The Other Side of Russia: A Slice of Life in Siberia and the Russian Far East

This extraordinary work is quite a bit more than "a slice of life." It's more like a seven-course meal replete with a different wine for each course topped with cognac, coffee, tea and cigars--not to mention a steady stream of songs, dances, toasts, speeches, gossip and other staples of Russian life east--far east--of the Urals. Relying on her experience as visiting professor at the Irkutsk State University in Irkutsk and the Far Eastern National University in Vladivostok during the years 1993-1995 when the fledgling Russian Federation was crashing headlong into the realities of the new market economy, Professor Hudgins has penned an amazingly detailed, colorful and often painfully vivid reminiscence of life in a place she and her husband Tom rightly dubbed "Absurdistan."

Much of the book chronicles their day-to-day life amid the dreary poverty, the revolting filth, the depressing pollution, the mind-altering inefficiency, the endemic corruption, the physical danger and the stubborn backwardness and Big Brother paranoia that still characterized the Russian reality. Living in a drab high-rise "village" often without electricity or running water, with elevators that seldom worked, in small rooms often without heat in below zero temperatures, where toilet paper typically consisted of pages cut from Soviet era books, subsisting on their wits and craftily purchased food and drink, Sharon and Tom made an adventure out of what most of us would rightly experience as a horror story.

Consider this from Chapter 7: "The water that ran through our taps...ranged in color from clear to amber to orange to purple to black, with accompanying aromas of petroleum, sewer gas, ham, rotten eggs, or fish." Consequently they pumped all their water for drinking, cooking, and tooth brushing through a portable filtration device they had brought with them. When the electricity was on they used the opportunity to boil water for future use, storing it in plastic bottles and an emergency 10-liter plastic container. They saved and used and reused plastic bags for many purposes, including carrying home fresh meat from the market that was cut from the animal and placed in their hands. They even reused the foil from Cadbury chocolate bars since there was no aluminum foil available.

Siberia is a cruel place, one must conclude from reading this book, yet a place where people survive in a hardtack economy buffeted with long cold winters and brief, sometimes sweltering summers, away from the dependable comforts of our world, a place pitifully short on glamour and indoor plumbing, a place I would rather read about than experience first hand.

That Hudgins did experience this first hand surprises me. I wonder why she did it. Part of the reason was her love of adventure no doubt, and part was to write a book about a country that she had been interested in since childhood, and part was to experience a culture in transition.

Central to that experience was her love of food and drink as exemplified by the way she describes in the most amazing detail the bizarre and sumptuous feasts she attended as well as exactly what she and her friends and neighbors ate on a daily basis. Additionally she recounts ritualistic ethnic meals featuring strange dishes and the frequent imbibing of even stranger drink. In one of them Tom is forced to eat raw salted liver still warm from the butchered sheep (while she was able to make herself otherwise busy away from the table!) The food in general was so heavy and the accompanying drink so relentlessly alcoholic that I was weighted down by the mere experience of reading about it! How Sharon and Tom could walk after some of the gluttonous meals forced on them by the dictates of the social graces, is beyond me. Sharon never once admits to regurgitating, even though some days the eating and drinking began full force in the morning and continued throughout the day and even into the wee hours of the next morning. One especially recalls tarasun, a liquor distilled from sour milk by the Buryat people that had the "unappetizing aroma of a baby's wet diaper." (p. 139)

So outrageous was the cuisine that at times I felt like I was reading about a drunken episode of the TV reality show "Fear Factor"!

Yet there is great beauty in this forlorn land of corrupt petty bureaucrats, dirt poor peasants, and mafiya cowboys in shark skin suits. There is the fabled Lake Baikal and environs, the land of the Buryats, historically a nomadic people akin to the Mongol hordes that once ruled half the world. There is the extraordinary white of the Siberian winter when all imperfections are covered in a pillowy down while in the snowy forests Siberian tigers (God save them) still roam.

But most of what Hudgins describes made me realize how far the Western world has come from the days when the serfs still tilled the land in Russia, and how little removed the present day people of Siberia are from that way of life. This sense is illustrated on the cover with the photo of the leather-skinned and shifty-eyed babushki in shawl selling radishes and onions from her dacha at market much as her ancestors did more than a hundred years ago.

Hudgins's book is attractively presented, well-edited, and written in a style that is at once thoroughly professional and as readable as a travel log. There are four maps, a couple of dozen or so black and white photos of buildings, people and scenery, an Index, and a splendid "Bibliographic Essay and Notes" on the literature of Siberia and the Russian Far East.

IN THE OTHER SIDE OF RUSSIA author/educator Sharon Hudgins manages to give us more insight into an area of the world most of us have known only as a destination for political prisoners from the Tsars on, a faceless frozen tundra where few (if any) of our fellowmen could possibly elect to live! than any other author I have read. Hudgins and her husband were sent to Siberia and the Russian Far East as educators - transplanted from the University of Maryland to the universities (yes, they exist!) in Vladivostok and Irkutsk in 1993 and 1994. In the pages of this enormously readable, educational, and fascinating book Hudgins manages to reveal much about the Russian people, the changes brought about by perestroika, the economy of the hinterlands, the pitiable (yet ofen hilariously related!) conditions of high rise living, the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the holidays, the drinking and eating, the educational system, and in short the day to day existence of a people little known to us. Hudgins writes eloquently about the beauty of the terrain (her chapter on Lake Baikal is sheer poetry), the harshness of the winters contrasted with the beauty of Spring and Fall, and when it comes to her chapter on Feasts and Festivals she reveals her own proclivities of being a meticulously detailed, fascinatingly interesting food writer.

There are moments in Hudgins' book when it seems as though we are seeing a negative side of a people who are far behind the rest of the world in the areas of the 'excesses of capitalism' (read electricity, gas, heating, adequate food, sanitation, shopping conveniences), but within pages she turns the negative aspects of life as she and her husband survived it into a praise of the friends and the indomitable spirit of the people around her.

Others have written books about this area of the world and each author has a direction for justifying his/her investigation. Hudgins writes as though for her own pleasure which easily extends to "our" pleasure. Well written, well documented, funny, tender, and in general an all around excellent book. Highly recommended!

Sharon Hudgins and her husband took teaching jobs in Irkutsk and Vladivostok, two major cities in Siberia. They had to adjust to life in post-Soviet Russia, a far cry from the way things were at the University of Maryland, where they held teaching positions.

Hudgins is a food and travel writer, so there is much detail about the food, cooking and grocery supplies in Russia. In fact, several chapters seemed pretty much one party after another with the hospitable Russians, who love a get-together with good food and drink, and party hard all night. It's a good way to ignore the intermittant electricity, lack of running water and other infrastructure problems that plague the crumbling post-Soviet urban landscape.

The most interesting part of the book was a stint in Ulan-Ude, capital of the Buryat Republic. The Buryat are a Mongolian people, cousins of the Mongol Horde of Genghis Khan. The only Tibetan lamasery (monastery) is in Ulan-Ude. The Buryat Republic borders Lake Baikal, the deepest, oldest lake in the world, home to unique species of flora and fauna and a fascinating place to read about.

This is a fascinating travel book, with a lot of fun anecdotes and stories about horrific train rides, scary food (a sheep's head with the wool still on it, and blood pudding in a sheep's stomach, no way to say "no thank you" to the amiable hosts who are putting on a real spread for their guests.) If you are interested in Russia, in a part of Russia most Westerners never visit, you should read "The Other Side of Russia."