Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia

by David Greene

Overview

Travels with NPR host David Greene along the Trans-Siberian Railroad capture an overlooked, idiosyncratic Russia in the age of Putin.

Far away from the trendy cafés, designer boutiques, and political protests and crackdowns in Moscow, the real Russia exists.

Midnight in Siberia chronicles David Greene’s journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway, a 6,000-mile cross-country trip from Moscow to the Pacific port of Vladivostok. In quadruple-bunked cabins and stopover towns sprinkled across the country’s snowy landscape, Greene speaks with ordinary Russians about how their lives have changed in the post-Soviet years.

These travels offer a glimpse of the new Russia—a nation that boasts open elections and newfound prosperity but continues to endure oppression, corruption, a dwindling population, and stark inequality.

We follow Greene as he finds opportunity and hardship embodied in his fellow train travelers and in conversations with residents of towns throughout Siberia.

We meet Nadezhda, an entrepreneur who runs a small hotel in Ishim, fighting through corrupt layers of bureaucracy every day. Greene spends a joyous evening with a group of babushkas who made international headlines as runners-up at the Eurovision singing competition. They sing Beatles covers, alongside their traditional songs, finding that music and companionship can heal wounds from the past. In Novosibirsk, Greene has tea with Alexei, who runs the carpet company his mother began after the Soviet collapse and has mixed feelings about a government in which his family has done quite well. And in Chelyabinsk, a hunt for space debris after a meteorite landing leads Greene to a young man orphaned as a teenager, forced into military service, and now figuring out if any of his dreams are possible.

Midnight in Siberia is a lively travel narrative filled with humor, adventure, and insight. It opens a window onto that country’s complicated relationship with democracy and offers a rare look into the soul of twenty-first-century Russia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393245905
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/20/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	259,631
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

David Greene is cohost of NPR’s Morning Edition. He is NPR’s former Moscow bureau chief and has spent more than a decade covering politics and events from the White House and abroad. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Rose, a restaurant owner and fellow traveler.

Read an Excerpt

     It's the first thing international visitors notice: The streets are filled with nervous, blank faces. In public many Russians don't seem to acknowledge that other humans are sharing their space. They are indifferent if, say, you want to squeeze past on a crowded sidewalk. They avoid eye contact as if they might get a disease from it. (A not-unrelated point: Russians who visit the United States are equally perplexed by Americans, and their obsession with smiling at people they've never met.)
     You come to understand these tendencies. In Soviet times being in public was risky. If you accidentally spoke to a stranger who was under suspicion from the government, or told a joke about Stalin, or appeared too friendly with a foreigner, it could mean interrogation or in extreme cases worse—a journey to a Siberian prison camp. Many Russians developed coldness in public as defense, suppressing thoughts and feelings, not letting their true selves escape. And while the risks of putting yourself out there are far less severe in today's Russia, remnants of that behaviour remain. During three years living in Moscow, my wife, Rose, and I slowly adjusted to this. If someone slipped on the ice or was otherwise in need of help strangers would often just walk by pretending not to notice. Why risk getting involved, especially if the police were being called? Rose and I would be the only people coming to someone's aid, doing all we could with limited Russian-language skills. A British diplomat friend once saw two teenage girls hit by a speeding car as they were running across a street. One of the girls was decapitated. The driver just sped from the scene. Our friend stopped his car, called an ambulance, and ran to the other girl, who was screaming uncontrollably next to her friend's body. All the while, cars passed and pedestrians walked by as if nothing was out of order.
     While seemingly cold and vacant to strangers on the outside, many Russians are beautiful and generous on the inside. Their public disengagement can be shocking, but they are some of the warmest people on earth. Once they get to know you and invite you into their homes, many Russians will freely share their stories, traditions, and food. When you enter a home, two things happen: You are offered a pair of slippers—polite encouragement to take off your shoes and make yourself comfortable—then you are offered tea or vodka. I spent many days hoping for tea and getting vodka...

Table of Contents

Author's Note on the Map ix

Map x

Prologue xiii

Introduction 3

1 Rose 19

2 Sergei 25

3 Boris 46

4 Another Sergei 63

5 Liubov 72

6 Nina 92

7 Alexei 112

6 Vasily 121

9 Galina 134

10 Marina 151

11 Angelina 159

12 Andrei 174

13 Polina 185

14 Ivan 198

15 Tatiana 210

16 Nadezhda 216

17 Yet Another Sergei 233

18 Taisiya 252

19 Igor 266

20 Olca 274

21 Vitaly 286

Acknowledgments 395

Index 299

Editorial Reviews

08/04/2014
In 2013, after several years serving as NPR’s Moscow bureau chief, Greene traveled 6,000 miles of the Trans-Siberian Railway in a quixotic attempt to understand the Russian soul. As Green journeyed across the Siberian landscape, he made frequent stops to interview ordinary Russians in a variety of situations to capture the everyday realities of post-Soviet Russia. The result is chronicled in this travelogue that reads like a series of episodic radio pieces in the NPR style, a collage of Green’s interviews and insights from scholars about Russian history that attempts to answer a few difficult questions: what do the Russians want? Why do they tolerate a corrupt and restrictive government? And, as the Arab Spring erupts in the Middle East, how close is Russia to (another) revolution? What Greene finds is complex and frequently contradictory but all the more thought-provoking: a small business owner who believes Russia must be patient and slowly “develop” towards democracy, a taxi driver who wishes for socialism, an anti-Putin activist who believes Russia needs an autocrat like Stalin (but more benign). Despite the poverty and repression he frequently encounters, Greene remains optimistic throughout his travels, and he reproduces the source of this conviction in this collection of vignettes. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Beautifully written… The sharply observed vignettes, combined with the moving, elegiac quality of the prose make it a hard book to put down. David Greene’s travels provide insights and context for some of the more dramatic recent events in Russia that will appeal to both the casual traveler and the seasoned observer.

Fiona Hill

Greene is a great storyteller, and what a story he has to tell. A fascinating and thought-provoking journey deep into Russia’s physical vastness and soul. Greene’s landscape is inhabited by a cast of characters that light up both and would have made Anton Chekhov proud. A first-rate tale that puts you aboard the Trans-Siberian Railroad on the journey of a lifetime.

Aaron David Miller

In this picaresque story of adventure, David Greene reaches beyond Putin’s Kremlin across Siberia to show us Russian life in the Raw—the gritty stoicism, surprising warmth and generosity, black humor, and resilience of the narod, the average people. A storyteller with a human touch, Greene finds Russians tested by tragedy and war as he joins them in their cramped apartments, jammed trains, and gulping beer and pickled horse sausage in their steam baths, facing an uncertain future with an unexpected streak of inner wildness. His Russians are stolidly patriotic and, even now, drawn mostly to strong leaders, resigned to tough justice and preferring stability and harsh rule to the chaotic uncertainties of democracy, their personal lives ‘full of poetry, pain, and laughter.’

Hedrick Smith

Describe[s] the Russia of the vast interior…. An impressionistic book, a book about people along the way.

Bruce Ramsey - Seattle Times

[An] epic journey by rail.

Andrew McCarthy - New York Times Book Review

A mesmerizing, confounding, comforting and thought-provoking book.

Kevin Begos - Associated Press

★ 11/01/2014
NPR's former Moscow bureau chief explains that his book is "a journey and an adventure, a wild ride on one of the world's epic train routes, 6,000 miles from Moscow to far East Asia taking us into the heart of a country and into the lives of its people, asking how their lives have changed in the post-Soviet years." Greene's journey enables him to get past the headlines and provide insightful observations about the politics and culture of Russia today. (LJ 9/15/14)

Library Journal

2014-07-13
A former Russia correspondent for NPR ends his gig by taking a train across Siberia, generating new experiences and remembering earlier ones. Greene, who's still with NPR as a host with Morning Edition, debuts with a journey that is personal and emotional, both actual and metaphorical. He begins by explaining his history with Russia: He and his significant other, Rose, moved there in 2009; the inability to speak or understand Russian remained an issue for both of them—but one they were able to surmount with the aid of Sergei, a translator who became one of the author's best friends. During his journey of thousands of miles (Rose was with him only temporarily), Greene tells us about the hassles of traveling (security agents shadowing them), the explicit and tacit rules for behavior on trains, the charms of traveling third class (as circumstance occasionally forced them to do), and the people they encountered—both on the train and in the communities where they stopped. Greene had met some during other reporting excursions; others were strangers who shared rail compartments, managed hotels and drove public transportation. But traveling also provided Greene an opportunity to recall important experiences throughout his life. He recalls an intense conversation about hockey, a visit to a Holocaust memorial and a series of low points in his journalism career. In addition, the author offers quite a few quotations from other travelers and from Russian writers—Chekhov appears more than once. He also speculates continually about the Russian character: What do they really think about Vladimir Putin? Why does there seem to be lingering nostalgia for Stalin? How do they manage to deal with the almost Kafkaesque aspects of the Russian bureaucracy? Glowing in its profound affection for the Russian people, an affection Greene convinces readers to share.

Kirkus Reviews