REPORT   FROM  RODCHREVO

 When I visited Boris it was only  25 degrees below – comparatively warm for early winter. After all, the Artic Circle did go through the town.

            Boris was a burly man who appeared much bigger due to the layers of clothing he had on. He had some fat, very necessary for living in northern Siberia where even in early summer the harbours are frozen . Looking  like a Russian bear. with his furry hat  and coat , he came into focus through the driving snow.

            “You made it then,” was his greeting in the north-eastern Russian dialect (or words to this effect in English).  I thought he could have been a bit more effusive considering I had struggled four kilometres on foot from the nearest town. He knew I was coming to see him. Speaking some Russian,  I had been given the privilege by my newspaper of interviewing him, at his “home” near Rodchevo. Having been waiting only a couple of minutes I was already beginning to seize up in the icy blast that had crossed hundreds of kilometres of wilderness. The wind struck like a blow.

                        Inside Boris`s “house” , a homemade  wood and cardboard shed, it was almost cosy. A coal fire provided warmth – and  smoke! I was out of the wind, at least. Huddling round the fire and keeping all my clothes on , I looked through the two tiny windows at the back of beyond  Boris called his homeground. Different in anybody`s language  but doubly so because we were on a rubbish tip.

                        “How do you manage to live here, Boris?” Fortunately he could understand my “standard” but not fluent Russian.

                        “You`d be surprised how much tinned stuff is thrown away on this dump. All perfectly good. Better than in town, where food is hard to find and even harder to pay for. Look in those boxes.”

                        I discovered tins galore : of fruit and meat, potatoes, carrots, fish, even caviar. You could live sumptuously on this tip provide you had a tin opener. Which of course Boris had. His eyes twinkled in the musty gloom. Nearly time to light the (re-cycled) candles. He could see I was impressed.

                        “However much you earn in town you can`t buy anything. Here you can eat easily.”

                        I felt he had made a good point. Bread had been in short supply in town and its inhabitants were doing their best to stockpile food for the harsher winter conditions to come. The dump appeared to be immune to these shortages.

                        “Only one thing against this,” Boris added  with a half smile. “No indoor closet.”

                        For the next few minutes I was regaled with the  Russian anecdote equivalent to brass monkey weather; the allusions were remarkably anatomically similar , but adducing a different  animal. I was very glad I had had the foresight to visit the loo in town; I didn`t relish a freezing excursion in  the snow. People in this area didn`t go out, in any case,  in  the winter  unless there were very compelling reasons.

                        “And no running water either, Boris?”

                        “Washing is no problem. Plenty of snow in winter and the running streams in summer. Get up a good fug inside when it is cold and Serge`s (or Bob`s) your uncle. You`ve soon got warm water.”

                        “The real problem is the local militia,” he went on.    “So far they haven`t bothered me, perhaps because they think no-one would be fool enough to live so far from town and on a tip at that. Many of my friends and acquaintances who lived on the outskirts of town have been arrested and their sheds bulldozed.”

                        “But you are known as Bomzhi: people of no fixed abode, right, Boris? I asked.

                        “Well, what can you do if you can`t get work?”

                        Boris, I knew, had a petty criminal record and had gravitated like so many others to the town area , to form a vagrant underclass of ex-cons who proved a nuisance to authorities and residents alike. But you had to have sympathy with such as Boris : there was no NACRO or similar organisation here! In any case it was hard to justify destroying whole neighbourhoods of wooden homes because they were politically embarrassing.

                        “I remember one particular day last summer when the militia came with their bulldozers. They had the excuse  that it was an offence to be out of work for more than six months , but they just wanted to get rid of us. After all, my flat was taken away from me and with it my job. As happened to many others.

                        Anyway, scores of us were scraping some sort of living in our do-it yourself homes , trying to make good you might say, when the crack-down came. First we saw the armed militia and then the bulldozers behind them . They clearly  meant business. They  began shouting and firing guns into the air. `Bomzhi, ` they called, `we`ve come to get you.` We all knew what this meant – arrest and imprisonment or shooting on the spot for trying to resist. There was little we could do except flee – if we could. Luckily our `village` was on the edge  of town  near to the woods. Even so, many who couldn`t run for one reason or another were arrested. From the shelter of the  forest we could we could hear our homes being destroyed. Those of us who had families , wives and children,  fortunately not many , did not attempt to run and they with their families were placed in labour camps.  It was terrible to hear the sounds of destruction , the ripping apart  of buildings so laboriously put together. Above all, the shouts and laughter of the men doing the deed, fellow Rusians, hurt more than anything. In a short while nothing was left , only piles of rubble.”

                        I tried to sound calm as I asked Boris how long he had been here. “Four months. If I can survive the winter, things can only get better. This is where I see my future  for the time being at least. I have a better life here than I would in town even supposing I got somewhere to live.”

                        I peered through the grimy windows. “What`s all that, Boris?”

                        “That is the result of all my scavenging, …Tony…is it?”

                        I nodded; he pronounced my name  in a distinctive  East European manner: with a very flat o.

                        “You see all those crates? Full of useful articles or things to sell. I can get money on those empty bottles. There are some more tins there as well. “

                        “What`s in the sacks?”  (I had counted at least twenty.)

                        “Old bread, loaves and such like. I sell them to local farmers for pig food. Don`t worry about me,” he said with a smile. “I have a full belly and a full purse. Most of the time!”

                        In a couple of months I knew it would get even colder. Wouldn`t it be something of a struggle to survive then, I asked him. 

                        “Well,.the path  will be completely covered in deep snow so I will have to be out there with my shovel every day. In minus 40 you have to be careful of frostbite. No, it`s not a had life if you are careful. At least here I am safe and work when I like. In fact, it`s easier here than in town….”

                        “Didn`t you have a companion at one time , Boris?”

                        “I did. Poor Igor stayed out too long one day hunting game and got frost bite. He had to be taken to hospital. My only company now is bears, wild dogs and the squirrels. Maybe I shall get fed up with it come next winter and if the law is liberalised for us, as I believe it will be , I may return to `civilisation ` if I can call it that. “

                        “But for the moment no worries, eh, Boris?

                        “The only thing I have  to worry me now is the occasional bear that comes too close, “ he said with a smile. “I don`t have to worry about the militia turning up with bulldozers  to knock my home down. I live here and don`t bother anyone – and no-one bothers me….except the occasional reporter.”

                        His broad smile was reassuring. He had agreed to this meeting after all.

                        “Thousands were not so lucky as myself. They died in woods like these, either from cold, starvation, or persecution, or all three. Here I feel safe. But I`ve built another shelter deeper in the woods….just in case.”

                        Before I left this remarkable man , Boris added a  final comment,  answering the unspoken query I could not bring myself to ask.  I could see he would survive the unconventional lifestyle he had adopted.  But was he happy? That was the question.

                        “At least, while I live here I won`t go hungry. My life is calmer. I feel much happier here than I was.”

                        I trudged back through the snow towards the town with its shortages and hand-to-mouth population. At least, Boris was King of his Dump.

© A.B. Finlay Ph.D