Free Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia by David Greene

how far Russia has come since Soviet times (they drink and appreciate good French wines!) and how far it hasn’t (they still undervalue more obscure wines highly respected in the West).
    My observations about Russian life often resonated with Boris and Sergei, who would add their own thoughts. Occasionally they just politely nodded, which I took as a sign that I was trying too hard to see deeper meaning in every experience in Russia. I seemed to be trying too hard here. The three of us smiled and took a swig of the underpriced Chilean merlot.
    “Boris, didn’t you tell me you like Georgian wine?”
    We had discussed wine from Georgia, the former Soviet republic to the south, which claims to be the birthplace of wine. Ancient vineyards there fell into disrepair in Soviet times but have made a comeback since.
    “You had a Georgian friend who liked giving toasts and overserving you, right?”
    “It’s a big story.” Boris smiled. “Eto istoria druga, Gia.”
    “The story of my friend, Gia,” Sergei said, translating through a mouthful of spaghetti.
    The warning from Boris that this was quite a story had Sergei a tad on edge because it meant so much unanticipated translation. But he was also eager to listen.
    “Gia and I—and both our families—lived in the same communal apartment in Moscow until I was in the fifth grade. There were ten families. In one flat.”
    In a way Boris was lucky. His family was Jewish but didn’t advertise it. As Jews, not anywhere near the top of the hierarchy in Soviet times, Boris and his family could have been assigned to live somewhere far less pleasant than Moscow. Having the government offer a job and an apartment in Moscow, or any big city, was considered a luxury. Of course, everything is relative.
    “My parents, my aunt and me, shared a single room, eighteen square meters.”
    “How did everyone fit?” I wondered aloud.
    Boris took his two index fingers and put them flat against each other, pointing in opposite directions, representing two beds, touching like Tetris blocks. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not sure how my parents survived. But David, they were the best years of my life. I had my friends and family, all in one place. There was a babushka from another family who loved to cook. I can still taste her veal cutlets.”
    Sitting with Boris and Sergei in this basement café, I began to appreciate why Boris cherished those times. The world outside—frightening and dark and complicated. The world inside—cramped, yes, difficult, absolutely, but simple. I wouldn’t wish for his life. No doubt, I’ll never understand it. But I was understanding why Boris has happy memories of youth.
    “When we were both in fifth grade, Gia moved away to Georgia. And things got worse. Families just weren’t getting along anymore. One woman spat in other families’ food.”
    Sadly, that was reality for too many Russians. In her 1999 book, Everyday Stalinism , Australian-American historian Sheila Fitzpatrick described Soviet communal apartments as cauldrons of jealousy and paranoia. “Private property, including pots, pans and plates . . . had to be stored in the kitchen, a public area . . . jealously guarded by each individual family. Demarcation lines were strictly laid down. Envy and covetousness flourished in the closed world of the kommunalka , where space and family size were often mismatched and families with large rooms were often deeply resented by families with small ones.” She told the story—not uncommon—of a Moscow apartment where one family essentially spied on another, “writing denunciations to various local authorities. The result was [that] the family was successively disenfranchised, refused passports and finally, after the father’s arrest, evicted.” But “against the horror stories,” she added, “must be put the recollections of a minority whose neighbors in communal apartments were mutually supportive and came to constitute a kind of extended