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"Would God forgive Lenin?"
In a lonely tower above the mean streets of Krasnoyarsk, a wanderer encounters the fervent heart of Russia's abiding faith.

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By Jeffrey Tayler

Dec. 1, 1999 | The pale pewter haze of a dawn stillborn in leaden clouds suffused the sky. Snow was falling on Krasnoyarsk, in eastern Siberia, whirling earthward in squalls that wandered over shanties and factory walls topped with barbed wire, roaming over apartment barracks materializing in the gloom, barracks whose cement hulks were studded with sepia lights set in windows layered with grime and creeping soot.

I left my hotel and trudged down the road past the apartments. In the doorways huddled threesomes of bums passing around bottles. Their faces were booze-swollen and cracked, like overripe fruit, from the cold, their hands were gashed from brawls and falls on grit-blackened ice. I fell in with the legions of proletarians plodding to work along slush-splattered sidewalks, their heads lowered into the blowing snow, their faces wearing a hangover pallor. It was a weary march amid a nullifying tableau, and I felt my spirits sag. The day would be a maddeningly brief spell of foul weather and faint light, the night would fall early and last long, bringing on an ache of cabin fever and a twitchy yearning for escape into a vodka-drenched oblivion.

I left the crowd to make my way around a traffic circle where grimy Volgas honked and sprayed slush as they passed and Zhigulis dodged trams with headlights flashing yellow through streaks of soot, and started across the long bridge over the Yenisey River. The air was frigid and the Yenisey, one of Siberia's great waterways, should have been iced over, but it was feverishly warm: a fog -- a febrile, slightly fetid vapor -- rose from it in curls and miasmic wisps and brought on a sweat and a penetrating chill. Since the construction of the thermo-electric plant upstream at Divnogorsk, the Yenisey rarely froze, and the city had warmed up. The fierce Russian frosts ("frosts so strong they burn your face," as Siberians like to say) had become a matter of lore, like horse-drawn droshky and dueling counts on gentry estates.

I was on my way to the church clock tower on top of the yar -- the slope above the city. Krasnoyarsk derives part of its name from the slope: Yar means "slope" or "steep bank of a river or ravine"; krasny, "red" or "beautiful." I wanted to see the tower: It was one of the few historic sites left in town, which had been built almost 300 years ago as a stockade outpost during the Russian conquest of Siberia, but which had suffered decades of Soviet "renewal" that left it modern in a pockmarked, Stalinesque way.

I crossed the bridge. The yar rose ahead of me, bald and dun-colored in places, dusted with snow in others, with the tower at its top. Leading up toward the tower was a wooden staircase with great gaps through which not just a foot but a body might drop. Clutching my coat collar against the wind, I climbed and climbed, bounding over the missing stairs where I could, dismounting the staircase and scrambling up the incline where the gaps were too big. About three-quarters of the way there, the stairs ended and a foot path began, which I followed until it faded, then I trod the unmarked earth the final 50 yards or so to the tower.

At the door I stopped and took in the view. Beyond the city, in every direction, spread a panorama of snow and low mountains scattered with scraggly pines, raced over by sub-arctic winds. The vista appeared vast, but it was no more than a tiny swatch of the Siberian territory that covered 6 and a half million square miles. Siberia, for people who travel it, is more than mere landscape; with its dwarfing dimensions, humbling desolation and stultifying monotony, it is a diminisher of hope and a slayer of pride, it enforces a sense of helplessness that prods even atheists to conjure up the gods.

Footsteps resounded behind me, echoing as if from a stone chamber. Startled, I turned around. The tower door creaked and swayed on its hinges, then shut softly. I approached it and knocked. No one answered. I reached for the latch but as I touched it, the door swung back and away from me. My heart skipped a beat and I almost cried out.

Next page | "Would God forgive everyone? Even Lenin?"