model friends. “Though we can’t quite be sure.”

Olga started to look online.

“Trainings for personality development” is how the Rose of the World describes itself. “Our seminars will teach you how to find your true self, realize your goals and achieve material wealth,” its Web site states—lit up by photographs of happy, shiny people standing on the top of a hill, shot from the bottom up, their arms out embracing a strong wind so it looks like they’re almost flying.

The Rose also specializes in corporate training.

Olga went through Anastasia’s papers from the Rose. She found the names of two men mentioned there and matched their numbers to Anastasia’s phone (a gold-plated Vertu, given to her by some lover). One number didn’t answer; another did. When he picked up the phone and Olga told him who she was and what had happened to Anastasia, he was shocked. But, no, he didn’t think the Rose was that important. He couldn’t say exactly what happened there, he also had signed some papers, but he mentioned there was lots of crying. He had only finished the first basic course before he quit. Anastasia had stayed much longer.

On Internet forums and in chat rooms there is some discussion, though not much, about the Rose. A couple of people write that it changed their lives forever and they are transformed. Others write that it’s a con. Still others write that they think it might be dangerous. The posts in the chat rooms are all anonymous.

•  •  •

When I tell my editors at TNT about the Rose they aren’t particularly excited.

“Find out anything you need, Piiitrrr. But why should our audience care about life-trainings for Muscovites?” says one producer.

“How much did you say they cost? 1,000 a go?” adds another.

“How does that relate to a provincial single mother? Our audience? It’s not part of her world, nor is it anything she aspires to or understands. Keep it brief,” says the third.

“But what if it
is
a sect?” I answer back.

“Russian sects are crazed freaks on communes in Siberia. What do this lot do: corporate trainings? That’s not like any Russian sect we know. And Piiitrrr, we still need more positive stories.”

•  •  •

Everyone who has been at the Rose has pledged themselves to secrecy. I need someone to go in and blend with the girls there, make friends with the employees and those who have been there a while. There must be some gossip since two students have now died. I want someone Russian, preferably the same age as the girls.

I approach an undercover reporter, Alex (not his real name), who is excited to help out. Alex is meant to be the best in the business, has penetrated gangs and corrupt state institutions. We pay just under $1,000 for the foundation course. It will last three days. After each day of the trainings Alex will meet with me and Vita Holmogorova, a professional psychologist and member of the Russian Association of Psychotherapists, to go through all the events and thoughts. Based on Alex’s testimony, recordings, and interviews I do with present and former adepts and the psychotherapist’s analysis, I slowly start to piece together what happened to Ruslana and Anastasia at the Rose.

•  •  •

The Rose of the World runs its trainings in a Soviet-gothic palace at the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNH) in northern Moscow. VDNH was commissioned by Stalin to celebrate Soviet success, with great gothic pavilions and statues dedicated to every republic from Armenia to Ukraine and every accomplishment from agriculture to space. Now it is rented out to petty traders selling anything from kitsch art to kitchens, furs, and rare flowers. Stray dogs hunt in packs between gargantuan statues of collective farm girls and decommissioned rockets. The Rose’s trainings are in the old Palace of Culture.

When you walk in at 10:00 a.m. there’s a table with name tags on it, just like at a professional conference. You’re directed up the grand staircase toward the main hall. It’s closed. All the participants of the training stand around in the foyer looking a little awkward. There’s some tea. There are roughly forty people: a few stolid fortysomething businessmen and a lot of younger women in their twenties who are clearly well looked after. Suddenly you’re startled by
Star Wars
music blasting from inside the hall itself. The doors burst open. The music is really loud, so loud it almost hurts. A woman is standing at the entrance:

“The doors to our auditorium are open! Come inside! Come inside!”

She shouts this over and over as you enter. Inside it’s almost pitch black, and all around the sides are people shouting: “Quick, quick, take your seats, put your bags away.” This is the “group of support,” volunteers who have been at the Rose several years. They’re shouting at you all the time, and they seem to be everywhere in the darkness. From the moment you walk in you’re lost, disorientated, somewhat stunned.

You take a seat on chairs that spread in a fan several rows deep around the stage. The volunteers are seated in the row behind you—so you can’t see them but their voices are shouting at the back of your head: “Sit down! Hurry! Hurry!”

Then everything is silent.

A bright light comes on up on the stage, and the “life coach” enters. He has a face like a teddy bear and wears an earpiece microphone and a slightly baggy suit with a bright tie that looks too loud. One of those silly ties you get as a joke for Christmas. He talks fast, very fast, and in provincial Russian with some grammatical mistakes. His accent is so hokey and he looks so comedic with his baggy suit, soft face, and silly tie that at first you find him funny. He talks about nothing in particular. How his mother was a seamstress. How he’s from the sticks. He tells a few stories, like a bad comedian. Everyone is looking at each other—what have they signed up for? This is a “life coach?”

He keeps on talking very fast, the microphone pitched at a level that slightly hurts the ears. Your head begins to ache mildly. He brings out a huge white board and draws flowcharts, complicated shapes and arrows showing how you will transform and what your personality consists of. You try to keep up with all the formulas and arrows and flowcharts, but at some point you start to get confused, lose your orientation. The more clever and alert you are, the more you focus on what he’s saying and drawing, but it never quite makes sense, and you get confused all over again. This is the point of the introduction. The shouting, the darkness, his jokes, and the frenetic drawing: your brain starts to get scrambled.

After a period (you’re not sure quite how long) of this a woman gets up to leave the room.

“Where are you going?” the life coach says, suddenly angry.

“The toilet.”

“You can’t go,” says the life coach.

Everyone thinks he’s joking.

“But I need to,” smiles the woman.

The life coach shouts back at her: “You want to change your life? And you can’t stop yourself from going to the toilet? You’re weak.”

Everyone is shocked. The woman explains that she really does need to go.

“Off you go then,” he says, light again, and waves her away.

What was that?

He talks on, jovial. A few minutes later another woman wants to go to the bathroom. When she’s at the door the life coach, stern again, says:

“Forget about coming back if you leave.”

She turns back.

“Why?”

This time he screams louder, longer, waving his arms in front of her face: “Why? We’ve come here to transform. Change. I could just wander off and grab a snack. But we’re here to perfect ourselves. You’re weak. You’re just weak!”

“That’s ridiculous,” says the young woman who wants to go to the bathroom. At first everyone in the audience backs her up; the life coach is being a tyrant. In her time Ruslana was one of the loudest and brightest in the audience, the first to pick a fight with the life teacher.

The life coach starts to negotiate with the audience. Their transformation starts now, today, he argues, this minute. Don’t they want to change? Defeat all their fears and inner demons? Be free? Together they can do it. And the only person holding them back is the woman who wants to go to the bathroom. She’s betraying them. They’ve spent how long now discussing this? Ten minutes? Fifteen? So she didn’t really need to go, did she? It’s all in her head.

“Yes, she didn’t really need to go,” repeat the volunteers from the back of the room.

The woman looks uncomfortable. What if they are right?

And without you noticing, the life coach has brought the audience around to his side, and the whole audience is calling on the person who needs the bathroom to be strong, she can make it, if she can make it they all can. She sits back down. Everyone applauds. They have crossed a little Rubicon together. The life coach has their attention.

“In the next days,” says the life coach, “you will feel discomfort, fear, but that is good, that’s because you are changing, transforming toward a brighter, more effective life. You’re like a plane, experiencing turbulence as you rise higher and higher. We all know you can’t grow without discomfort. Don’t we?”

The life coach calls up anyone who is ready to join him on the stage. Ruslana had been one of the first to try this. He asked her why she came, what were her aims, what was holding her back in life. She said her problem was men: she couldn’t get any relationship right. And then the life coach ploughed into her: it was her own fault she let men leave her, she had an “inner monologue” that made her a victim. Ruslana tried to fight back—she was the innocent party, she explained. But the trainer spun her words back at her: she wanted everyone to think she was a “good girl” and that made her weak. The more you push back against the life coach, the more he argues: “Ha, the fact you’re fighting me shows how scared you are to admit you’re wrong! Scared to change!”

You find yourself first outraged and then slowly nodding.

Then everyone stands and has to recite together, like in an army, the “Commandments of Training”:

I will not tell anyone what goes on here.

I will not make any recordings.

I will not be late.

I will not drink alcohol for the duration of the training.

Smokers are told to stand. There are seven or so out of the forty. Anastasia and Ruslana were both smokers. Alex is, too. The trainer tells the smokers they have a chance to change their lives and quit. Those who promise to quit can sit. A couple (the stubborn ones) keep on standing. And the trainer begins to lay into them again; he keeps talking for ten, twenty minutes, until their legs are hurting, and they face a challenge between the physical pain they are experiencing and not giving in to the life trainer. Meanwhile the volunteers and some in the audience begin to shout at them: “Come on, sit down, you’re taking up our time.”

Eventually everyone sits down.

There’s a lunch break. It’s packed lunches or takeout; you’re not allowed to leave the building. Many are outraged and upset at the trainer—but no one leaves. People have come here for different reasons: some are midlevel professionals who want the training to give them a boost. This is what the trainer promises: to make you more “effective,” borrowing the language of the Kremlin and the political technologists. Others have been brought here by friends or lovers who have been through the courses themselves and insisted they come too.

“My girlfriend said she would leave me if I didn’t do it,” says one young man.

After lunch you go back into the hall and there’s some ambient music playing. “Who’s strong enough to tell their darkest secret?” asks the life trainer. He seems suddenly gentle now, caring. Everyone is sworn to secrecy, he repeats; this is one community. Someone stands up and tells how she was sacked at work. Someone else how a girlfriend left him. Then a woman stands up and talks about how she was raped when she was still a child, raped repeatedly. She breaks down afterward and cries; the volunteers cradle her. It’s the first time she has told anyone. There’s a hush around the room. There’s a lot of crying. When it was her turn Ruslana talked about her father: how she had felt when he departed. Anastasia remembered her parents’ divorce when she was young. For the first time the models had a place where someone would listen to them. They felt for the first time that they could be themselves. No one even knew they were models here.