Author: Marina Dmukhovskaya

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The Stolbista

Stolbi nature sanctuary is a national park near Krasnoyarsk. The stolbi – “the pillars” – are some of the oldest mountains on our planet. Rocks of unusual beauty and shape, surrounded by endless taiga.

Throughout the last centuries Stolbi became more meaningful for a local community than just a national park. It became the symbol of a whole subculture. All this time, Stolbi has been pulling in all sorts of people like a magnet: adventure seekers, climbers, people who were running away from something in search of freedom. Freedom from routine. Freedom from regime. Freedom from social inequality.

This is the story of our guide Irina, who is a recognized Stolbist (ed. note, Stolbi regular climber). She recently turned 60. 50 of those years, she spent in Stolbi, conquering the peaks that are too difficult even for the strongest athletes.

“I was born and grew up in the Far East. One childhood memory is very vivid: when I was three, I escaped from my parents and made it to the top of a mountain. Older guys found me and took me back to my parents. Even back then I was drawn to the heights.

When I was 6 years old, my family moved to Krasnoyarsk and my mother took me to Stolbi. After this, she would hardly see me at home…. For me and my friend blini (ed. note, Russian pancakes) became a currency and for a blini with cottage cheese or minced meat strangers would let us drag along to climb the Stolbi with them.

When I was a teen, people took me from the wall and beat me for climbing without rope. Older comrades beat my butt with rock shoes, they said that I shouldn’t climb like that. Now it’s different: people know that I climb free solo all the time, and they respect me. Out of all women, I am one of the most dedicated Stolbists. I often go climbing with guys on rocks with a high level of difficulty. Many men would not even try to climb pitches that I have completed.

You have to have a certain mindset and emotional state before difficult areas for free solo. Only this way you can overcome extreme situations, by suppressing your will and emotions.

Many people climb with headphones on, but it doesn’t work for me. I feel more comfortable hearing natural sounds. What is going through my mind as I climb? If it’s a difficult route, I think, “Why did I climb here? They warned me it was not a good idea to climb here.” If I am climbing with another person, I carefully watch that he is doing everything right. This grabs all my attention.

When the route is incredibly difficult, you can’t think of anything, you just need to concentrate. You sort of get into an autopilot mode. Sometimes, after descent, people are curious about how you managed to overcome this difficult section, but you can’t remember it, because your own internal navigation system put your hands in the right spots.

In the backpack of any Stolbist you will find the following items: magnesium for our fingers, for them not to slip on the rocks, a short rope in case you suddenly need to save or just belay somebody. And of course a water bottle, we fill them with water from a local spring.

I never had serious injuries. One time I fell into the rope on the wall from a height of 12 meters and just stayed hanging there. After this I was very scared, but with time you are able to get rid of your fear. With experience I can understand where I can climb on my own and better calculate my abilities.

I am just not afraid of some things. I have so much energy, that I need to invest it into something so that it doesn’t disturb other people. If I don’t put it into climbing, it may burst out of me, and then I will be up to no good. There must be something wrong with my brain. I like living like this, to feel the rocks with my hands and legs, with my mind too. Rocks are my emotional half. Sometimes I approach a mountain that requires a technique that I don’t possess, and I think, “How will I do this?” And then I just do it. For me Stolbi is a place of power, a temple of nature, where God himself envisioned us, humans.

I am teaching climbing at Krasnoyarsk University. When I take my students to Stolbi, I teach them how to listen to nature and communicate with it.

I don’t show many things to my grandchildren, because it is very dangerous. Once they see something, it is impossible to tell them they can’t do it. They think, “If granny can do it, so can I”.

Krasnoyarsk locals spend a lot of time in Stolbi. Originally Stolbism was shaped as a protest movement. People came here not only for spiritual, but for social freedom. In the city you could be a general. But in Stolbi you are free of any social ladder. In the mountains everyone is equal before difficulties, it doesn’t matter if you are a professor or a millionaire. If you climb well, everybody will respect you.

As soon as the national park was established, people started building huts up in the rocks, which became an important part of Stolbist culture. Most people who came to Stolbi were involved in politics. They annoyed the Stolbi administration with their behavior, they constantly fought for their rights. Sometimes the huts were burned down. Very often police would come to the hut, put everybody in buses and leave.

A hut is essentially a closed club, and it’s very difficult to get in. I am the only person on Stolbi, who belongs to two huts, and I have keys to both of them. There are 15 huts in a national park and only experienced climbers and awarded professional athletes become members. They help find people who lost their way and assist fire fighters in putting out forest fires.

A couple of years ago, guys from our hut found a couple, who had been missing for three days. The man, 20 years old, died, but they managed to save his girlfriend. She was wearing a skirt and pantyhose in cold weather. There were many situations, when we called emergency serices for people we found on the way. Once we had to bring a man who weighed 90 kg down from a pillar. He was climbing alone and fell down 30-meters; that’s equivalent to a 10-floor building. I don’t’ know how he survived.

Once I played a role in a movie. They filmed a TV series in our hut, and I was a stunt woman for the leading character. It was in winter, we had -30 degrees, and the actress borrowed my clothes. It was funny to watch the show on TV later with an actress walking around in my pants and hat.

There are many stories, legends and jokes that go around Stolbists. Once a Stolbist fell down during a climb and broke his hand. Then he came back to the same spot a year later to show his buddies where he broke his hand. And guess what, he fell down again on the same spot and broke another hand.

Stolbi took many human lives. One of the most decorated Stolbists, Volodya Teplyh, slipped on the Feathers, a route that he had climbed hundreds of times before. Each year I host night competitions in his memory under the moon light. A small church was built next to Stolbi with the names of people taken by the mountains and rocks carved on it. I used to climb with many of them, and knew them very well…

These people influenced me, they shaped who I am today. They taught me how to survive sorrow and happiness. How to love my family. Because of Stolbi, I never feel alone.”

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The Poker Player

First I was playing as an amateur, I just liked poker. When I first won 3000 rubles (ed. note, 42 euros), I thought that I would only dedicate my life to poker from now on. Once I met a man, who was surprised about the level of my game and saw talent in me. He liked the way I took non-standard decisions, and said, “Let’s play a game of poker.” We set beer as the prize for the winner, I got lucky and beat him. He offered me to study with him, and in one year I achieved great success.

Whereas I didn’t even have pocket money to buy cigarettes before, as I was playing in free tournaments, one moment I saved 40 thousand rubles ( 570 euros). Then I won another tournament with prize money of 200 000 rubles (2850 euros)! Then I started playing online, had some other big wins and saved $100 K. 2011 was the biggest year for me; I dominated all possible tournaments. Sometimes I would be in a mental state of “machine zone”, when you have dozens of thousand dollars, and you lose one, two, three and all you do is try to win it back. You get these mental states quiet often in poker. It’s important to stop the game, and to switch to something else.

The problem was also that I didn’t live a healthy way of life: constant night games, neurosis, alcohol. You are young, you have a lot of money, and you constantly want to spend it. Girls, trips, night clubs. At some point I started having panic attacks. I went to doctors, but got no answers.

I was obsessed with an idea that I would always keep winning big money and that my success is never going to end. However, five years later a lot of poker schools emerged, and people were learning how to play, but I stayed still in my poker techniques. I thought my talent was limitless, but those people who worked hard, have caught up with my abilities and even surpassed them. One day you realize it, and either you choose to improve or decide to quit and start doing something else.

I opted for option number two and decided to do science, enrolled in Master’s degree on physiology of humans and animals.

Success in poker is 80% of good luck and 20% of talent, if we talk about one day in the game. But if you measure the formula for the time period of a year, it’s exactly the opposite – 20% of good luck and 80% of your abilities. The longer the timing is, the better you get a chance to apply your abilities. In poker hard work beats talent.

It’s a delusion that pokers can read people. There is a book by Mike Caro “Poker Tells”, there are practical recommendations on how to read body language. If the person has good cards, he tends to lean back and relax, and if he is bluffing, he leans forward a lot, holds his hands next to the face, as he tries to hide something. But there are people who use this just to confuse their rivals.

Two and a half years ago my father died. He had a stroke, both me and my mom were not at home. He was lying there for four hours. It changed me a lot and pushed me to development. I started treating many things seriously, the game of poker and my goals. My father was the closest person to me, he still comes to me in my dreams, and we talk for a long time. And I know that he would have supported me 100%. He always supported me in everything.

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The Rapper

Oleg, 18 years old, Ekaterinburg

I was born in Aleksandrovskoe village in the Tomsk region. I grew up with a lot of siblings, we never had enough money, so I started working when I was twelve. I grew up quickly: I didn’t have a real childhood.

When I was twelve, I dragged cast iron bath tubs around, I helped movers and ruined my back. When I was thirteen, I worked in a church. I cut the grass, took away the burned candles, the priests paid us pennies. When I was fourteen, I used someone else’s documents and went with my brother to do road work, we shoveled asphalt.

I came to Ekaterinburg three years ago to study at the Gorny College Polzunova. The stipend is really small – even though I have a higher one (790 rubles) it’s not even enough to pay for a room in a dorm. So you have to work. I was working as a janitor for 7,000 rubles a month, I worked as a realtor, and I also worked in the kitchen at KFC. For a while I worked illegally and made almost 100,000 rubles. Then a guy burned us. Some important people came into town with fancy cars, took us into the forest, and we couldn’t say anything…we didn’t know what had happened to the money. After that I stopped with that kind of work, I was thinking that I want a family and that’s too risky.

Our teachers at college ask why we do so badly in school and work at the same time. It’s because we’re surviving and not living. My parents help, but it’s a struggle to even buy clothes and food.

Things have been hard but I have more going on in my head than others my age. Right now most 18 year old guys just think about where they can go get wasted or have sex. Random hookups, partying, gangs. I’m really ashamed of young people today, they don’t think about life.

I’m studying to be a mining electrician. It’s like a repairman for all the machinery in the mines. I didn’t want to study that but Mom said you need a masculine profession. I wanted to be a musician because I went to music school, I play balalaika, guitar, all wind instruments, and piano. Earlier I went on concert tours with kids from all over Russia, I even learned violin. Or I wanted to be a pastry cook. That’s something I’ve loved since childhood. But now it’s too late, I’m in my third year and I need to finish it.

Right now I’m rapping. People say that rap is really dirty but if you really take apart each line by itself, you can see a lot of thought behind in. I’ve written a lot of tracks about my life and about people. I have a really wide worldview, I see the world from a lot of different perspectives. From the perspective of the rich and the poor. Right now I’m writing an album, I need to record it properly, make a good video, and make it catchy. You know, we’re in the age of fast food. For a no-name to shoot for something more elaborate is really hard. If I can’t make it with this album then I’ll go to the army. There’s no fucking way I’ll go do what I’m studying. Standing in mines with water up to my balls isn’t for me.

People react to this potato costume in a lot of different ways. There are some people with cool reactions. They’ll hug me, yesterday a girl gave me a Nike bracelet. Then there are some people who get scared. People are usually dull and frowning and just don’t pay any attention to you, although that’s actually very difficult. Right now I need to go home. I don’t really want to work but I need the money.

I’m not complaining about anything. In our country, it’s hard for a lot of people. That’s the school of life, it teaches me something that no one else can.

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The Taxi Driver

Ilbrus, 59 years old.

I was born in Azerbaijan and I studied in Baku. During the Soviet Union I went to study in Nizhny Novgorodat the Institute of Water Transportation. And I’ve lived here since then. Today I am taxing, but in the 90’s and 00’s, I had my own business and made good money. But from that money 80% was sent to my family. The Caucasus is the Caucasus. There education is completely different. There you have respect for the elderly and for women.

My first wife – journalist and a TV host, was the head of the department in the university, a smart woman. She wrote a book about me. We are from the same village, studied together in school. We are divorced. The first foundation for the collapse of the family was laid by her father, my father-in-law. When we got married, I said “We are going to Nizhniy Novgorod. I won’t be living in Baku”. And her father did not allow it: “No, she is a journalist and she will work in Baku.” I bought her a four room apartment there. But what kind of family life can you have long-distance? We got divorced after 4 years.

She loved and still loves me madly. She still calls me five times a day. When we divorced, she was 32 years old, a young woman. Her dad (through her sister) said “There are many young eligible bachelors, she should remarry”. After that she didn’t speak with her dad for eight months. She said, there was only one man, there won’t be another. That man I love and I will love all my life. We have a daughter together.

After the divorce I didn’t speak with them for 10 years. I left the apartment and left. All these years I never saw my daughter. First I sent them money, and then my daughter began to speak up. I want a dad, not the money. In 2016 I went there and my niece organized a meeting with my daughter for me. Ten years later. I went and sat in the car of my ex-wife and my daughter started talking about childhood grievances, that’s all she held onto for all these years. She told me everything and began to cry. I told her “Alright, daughter, are you finished? Goodbye.” I couldn’t handle when they attack me like that, it’s in my personality. 

I met my second wife in the hospital in Nizhniy, where I was when I had an ulcer, she was also a patient. She was a good woman, she loved me very much. She forgot her own diseases and cured my ulcer with her food.

I lived with her in a two bedroom apartment, there was a dacha (summer house), the Volga, a Zhiguli (Editor note: Zhiguli was a common brand of car popular during the Soviet Union.). I earned money, she had a group two disability, Rheumatoid Arthritis. She put me in her will. She persuaded her aunt, she said “you know your own mom” . In reality my mother-in-law is a rotten person. So my wife decided to give the house that her father had left to me on the condition that I buy her sister and niece an apartment. 

Then my mother-in-law took me to court. Court started as such: The black caucasian cheated a 70 year old grandma. I immediately told the judge that she won’t raise her voice at me. But when the judge found out her doctor, relatives, neighbors, everybody supported me, everything changed. After half a year we reached an agreement. You wouldn’t believe how my dead wife came to me in my dreams after that and asked, what happened. Why did I fight with her mom. I went to her and she ran away.

After her death I met my third wife. Another while she was in the hospital, I went to the cafe to eat. I saw her. She was asian, a pretty young girl, working as a waitress. I saw her and suddenly thought; how she could be my wife. Then I forgot this story.  

After the death of my wife, a year and a half, I ended up in the cafe again and saw her. I decided to meet her and sat down at the table she was cleaning. She says, sit down at a clean table, why did you sit here? I say, “Specially sat down, to meet you. I want you to serve me”. 

I gave her my number, but she didn’t call me. When I went the next day, I asked, where did she live, and after work I waited for her near her home in my car. I told her from tomorrow on not to go to work. I have serious intentions. The next day I arrived with roses, as expected, she did not show up at work. She came to my apartment, I immediately showed everything to her, I say, “Will you marry me? Don’t think for a long time.”

After a month we filed an application and got married. And now we have been together for seventeen years. The relationship with her is very difficult. I’m 59 and she is 38: 21 year difference. She is jealous of me from every pillar.

I’m a bastard. For four years I didn’t cheat on her at all, but she still is still jealous. It’s as if I’m doing it. But, it’s like I’m guilty without actually being guilty. That is when I started cheating on her. I told her, I love her, I want to be with her, she needs to understand that I do everything for my family. I’m a big family man, I work for days to provide for my family. Several times we almost got divorced, but I can’t step over the children now, they will be very worried. Especially the daughter. I already hurt one, I don’t want to hurt these children either.

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The Teacher

It happened on Christmas Eve, December 25 2002. We are Estonian Lutherans, and each year we celebrate both Christmases: Catholic and Orthodox. For Catholic Christmas we have this tradition to bake an apple pie.That night my ex-husband and I took our sick dog to the vet and were rushing back to Moscow, as we needed to set the table.

We had a premonition. My dad said to us, “Stay, why are you going so late?” Our dog also had an intuition. She wouldn’t let us go for a long time, she was running around in circles, yelping, licking our hands, doing everything possible to block our way out.

The night was falling, it was getting dark, and we set off to Moscow on a curvy road. What happened next, was like in a movie. Bright light, and you wake up in a hospital room. When you open your eyes, everything around you is white and sterile. I had a cat sitting on my chest, he must have woken me up.

It was a big Siberian cat, he was living in hospital’s admissions office; he would admit new patients and accompany doctors during examinations. Nurses told us that his owner was once a patient, but they couldn’t save him, and the cat just stayed to live in the hospital.

My injury was very serious, I was in a state when I couldn’t move at all. When I started to gain my conscience, I realized that we got into head-on accident, and the so-called “street rides”, races of police cars on open roads, were to blame. Right away they started pressuring me to take my claim back. The easiest way to write off the responsibility in an accident is to claim that the other driver was under drug or alcohol influence. And I was the only witness of the accident. That’s why they came and insisted that I make a false claim against my former husband.

These were the times, when a fast-track court expert evaluation was non-existent, when blood test would take forever to come back, and if the witness had claimed that the driver was under drug or alcohol influence, they wouldn’t have even bother to conduct the test in the first place.

We, Russians, stick together. When they came to threaten me in the hospital, grandmas were chasing all New Russians (ed. note,  newly rich business class who made their fortune in the 1990s in post-Soviet Russia) away, they threw crutches into them, said that they could remember Stalin times and would never again sit back and watch injustice happen again. When an investigator called me and started asking, who came to threaten me in the hospital, I started describing a man. And then suddenly, this exact same person turns around and looks at me: he was investigator’s colleague.

They never found the guilty, as their strategy was to deliberately put off the trial and make it long. The court hearings were taking forever, and when the period defined by law passed, they evenutally stoped the trial.

Now I have a strong fear of driving. I tried to pass a driving license exam 15 times, but after finally getting it, I drove from Khimki back to my home, and never sat at the driving wheel again. Up until today, when I pass the spot of the accident, I get panic attacks.

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The Homeowners

Story 1. Dima, Kazan, founder of Chak Chak museum and Tom Sawyer Festival leader

I am from Naberzhnye Chelny. When I was young I moved to Moscow to work for a popular newspaper. First I liked seeing stars in real life. And then I realized that life was only about work and traffic.

Then cars came into my life: I thought that I need to do something more real. I started selling cars and grew to the position of the director of a carshop. And then realized: what’s next? What will I leave for my kids? How will my name be remembered and what mark will I leave in this world? So at 36 I started having middle age crisis.

I met my wife thanks to car business. I came to see my parents in Naberezhnye Chelny, and I needed to renew car oil. I was looking for a dealer, but in a local shop they told me they don’t have original.  I was mad and said that I would complain. In a week there was a conference with all car shop representatives on the roof of Ritz Carlton hotel. I decided to talk to the boss of that service center from Chelny and complain, but a beautiful lady came out and I just had a glass of wine with her.

Together with my wife we developed an idea for chak chak museum. As we were living in Moscow, we were talking about culture and history of Tatarstan. Once we developed an idea, for about a month we lived in Lenin library. Even in today digital world when you try to find information on tatars and chak-chack (ed.note, traditional Tatar sweet, made with dough), there is nothing. We asked to give us all books on Kazan history. They brought us entire carts full of books. As we were reading them one by one, we found references and wrote out all carefully. We were digging and digging, it was a lot of work. In one month we shaped a story line for chak chak history.

Two years passed form an idea to realization. There was a question about finance, as at that point we were just employees. We started looking for a house, wrote down a business plan. We tried to take out a loan in the bank but we were told, “This is a risky business.” When we asked what was NOT a risky business, they gave us McDonalds in city’s downtown as an example. Then we started applying for grants, but they told us that we were young and had no prior connection to art and museums. It was true and fair.  We thought that the silver lining in this is that we wouldn’t owe anybody. We can be free and flexible.

Then we decided to get advice from state museums… We had to learn what kind of mindset governmental organizations have. At national museums they gave us a brochure on preserving and cataloguing museum items. But we wanted something totally different: to tell a live story of Tatarstan and its cities through chak-chak.  The house where museum is situated used to belong a merchant, a grocer. As soon as the visitors come in, they find out that chak-chak in fact doesn’t have a a recipe. It’s just the soul and hands. Often we heard from some people, “I know that in this village there is an artist who makes the best chak chak in Tatarstan” But when you try to talk to this master in person, it is impossible to get her to talk on how her chak chak is made. Maybe, they are mad that people come to the museum for master classes. Or they don’t want to be filmed by other people.

During an hour tour guides in our museum explore the history of an epic sweet. A visitor goes back to the 19th century, and through chack chack we showthe  daily life of tatars, their tales, objects of their daily life and history of traditions. People, for example, used to color their teeth in black in order to show that they were rich enough and could afford to eat sugary products, which were expensive at that time.

Apart from the museum, we also curate Tom Sawyer festival in Kazan. This festival takes place all over Russia. Old Russian homes are being reconstructed by volunteers. They paint them for free, get their facades in order. Our volunteers love history and these houses. People help for entirely different reasons. Someone is tired of his job, he just wants to work with his hands, throw everything out of his head. Somebody comes to meet new people. Also we cooperate with volunteers from France who come on their own budget to help us with houses.

Sometimes we face the distrust of people living in those houses. We tell them about the festival, that we do everything for free, and they don’t believe us. If we like the house a lot, and the residents are suspicious, we can go on talking to them for a year: drink tea, get to know each other. It’s a long process, as the color of the paint needs to be coordinated with local authorities. For visual component of the project we use the help of architectures and designers.

It is important to preserve these houses for next generations who should understand our history and architecture. In the city they call us precedent humans. People around us keep saying. “It is not done in this way. You cannot do that.” And we just do it.

Story 2. Kostantin, the homeowner we meet through Dima as his Tom Sawyer festival project

My last name is Lebedev, but I believe that this could have been a made up last name at the end. My grandfather and his brother ran away from the Solovki (editorial note: Soviet prison, a remote place of detention known for its tough inhumane conditions). The two brothers separated and changed their last names not to get caught. Who he really was, we don’t know, he never told anybody.

Our grandfather was a director of a plane factory. My father was also an engineer-constructor, he was inventing planes. He smoked Belomorkanal (editor’s note: the cheapest and strongest cigarettes in Soviet Union) all life, he died from lung cancer, and I keep his ashtray. There was a good balance in my upbringing: my dad was strict, but fair, and my mom was a kind and a soft person. When I was a child, I loved taking apart everything: toys, washing machine, tape recorder. I was very curious how a mechanism functioned. Sometimes I could not collect everything back, but my parents didn’t yell at me for that, and I learned how to work with my hands.

Now this skill is very handy, as I do all the work around the house. My family has been living here since 1949. I was born in this house, my great grandparents, my grandparents and my family all lived here.

The house was built in 1900, when instead of village lodging, there was a great demand for furnished apartments. In provincial towns an intellectual class was being shaped: doctors, teachers. They didn’t want to live in village houses with barn-yards. The house was split into four apartments. When the soviet power got established, they forced urban density, the walls in the houses were removed, they put all people in the same flats, which gave birth to Kommunalka. If the house doesn’t become damp, if people live in it and take a good care of it, it will stand for a long time.

Twenty years ago Kazan downtown looked horrible. It had many old wooden rundown houses because of bad care. And all the center was populated by people from low social class. Kazan had a program on extermination of rundown buildings. They tore down the houses in the downtown, and in exchange these houses’ owners were given new apartment for free. It gave them a chance to move out from the house with no drainage, where rats were running around, into a brand-new modern apartment. However, not all people were eager to re-settle.

Our house also was assigned for this program… They wanted to kick us out against our will. But the difference between us and those who agreed to move was that we were taking a good care of our house. Now we live in a state with human rights, but back then in the 90’s nobody cared about that.

Many people who gave their consent to leave, didn’t have a good life. But for our family the situation was different. We lived in a cultural center, with a school and a shop nearby. Downtown area was becoming better and better and the atmosphere was changing. We were born here, we understood that nobody would give us an apartment with the same square space.

And how can you make people move out from their apartment? You might decide to set it on fire. If they don’t want to move, you should fabricate a case against them or black mail them. We were threatened with a court decision, and some people showed up at our door, and told us to move. I was twenty years old back then, and I took situation under my control. I studied the court decision. We started a battle for our apartment, and I filed a court of appeal. And won. That’s why we are here. I won a fight for my house.

I am an auto mechanic, and I spend 12 hours a day at work. That’s why for me my house is a place to rest. It’s like a bed, your favorite spot: you lay down, you take a rest, you are fresh and awake and you go ahead achieving your goals. When I was younger, I rode motorcycle, I wanted to become a sailor, dreamt about far away lands, reread all Jules Verne. But having travelled a bit, I decided that home is better for me.

The house is a place of power. When our previous neighbours were being resettled, many were 90 years old. They had been living here many years, and as soon as they moved to the new apartment, they died. Old people moved in with their stuff and moved out inside a coffin. For an old person it is very difficult to adjust to a new life.

I am a happy person. I can’t complain. My father passed on to me his diligence, I have a house, work. I have two kids, they are healthy, they are fine. A person tends to choose something he is used to.

The habit is God’s gift, it’s His tribute: to happiness it’s equal substitute.

Story 3, Alexey, another homeowner

Originally our house was built to make money from renting it. In 1896 it was acquired by Peltsam Emanuil Manilovich, he was an ichthyologist, a scientist who studies fish. He never had any systematic education, apart from elementary school, but he became an established member of scientific circles because of his empiric research.

After he retired from Tomsk university, he settled down in Kazan and bought this house. In 1912 he died and we don’t know what happened to the house up until 1934. We know only that it was nationalized by Soviet state and it belonged to Agricultural bank of Tatar republic. My great grandfather was appointed as the manager of this bank in 1934, and he received an apartment in this house. Since then, my family has been living here. Four generations: great grandfather, grandparents, parents and me. My grandmother used to live here, but October last year she died. Now I am remodeling the interior on my own and I plan to rent it out to tourists on AirBnb. There used to be a gorgeous interior with a colonnade and a tiled stove, but my grandfather took it apart when central heating came. They were trying to save space back then, as they were assigning living quarters to our apartment during the war. My parents didn’t appreciate this old interior, it was truly Soviet Union Style. All this beauty was covered with carton, and there was a carpet over colonnade.

At the end of the seventy’s when the country was going through hard times, animals were very sick in Kazan zoo, some were gnawed by wolves. That’s why my grandmother with my father took in different kind of animals: leopards, pumas, a lion) to raise them.  They nurtured them till they are one year old, and then gave back. Pumas got back to the zoo, and lion and leopard went to circus.

It’s been a long time I have been searching for my profession that would bring me satisfaction, a profession I could make my living of. In 2005 a professor from Paris University came here to film a documentary. He asked me during an interview, “Are you happy?” For me it was a weird question, I haven’t heard such a question in my entire life. I said, well, yeah, even though I didn’t understand by which criteria I should use to answer such a question.

In Russia we don’t speak a lot about happiness. Those people I grew up with faced only one question: how to survive? Go to university. Only not to work as a janitor. After graduating from university you live in darkness. You don’t understand where you are and what you need to do. I went to work as a bell ringer in church. However, I didn’t find answers to my existential questions. At some point I started noticing that religious formula for achieving happiness (penance, admittance to your sins and many others) don’t give me a feeling of happiness. It looks more like kabala slavery.

At the same time I was doing my PhD and working as a research assistant. However, it didn’t bring me happiness either, just horror, suffering and poverty. Then I got into business. We were selling a wine package which turned into a lamp. We did it for couple years, put a lot of effort into it, got tired, but didn’t enjoy it that much. My mother came to terms into my constant search and my unemployment. First she pressured me, but I was shutting her down and she learned to live with it.

To be in search of yourself for such a long time is hard psychologically. That’s why I understand those people who decide to give up. You just have to really hate to work for somebody else, like I do. There is no alternative, you either find your passion, or you will suffer in this life. I can’t suffer, so I will suffer in a different way.

Russian art: literature, paintings, everything is scary. It’s a philosophy of Russian nation. The idea that suffering is a virtue was always used for the purpose of politics.

I think that happiness consists of several areas. It’s your love life, your relationship to a person next to you, area of your professional mission. If all areas are balanced, I think you are a happy person. And if you don’t stress yourself out all the time or think about something good, you believe that any situation will result into a good experience. It doesn’t mean that you fly in the clouds or wear pink glasses.

I consider myself an agnostic. Gnosis means knowledge. Agnosis is someone who doesn’t accept such knowledge. I believe that we don’t have enough knowledge to accept certain values as truths. There are no such instruments in this world to understand how it is structured. I can not understand beyond something concrete and decided not to dig into it. It’s better to concentrate on something I can influence: on my life, so I can live it happily.

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Podcast

The Lacemaker

Anna, 33 years old

I’m from the Nizhegorodskaya region, I work as a lacemaker. I started to sew lace when I was 11 years old. Across from our house was the Center for Children’s Crafts and as a child I’d look out the window and watch how the girls were being taught how to do something interesting. At the time, we had no idea what lacemaking with bobbins even was, but my grandmother insisted that I try it out.

It’s impossible not to immediately fall in love with lace. For me it was almost contagious, I fell under its spell. It amazed me with its delicacy and airiness. For an entire century, this rare, interesting craft was one of the most baffling types of needlework. Now when I tat, I don’t even look at my hands. I watch the movement of the threads. Sometimes I’m sewing and then I’m surprised – how was I able to make this?

To actually achieve something with lacemaking, you have to have perseverance, you have to work and work at it. This is what sets lace apart from other types of needlework. With knitting, you can unravel it and knit it again. With lacemaking, the way you made it is the way it will stay. You need to have infinite patience.

In lacemaking, the instrument you use plays a big role. The bobbin is a stick with a notch cut into it for winding the thread. Depending on the technique that the lacemaker uses, there are different shapes of bobbins. The bobbin that I use is our Russian shape, with a bit of an elongated stick with an elegant middle. It doesn’t do anything technically but it’s aesthetically pleasing. Bobbins can be made out of different types of wood, out of any tree that you can imagine. In Russia, the most common kind of lumber comes from Russian birch trees. That’s the cheapest, easiest to find material, but it’s not my favorite.

Each lacemaker chooses her own bobbin based on her personal preferences. The most important thing in choosing a bobbin is the sound it makes while you’re tatting. While we’re sewing, the bobbins hit each other and it turns into a type of rhythmic melody, we like to call it music. In Vologda there’s even an event where they invite an orchestra, the lacemakers are sitting there, and they start sewing and the musicians play alongside the lacemaking sounds.

Historically speaking, families with lacemakers were always prosperous. In pre-revolutionary times, lacemakers earned enough that they could feed a family of eight. In the Nizhegorodska market lace goods would be sold for 6-15 rubles in Tsarist times, depending on how complicated the piece was. For comparison, at the same time a cow cost 2 rubles.

Lacemaking is a valuable art form. Originally, handmade lace was decor for the upper classes of society, tsars and aristocrats. That’s how it was in the past and it’s still like that today. People buy and wear this lace to emphasize their social status. The cost of the lace is determined by how many hours it took to sew it, so for me it’s about 200-300 rubles (3-5 dollars) per hour. It all depends on the technique you’re using and how big the piece you’re tatting is, but it could be on average about 10-15 thousand rubles (160 to 235 dollars). The lace that I’m wearing I made myself, the market price would be 13,000 rubles (205 dollars). 

Lacemaking came to Russia from Europe during the time of Peter the Great’s government reforms. The European suit became popular here, and it had a lot of lace trimmings. If you look at an old map of lacemaking from the 18th and 19th centuries, they were making lace in Spain, Italy, France, and the Netherlands. In Russia, there were very few lacemaking areas. There were only 17 regions where people practiced lacemaking as a craft to sell. In the 90s, when things were hard, it almost completely died out.

There are some work-related injuries with lacemaking – joint problems, finger problems, osteochondrosis. You have to take some precautions – don’t tat for more than five hours a day, take a break every 10-15 minutes, just stand up and stretch. Even though I’m young, after sewing lace for ten years I also have some of these problems. Joint problems are scary because when you have pain in your joints and palms it’s hard to sew. If that continues, you have to take a break for a few days. If the pain doesn’t go away, you have to go to physiotherapy. Some people even have to stop lacemaking entirely. You also need to have really good eyesight. I had bad eyes, I had minus 6 and minus 8, so I had an operation.

Now lacemaking is on the rise, a lot of young girls are doing it. If you follow fashion trends, you find dresses in girl’s closets again today and that’s nice. More feminine forms and silhouettes are back, the world got tired of emancipation.

I grew up in a very conservative family, so I’m also more old school, with conservative views. It’s not just based on how you’re raised, we’re carved like this on a genetic level. We have a very strong lineage. There haven’t been any divorces, not on my father’s side of the family or my mother’s. Death was the only thing that separated spouses, so the marital lifespan in our family is about 45-50 years. For me, my grandmother was a powerful role model. My grandfather on my mom’s side was an alcoholic, but it never even crossed my grandmother’s mind to leave him. She always said, “This is the person that I’m responsible for before God.”

I was originally raised with the viewpoint that there should be only one man in your life, and for a long time it was really like that. I had a really sad and unfortunate experience: the person who became my first sex partner wasn’t able to carry the burden of this responsibility. It didn’t work out ideally, but it was a fairly minimal experience in terms of intimate relationships

His family accepted me, but only as long as we weren’t talking about marriage. Once we were drinking tea together and his mom was talking about another girl they knew, a daughter of acquaintances, and judged her by her salary: “Marusia is a good girl. She earns 40,000.” (630 dollars a month.) I should have thought about that comment back then.They didn’t consider me suitable from a materialistic standpoint. At the time I was a full-time student. We separated under pressure from his mother. Now I think she’d be really surprised to know that I actually earn quite a lot of money.

I met my husband on the Internet. He’s older than me by 11 years. When we met (this is what he told me later) he understood that I was the woman for him after just 10 minutes of talking to me. People say that if a guy doesn’t marry in his 30s, he won’t get married at all. This is actually his first marriage, but he still immediately made it clear that he had serious intentions. Sometimes I ask him, “how are you so amazing and didn’t get married until you were 40?” He jokes and says “I was a virgin, I was waiting for you.”

At home, it’s patriarchy. We are a traditional, conservative family, in which I am subordinate to my husband. That probably sounds harsh, but actually I was raised that way and don’t know anything else. I ask him for permission every time that I leave the house. If we go somewhere, we go together. Even coming here [a needlework festival] he only reluctantly let me come, but I said that it was for work, it’s necessary. After I explained to him why, then he agreed. When I tell this to people, they say that my husband is a tyrant because he doesn’t let me go anywhere.

But actually I’m unbelievably lucky. I’m very happy in my marriage. I always have a strong shoulder at my side. My husband is a very rare type of person, right now men like him don’t really exist anymore. He’s solid, strong-willed, self-sufficient. We have a strong and harmonious family, we do everything together. We’re one organism, one whole, we make each other complete. In our family life, domestic routine isn’t something that wears us down but something that strengthens us. Our life is such that we spend all our time together. My husband is most content when I’m just near him, then he’s calm and happy. He tells me, “just sit and sew next to me.”

In terms of today’s trends we’re like dinosaurs dying out. It’s pretty rare. The modern family unit looks very different. All the attempts our women have made towards emancipation, focusing on career, it doesn’t actually lead to anything good. Women feel flawed, and family life suffers.

In our life together we have never had a conflict. We’ve never gone to bed angry. My husband has a down-to-earth profession, there’s nothing creative about it. He studied to be a psychologist, and now he sells ventilation equipment. My husband values everything that I made for our house – the napkins and the icons that I brought to his home. He won’t give them to anyone, even my mother. When my mom comes and asks to take something with her to work to show it to people, he’ll loan it to her very reluctantly. Sometimes people come visit us and it turns into a tour. He loves to talk about the things that I’ve created and show off boxer shorts that I’ve sewed for him.

I’m an extremely happy wife. For me, my husband is the most important person after my parents. I find the possibility for self-actualization within my family.

I serve him with pleasure. Solid values are the moral backbone of our country and there’s no discrimination or inferiority here. What’s happening to the institution of family in the West, what’s coming closer to us here, that’s very foreign to me. It’s horrible. My husband and I just watched a fourth movie with propaganda about same sex relationships. We turned on the historical film “The Favorite.” I thought it was about the King…it turned out that “the favorite” was a girl…the queen’s favorite girl. They showed their intimate life with all of this horrible stuff.

The problem is that in even quite good movies, examples of same sex love, heroes of that movement are shown as positive people, they love and take care of each other. This helps the perversion spread. Of course, it’s been around since ancient times, but it’s not necessary to popularize that, to show it, and really implant it in society. We Russian people are orthodox people. Our nature is to oppose all of that. Boys should live with girls, men should live with women. It’s a certain social order, a lifestyle. God created men as men and women as women so that the human race could continue. Each of us has a specific role in this.

Right now in our family I earn more money, but when we met, my husband made more money. He owns the apartment we live in and has a car. I never used to earn money, I always would give to charity, I was involved in art therapy. My husband directed me on this path, he helped me, taught me how to earn money, curbed some of my altruistic ambitions. At some point he got laid off at work and I started to make money. He’s not just sitting around, he’s looking for work. He’s a very thoughtful and forward-thinking person.

Our family, a family just like in ancient times, is an example of a patriarchal lifestyle. We belong to each other implicitly. Each of us sacrifices something by fulfilling our role in our life together. For example, my husband also sacrifices his freedom, he doesn’t spend time with his friends, or God forbid, with other women. He is with me.

Right now we don’t have children. At the moment it’s physically not working out. We’re trying to do it the natural way. That happens sometimes, that it doesn’t work out or it takes a bit longer, but we don’t fixate on that.

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The Coin Collector

Vitaly, 42 years old

I was born and live in Reutov, Moscow region. I collect coins. At five I found my first coin while playing in a sandbox in kindergarten. I remember seeing it for the first time: five zlotis with a hole inside, in a doughnut shape. Somebody must have worn it, on a keychain or around their neck. At school I learned that a sister of my classmate collected coins too. Through this acquaintance I added some more coins to my collection and a Tsar banknote from the period of Nicholas the Second . I thought, “Wow, it is so beautiful!” and got addicted to it.

I didn’t like school. There were many things I didn’t like about it, especially having to wear a uniform and to study the subjects I hated. I am an absolute dummy in math. I didn’t like sciences: chemistry, geometry. I liked humanities more. I liked history, I always had As and Bs in it.

I studied accounting at vocational school number 90 in Reutov. Everybody thought I am a future accountant, but it just didn’t work out. I attended university to study audit and economics, but didn’t finish it. It led to nothing good. In my lifetime I worked as an accountant for three days in total. I saw how much paperwork it was, how much I needed to sort out and quit. Now I think I should have stayed in that job.

In the 90’s I earned my living by helping people move. I owned a GAZelle (editor’s note: Russia-produced light pick up truck) I put leaflets up on houses, people called me and I helped them move food and furniture. The economic situation was not the best, and in 1999 I sold my car. At the moment I am unemployed, I don’t have any means to make my living. I occupy myself exclusively with collecting coins. My mother approves of this hobby. The most important thing for her is that I keep myself busy instead of just pointlessly hanging around.

I came up with the scheme for collecting coins during FIFA World Cup in Russia. There were many foreigners in Moscow. I still remember June, 19 when Mexico won… all of Red Square was in fans’ green colors. First I came up to them and asked if they wanted to exchange. Some gave me a couple of coins, others were saying that they don’t have change or didn’t understand what I wanted. Then I tried writing down a short note on a piece of paper in different languages, asking to exchange coins. Since then, I have been handing foreigners this note to read it in their native language and they decide whether they want to exchange or not. I started addressing them in the line to Lenin’s Mausoleum. Where else can one find so many foreigners in one place in Moscow where they are not rushing and can take time to read my note?

First I was offering expensive 10 jubilee ruble coins. Then I had another idea. I have 10 kilos of Soviet change at home, so I decided to give it a try and see if exchanging cheaper coins would work. I brought that change here, to Red Square and it worked! I started coming every day, even in winter, when it’s 20 degrees below zero. If I come, I stand on Red Square very determined not to go back home without new items for my collection.

Foreigners react differently when I talk to them. Some are interested, and some just don’t care about coins, they say they don’t have change with them. Indeed, why would anybody carry around change from their home country while travelling abroad?

Sometimes I buy coins. Recently I bought a 1924 silver ruble with with Worker and Kolkhoz Farmer for 1000 rubles (editor’s note: a common symbol in socialism that – in 1937 – was made into the famous sculpture of two figures, with sickle and hammer, raised over their heads, for the Paris world Exhibition. It is now in Moscow)

Everything is changing now. During Soviet times people could not travel abroad, if they did, it was mostly to countries of the socialist bloc, like Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, or the Czech Republic. One could change stamps for coins from those countries. Then people started exchanging wrappers from chewing gum and I did that too. I have never found any interesting coins myself, but my uncle, who lives in Pereslavl Zalessky, found a quarter-kopek piece from 1734 and gave it to me.

I have never travelled abroad, I have only been to Ukraine one time. By collecting coins, I study the geography and history of these states. Coins are very representative of the region they are from. It is fun to look at who made it to their design: sometimes animals, fish, fauna, flora, flowers. Some coins have contemporary events depicted on them. It could be the conquering of foreign land or have a sports theme: champions or competitions.

Sometimes I can’t help thinking. If the coin is not new, it was used… Who held it, what kind of a person was it? Just curious. Sometimes you hold a Russian coin from Tsar times and you get a feeling that this coin breathes history. It is saturated with old spirit.

There are several thousands items, coins and banknotes, in my collection from 196 countries. 180 of them are countries with existing currency. 16 out of them have disappeared. It’s Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic… They disappeared, but their money stayed. The oldest coin in my collection is a quarter-kopek piece of Peter the Great of 1707. Before 1725, coins had years aggravated in letters, it was called Slavic. And after 1725 Peter the Great introduced a civil year with numbers.

I have almost all American quarters. I am only missing a quarter from Northern Mariana Islands. I have quarters of all national parks, except for the last two. It is difficult to get them at the moment. They produce five coins a year. In 2019 I collected three and have two more to go.

I specialize in coins of England and its Commonwealth. Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Jersy, Guernsey, Fiji. England had many colonies. I also have Cypriot coins with portraits of Elizabeth or with Georg V, VI, but I like coins with Elizabeth better. One of my friends says, “You have a crush on Elizabeth”. No, I just like coins with her. And Georg is kind of ugly, he is bald. It’s easier to acquire coins with Elizabeth, as some are still in use.

There are coins that would never make it to my collection. There are only a couple of those in this world and they all are in museums. For example, a coin of Anna with chain from the time of Anna Ioannovna’s rule, 1730-1740. Such a coin is worth 15 million rubles, there are only a handful of copies.

 I think coins will continue to exist, I don’t think credit cards will push them out completely. Not everybody can use cards. What about the generation of our grandparents? They will still prefer coins to cards…

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The General’s Wife

My husband was a military pilot. He had a hard life, and since I was sharing my life with him, mine turned out to be a complicated one too. We lived together for 45 years. We lived in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Uzbekistan.

He dreamed of becoming a pilot since he was a child. Back then, when Chkalov successfully completed a non-stop flight from Moscow to Vancouver in 1937, all boys wanted to become pilots, and he also applied for a flying school in Kharkiv.

We met when I was 17 years old. He was on vacation from his military service in our village in Ukraine. He stood out: a pilot, all dressed up like a rooster in a parade uniform with a dirk, forage cap…

His brother Boris asked me out for a dance party. We danced just one song, when my future husband approached us and said, “Boris, go rest a bit, I will dance with your girlfriend.” We danced the whole night, and he walked me home. It was May 9th, and on the 24th we already registered our marriage. I can hardly remember that day, it’s almost like everything was in a thick fog.

First they didn’t want to accept our application for marriage, because I was not 18 yet. They said that my mom should come, but my husband insisted and pulled some strings, and they let us get married.

I didn’t know anything about family life, I was completely ignorant about sex. There was indeed no sex in the USSR. Everything was so hidden, that kids didn’t know anything. When I was getting married, I thought that you have sex just once to make a baby. Sometimes girls in the village would say “There are three kids in your family. Wow, you parents have done it three times!”

We could only understand how things worked by watching animals in the village. If a cow had something with a bull, children saw a calf being born. That’s why I thought that we would wait for some years and just live like a brother and sister.

When we went to bed, he tried to approach me. It was a nightmare, he was afraid that I would start screaming on top of my voice. He also had no sexual experience. Two nights we slept together, and nothing happened, and then his vacation was over and he left for Azerbaijan.

When he arrived at his service point and reported to his regiment’s commander that he had married during his time off, they started cursing him, “Holy shit, you are seriously going to bring a 17-year old child here. It’s Azerbaijan, prairie with horrible conditions, there is nothing here. Are you out of your mind?”

One of their officers had previously married a girl from Moscow. She came, looked at everything and ran away two days later. That’s why, when I came, all the regiment was watching us. Everybody was interested what will come out of it. And I wasn’t scared. The thing is, I got pregnant really fast. We had a lack of food, ate mostly canned fish, and my milk disappeared. We had Azerbaijani women bring buffalo milk to us.

This was a time, when Azerbaijan was the wildest country. As soon as you appeared in the city, a crowd of men started following you. That’s why we’d have to be accompanied by a soldier with a rifle even to buy fruits in the market.

Pilots are a special breed of people. We buried many people in the course of our lives. When we looked at his graduation photo, every third person died in a crash. It was almost like a routine, yesterday your comrade died, today you bury him and tomorrow you go on flying. Just before my husband took his obligatory vacation days, he would fly in a special zone to loopings in the sky. Just so he can live through a month without flying an airplane.

When we moved to Germany in 1960, I was dying to see how Westerners were living. My friend and I ran away to Berlin on a day, when our husbands had night shifts and were to come back after midnight. She could speak German, we were pretty, stylish, and it was impossible to tell us apart from German women. If somebody had found out about it then, we’d would have been deported to back to the USSR within 24 hours.

Western Berlin astonished us. We were strolling around the city, sat in a restaurant. Suddenly a waiter brings us two glasses of wine. We didn’t order wine. He points at men at the table across us, they bought it. We had a dilemma, what do we do? If we drink it, they’ll think that the contact is established, and if we don’t drink it, we might hurt their feelings. The wine is standing there, and we don’t know what to do. We had our meal fast, paid, chugged the wine and ran away.

My husband and I almost divorced two times. The first time is connected to my son. In the 60’s the army lacked recruits due to a demographic pitfall of the 40’s. The government started recruiting boys from universities, some men were recruited from prison to join the army. At that point my son was a freshman, and my husband, who had a high rank in the army, would have no difficulty in finding his way to protect his son from the army. But he was a patriot and told our son to serve the country.

On the first day of his service, they took off my son’s sports shoes, jacket, took away his clothes, razors, shampoo. The abuse of new recruits by higher ranks was horrifying. During that period of time I aged a lot, and the situation almost resulted in a divorce.

The second time happened when my husband had problems with his blood pressure, and they didn’t allow him to fly anymore. I was so happy I could not hide it. I didn’t have to wait with my heart sinking each time when a motor roaring suddenly stopped. And my husband hated me for my relief. It was the most difficult period in our life, but he loved me and with time we were able to move on.

It’s been twenty years since my husband is gone. I almost don’t remember the year when he died. He was never sick, and suddenly they diagnosed cancer. He was sick for seven months, and I was with him alone day and night. Later, when he passed away, my son said that they were afraid I would leave with him.

In my life I wouldn’t want to change a single day, even though there were some hard moments. In comparison with my husband, I put my children first. He raised them with this mindset, that I, a mother and a woman, am the most important person in a family. My children treat me this way up to today.

I felt love and deep respect my husband, but not to the same extent, as he did for me. He adored me. They say that in a family one person loves and his spouse lets his husband or wife love him. I let him love me.

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Podcast

The Fortune Teller

Rimma, 85 Years

I have always been interested in the unknown. I was born on the 25th lunar day, that means I am prone to insight and intuitions. My destiny is to interact with people, my karmic task is to serve them.

I have been learning and practicing numerology and esotericism for 40 years already. Originally I am an engineer, I have 52 years of work experience. I have a massive understanding of numbers. Everything now is becoming digital. Pythagoras created a special matrix in which he determined the birthday of each person. Combinations of numbers from 1 to 9 are organized in table cells and they tell about the future, character, energy, duty and hobbies of a person.

I am not a professional esoteric, it’s my passion. It all started when my friend invited me to an underground theater in the 70s. There they were showing Filipino healers surgically removing cancerous tumors. I really liked it. Then my grandma taught me how to read tarot cards. I also went to secret yoga lessons. This was when it was banned in the USSR, the police chased us out. Then I refused fortune telling because I thought it was a sin.

But without numbers nothing can be done – this is an objective worldwide assessment of our human life. Differences in people are due to the natural properties of man, which come from the date of his birth. So I went to the theory of numerology, and began using the pendulum and a frame.

In the 70’s I worked in career center at the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (editor: the biggest trade show and exhibition center in Moscow). They gave me an elementary program, but I, as a creative person, included esoteric components in the program. I don’t’ charge for my service and help exclusively acquaintances and friends. I don’t do advertisements. This direct connection from heart to heart is only possible if the person believes in me. Some clients cannot even take a step without me.

I helped the son of my friend to buy a car. He goes and searches for cars on an auspicious day, which I set for him earlier. He only has around 50,000. He calls me, I ask him to put his hand on the hood of the car. With the hood, I can determine its resource and efficiency. A car is essentially an animated robot, she can react to people, like a dog to its owner. I helped him choose a car for 45,000. It served him like a powerful horse.

Recently, for example, I got a call from a friend “I lost my earring. It isn’t anywhere, I searched the whole house. She looked all day, I grabbed the hood and it immediately showed where it is. “Turn your head to the left” and there it is! The earring sticks out of the baseboard.

One time a client met a man and she told me about him. I say, “Do you know that he is 40? And she is 23. I see that he fooled her. After two days she comes to me and says “Rimma Pavlovna, you are right, he is 42”. Why does she need this old fart, if so many guys go after her, when she is such a pretty girl? We immediately found out everything about him, and she broke up with him. Sometimes I think I could work in customs at the airport. I could easily determine what is being transported – dangerous or vodka, weapons, cartridges….


With the help of my frame, I do diagnostics. I can see the whole body, pressure, blood… I really trust only non-traditional medicine. One time I was going to the therapist and I said I feel terrible. He said “Well you’re already old, what do you still have to cure?” I went to the corner with the frame and saw – she bought her diploma!

Many people don’t believe in it. When famous esoteric doctor Konovalov appeared, Luzhniki stadium, it was a full house. I went to his appearance for 12,000 rubles: they have tickets for 4,000 but I have bad hearing, I need to sit close. Some people claim that he is a swindler. How can you not believe if when he appeared, 6,000 people attended: everyone was silent, listening with bated breath, a fly flew by but nobody heard it.

This is called NLP – Neuro-linguistic programming. Life is so difficult now, that people already cannot live with this psychological pressure. People come to this doctor – they calm down, everything is fine, everything is wonderful.

Rimma’s dowsing device

I charge water. Every night I put it under the cone and in the morning it is charged with the energetic pyramid. This charge is so strong, that you don’t need to sharpen knives, they will straighten themselves in the right places. My whole house – is made of Esoteric books. “Self-healing without medicine”, “Brilliant Bioenergy”, “Birthdays – key to understanding people”, “How to achieve spiritual enlightenment”. This book was presented to me by the scientist Semenov himself. Here are photos from space, the image of Christ. Here are some chosen numerical prayers. For example, for the treatment of the optic nerve you should read this prayer then “Our Father” then these numbers. Here is an example, atherosclerosis, for example. You need to read “1 – be silent – 3 – 2 – pause – 1 – silence – then 0 and code ANMISA. If you repeat this, your atherosclerosis will gradually begin to somehow leave you.

My work helps me feel needed. Recently I visited my father’s grave for the first time, I told one of my clients that now I can die. She said “Rimma Pavlovna! How so? We all need you!” I help people make less mistakes.