Plano Profile February 2010 : Page 80
the journeyman S the other side of russia HARON HUDGINS is a Texan who knows firsthand what it’s like to live in Siberia. In her fascinating book, The Other Side of Russia: A Slice of Life in Siberia and the Russian Far East, she describes living conditions in her high-rise apartment building in Vladivostok, a city of 650,000 people. “We usually returned home from work around 6 p.m. after the sky was already black and icy winds had driven the temperature below freezing,” she writes. “But often only five or ten minutes after we ar- rived, the electricity went off—which meant that we had to prepare dinner by the light of a single candle…. Occasionally it was for only a few minutes; other times we were without electricity for hours or even days…. We had to wear thermal underwear indoors to combat the cold. Russians living in cities were accustomed to their hot water being cut off for one or two months during the summer…but sometimes even in winter we went for weeks with- out any hot water.” Left: Woman in traditional costume of Russian “Old Believer” religious sect in Buriat Republic, Siberia. Recently I “Old Believer” church and gate in Tarbagatai, Buriat Republic, Siberia. visited Sharon at her home in McKinney, where she talked about how she and her husband, Tom, spent three semes- ters in Siberia, teaching in a new education program estab- lished by the University of Maryland there in the 1990s, not long after the fall of the Soviet Union. Sharon was delighted to get the job. She re- called, “I grew up in Denison, Texas, during the Cold War and the Sputnik era, when Russia was a superpower and a technological challenge to the United States. I first became interested in Russia when I was only a teenager.” Sharon went on to specialize in Russian studies for her bachelor’s Top, left to right: A boat crosses Siberia’s Lake Baikal; statue of three soldiers on Lenin Square, in front of the Opera and Ballet House in Novosibirsk; 80 PLANO PROFILE FEBRUARY 2010
The Journeyman
the other side of russia
Sharon Hudgins is a Texan who knows firsthand what it’s like to live in Siberia. In her fascinating book, The Other Side of Russia: A Slice of Life in Siberia and the Russian Far East, she describes living conditions in her high-rise apartment building in Vladivostok, a city of 650,000 people.
“We usually returned home from work around 6 p.m. after the sky was already black and icy winds had driven the temperature below freezing,” she writes. “But often only five or ten minutes after we arrived, the electricity went off—which meant that we had to prepare dinner by the light of a single candle…. Occasionally it was for only a few minutes; other times we were without electricity for hours or even days…. We had to wear thermal underwear indoors to combat the cold. Russians living in cities were accustomed to their hot water being cut off for one or two months during the summer…but sometimes even in winter we went for weeks without any hot water.”
Recently I visited Sharon at her home in McKinney, where she talked about how she and her husband, Tom, spent three semesters in Siberia, teaching in a new education program established by the University of Maryland there in the 1990s, not long after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Sharon was delighted to get the job. She recalled, “I grew up in Denison, Texas, during the Cold War and the Sputnik era, when Russia was a superpower and a technological challenge to the United States. I first became interested in Russia when I was only a teenager.” Sharon went on to specialize in Russian studies for her bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas in Austin and for a master’s degree at the University of Michigan. Later she became a professor for the University of Maryland’s education programs in Europe and Asia, while also pursuing a career as a writer.
“Getting a chance to work in Russia was a dream come true,” she said. “It felt like coming full circle back to my early interest in Russia.”
In the fall semester of 1993, she and Tom taught in Vladivostok, Russia’s major port on the Pacific Ocean. She tells how conductors on the Trans-Siberian railroad, after the weeklong trip from Moscow, would announce the train’s arrival in Vladivostok by saying to the passengers, “Ladies and gentlemen, you have reached the end of the world”—because Vladivostok was the end of the line, on the far eastern edge of Russia.
In January 1994, she and Tom boarded a Trans-Siberian train themselves, for a three-day, 2,500-mile journey to the city of Irkutsk, for their next teaching assignment. They traveled in a first-class sleeping compartment, with no sink and no shower, sharing a single cold and filthy bathroom with 16 other people on the same passenger car.
They brought their own food supplies, since the dining car food was so bad.
“Shopping for food wasn’t easy back then,” said Sharon. “There were no supermarkets, so we had to go to small stores, open-air markets, and kiosks all over the city to find what we needed.” Staples such as sugar, flour, and soap might disappear from the shelves for weeks. At the farmers’ market in Irkutsk, “fresh milk, straight from the cow, was poured into buckets and set outside to freeze in the Siberian winter,” said Sharon. “As the milk froze, a thick wooden dowel was stuck upright into the middle of each pail. When the milk had frozen solid it was removed from the pails, like giant popsicles, then stacked for sale on wooden tables outdoors. We carried the milk home using the stick as a handle, and it never melted in transit.”
In 2006, eleven years after she returned to Texas, Sharon was asked to be the National Geographic Expert accompanying an educational tour on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, traveling 6,000 miles across Russia and Mongolia on a new luxury train. From 2006 through 2008, she crossed Russia five times by train, lecturing on Russian history and culture to the passengers on tours offered by National Geographic Expeditions. She saw how much Russia had changed since the 1990s. “I couldn’t believe there were real supermarkets now,” she said. “I also saw modern office buildings, brand new apartment complexes, Lexus dealerships, and IKEA stores. So much new development has occurred during the past decade!”
When I asked Sharon about her fondest memories of life in Russia, she cited her first train ride from Vladivostok to Irkutsk in 1994. “My father was a fireman on the Katy [M-K-T] Railroad in Texas, so I grew up loving to ride on trains. My first train ride in Russia was so exciting. To actually be traveling on that legendary route was a real thrill, especially in the middle of the Siberian winter.”
During the trip she read Doctor Zhivago, and when she looked out the train windows at the snowcovered steppes and frozen rivers, she felt like she was traveling through scenes in the novel. “As I rode on that grungy train, little did I know that years later I would be riding the same route with National Geographic on a luxury train. I’ve logged over 35,000 miles on the Trans-Siberian Railroad.”
She also has fond memories of the Russian people she met in the 1990s. She recalls joining them for birthday parties, New Year’s celebrations, picnics, and special family occasions. “They opened up their hearts and their homes to us,” she said. “I’ll never forget the good times we had with our Russian friends, despite the difficult living conditions there.”
Sharon’s award-winning book, The Other Side of Russia, provides a vivid description of life in Russia during the early years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about everyday life in a part of the world that most Americans have never seen.
Publication List
