Some hours later the older Tatiana arrived. I put down Celebrity Hair and went into the hall to engage her in conversation. She was a solid, middle-aged woman with red cheeks and a blonde bob. Where Tatiana the daughter was cold and aloof, Tatiana the mother was warm and open. ‘Have you toured the building yet?’ she asked. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Then let’s go!’
She led me upstairs to the computer room. Rashid was in there, staring intently at a monitor. The centre had internet access, and I was welcome to use it. Then I was shown the room where the girls of the village enhanced their femininity through sewing and weaving. But now Tatiana was so inspired by the poetry and beauty of life in Petropavlovka that she seized my hand and, staring directly in my eyes, started to tell me her story.
‘Before I came to Petropavlovka,’ she said, ‘I had many professions. I am a trained philologist, and a qualified librarian. I worked for the newspaper Sovietskaya Rossiya – do you know that paper? I was the editor. And my husband was a film director. Because of my work I had many opportunities other people in our country did not. I have been to thirty countries. I have never been to Scotland, and that is a pity, but I have been to London five times! I love London, especially – what’s it called – St James’s Park! Have you been there?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘So beautiful! But let me tell you – I suffered from bad health in the early 1990s. I was hospitalised five times. And I was so ill that I saw no reason to go on living. I didn’t care then about parks and careers and travel. What was it all worth? What did it all mean? But when I heard of Vissarion and his teachings, everything changed. I recovered from my illness and I started to see a reason to live again.’ She paused, took a breath, then leaned forward so her nose was almost pressed against mine. ‘There are five thousand books in my personal library. Five thousand! And yet, I would give them all up for Vissarion’s seven. There is such wisdom in the Last Testament – it’s like nothing I’ve ever read before! And I am not uneducated, or gullible, you understand? I am a trained philologist and a professional librarian. People say, “Vissarion is Christ, he is the Messiah” – and all that blah blah blah. Is he Christ? Who can say? All I know is that he is an incredible man …’
The ground floor was a communal TV room, doubling as a dormitory for workers from Vissarion’s mountain posted temporarily to the village. Two of them were in there, watching Back to the Future. One of them was a dark-eyed dwarf with enormous shoulders who was holding a cheese grater in his hand. Tatiana introduced him to me as Ali, from Dagestan. ‘He is a Muslim!’ she said, especially proud of the fact that a member of this particular religion had converted: the prophet decreed death for apostates, after all. The second worker was a young guy in paramilitary fatigues. Tatiana didn’t introduce him, or even look at him.
A photo of Vissarion and several paintings were hanging on the wall. One of them was a muddy landscape Tatiana had bought with her first ever wage; another was a bright painting of slender girls of varying ethnicity dancing and banging tambourines. The painting was a carefully sexless ‘tribute to the beauty of the young girls of the community’. She mentioned the artist’s name. ‘Do you know him?’ she asked, as if fame in Petropavlovka amounted to fame beyond the borders of Vissarion’s world.
‘No,’ I said.
Tatiana was disappointed. ‘A pity. He is very talented. We have so many talented artists and musicians in our community. You know, before we came to this village there was nothing at all. It was dead, like all the others you saw on the way here. But now, with the money from the sale of my flat in Moscow, I have built this school, a dance hall and my own cottage. But I am not finished: I dream that this is the beginning of what will one day be my art gallery …’
Suddenly she turned to Ali and Camouflage Boy. ‘Right, you two, out.’ There was a pause. Nobody moved. ‘I’m going to show Daniel a film.’
‘Excuse me?’ I said.
‘It’s all right, they don’t mind.’
Ali got up and left, taking his cheese grater with him. Camouflage Boy was slower to get to his feet.
‘Oi! Get out!’
‘Really, it’s not necessary –’
‘Oh, don’t worry about him,’ said Tatiana. ‘You’re our guest.’ Camouflage Boy exited, grumbling as he was cast into the outer darkness. Tatiana slid a DVD into the machine. The sound of ethereal bells ringing in the heavens filled the room, and then the screen lit up with a revolving gold cross, its four points enclosed in a sparkling circle, and the narrative began …
Intro
Mountains, forests and shimmering Tiburkul, ‘God’s Lake’, in Khakass: beautiful as a dream, bearing so little resemblance to the bitterly cold tomb-world I had just been wandering around in. Children are laughing, couples are smiling. The narrator echoes young Tatiana: ‘The Aryans lived here, and are preordained to return to fulfil the Will of the Almighty … the heart of the earth is right here.’
Data
There are tens of thousands of members of the church in Russia and abroad. Of the four thousand that live around the mountain itself:
39.5% are men
60.5% are women.
The average age is between 30 and 50. Of these:
36% have higher education
31% are graduates of colleges or trade schools
33% have school certificates only
85% of the community members are Russian
15% are ‘other’ (comprising thirty-four nationalities).
There are 830 children under the age of sixteen; the population of the community is growing nine times faster than the Russian average.
Lifestyle
There is no ban on the consumption of dairy products, but they are not recommended. Animals are not eaten, but horses are kept for haulage. Sheep’s wool and goat’s hair are used to make warm clothes in winter. The community grows a variety of crops, including rye, oats, buckwheat, and potatoes. They strive to keep technology to a minimum and plant by hand. And yet, even operating under these restrictions there are greenhouses where the community’s farmers are successfully growing crops atypical for Siberia – tomatoes, sweet peppers, cucumbers, aubergines, and even grapes! All of this is being combined to create interesting new culinary experiences.
Transformations of the soul are under way: a computer technician learns rod-weaving; a chauffeur becomes a potter; a metallurgist is now a blacksmith. City dwellers are mastering traditional arts and crafts.
The goal is to become an entirely self-sufficient settlement. At the moment, however, the community is still attached to the world economy, and its craftsmen sell furniture and other works of the hand at festivals and fairs in the Krasnoyarsk region to raise funds.
The mountain
The Abode of Dawn is being built on Mount Sukhaya, 1,000 metres above sea level. This is where Vissarion lives. At the moment the buildings are made of wood, but as the skills of craftsmen develop it will be transformed into a city of stone that shall endure for ever. The town is divided into 120 plots, fourteen streets radiating starlike from the centre. It will not grow beyond these limitations, for cities are dehumanising. The other members of the community will live together in a network of villages radiating from the mountain.
Men and women
One man and one woman, living together in a bond of love that produces children. A believer will never leave his family of his own free will.
Children
Boys are raised as master craftsmen, while girls are trained to be feminine, skilled hostesses, who care for the home. The creativity of children is encouraged, their imagination is fostered, but no negative or destructive images are permitted. Only the good in a child’s soul should be strengthened. Petropavlovka has a media studio that produces ‘Magic Box’ comics, concerts and activities for the children according to these principles; and so children are exposed only to kind, gentle stories, that they may grow up the same way.
Communion
In some of the villages, all possessions are held in common. The aim is to overcome the personality, and forge new types of relationship devoid of ego and fear. Problems are discussed together and resolved together. Sometimes the people of these villages meet, link arms and form a circle for communal singing and dancing, singing the new songs written by the musicians of the community.
Outro
The ethereal bells return and the Messiah, in blood-red robes, walks through a crowd of adoring followers. The camera follows him for a full two minutes, mysterious, silent, acknowledging the love showered down on him with a smile. His eyes are half-closed, giving him a dreamy expression: he is present, yes, but also elsewhere, someplace higher and brighter. Vadim the Chronicler is on Vissarion’s left, while on the right another man, wearing an altogether graver expression, is gently guiding the Messiah forward, a hand at his elbow. The camera focuses on the Teacher’s blissful expression, and the happiness of his followers.
Vissarion does not speak. He keeps his revelation to himself. But you see the beauty he is creating, don’t you? And though you do not believe yet, surely you are at least curious …
The film finished. Camouflage Boy returned, Ali behind him, cheese grater still in hand, and he had also now acquired a turnip. Ali started telling me his story, and the video I had just seen played a central part in it. It wasn’t easy getting the details out of him though: Russian was his second language, and he answered questions briefly, in short sentences that stood alone and came to a definitive end, never opening up any other thoughts or associations, always looking down or away as soon as he was finished.
Ali was from the mountains. I had read about that life: remote villages where men lived as tribal patriarchs with four wives and enormous families. I had read too that Wahhabism, the strict Islamic sect promoted by the Saudis, was spreading, radicalising the populace. Ali didn’t say anything about that, though: he had lived for years in Mahachkala, the capital, running some businesses: shops, cafés, a gym. It was in the gym that he had first heard about the Teacher, from a Vissarionite who used to come in a few times a week to train. Like Ali, he was a power lifter. (‘Because I am small,’ he said, ‘I have always had to fight.’) The Vissarionite talked about his beliefs; Ali liked what he said. Then he gave him some videos. Ali liked what he saw. After that he visited the community twice and had three meetings with the Teacher.
‘Personal meetings?’ I asked.
‘Face to face,’ he nodded, keen to make me understand how close he had been to the Son of God. ‘I was impressed by the Teacher’s words. And so I decided to sell my things and come here.’
Now he lived on the mountain, close to the Teacher, alongside the most deeply committed believers. His new trade was that of a stonemason, and he made steps for the path that led to the temple on top of the mountain, so that in the future it would be easier for the faithful to get up there. He worked day and night, but he was too busy to complain. (‘And anyway, because I am small, I have always had to fight.’) Life was getting a little easier too: they now had electricity, not from a grid but from solar panels. They gave power for only a few hours a day, but it was enough for his TV.
It had been question–answer all the way, the most excruciating sort of conversation. But then suddenly, apropos of nothing, he looked me directly in the eyes and said, ‘I have a four-month-old daughter.’ He paused; that wasn’t all. ‘And my wife is Russian.’
In the Soviet Union the leaders of non-Russian republics had frequently married Slavic wives; it was a mark of status. Ali wanted me to know how far he had come, how much he had gained by abandoning his old life of struggling against mockery, derision, bullies. Now he struggled for the future. In Siberia, and only in Siberia, had he found meaningful work, acceptance, family, love, status. And it was all down to Vissarion.
Meanwhile Camouflage Boy had switched Back to the Future back on. He wasn’t interested in talking and sat facing away from us. I took the hint and went upstairs. But noise carries in wooden houses, and a few minutes later I heard arguing.
Male voice: I can behave how I want!
Tatiana’s voice: Not in my house, you can’t!
This wasn’t the first time I had overheard mutterings of conflict. Earlier, whispered voices had travelled up the stairs:
They’re calling a meeting to discuss the relationship between the two girls … Masha and Lena … they wanted to live together … but they fight all the time … they’re going to be told that they have to become friends or they’ll be separated … sent to live in different houses …
Meanwhile the meeting under way in the German House when we arrived was also about resolving conflict between two men. The whole community was getting together to discuss possible solutions.
Were we already uncovering the dark truth behind the façade of bunny-petting, vegetable-eating loveliness?
Well, maybe. The tone usually adopted in writing on modern-day saviours and their followers is extremely negative. The miniature apocalypses of David Koresh and Jim Jones are world renowned, but there are plenty of other, smaller ones too. Just the day before flying to Abakan I had read an article about an American organisation called the Family: I had never heard of them, but the allegations were truly horrific, detailing sexual abuse so bad that one of the victims, who was actually the group’s chosen Messiah, had rebelled and sought out his mother, the Family’s ‘spiritual leader’, in order to kill her. He failed, but not before stabbing her lieutenant to death and then retreating to an abandoned car park, where he shot himself in despair.
And what about ‘brainwashing’? Semyon’s father, a high-ranking Soviet engineer, was outraged his son was accompanying me to see Vissarion. He was concerned that the group might somehow be in possession of a magical, hypnotic technique for separating the weak and gullible from their money. This was a common view: why else would anyone be so stupid as to believe a traffic cop was Jesus?
And then there were the comments of the taxi driver, which I later found repeated in the Russian press, that Vissarion was working a scam, that the children in the villages were undernourished and infected with tuberculosis, and that his followers might one day commit mass suicide. There was never any evidence given to support this claim other than that it had happened before, in other countries, under other Messiahs.
There are indeed a lot of Christs out there giving Messiahs a bad name. But I have purposefully avoided the word ‘cult’ in this narrative, not out of some spirit of equivalence, or approval of what Vissarion is doing, but simply because it is such a loaded term that it gets in the way of seeing.
I was wary of looking for evil. I knew that I was actively seeking cracks in the façade, that I wanted them to be there, like someone staring at a grainy photograph of a blur in the sky, willing it to be a UFO, when really it’s a smear on the lens. But I was equally determined not to do this: it’s good to be on the alert, but being overly suspicious is no better a way of approaching a phenomenon than being overly credulous of it. The Vissarionites had fights: what was shocking about that? They didn’t claim to have attained perfection. Not yet, anyway.
I was there to listen, to record, to try to understand; interpretation or judgement could come later. I resolved then to resist the (admittedly powerful) urge to prophesy impending fiery death based on whatever angry words I heard. Not every Messiah is David Koresh or Jim Jones.
After she had finished castigating Camouflage Boy, Tatiana invited us to join her in her house for some supper, where Natasha had prepared some more ‘interesting new culinary experiences’, this time in the form of oats and salt, for our delectation.
I studied the room again, seeing it more clearly. The painting of the dancing girls in the TV room was reproduced here as a calendar. The year was given as 45 ED, that is to say the Era of Dawn, which had begun with Vissarion’s birth. Underneath there was something about ancient Chinese methods of healing and an alphabet of ‘magical’ words: I tried to memorise them, but when I came to write them down later they had all merged into each other – variations on bright, clear, magical, wonderful and so on. Magical words, it would seem, lose their magic when placed in close proximity to each other.
It was time to inaugurate me into some of the mysteries. Tatiana was holding some framed photographs of Vissarion behind her back; one by one she brought them forward to reveal unto me the changing face of the Messiah.
Portrait #1 consciously mimicked Catholic iconography. Vissarion’s head was bowed, and his eyes gazed inwards at some terrible torment, as though he were suffering terrible agonies on the road to Calvary itself. This Vissarion was not so much the God-man as the man-god, a mortal struggling with the divine part of his being. Could he carry this burden, this terrible responsibility?
Portrait #2, stark, black and white, had been taken in Israel. Vissarion’s eyes were still haunted, his features were still gaunt, but there had been a change. Now he was looking up towards a sky we could not see, and an illumination had touched his face, giving it an ethereal quality.
Portrait #3 revealed the Christ Triumphant: Vissarion sitting on a throne with a gold crown on his head. Thorns and roses were intertwined in the metalwork, the Teacher acknowledging pain, but merging it with something new and brighter, with beauty and hope and love. Vissarion was smiling too, having attained harmony with the divine aspect of his being. He now wore white: last year he had cut up his old red robe and gifted squares of it to his followers.
‘Did he cut it himself?’ I asked.
Tatiana looked puzzled. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s not important. Look! He is a king! And doesn’t he look like Christ?’
‘Yes, he does.’
‘It’s not a coincidence! For two thousand years this face was prepared. On his first trip to Israel, people asked for his autograph …’
Tatiana had obviously made up her mind since we’d spoken in the house. Vissarion most certainly was the Christ, and she was out to prove it to me.
Next, Tatiana pressed a Vissarionite cross into my palm.
‘This is a symbol of Vissarion’s mission on earth: the four points of the cross represent the world’s four main faiths: Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. The circle encloses them because the Teacher has come to unite all religions under the banner of the Last Testament.’
‘Why those four?’ I asked. ‘Why not include Judaism? It’s the source of Christianity and Islam. And Hinduism is older than all of them.’
‘Er … those are OK,’ said Tatiana, ‘but they’re not that important … they’re just branches off the main tree.’ She changed tack: ‘Do you believe in reincarnation?’
‘It can’t be proven either way,’ I said.
‘The Teacher says that we all live many times.’
‘Hm …’
‘Listen to this uncommon wisdom: in the Last Testament, Vissarion asks whether we should love both the good man and the evil man, or only the good man.’
‘Christ commanded us to love everyone,’ I said.
‘That’s a good answer,’ she said, before promptly launching into a long speech I couldn’t follow. Semyon, blank-eyed and miserable, had given up interpreting: theological discussions just weren’t his thing. I think she said that as the soul is eternal, you can’t measure an individual by his actions alone, but rather have to consider the state of his soul throughout its existence in many bodies and forms throughout time. What I definitely understood was her conclusion: ‘What Vissarion says that is startling and new is that we must love the good within the evil man. No one is entirely evil; everyone has good characteristics. Maybe the evil man is hurt, or afraid. So we should love him.’ She sat back and smiled, beaming at the Teacher’s wisdom.
Hate the sin, love the sinner: not exactly revelatory. Although this old proverb differs from Vissarion’s formulation in that it doesn’t ask you to believe the rather naïve proposition that all wicked men are secretly scared children within.
The scales had not fallen from my eyes. I wasn’t quite responding with the awe that Tatiana had hoped for. It was time to break out the heavy weaponry. She disappeared into her room and then returned, weighed down by six fat red volumes with gold embossed lettering on the spines. She laid them on the table slowly, one by one, with reverence.
At first she was silent. I needed time to fully appreciate the wonder that lay before me. Then she spoke: ‘This is the Last Testament.’
‘Yes.’
‘It is printed in St Petersburg.’
‘I see.’
‘There are seven volumes, but only one to four and number seven have been printed …’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Er … we didn’t have enough money to print volumes five and six.’
‘I see.’
She indicated the tome lying on top. ‘This is volume seven. It is of especial importance.’ It was a big book; indeed, they seemed to be getting bigger.
‘It’s on the internet,’ she said, ‘in English. Have you read it?’
There was such hope in her eyes. In fact, I had made a sincere stab at it, carrying it on the metro and reading passages between stations. I remembered some stuff about the outer space mind; some seemingly contradictory statements to the effect that God was the essence of love but also that God didn’t care about us; that the ego was bad and that only Vissarion was absolutely without ego … and also that the Jews had a ‘special mission’. But how it all came together I had no idea.
‘The translation …’ I said.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s … problematic.’
She looked crestfallen; but it wasn’t a surprise. She knew. ‘But I did agree with Vissarion about the ego – that we must struggle to overcome it …’
‘Yes, yes, but all religions say the ego is bad. Vissarion is the first spiritual teacher to say it can be overcome! For there are three testaments: the first, the Old Testament, is about faith. The second, the New Testament, is about hope. And the final one, Vissarion’s Last Testament, is about love …’ She cracked open volume seven: ‘At the beginning there is an open letter from Vissarion to the Patriarch, and to Putin.’
‘What’s in it?’
‘He explains how to save Russia.’
‘No.’
Tatiana was God-intoxicated. Her thoughts moved at a bewildering speed, making connections that were obvious to her, but less so to me. I knew she would jump on my brain until I surrendered.
‘There is so much wisdom in this book! People are sceptical, of course. They say: if you’re the Christ then why don’t you die? The Teacher replies: the times today are less hard. Then people ask: if you’re the Christ, why do you have five children? But the Teacher has an answer for them also. Jesus was only here for thirty-three years. It’s irresponsible to produce children if you can’t raise them … But I will be among you for a long time. What else do you need to know? Ah! He is strongly against money. Money is the root of so much evil … there is no lending or borrowing here. If money is given, then it must be forgotten. It’s better still not to give money, but to buy the needed thing for your neighbour, leave it on the doorstep, and forget you bought it.’
Then she told me the story of Vissarion’s trip to England: he had been denied a visa by the British embassy, as he was expected to declare his salary and job and employer. Vissarion, being the Son of God, had none of these. He spent five days in Tatiana’s flat in Moscow eating buckwheat and salt. Eventually the BBC was persuaded to vouch for him and an invitation was issued.*
At the mention of the BBC a look of anxiety came across her features. ‘They came here and made a documentary about the Teacher,’ she said, echoing her daughter. ‘They said they would send it but they never did … Did you see it?’
‘No.’
‘But why wouldn’t they send it? It’s so strange.’
In fact, the missing BBC documentary was a source of much confusion. I was asked about it repeatedly in the coming days. What had the BBC said about the Teacher that was so bad they wouldn’t let the community see it?
Tatiana’s anxiety sobered her up quickly. A deathly silence descended. To clear the air, she put on a CD by Vadim Redkin, a.k.a. Vadim the Chronicler. For in addition to a library for the preservation of human knowledge after the apocalypse and a film director, Petropavlovka also housed a recording studio. Tatiana skipped past the first couple of tracks, and then stopped: ‘This one is lovely,’ she said. It was a ballad in the style of late-eighties hair metal. The lyrics were to the effect that there was a road ahead, and it was very, very, very long.
‘Vadim was a member of Integral,’ said Tatiana.
Semyon snapped out of his torpor: ‘Really?’
‘Oh yes.’ She was pleased that she had finally caught his attention. ‘Integral were a really famous band in the early nineties,’ said Semyon. ‘But then their leader, Zhenya Belousov, died. Many teenage girls were upset.’
‘And did you know that before he died, he too was about to give it all up and follow the Teacher? He said that to Vadim.’
Semyon nodded. He didn’t believe her, and she knew it.
‘That’s not all, though,’ said Tatiana. ‘My neighbour is Svetlana Vladimirskaya –’
‘What?’ Semyon raised his eyebrows. Now he was really impressed.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
‘She was extremely popular in 1994 or 1995. I mean, one of the first real pop stars in post-Soviet Russia. Then she just disappeared.’
Tatiana asked him to translate what he had just said. She glowed. ‘Yes. Well, now you know where she disappeared to.’
The CD’s cover image was Vadim’s long face beaming an enormous grin; its title was Hey! Hey! Cheer Up! In the liner notes he explained that he had recorded the songs in the few spare moments he had between writing the Last Testament and working as Vissarion’s private secretary. Then I noticed one of the song titles: ‘The Cathedral Had Already Burned Down’.
I remembered Young Tatiana’s words about the great cathedral on the mountain that fire had erased from the face of the planet, and her warning: Our people don’t like to talk about it …
‘Hey, Tatiana,’ I said. ‘What’s this song about?’
A shadow passed over the elder Tatiana’s features; she hesitated. But I had asked directly, so she had to answer. I didn’t get any new information, she just confirmed that there had indeed been a big cathedral on the mountain, and it had burnt down. ‘It was a very sad day for all of us … Vadim wrote the song as a memorial. Would you like to hear it?’
‘Sure.’
I had heard that Vadim was a big Whitesnake fan. I couldn’t detect much influence. A mournful voice crooned to a plangent keyboard accompaniment: O, we went up with big buckets of water to save it, but it was too late: the Cathedral had already burned down, the Cathedral had already burned down, the Cathedral had already buuuuuurned doooooooooown!
Tatiana was uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure if she actually liked the song. Then again, perhaps it was simply the sad memories making her grimace. Once it was over she skipped to the upbeat title track.
‘You simply must visit us again,’ said Tatiana. ‘Our villages are not at their best during the winter. Come on the 18th of August. That’s the date of our biggest festival – the Holiday of Good Fruits. We have wonderful music and dancing, and you will be able to see how creative the members of our community are. We have one village, for example, Cheremshanka, which is full of jazz musicians, folk musicians, classical musicians … it’s simply wonderful! August is also good because it’s the only month in summer when you won’t get eaten alive by mosquitoes.’
‘Really? You get bad mosquitoes?’ I hadn’t seen those in the film.
‘Terrible,’ she said, then continued: ‘Next year’s festival is going to be extra special because it will mark the fifteenth anniversary of Vissarion’s “preannunciation”. For it was on the 18th of August 1991, not far from the city of Minussinsk, that the Teacher first openly proclaimed the fundamentals of the Teaching of the United Faith, revealing that he had come to unite into one all people who strive for Love, Good, Truth and Happiness, irrespective of their denomination, nationality or language. More than that, it was also the day Vissarion revealed that there is not one God, but two …’
‘Wait, wait,’ I said. ‘Two Gods?’
‘Yes, the God of the Universe who created the planets and stars, and God the Father who created souls …’
Tatiana’s eyes flashed. She had relocated herself, and was ready to take flight again on wings of heavenly revelation.
Unfortunately for her I had had my fill. It was past midnight, and I was exhausted. I cut her off. It was time to sleep.
But sleep didn’t come easily. I was thinking about her words, the jumble of ideas taken from other religions and mixed together wholesale. I was particularly suspicious about the omission of Hinduism and Judaism: had Vissarion really read and absorbed all the texts of these religions before he had his revelation? It seemed unlikely, especially as he had grown up in an officially atheist country where such texts were hard to come by.
In fact, I saw another religion lying hidden and undeclared in Vissarion’s thinking, and its influence was crucial. It was, of course, possible to find analogues in numerous places for his beliefs, but the call to live together, sharing everything, the attempt to abolish money and differences in status, the desire for one world government under one ideological banner, the insistence on peace and pacifism, the cult of physical fitness, the demand for clean, enriching entertainment, the search for personally fulfilling, noble labour, the idealisation of nature, the sacrifice of the self for a future paradise that would be located on earth, and especially the settlement and terraforming of Siberia, growing fruits and vegetables that went contrary to nature, resembled nothing so much as the state religion of communism that Vissarion had grown up with, in its pure, idealised form. Perhaps even Vissarion’s position as supreme leader was made easier to accept by his followers’ long acquaintanceship with the personality cults of a totalitarian system; certainly they decorated their homes with photographs of him in much the same way ideologically correct Soviets had approved of the portraits of the various general secretaries of the party that had festooned their cities.
Below me a wizened old woman was sitting in the front room of the cultural centre, hunched over the TV, watching a traditional Russian dance ensemble. This had been a staple of the Soviet variety shows people of her generation had enjoyed for decades. The sound of balalaikas followed me as I drifted in and out of sleep. At some point I started to dream that I was in the room myself, floating in the corner like a disembodied spirit, watching the TV with her, receiving signals from a dead world that could so easily be summoned back to life, in the feelings and imaginations of so many other aging men and women hunched, just like her, over flickering blue screens located across the vast territory of the former Soviet Union.