Travels in Siberia (81 page)

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These thank-yous begin, as did this book, with Alex Melamid and Katya Arnold. Twenty-five years ago, when I lived in lower Manhattan and Alex’s painting studio was a few blocks away on Canal Street, our conversations about his life in Russia gave me a desire to go there. Katya’s insistence that I accompany them on their trip to Moscow and Ulan-Ude in 1993 started me on my Siberia journeys. As I did research, studied Russian, and wrote the manuscript, Katya provided counsel all along the way. Alex’s painting of a Siberian scene served as the cover for one of the issues of
The New Yorker
in which an excerpt of the book appeared. I can’t thank Alex and Katya enough for their brilliance, and for their generosity in sharing their past with me.

Boris Zeldin helped me greatly with the book’s literary, linguistic, and cultural details. Almost any question I asked, Boris knew the answer to. He found references I needed in his own extensive library and read the manuscript for
kliukvi
—the kind of errors travelers in Russia stumble into. Boris’s wife, Sophia, also read the manuscript and offered her perspective and suggestions. To my friends the Zeldins, deepest thanks.

Luda Sokolova, the Zeldins’ longtime friend in St. Petersburg, rented me her apartment and helped me generally in getting around there. In Moscow, Lyudmila Borisovna Melamida, Mitya and Irena Arnold, and Tatiana (Chuda) Kotreleva and Kolya Kotrelev kindly put me up on several occasions. Tisha Kotrelev, Chuda and Kolya’s son, showed me around the city. Thanks and best regards to them all.

I could not have done my longer trips in Siberia without the assistance of Victor Serov and Sergei Lunev. I am grateful for their competence, hard work, and patience. Vladimir Chumak helped the 2001 trip go smoothly and was the best driver I ever saw. To Victor, Sergei, and Volodya—thank you. I hope you always have successful journeys.

Aleksandr (Sasha) Khamarkhanov, now deceased, and his wife, Tania, hosted Alex and Katya and me in Ulan-Ude. Elsewhere I have expressed my admiration and thanks to Sasha, but want to thank him and Tania again here.

Sergei Prigarin and Sveta, his daughter, were of key assistance to me in Novosibirsk and Akademgorodok, as was Ivan Logoshenko. They are chief among the reasons that I rank Novosibirsk as my favorite part of Siberia.

In Alaska and Chukotka, I benefited from the help of Vladimir Bychkov, Eric Penttila, and Jim Stimpfle.

A number of gifted and patient teachers of the Russian language led me through its intricacies and did the best they could inserting them into my resistant brain. Many thanks to Irina Katz, Katya Popova, Lioudmila Tomachevskaya, Dina Kupchenka, and the master, Boris Shekhtman.

The late publisher Roger Straus, of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, took an interest in the idea of a book about Siberia when I first suggested it. He sent me Siberia-related materials he knew would be useful and otherwise encouraged me. Jonathan Galassi, my editor at FSG for the last twenty-two years, has always been completely great. My gratitude and affection go to Roger, Jonathan, Jesse Coleman, Susan Mitchell, Jennifer Carrow (who designed this book’s cover), Chris Peterson, and everybody at FSG. Thanks are also due my excellent agents, Jin Auh and Andrew Wylie, of the Wylie Agency. David Remnick, editor of
The New Yorker
, helped me greatly with his expertise on Russia and with financial support so I could travel there, while
The New Yorker
’s Ann Goldstein, assisted by John Bennet, did an outstanding job of turning sections of the book into a three-part magazine article. Mike Peed, of the magazine’s fact-checking department, pursued factual accuracy with rigor while never neglecting to listen for the poetical—a rare skill. He also did invaluable checking work on the manuscript as a whole. Katia Bachko, also of
The New Yorker
, made checking calls to Russia in which her language fluency shed light into previously murky areas. I also thank Maddy Elfenbein,
Chris Glazek, Blake Eskin, and everybody else who worked on the excerpts in
The New Yorker
.

John Lewis Gaddis, Lee Clark, Glenn Eichler, Robert Carey, Bill McClelland, Jonathan Alter, David Smith, Sumie Ota, John McPhee, Hedda Sterne, Marie D’Origny, Rich Cohen, José Manuel Prieto, Alec Wilkinson, Luda Stiler, Henry Timman, and Jean Strouse all helped me in one way or another. Many thanks to them all. For support at important moments during the travel, research, and writing, I am grateful to the Lyndhurst Foundation; the Lila Wallace–Readers’ Digest Foundation; and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, at the New York Public Library.

When I started working on this book, my daughter, Cora, was four, and my son, Thomas, was seven months. In later years, Cora helped with typing the manuscript and Thomas expertly handled all problems that came up with the computer. My wife, Jacqueline Carey, helped me plan my trips, stayed near the phone while I traveled, read and reread the manuscript, and managed to write books of her own. This book is dedicated to her.

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Abramovich, Roman

Achinsk

acrylonitrile

Adams, John Quincy

ad-Din, Rashid

Aeroflot Airlines

Afghanistan

agriculture

air travel; airport bathrooms;
see also specific airlines and airports

Akademgorodok

Akaturi

Akhmet, Khan

Alaska; –Russia ferry service; –Siberia transfer route

Alaska Airlines

Aldan River

Alekseev, V. V.:
The Last Act of a Tragedy

Alexander I, Tsar

Alexander II, Tsar

Alexander III, Tsar

Alexei Mikhailovich, Tsar

Alliluyeva, Svetlana

aluminum

American Expeditionary Force

Amur River

Amursky Plate

Anadyr

Anadyr River

Anchorage

Angara River

animals; hunting; prehistoric; sable; tigers

animism

Annenkov, Ivan

antibiotics

antigovernment violence, nineteenth-century

Arabic

Arakcheev, Count Aleksei

Arctic Ocean

Armfeldt, Nathalie

Arnold, Katya

Arnold, Mitya

arrows

Arsenyev, Vladimir; death of;
Dersu Uzala

art

Asia

Astafiev, Victor

astronomy

Atlasov, Vladimir

Aurora

Austria

Avars

Avvakumovo River

Avvakum Petrovich;
The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum by Himself

Baikal-Amur Magistral (BAM)

Baikal Lake

Bajazet

Bakunin, Mikhail

Balanchine, George

ballet

Baltic territories

banya

Barabinsk Steppe

Baranov, Alexander

barbed wire

Barguzin

Barr, David

Basargin, N. V.

bathrooms

Batu, Khan

Bazhanov, Boris

beatings

bedbugs

beef

beer

Belinsky, Vissarion

Bell, John

Belov, Sveta and Tolya

Beluga Foresight

Beluga Fraternity

Bennett, James Gordon

Benyowsky

Bereyozov

Berezovyi Yar

Bering, Vitus

Bering Air

Bering expeditions

Bering Land Bridge

Bering Sea

Bering Strait; tunnel

Berlin, Isaiah

Bestuzhev, Nikolai

Beveridge, Albert J.:
The Russian Advance

Bible

Big Diomede

Bikin

bin Laden, Osama

birds; crows and ravens

Birobidzhan

Black Sea

Blagoveshchensk

Blakely, Alexander;
Siberia Bound

Blyukher, Glafira

Blyukher, Vasily K.

boats,
see
sea travel Boguchansk dam

boletes

Bolsheviks; in exile

Bookwalter, John Wesley:
Siberia and Central Asia

Booth, Roland

borders

Borodino, Battle of

borscht

Boyarsky, Victor

Bradner, Heidi

Bratsk

Breshkovskaya, Katarina

Brezhnev, Leonid

bribery,
see
corruption and bribery

bridges

Brodin, Fred

Brodsky, Joseph

bronze

Brynner, Yul

Buchanan, James

Buddhism

Bulgaria

Bunin, Ivan

Bureya River

Buryat

Buryats

buses

butter

bychki

Bychkov, Vladimir