Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruins of Empire

"Howard Amos’s book is very heartfelt. He’s a journalist and he has written it with a keen eye for detail, but also for the breadth of coverage. The book brings together in a very holistic way the history and cultural markers of a specific region, Pskov, which used to be the beating heart of Russia. This is where Russia started out, so to speak. Even before the state was formed around Moscow, Pskov existed as a city and was one of the trading posts of the Hanseatic League. Amos describes what’s happening there today, which is a very sad story of rural decline, of poverty and social degradation, of bones buried in the ground in a very orderless manner, of orphans living in various institutions that are in need of help—and that the author himself was involved with at certain times. So it’s a very intimate look at contemporary Pskov. It’s psychologically very attuned and allows you to see it through the eyes of Howard Amos himself. He speaks to individuals, visits those villages and institutions, and engages in their daily life. He does it almost in a Buddhist fashion: he just observes what happens and doesn’t make judgments. We find out what’s happening there: the pain, the nostalgia, the greatness that people refer to in the past, the sacred values that individuals who live in the villages in those lands refer to when they talk about World War Two , for example. This observational acuteness brings out for the reader an understanding of why Russians might be supporting Putin, why they so senselessly support the war in Ukraine, and how the conditions in which they live, in a way, predispose them to feel or think in certain ways. It’s a very nuanced portrayal of the enormous difficulties, the trauma, the everyday problems that people live with. The book looks at them as human beings, without making a judgment that they are either brainwashed or traumatized…Well, you can see they are traumatised, but you don’t put a psychological diagnosis on them. You just see them as human beings who have had difficult lives and look to their history and their political leaders as a potential foundation or a point of strength for them. It’s a very nuanced appreciation of a traumatized, impoverished part of Russia today. There are 17 chapters in that book, with short, very accessibly written stories that provide more color and nuance to our understanding. There is a chapter called ‘rising bones’ and it tells the story of the exhumation of human remains left behind in the German military cemetery during the battles of World War Two. The remains still have their identity tags, which allows one to figure out whose bones they are. The German organization Volksbund has been working throughout Russia, including the Pskov region in particular, on reburying German soldiers so that they all have their individually marked graves. For Russia, it’s also about money. The Germans pay the local authorities for constructing stadiums or sports arenas in these dug-out places. So you have issues around the sacred memory of war, but they are also intertwined with poverty, money, and development."