{"id":1469,"date":"2014-05-30T19:25:10","date_gmt":"2014-05-30T15:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monogoroda.closeuprussia.com\/?p=1469"},"modified":"2014-05-30T19:25:11","modified_gmt":"2014-05-30T15:25:11","slug":"not-a-real-motherland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monogoroda.closeuprussia.com\/en\/not-a-real-motherland\/","title":{"rendered":"Not-a-real Motherland"},"content":{"rendered":"

The home-town, the winter and the broken nose.<\/h2>\n

Text and Foto: Anton Sokolov<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

I<\/span>f you \u00a0heard<\/a>\u00a0the anthem of Glazov a town where I was raised, you would probably be surprised \u2013 there is neither fanfare nor choir in it. Just a plain arrangement and some very simple lyrics about a \u201cwhite bird flying over the water\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018This anthem is somewhat odd\u2026\u2019, you will say. <\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s unofficial\u2019, I will answer. <\/p>\n

\u2018Ahh, unofficial. So, it\u2019s not a real one, is it?\u2019<\/p>\n

At this point my reaction as a Glazovite must be flushing. \u201cNot being real\u201d is the birth trauma of the whole town. Korolenko, an exiled writer, applied this epithet to Glazov once and, as it often happens to, sadly, mostly uncharitable names, it caught on. Now the teachers\u2019 college I graduated long ago is named for Vladimir Korolenko, and the local historians along with all the concerned citizens are looking for the \u201crealness\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_01\"<\/a>Just like real, the \u201cPassage\u201d mall with its glass dome, its floors polished slippery and a fountain standing in the centre, is located right at the spot where I tried smoking for the first time in my life.<\/p>\n

Just like real, there is a newly-built red brick cathedral with a dour young priest where the Cathedral of the Transfiguration had been standing before being blown up in nineteen sixty-two. And a stele and the eternal light on the cathedral square. <\/p>\n

Just like real, a plane, a helicopter and an air defense missile by the shooting range at the local army, aviation and navy support NGO. Slowly corroding on their metallic pedestals. <\/p>\n

Putting the \u201cjust like\u201d aside, there is not much \u201creal\u201d left. Well, there is the plant where gargantuan apples weigh down branches of the apple trees growing near the uranium department, and the armor-plated doors of the abandoned bombshelter right behind the plant administration, left wide open, no graffiti inside. <\/p>\n

\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_02\"<\/a><\/div>
\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_03\"<\/a><\/div>
<\/div>And that\u2019s it. Weird. There are local newspapers, radio stations, a TV channel. Sixteen schools. Three art schools. Two colleges. A couple of museums. There is all of this, but the \u201crealness\u201d is missing.<\/p>\n

Since school times I remember Korolenko, Zhukovsky, \u201cthe Decembrists\u201d and somebody else, I probably must remember whom, but I\u2019ve forgotten. All those people from the \u201cbig\u201d history that happened to pay a drive-by visit to the town.<\/p>\n

\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_04\"<\/a>Or rather, a \u201cwalk-by\u201d one \u2013 as suggested by the Siberian street located where the Siberian tract (prisoners walked to penal servitude there during Tzar times) had been before. A same-name bar where the perennial classic \u2013 200 ml of vodka and a helping of pelmeni \u2013 cost more than cheap (or maybe \u201cless than cheap\u201d is better), was pulled down a few years ago. <\/p>\n

\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_05\"<\/a><\/div>
\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_06\"<\/a><\/div>
<\/div>\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_07\"<\/a>\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_08\"<\/a>Where are our people then? They went down into the ground all the way from Sevastopol to the Arctic. The War. The War pays all scores. Even the bad poems written about it:<\/p>\n
\n

\u201cCould the mother at the busy platform,
\nSeeing off her son, ever expect
\nNaming one of vibrant streets for Sasha,
\nAs the town would pay him its respect\u2026\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_09\"<\/a>Alexander Pryazhennikov is now in the Hero Park \u2013 a Soviet memorial with nine shining busts \u2013 that is exactly the number of Heroes of the Soviet Union born in Glazov. All of which became Heroes \u201cposthumously\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>A hero is, in fact, a bogatyr. In Udmurt \u2013 a gondyr (which also means \u201ca bear\u201d). A Russophone ear is uncomfortable with the phonetic disharmony that hides a flow of sheer poetry: kizili \u2013 a star, zarez\u2019 \u2013 the sea, ymit\u2019 \u2013 anticipation.<\/p>\n

Tired of trudging through a dozen and a half cases, the consciousness gives a native speaker the previously neutral, but currently insulting name \u201cvotyak\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is a shame to be a \u201cvotyak\u201d. What it means at school is \u2013 tears and a broken nose. It only hurts more to be a \u201cpyatashnik\u201d (a \u201cfiver\u201d) \u2013 a pupil of the special school \u21165. It is all funny now, but back then, at the school stadium in the dark-blue twilight after classes \u2013 it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_11\"<\/a><\/div>
\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_12\"<\/a><\/div>
<\/div>Closed until late eighties \u2013 the uranium production \u2013 the only reason this town ever gets mentioned in the world of the \u201cbig\u201d history is the weird monument list. Or at least, it used to be. It turned out that the 10-feet monument to a bottle of vodka opposite the liquor production plant\u00a0had been brought down.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_13\"<\/a>When I was a child, my \u201cnot real\u201d Motherland was summer-dusty, with the rich cut herb odour, the river clam shells, the kebab house smoke on the Town Day, the heat-treated roofs, the fishing with my father and the dewy morning chill.<\/p>\n

\"anton_sokolov_nenastoyaschaya_rodina_14\"<\/a>And now it is, like the memory in the famous song by Tariverdiev, \u201ccovered with such thick snows\u201d \u2013 I manage to come here less and less often. Almost never in summer. Mostly in winter, when the low white sun lights the cold blue sky, when the wind hurries you from the other bank across the ice crowded with fishermen. Hurries you home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The home-town, the winter and the broken nose. Text and Foto: Anton Sokolov f you \u00a0heard\u00a0the anthem of Glazov a town where I was raised, you would probably be surprised \u2013 there is neither fanfare nor choir in it. Just a plain arrangement and some very simple lyrics about a \u201cwhite bird flying over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,119,108,102],"tags":[133,138,137,134],"coauthors":[],"yoast_head":"\nNot-a-real Motherland - Invisible Cities<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/monogoroda.closeuprussia.com\/en\/not-a-real-motherland\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Not-a-real Motherland - Invisible Cities\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The home-town, the winter and the broken nose. Text and Foto: Anton Sokolov f you \u00a0heard\u00a0the anthem of Glazov a town where I was raised, you would probably be surprised \u2013 there is neither fanfare nor choir in it. 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