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After refueling at Volgograd, the pilot took us north to Volzskij, but first to the great dam, which holds back the Volga for almost five hundred kilometers in a huge reservoir. Igor pointed out the details. The pilot took us down to two hundred feet above the smooth surface of what was once a mighty river. Then he turned and followed the river down stream towards the Caspian Sea.
"Let me introduce to you the real Russia," said Igor proudly as we flew above a part of the Volga that had remained in its natural state just as it had been for countless ages. "This is Volga Matushka, our mother, the heart and soul of the private world of Russia." He turned to me and smiled; "It may look like just a river," he said, "but her presence reaches deep into the lives of all Russian people. One might say, the country is married to the river."
Igor's father approved, and explained that thirty percent of the entire Russian population lives somewhere in the Volga river basin that encompasses the heartland of Russia. For centuries the river has carried Russia's commerce, and it still does, perhaps more so, now, than ever.
"The Volga spreads itself across the county in the shape of a giant star," said Igor, "it comes from everywhere, north, south, east, and west, and provides access to everywhere via other rivers and two inland seas. The Volga is built into the nation. It is a part of our national identity. If anyone ever wants to find out what moves Russia, he must follow the Volga. If you look for Russia in Moscow, you will never really find it. You must go to where the pavement ends. You must follow the river. Its 3700-kilometer stretch is a history-laden presence of a country that few in the West have ever noticed, much less understood. If you look to Moscow, you see nothing more than the shadow of a myth that had in part been created by your own Sovietologists and Soviet specialists, back during the Cold War days. Sure, you will find what you expect to find there, a political facade. But you won't find Russia there. To see its private face, you must look beneath the whitewashed garment of the many isms with which her governments have clothed her people over the centuries. Russia isn't communism, imperialism, or anything they teach in schools in the West. You must go to where steam heated concrete structures give way to farmhouses in villages and factory towns. There you will see people laugh, joke, suffer, cry, smile, love, hate, like any other people on earth.
"Communism wasn't Russia," said Igor, "neither is the madness we have today, a facet of the real Russia. Russia is humanity, a sea of common people bound to much of the same superstitions and fears that all people on earth are, driven by the same needs, bending in their ways like the Volga bends and winds its way through the country, yielding here, compromising there, surging, struggling, moving. The real Russia is a flesh and blood world of living day by day the best way a person can, a world of toil, sweat, victory and agony, a world that has been immortalized in many songs about the Volga, songs that every human being understands."
It took us five hours to get to Sergei's place on the sightseeing course, including the stop for re-fueling. Near the end of our journey the country became dominated by grasslands, interlaced with lakes and patches of forest. There were few signs of civilization apparent when Sergei suddenly announced, apparently in the middle of nowhere, that this was home. The engines slowed. We began the descent towards a lake.
"Look, behind the lake. Can you see the large white building? That's our house," said Igor to Jennie. He pointed to a gleaming white mansion that soon came more fully into view as we approached across the water. "Can you see it now? It's like I told you, isn't it?" he said excitedly. "My parents have plenty of room for all of us in the big house."
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Stories
about
Healing
from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche
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