Siberian Education Read online

  He hurried off to get dressed and we started towards the river. While we were walking he told me about the others: they were all okay – a little the worse for wear, but okay. The very next day after the fight Gagarin had gone to Caucasus, a district of our town, to settle a score with one of the locals. Lyoza and Besa, who had miraculously succeeded in hiding in the park and hadn’t been caught by the police, were in the best state of all: they didn’t have a scratch.

  When I reached my boat I suggested to Mel that we go for a trip up the river. There was a cool wind – a pleasant morning breeze – the sun was rising and everything was bright and peaceful.

  Mel jumped into the boat and lay down in the bow on his back, looking up at the cloudless sky – it was a yes.

  I took one oar and with it pushed the boat away from the bank, then I rowed slowly, standing up: I had the wind on my face, it was wonderful and relaxing. Ten metres from the bank I felt the current of the river grow stronger and stronger, so I switched on the motor and, gradually increasing speed, I set off upstream towards the old bridge. I put on the jacket that I always kept in the boat. Mel was still lying down in the bow. He was hardly moving: his eyes were closed, and his foot was just faintly rocking to and fro.

  When we reached the bridge I made a wide curve and turned back with the motor switched off, letting the current carry the boat, rowing only occasionally to correct the direction. As the boat floated slowly downstream, now and again we jumped into the river and swam around. In the water I felt protected, I let myself be carried by the current, holding onto the boat or keeping slightly away from it. It was the best medicine in the world, the water of the river; I could have stayed in it all day long.

  When we touched the bank, Mel jumped down from the boat and said he wanted to go and see an old aunt of his who lived not far away and always complained that nobody went to visit her. I decided to go and see Grandfather Kuzya, to tell him about everything that had happened to us.

  In the community of the Siberian Urkas the greatest importance is attached to the relationship between children and old people. As a result there are many customs and traditions which make it possible for elderly criminals with great experience to participate in the education of children, even if they have no blood relationship with them. Each adult criminal asks an old man, usually one who has no family and lives on his own, to help him in the education of his children. He often sends his children to him, to take him food or give him a hand about the house; in exchange the old man tells the children the stories of his life and teaches them the criminal tradition, the principles and rules of behaviour, the codes of the tattoos and everything that is in any way connected with criminal activity. This kind of relationship is called in the Siberian language ‘carving’.

  The word ‘grandfather’ in the Siberian criminal community has many meanings. The grandparents are naturally the relatives, the parents’ parents, but also the highest Authorities in the criminal world – in this case the word ‘Holy’ or ‘Blessed’ is prefixed to ‘grandfather’, so that it is immediately clear that the person under discussion is an Authority. An elderly educator, too, is called grandfather, but never grandfather alone: his name or nickname must always be added.

  My very personal and dearly loved educator was, as will have become clear by now, Grandfather Kuzya. As far back as I can remember, my father always took me to see him. Grandfather Kuzya was highly respected in the criminal community, and he had earned this respect partly through the sorrows and sacrifices he had undergone for the sake of the community.

  Grandfather Kuzya was ageless. His mother had died when he was very small and his father had been shot not long afterwards, and the family that had adopted him never knew exactly how old he was.

  As a young man Grandfather Kuzya had belonged to a gang of Urkas led by a famous criminal called ‘Cross’, a man of old Siberian faith who had opposed first the power of the tsar and later that of the communists. In Siberia, Grandfather Kuzya explained to me, no criminal ever supported a political force; everybody lived only following their own laws and fighting any government power. Siberia has always been coveted by the Russians because it is a land that is very rich in natural resources. Besides the fur-bearing animals, which in Russia are considered a national treasure, Siberia had large amounts of gold, diamonds and coal; later oil and gas were discovered too. All governments have tried to exploit the region as much as possible – of course without the slightest regard for the population. The Russians would arrive, said Grandfather Kuzya, build their towns in the middle of the woods, dig up the land, and carry off its treasures on their trains and ships.

  The Siberian criminals, expert robbers whose ancestors had for centuries attacked the mercantile caravans coming from China and India, had had no difficulty in attacking the Russian ones too.

  In those days the Urkas had a particular philosophy, a world-view, which they called the ‘Great Pact’. It was a plan which made it possible to maintain a concerted resistance against the government. According to the old criminal law, each individual gang could carry out no more than one robbery every six months: in this way the quality of criminal activity was kept at a high level, because it is clear that if a group has only one chance to rob a caravan, it must prepare well and take no risks, avoiding any false moves. People were keen to organize the job well, otherwise they would have to go half a year without eating. The Great Pact eliminated this rule, allowing the gangs to carry out robberies continually, because the aim was not that of self-enrichment, but of driving the Russian invaders out of Siberia. Old criminals joined forces with the new ones, forming very large gangs. The most famous were those of Angel, Tiger and Tayga.

  Cross had a smaller gang, comprising about fifty men. They robbed trains and the small ships that plied from the diamond mines on the River Lena to southern Siberia, and to the region called Altay. One day they made the mistake of coming out of the woods, and ran into the forces of the communist army. They tried to resist but in the end were outnumbered by the communists: they were surrounded, and almost all of them died in battle.

  The Urkas never surrendered; to them it was unworthy to be captured, so if they saw that the situation was hopeless they would say their farewells, wish each other good fortune and plunge into the fray, until the enemy killed them. The only possibility of surviving was to be captured because of your wounds: to be wounded and taken prisoner was not considered unworthy.

  In that battle three young Urkas were captured. One of them was Kuzya; he had taken a blow to the head and passed out. The communists, to show all the Siberians how those who opposed the government were treated, immediately ordered an exemplary ‘people’s’ trial for the prisoners in the town of Tagil, where the population had surrendered to the Russians, who had set up military barracks and police stations everywhere.

  Many people attended the trial, because many Siberians sympathized with the Urkas and supported their struggle against the communists.

  The judge and his ‘jury’, made up of ‘representatives’ of the people, and naturally all communists, sentenced all three to death. The sentence was to be carried out the following day by firing squad, in front of the walls of the old railway station.

  Next day the place was full of people. Many had brought icons and put crosses outside their shirts, to emphasize their aversion to the communist regime. The women wept and asked for a pardon, the men prayed to the Lord to welcome those three slaves of His who were about to be killed unjustly. The atmosphere was very tense, and reinforcements had been sent from the police station with orders to go into action should the people become dangerous.

  At last the criminals were driven up, taken out of the car and made to stand up, in chains. They were led before the judge and the public prosecutor, who read out to them all the charges which the Soviet government had brought against them. Then the judge read out the sentence and authorized the police to carry it out at once.

  The three were placed with their backs turned and th
eir faces against the wall, but none of them wanted to stand in that position, so they turned around to face the firing squad. Some of the crowd threw crucifixes onto the ground near the criminals’ feet, praying to the Lord to make the authorities pardon them.

  The commander of the firing squad gave a series of orders to his men, who prepared their rifles, took aim at their targets and fired. Two condemned men fell dead on the ground, but the third, the one in the middle, continued to stand up and look at the people. His shirt was soaked with blood and he had eight wounds in his body, but he didn’t fall; he stood motionless, breathing in the cold morning air deeply. It was Kuzya, the young Siberian Urka.

  According to the rules of the Soviet state the death sentence could only be carried out once; if the condemned person survived he must be set free. For this reason, years later the communists took to shooting the condemned prisoners from half a metre away and straight in the head – to remove all possible doubt.

  The people went wild with joy; to them Kuzya became a symbol, living proof of the existence of God, who had heard their prayers and shown His powers. From that day on every Siberian knew the story of Kuzya and referred to him as ‘the Marked One’.

  Partly because of this miraculous event, Kuzya was considered an Authority among the criminals. His advice was listened to by many good, honest criminals of different castes, and since he was wise and intelligent and had no personal interests – because his life, as he was fond of saying, belonged totally to the community – he succeeded in winning everyone’s cooperation and friendship.

  He had been in many Russian prisons, had sanctioned many alliances with various criminal societies and mediated the resolution of conflicts between gangs. Thanks to his intervention many criminals had signed truces among themselves, agreeing to live in peace to their mutual benefit, thus enhancing the prosperity of the whole community.

  If in any part of Russia two criminal powers clashed over a certain question, he would set off on his travels and, using his Authority, would force people to negotiate, to find the ways towards a peaceable solution. When I asked him questions about this role of his as a ‘man of peace’, he would reply that the people who made war were those who didn’t follow the true principles, who had no dignity. There was nothing in this world that could not be shared in such a way as to make everyone happy.

  ‘He who wants too much is a madman, because a man cannot possess more than his heart is able to love. Everyone wants to do business, to see his family happy and bring up his children in goodness and peace. This is just. Only in this way can we share the world that Our Lord created for us.’

  Grandfather Kuzya dedicated his whole life to keeping peace in the criminal community; as a result everyone was fond of him and he had no enemies. My father told me that once, when Grandfather Kuzya was in a maximum security prison, a group of young criminals from St Petersburg – people of the ‘new style’, who didn’t respect the old rules – had broken a truce that had been agreed some time earlier between various communities thanks to his assistance. They had killed a lot of people, gaining control of a large area of business, after which they had tried to prove to others, the people who followed the old criminal rules, that those rules were no longer valid and had no real power behind them. To do this they needed to strike at some great Authority, and they chose the figure of Grandfather Kuzya, because he represented the highest power in the Siberian community. They devised a simple and very offensive plan, sending to him in prison a letter of invitation to a meeting that was to be held in St Petersburg, informing him that if he did not attend they would no longer consider him to be an active criminal.

  This kind of blackmail is a very serious matter for a criminal, far more serious than the murder of a relative or a personal insult, because it affects the prestige that is attributed to an individual by the entire community, so the insult extends to the whole community and its representatives.

  Well, Grandfather Kuzya forced the prison administrators to grant a week’s release to him and five other Siberian Authorities who were being held in different prisons in Russia, by threatening a mass suicide, which none of them would have hesitated to implement.

  In the middle of the meeting, when the young St Petersburg criminals were already planning in minute detail how to compel all the supporters of the old Authorities to hand over control of the area to them, taking it for granted that none of them would attend, Grandfather Kuzya and the other five prisoners arrived.

  After that encounter the young men disappeared, they just vanished into thin air: many thought of the old Siberian ritual which involves the bodies of enemies being minced up to the point of complete disintegration and then mixed in with the soil of the woods.

  According to the Siberian criminal law, every active criminal can give up his post and retire – become a kind of ‘pensioner’. Once he has done this he no longer has the right to use his name or express his opinion on questions connected with criminal affairs or the resolution of conflicts. The criminal community supports him by giving him enough money to live on, and in exchange he takes on the responsibility of educating the young. He becomes, as has already been mentioned, a ‘grandfather’: a name that is given as a mark of great respect. People who are so called are regarded by the rest of the community as wise men able to give essential advice to younger criminals, and usually criminal meetings are organized at their homes.

  Grandfather Kuzya had retired from business – or, as we say, ‘tied the knot’ – in the early 1980s, when I was born. His retirement had caused considerable tension in the criminal community: many feared that without him a lot of old truces would be broken and there would be war.

  Grandfather Kuzya said that with or without him things were bound to change, because it was the times and the individuals that were different. When he discussed the matter with me, he explained it like this:

  ‘The young want easy money, they want to take without giving anything in exchange, they want to fly without first having learned how to walk. They’ll end up killing each other. Then they’ll come to terms with the cops, and when that happens, I hope for your sake, my dear, that you’ll be far away from here, because this place will become a graveyard of the good and honest.’

  Naturally I considered everything Grandfather Kuzya said to be the highest expression of human intelligence and criminal experience.

  We talked about the future, about what our life would be like and how things would be organized. He was very pessimistic, but he never feared that I would disappoint him; he considered me to be different from the other youngsters of our community.

  After 1992, when the military forces of Moldova tried to occupy the territory of Transnistria, our town was abandoned by everybody; we were left to fend for ourselves, as in fact we always had done. All the armed criminals resisted the Moldovan soldiers, and after three months of battles they drove them out.

  When the danger of an all-out conflict had passed, Mother Russia sent us her so-called ‘help’: the Fourteenth Army, led by the charismatic general Lebed. When they arrived in our town, which had already been free for several days, they applied the policy of military administration: curfew, house-to-house searches, the arrest and elimination of undesirable elements. During that period the river often brought to the bank the bodies of the people who had been shot, their hands tied behind their backs with wire and signs of torture on their bodies. I myself fished out four corpses of people who had been executed, so I can confirm with all my youthful authority that shootings by the Russian military were very common in Transnistria.

  The Russians tried to exploit the circumstances to install among us, in the land of criminals, their government representatives, who would have the job of administering what had previously been solely in our hands. Many Siberian criminals during that period ran a serious risk of being killed; my father, for example, was the target of three attacks, but he miraculously escaped and, not wanting to wait for a fourth, left Transnistria and moved to Greece,
where he had friends as a result of some old trading connections.

  The criminals of the town tried to join forces to fight the Russian military, but many members of the communities were frightened and in the event proved willing to collaborate with the new regime. The Siberians renounced all contact with the rest of society, and by 1998 were completely isolated; they didn’t collaborate with anyone and didn’t support anyone. Other communities reached a compromise with the regime, which had proposed one of its own men as president of the country and political watchdog over all business. Very soon new government forces eliminated the people involved in those terms, taking over the administration of affairs.

  Grandfather Kuzya told me everything he knew:

  ‘Our law says that we mustn’t talk to the cops: do you know why it says that? Not just out of caprice. It says this because the cops are the government’s dogs, the tools the government uses against us. My son, they shot me when I was twenty-three years old, and ever since then I have lived my whole life in humility, without possessing anything – no family, no children, no house: all my life has been spent in prison, suffering, and sharing my sufferings with others. That’s why I have power, because many people know me and know that when I cross my arms on the table I don’t speak in my own private interest, but for the good of everyone. That, my boy, is why in our world everyone trusts me. And now tell me why we should trust those who have spent their whole lives killing our brothers, locking us up in prison, torturing us and treating us as if we didn’t belong to the human race? How is it possible, tell me, to trust those who live thanks to our deaths? Cops are different from the rest of humanity, because they have an innate desire to serve, to have an employer. They don’t understand anything about freedom, and they’re scared of free men. Their bread is our sorrow, my son; how is it possible to reach an agreement with these people?’

  Everything Grandfather Kuzya told me helped me to cope with reality, not to become the slave of a mistaken idea or a never-realized dream. I knew with certainty that I was witnessing the death of our society and so I tried to survive, passing through this great vortex of souls, human stories, from which I was drifting further and further away.