Reportage: A literary path to the heart of Russia

Karl Ove Knausgård

Russia is a land of stories. The story of the Tsar and his people, of Lenin and the Revolution, the great patriotic war. The transformation of a land into a large modern and industrial state. The story of Stalin's reign of terror, of a sclerotizing country; the story of Vladimir Putin, the KGB man who rose to power in the midst of chaos and restored order. How did he do that? Thanks to the stories of the past, told in a way that leads to today's Russia. For a good part of my life I have been very drawn, almost mesmerized by these stories. When I was little, Russia was a closed, mysterious country, it was always presented to us as our opposite. We were free and the Russians were oppressed, we were good and the Russians were bad.

Growing up and reading, I realized that things were more complicated because it was Russia where the best and most intense literature came from: Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Memoirs of a crazy" by Gogol. What kind of country was Russia, where the spirits were so deep and the spirit so wild? Because it was there that the criticism of the injustices of society divided into classes had turned into action first with the Revolution of 1917 and then with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat? Why a wonderful story, which speaks of the equality of all human beings, has turned into terror, inhuman brutality and misery? Russia is still a mystery to me. Every day a news comes to us from Russia - Putin, his opponents in prison, his interventions in the elections of foreign countries and all confirm the idea that "Russia" is a unique, understandable and worthy entity. But what do the people who live inside this entity think? What is "Russia" for them, what are the stories they tell themselves, a hundred years after the revolution and twenty-five years after the fall of the communist regime?

For years I wanted to see Russia with my own eyes, meet the people who lived in that entity and understand what it meant to them to be Russian. That is why one morning in October I drove with a photographer and a translator from Moscow straight to Ivan Turgenev's old estate.

To understand what Russia was like beyond the news. The best place to start is the world told by Turgenev, the countryside that serves as the backdrop for his first book, Memoirs of a Hunter. Published in 1852, "Reminiscences of a Hunter" is a collection of stories about the encounters of a hunter on his walks in the woods. It has none of the emotion and depth of Dostoevsky's psychology, nor Tolstoy's epic complexity or ability to describe an entire society in a few strokes of the pen. They are by all accounts modest, if not insignificant, stories. A man walks through the woods with a rifle on his shoulder, he has a couple of conversations with someone he meets, maybe he shoots some birds and spends the night somewhere on the back road: that's all. However, due to Turgenev's closeness with which he describes the Russian society of the forties of the nineteenth century, the book is considered one of the best, one of the great works of world literature. Gradually the field becomes more undulating and then, suddenly we reach the top of a hill, the view changes completely.

Just half an hour later we leave the highway and enter a country road that takes us first to a village and then to a large gated estate with a parking lot. There is nothing around and silence reigns. The clouds are low; the air is heavy with humidity and seems to dampen any noise. In one corner there is a stone chapel with the lower part of the wall covered with moss, and a hundred yards further on is what must have been the main house. I expected something magnificent and monumental, similar to an English stately building. The Turgenevs were a noble family. Instead I find myself in front of a rather small wooden house, purple in color and covered in creepers. It doesn't give me any special feeling. You don't feel the spirit of history. I try to imagine Turgenev coming out of the door and walking towards the point where we are, but it is impossible to associate him with us and his time with ours. We follow a young guide with a beard and glasses. He explains to us that almost all the original items are gone and these are just copies. Some objects in the writer's house are displayed in the rooms of the house near the main office. There are tables and chairs, paintings, trinkets and bookshelves. But even if they are authentic, these objects do not speak, they are simply standing there, mutely, to show the past. The only objects of interest are the rifle, a gunpowder bag, and the bag that Turgenev used while hunting. Among the objects is also a sofa on which Tolstoy sat. The two writers lived only a few hours away from each other. At first they were good friends, then slowly Tolstoy began to hate Turgenev. The latter observed the life of the villagers, but never reached the degree of involvement.

We cross the big park on foot. There is none other than us. Moist, icy air is motionless. "Are there always so few people here?" I asked the attendant. He shakes his head vigorously. "No, it's usually full of students who come from all over Russia. And next year the country celebrates the bicentenary of Turgenev's birth. That is why it is under renovation. We will have many visitors, but today is Monday and we are in October". He stops by a large tree surrounded by a low fence. "This oak tree was planted by Turgenev himself," he says. To the right of the tree there is a cemetery. "What are those?" I ask, pointing to them. "It's the soldiers' cemetery," answers the guide.

"Here?". Yes, they fought against the Germans during the war and fell here." A little while later, as we leave, the image of the cemetery sticks in my mind, perhaps because the violence it presented was completely unexpected in the isolated reality of a house museum.

Before the Revolution, Russia was an agricultural society, for the most part. In the early 1900s, four out of five Russians were farmers. They were poor, uneducated, superstitious and illiterate. In many parts of the country the way of life had practically not changed much since the Middle Ages. Lev Trotsky begins the history of the Russia of the Revolution by emphasizing that, "the essential and most constant characteristic of the history of Russia is the slowness of the country's evolution, with the economic backwardness, the primitive social structure, the lowest culture resulting from this slowness."

In "Tragedy of a People," British historian Orlando Figes describes a primitive world in which every aspect of everyday life was governed by an unacceptable conformity where everyone wore the same clothes, everyone had their hair cut the same way, and they all slept in the same room. "In the peasant world there was very little room for privacy," writes Figes. "The bathhouse was in an open area and the city's doctors were shocked, where people would spit in each other's ears to relieve the pain, or the adults would chew the food they had to give to the babies first in their mouths" . These representations of the Russian farm world of the eight hundred years are not false, but are the fruit of distant observation and general generalization. The distance is of course necessary, it serves the writer to remember and explain the developments of society just as politics needs to face social problems. But it is the distance that has allowed the Bolsheviks to destroy the structure of Russian society without thinking about hundreds of millions of dead, who were not considered as persons, but "peasants", who were seen with such a distance that hid from them any trace of individuality. "Memoirs of a Hunter" tells about the world described by Trotsky and Figes from the inside without taking any distance. One of the most beautiful stories in the book tells of a man who is lost on his way back from hunting, who across the field sees a fire around which are a herd of young men tending their horses. They sit by the fire to pass the time telling their stories. Turgeniev brings it all alive with his manner and personality. There is something very touching in the way he brings them, he takes them seriously, he gives them dignity. The stories we are told are fascinating. And the story we are told is not the peasant, superstitious and reactionary class as told by revolutionaries and historians, they are five boys, each with his own life.

"Memoirs of a Hunter" was not a political book, but in the Russia of the fifties of the nineteenth century it had a great political influence, precisely because there was no political or literary program to show life for what it was and not for what it was. symbolized. At that time there was still slavery in Russia. The elders were the owners not only of the villages that were built on their lands, but also of the peasants who lived there. It was, in other words, a form of slavery. Turgeniev's book helped fuel the critique of charity, which was abolished nine years later, in 1861, by the progressive Tsar Alexander II.

Twenty years later, Alexander II was assassinated in front of his son and grandson, who would later become Tsar Alexander III and Nicholas II. It is not unreasonable. Imagine that the assassination of the Tsar contributed to transform both his successors into reactionary and illiberal despots, against any reform and thus determined to suppress any form of opposition to make the Revolution.

And it is already dark when we find the exact point where Turgenev's story about the boys is set. It is known as "Livadhi e Bezhin" and this is what an old woman tells us.

"Do you want to talk to him?", says the photographer from the back seat. "No, not better," I say. "Okay, I still want to take some pictures," he says.

Brown and Addario come down and climb over the fence. Brown says something in Russian, the woman answers. Suddenly I realize that I must talk to him, that the museum, the trees and the old books, the things I focused on represent nothing but my idea of ​​the place I am visiting.

What am I getting myself into? My vision of Russia is entirely based on myths and a certain romantic imagination. How can I be so presumptuous as to believe that I can say anything about Russia, after a nine-day journey in a small corner of this ruined country? It's like describing a bucket of water to speak the ocean. I get out of the car and climb the fence too. "She says she doesn't want to be photographed," Brown explains. "Why not?" She says she's just picking some corn for the chickens, he adds, "but that's not her field." "I understand", I answer. Then the woman agrees to tell us about her life.

"Ask him where he lives," Addario says, and starts with photos. “And what does she do? Ask if they have a family." The woman was born in a small village along the road. When she was fifteen she moved to Moscow and she lived there for several years, then returned to take care of her mother when her father died. "When I was a girl here, there were a lot of people," she says.

"It was a rich and vibrant community, there must have been fifteen or twenty families living here," she says, pointing to the abandoned farms along the road. "Now they have all left." "Have you read Turgenev?" I ask. "I read 'Memoirs of a Hunter'". "Did you like this?". For the first time she smiles. "I read to my grandchildren." "Is today different from what it was when Turgenev wrote?". "The landscape is the same, but the life is different. It's very different," she says. Then we parted and continued on our way.

The train to Kazan occupies a seemingly kilometer-long space along the platform at the station. The green locomotive and the long load of gray wagons seem straight out of wartime. We have a compartment, second class with four beds. I take out to read something. The book, "Lenin's life and revolution" by Victor Sebestyen is interesting. Lenin's favorite writer was always Turgenev. Lenin was a deep man. He was fanatical, at the same time emotionally evasive, even throughout his exile, wherever he was. Wherever he was, in London, Zurich or Paris, he made sure he had a work by Turgenev with him. I'm reading a book by Lenin, because I've chosen the places I've chosen to visit in the next seven days thinking about him.

In a few weeks it will be the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917, when Lenin almost single-handedly took power in Russia. We will go to Kazan, where Lenin studied law and started politics, and then we will go to Yekaterinburg, where in 1918 Nicholas II and his family were executed in a cellar on Lenin's orders. In its merciless brutality, this action marks the end of the old world in Russia and the beginning of the new. Every trace of the old world will be uprooted to make space for the new.

I was looking at people from head to toe. The fact that they are all fully revealed makes me feel like an annoying person. None of the passengers seem to mind, they act as if they are in their own room. We stop in front of three women who are talking. All three must have been the same age. I ask Brown to make the introductions. All three women watch me intently. "Where are you going?" I ask. "In Izhevsk," says one of the three. "Where do they make Kalashnikovs". "And you were in Moscow?" They nod yes. "What have you done?". They exchange a look. "It's a secret," she says, laughing. The other two laugh. Someone behind me was laughing and then I turn my head and see an 80-year-old woman take Addario's hand and kiss it. The woman says something to Brown and smiles

"What did she say?". "She said you are very good." "Oh, no," I reply. "Will you write it?". "Of course not," I replied. “But you're going to ask her if I can come back later and talk to her again?” It's very dark when we get back. The three women are sitting around the table sharing a bowl of peanuts. The woman who spoke the most must have thought about what to say first, because she immediately started talking about herself. Her name is Natalja. Her two friends are called Olga and Zinaida. She tells us that she grew up in an orphanage. He remembered his parents and had a sister from whom he was separated. She had a life looking for her, but she still didn't know where she was. "At that time it was normal for brothers and sisters to be separated," she says. When I grew up, I came back and got a job at the same orphanage. But I didn't find anything. So I wrote a program on television that helps people find their family and I'm waiting for a response. "When did you write to him?", I asked him. "Two years ago," she replied. He himself realized that her words did not leave much room for hope, because then he added: "Sometimes it is difficult to find people again, also for journalists. It can take up to five years." Natalja begins to talk about her Christian faith. Last year she went to Israel to see the place where Jesus was crucified. She shared that she had prayed for many people in need and that her prayer had been answered. "Then I prayed for a man and here I am, I'm dating this wonderful man!". While the others are laughing, I understand that the name Putin comes out of her mouth.

"Did he say something about Putin?" I ask Brown. "Yes, yes. She said her mother is a big supporter of Putin. They are all admirers of Putin". "We love our country", says Natalja. "And for the first time we have a Christian president, an Orthodox president." They turn a magazine on the table to show us the cover. All pictures are of Putin. In one he is shirtless. "Do you see what a physique he has," she says. "It has been a hundred years since the Revolution. What does this mean for you?". "It doesn't matter", says Natalja. "Those were a hundred years without a god. They rejected all the churches. Now they are rebuilding them and we can go there without fear. Here, in this city, there is an icon of the Virgin Mary. It is very old. When it was found to be completely black. Now it's slowly becoming more and more clear, and every year that passes it becomes clearer," she says.

An hour later the train stops and I look out from the track. It's dark and there's no one at the stations. There is a special pleasure in reaching a city at night, in the dark. It is not revealed what aspect it is until we wake up in the morning. What city is Kazan? The neighborhood I find myself in is modern and well maintained. The magnificent mosque I saw from my hotel room when I woke up is brand new.

Kazan, the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Tatarstan, and the city where Lenin studied law and was expelled from university. His father was a public official in Tsarist Russia and Lenin's life revolved around school, literature and chess, a game at which he was very good. Then two events shook his life. His father died suddenly of a heart attack, aged 54, and his brother. Alexander, whom he adored, was sentenced to death for plotting against the Tsar. Lenin knew nothing of these revolutionary activities of his brother and was never interested in politics. Alexander's death changed everything. Not only did Lenin immediately join a revolutionary cell at the University of Kazan, but as Sebestyen recounts in his biography, "his whole personality was transformed." The happiness and good humor of adolescence disappeared and Lenin became a closed, extremely disciplined and determined young man. From the moment he was expelled from the university, he never looked back.

He spent the rest of his life working for the Revolution, which he however did not know if he would actually achieve. Finally Lenin forces the Revolution to follow his line. The Bolsheviks were atheists, and religion completely disappeared from the new Russian state. For three generations it was suppressed, until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, when it made its return, fiercer than ever. In Kazan, all this is clear. There are more than 200 national and ethnic minorities in Russia. The largest is that of the Tatars, who represent four percent of the country's population. Almost all Tatars are of the Islamic faith, and one of the largest Muslim communities in Russia lives in Kazan.

I park my car at the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan. It is five o'clock and he goes to pick up a Tatar girl named Dina Khabibullina, a practicing Muslim. I met her before and we talked a little about how she felt as part of a religious and cultural minority in Russia. Then she invited us to her house for dinner. Dina is 29 years old and works as a researcher at the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan. She is six months pregnant. She received a non-Muslim upbringing in a home where Tatar culture was practically absent and Russian was spoken mainly. At the age of 19, he suddenly had an enlightenment and converted to Islam and learned Tatarism in solitude. Many of her friends did the same. Perhaps religion has always been present in the depths of society, waiting for the right time to raise its head.

"What prompted you to rediscover your faith?", I ask. "I was 19 when my father died," she says. "I asked myself what I could do to get over his death. It is clearly written in the teachings of Islam: you must give alms to the poor, it seems like a pilgrimage to Mecca and slaughter a ram". The building where Dina lives seems to date back to the fifties. She shows us the way and takes us to the apartment where her son, who is seven years old, is waiting for her with Dina's husband and mother. At the end of the visit, I found out that the child's father, Dina's first husband, had died. After greeting her mother, she goes into the kitchen to cook while her husband, Damir Dolotkazin, rolls out a prayer rug in the living room. Judging by his appearance, Damir is more or less 30 years old. While the boy plays on the sofa with his toys and Dina cooks, Damir sits for the prayer and when he finishes before leaving, he says a prayer almost silently. Then he would roll up that rug and the solemn atmosphere would suddenly disappear as it had come. Dina calls us from the kitchen. He pours a vegetable soup, balls of fat and pieces of dark meat into our bowls. Damian eats the soup with gusto and answers my questions willingly.

"Have you always been a Muslim?" I asked. "No", he replies. "I was in the army here in Kazan. I was in a security department when I was 18 and I was a Christian." One of his friends in the army was Muslim, says Damir, and “he taught me what it was all about. I thought it was a strong and great religion.” "It's very good," I say. "What kind of meat is that?". "It's horse meat", says Damir. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. There is nothing we can do but continue to eat that we are guests, and it would be impolite not to consume the food that is served to us.

"What do they say about the Russians in the West?" he asks. "Common stereotypes?". "There are some stereotypes, it's true," I replied, biting into a good piece of meat. "People think we are barbarians. It's very sad. What politicians say and do has nothing to do with us living here. There are many good people in this country, good souls and also bad people, of course. At the political level, nothing changes. The elections are a joke."

After dinner, a large tray of Tatar sweets is served. Damir says that he used to be a big football fan, but then corrects himself: “Well, it's not really that I liked football. I loved to fight.” "Were you a warrior?" "Yes. For three years I went to football games to fight. I had some trouble with the law, but I no longer have contact with that environment. Now I prefer to read. I try to read twenty books a year.” After dinner, when we realize that we can't abuse their time any more, we greet Dina and Damir and put on our coats in the hallway. Suddenly Damir approaches me. "My sister died in a plane crash in 2013," he says. "I'm sorry," I replied, not knowing how to handle this information. We shook hands. I feel great sympathy for Damir.

The last thing I see before the door closes is a chair in the living room with a child's clothes resting on it, a white shirt and a collar. After a while, we stop at a restaurant on the other side of the road. Immediately we all order a soup and sit at a table. After eating, we ask one of the waiters if we can talk to him. She makes a slightly uncertain sign, dry her hands on a towel and comes. She is young, under thirty, and explains that this is only a temporary job. The restaurant is part of a chain and she comes to help when someone gets sick. She has a reserved attitude when I start to ask her about Russia, glancing at her colleagues before answering. "Now things are better," she says. "The economy is growing, life is always better". "What are you talking about?", a man at the front desk interrupts. "In Russia things are worse! Everything is going to hell! Always worse and worse!” He is big and imposing, with short hair and a pale, flat face. But as he says it, he smiles.

"There is no progress," he shouts before sitting down at a table in the middle of the hall. I thank the young waitress, who runs off to the kitchen in relief, and approach the truck driver a little reluctantly. He looks down at me, spoon in hand. "Why are you writing about Russia?", he asks. "In the United States, the image of Russia is very much related to Putin and politics. We came here to see what life is like beyond these things." "Nice to meet you!" he says. "Sit down".

His name is Sergey. He is 44 years old and drives a truck that transports cars from a Lada factory to Kazan dealers. "I have to work 16 hours a day to make ends meet," he says. "If you want to live, you have to work. In 2004 I slept four hours a night and worked the rest of the day. At that time I had a boss to whom I had to answer. Now I work for myself, so at least I can choose things myself." As he speaks, I watch as he looks me straight in the face, a glint in his eye. He always has a joke ready. "Meeting someone like you only happens once in a lifetime," he says, bursting into laughter. "I was robbed once, do you want me to tell you?" One morning, fifteen years ago, he had parked the truck and was making a cup of tea in the cabin. The doors were suddenly closed and two men tried to enter. "Fortunately, only one of them had a knife," says Sergei. "One opened the door, the other went up and put a rope around my neck. I held him with one hand, started the truck and pulled into the middle of the road to call for help. The boy who tried to strangle me was between me and the one with the knife and that saved me. I managed to open the door and jumped down. Then the guy with the knife stabbed me from behind. I still have scars.” "And they left in a truck?" "Yes, yes. I just wanted to save myself. I walked along the road, but no one stopped to help me. No wonder, I was half naked and covered in blood. There was no one at the police station and I finally reached a house where a party was going on. I went, got some clothes and left immediately. They found the truck a few hours later, abandoned, destroyed and without a load. And, I was arrested because I had stolen clothes!“, he laughs. His face is constantly in motion, with expressions changing to highlight different steps in the story. Sergej is a born storyteller. He tells me that his grandfather claimed to be a Romanov. "A Romanov?" I ask. "The Imperial Family?". "Yes. I asked my mother, but they never managed to find out if it was true." Good luck, I think, to meet a possible successor to the Tsar in a small bar on the highway in the middle of Russia.

He started talking to me about my grandfather. "He was very strong," he says. “And my grandfather was twice my size. Once he was trying to wash a calf. It was a hot day and not a leaf moved. The calf was annoyed by a fly, which he tried to drive away all the time. Sergey lifts his head and pushes it around to show the calf gesture. "He gave a nod to his grandfather. Grandpa got angry and hit him. The calf died on the spot. One punch left him dead.” He pauses for me to recover from the story and then bursts out laughing. "I think dreams tell the truth," he says. "Also, in my opinion," I answer. "Really?". "Yes." "Then I will tell you a dream I had that extended my grandfather's life by another year. At that time I had left my father and lived with my grandfather, whom I loved very much. In short, in the dream there are three men, dressed in black and wearing a black hat. Very mysterious, a bit like the Georgians who come to our house. They pass me and go straight to my grandfather. They take him and he does not resist, he goes with them. I grab my leg and crawl behind him. I could not save him even though I am very strong. I lose hope and start screaming. One of the men in black asks: 'Who's that screaming?' Then he sees me and says: 'How much is left for him?' 'One year', one of his friends replies, 'for some good deeds he has done', he says, and then they disappear". "A week later my grandfather entered intensive care. He was in a coma. I said I didn't want doctors because I knew he would recover. Five days later he woke up and lived exactly one more year." After the conversation, we see Sergey crossing the street to go to the parking place. He turns around, waves to us, gets into the car and starts the engine.

One of the things that connects me most to Russia that I have always wanted is to see first-hand the typical village that appears in eighteenth-century Russian romances and historical photos. A group of wooden houses, mostly unpainted, some fences, some vegetable gardens, chickens running around, a grove nearby, a slow flowing river, surrounded by fields. During the journey, I often saw villages of this type from afar. First going to Turgenev's farm and then along the railway to Kazan.

The village seems uninhabited except for a lonely old lady working in the vegetable garden. Brown speaks. Apparently there is a woman in the village who is 102 years old. "Can I meet him?", I ask Brown. He repeats the question to the woman, who nods yes and points us in the direction. We walk towards a blue house, where we see a woman with a scarf on her head. Holding a large white chicken struggling to break free. I cross the threshold and enter the living room inside. There are carpets everywhere, on the floor and on the walls. It looks like a cave. In the middle of the living room, standing is a very old woman. When we enter, she slowly turns her head and looks at us. The woman who invited us in escorts the old woman to a bed against the wall, she sits her down, removes the scarf from her head and replaces it with a clean one, then puts on a pair of leather slippers, almost as if she is wearing a doll. But it seems that the old lady is not impressed. She is sitting quietly with her hands in her lap and looking at us. She is wearing a black dress with some flowers. The white scarf is very large and not only covers his head, but falls down his back. It is called Minizaitunja Ibjatullina. I reach over and shake his hand gently. While he sees me, he tells me something. "She's speaking in Tatar," says Brown. "I don't know what he is saying". Minizaitunja turns her head towards the camera as Addario starts shooting. At the door is Kasim, who takes care of the woman, who sees the scene from afar and smiles. His wife, who is called Alija, pulls a large photograph from a plastic drawer and passes it to the old woman. It is a picture of a soldier and the woman holds it in front of her. It is the portrait of Minizaitunja's husband, who died in 1943 in Ukraine during the war.

This picture was taken 70 years ago with that attractive and so young man and this lady who is now 102 years old. But apparently he doesn't really care. She sits proudly with her husband's photo in her hand. It must be strange for the son too. He is 80 years old, more than twice his father's age when he died. Kasimi has always lived in the village, since during the Soviet Union it was a collective farm. He tells us that he worked there as a carpenter and his mother worked all her life. Minizaitunja murmurs something. The boy walks towards her. "He says that she is already too old to work, she no longer has the strength." "What kind of work did you do?" "She worked on the collective farm. He milked the cows and did other work." Alija enters the living room and invites us to the table. While we were there, she had prepared something: on the table are several jars of various jams. There are only two chairs and there is no way to persuade the owners of the house to sit down. The woman pours the tea, the man holds a large bag of sweets. Seeing that I hesitate to take, he pulls out three and leaves them next to my plate. A sound of slow, subtle footsteps is heard from the living room.

"The babushka is coming!", says Alija. A few seconds later Minizaitunja appears in the doorway. The boy escorts her to another bed, where she sits and watches him while we eat. He was born in 1915. At that time Russia was still a monarchy and Nicholas II reigned. Minizaitunja has seen the Old Tsarist Empire, the Revolution, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and now the new Russia. Alija puts aside some fresh bread in a bag, Kasim gives us a few bags of candy, and the three of them each give us an embroidered scarf. Minizaitunja also has a gift for us: a soap for Brown, and two scarves for Addario and me. "All the people I was born with are dead," she says from the bed when we get up to leave. "No one is left." I never look anyone straight in the eye for more than a minute. I don't want to invade other people's space and I don't want others to invade mine. But, after shaking hands with my friends, I find myself in front of this woman who looks at me intently and I think I should return it, I even have the obligation to look her in the eye. Those eyes that saw the world in the Tsar's time and still see it today, a hundred years later. We look at each other for a long time. At first she looks surprised, and looks like she's wondering what I'm doing, then she starts to smile and it's such a wonderful smile that right after we leave the house, I still have tears in my eyes.

On the last day we traveled 14 hours to reach Yekaterinburg. A little before they arrive, in the middle of a forest about an hour from the city, I stop on the bank of a river and I light a cigarette under the open sky. I think about what awaits me tomorrow. The assassination of the Tsar and his family in a cellar in Yekaterinburg was a shocking event, a copy of the French Revolution. But perhaps for Lenin it was also a personal matter. Hatred for the Tsar who had executed his brother consumed him since he was 17 years old. It is not difficult to imagine that this personal hatred has made him even more ruthless and uncompromising.

The next day in Yekaterinburg, we see a crowd gather in a square, hundreds of people shouting and raising banners. When we drive by, they turn to look. "What are they protesting for?", asks Addario. "Today there are demonstrations all over the country," says Brown. "In favor of one of the leaders of the opposition, Alexei Navalny, who is in prison. And it is also Putin's birthday". "Really?", I ask. A moment later I forget this event, because we are approaching the Bloody Cathedral, erected on the place where the legendary story of the Tsars ended. Indeed, the church offers an experience that is equally important, for me epic: an authentic Orthodox mass. Thanks to Russian novels, and especially the works of Dostoyevsky, for me this experience is wrapped in an altruistic light of mercy, which illuminates not only the first and the richest, but also the last and the poor. I understood immediately that no Dostoyevkan vision would open before me. The church was built in a traditional style, full of light domes. Looking at it gave me the same strange feeling I once experienced in the old town of Warsaw, where the ancient buildings, destroyed during the Second World War, were replaced by immaculate copies. It's like some kind of anomaly in space. It's old, it's not old, it's new, it's not new. But then where are we? July 16, 1918 - so it is said - the Tsar and his family wake up in the middle of the night and are moved to a safer place. After they are brought down from the respective rooms, they are taken to the basement, where they are told to wait. They have no idea what's going to happen until we see the gun to their heads. The revolutionaries who form the platoon are amateurs, some are drunk. There are shots, the floor is filled with blood, the air is thick with smoke, there are probably screams and confusion. Several people in the family are lying on the ground, bleeding but still alive, until someone ends them with a shot to the head. The troops pick them up and take them out of town, and the revolutionaries try to douse the unknown features with acid, before throwing them into a mine shaft. A few days later the bodies were exhumed and taken to a nearby forest to be buried. The house is gone, the basement is gone, the blood and bodies are gone. But the Romanovs are still there. They returned to the Bloody Cathedral in the form of symbols. Those crazy, bloody minutes, and all they represent, are locked in relics that promise the opposite: wisdom, order, harmony, and balance. At the entrance to the church is a sculpture of the entire Romanov family, in the same heroic-realist style used by Soviet artists to depict workers in the 1920s-30s. Inside the church there is a series of icons in which Nicholas II is portrayed in a medieval manner. Almost everything in the church seems to revolve around a distortion. The Tsar and his family were transported to this environment and their history has disappeared without a trace. While Lenin was embalmed in the mausoleum on Red Square, his body is real and connected to this moment, but there is nothing in that body that connects him to the time of the Revolution. "History is a nightmare I'm trying to wake up from," Joyce writes.

The next morning, at Yekaterinburg Airport, while waiting for the flight to Moscow, I glance at the news on my phone. I watch the news about the mine. There have been demonstrations against Putin and the government in all major Russian cities. It is mainly about the manifestations in Yekaterinburg, what we saw while going to church. 24 protesters were arrested. My first thought is that I should have been there, that is where the story goes, because there I would have found the best image of modern Russia. But then I think: No, it's not true. Stories have always held Russia together, and perhaps what made them different from the founding stories of other countries is precisely their authoritarian nature: there is only one story, and anyone who deviates from the official version is banned. It was like this under the Czar's regime who censored books and newspapers, it happened with Lenin and it continues today: in Russia, journalists are sometimes imprisoned or sometimes simply killed. But even the alternative stories, the ones the authorities don't want to circulate, tell about the abuses of power and oppression, of life under a dictatorship where all hope for the future has disappeared, and even the stories have become standardized. This is how foreign newspapers reported what happened that day: their articles confirm and reinforce the story of a people oppressed by a totalitarian state. Behind this reality, however, there is another. The three happy ladies on the train; Dina and Damiri; the Kazan couple with a new baby; Sergey, the truck driver; the very old lady of the village and the elderly couple who take care of her. What stories can manage to encompass all these realities without diminishing the uniqueness? Surely those of Turgenev. His characters are not symbols of anything, they are just themselves. But the world as it is cannot exist without its twin, the world as we would like it to be. Lenin, the printer, read Turgenev all his life, and so did Vladimir Putin, who admitted his love for Memoirs of a Hunter in a 2011 interview in which he said: “The main character, in a simple but picturesque way , tells about the life stories of the people he meets while going hunting. They show a deep portrait of Russia in the middle of the nineteenth century that we need as a starting point, that allows us to see our country, its traditions and its national psychology in a new light."

In the afternoon, in the bar of a Moscow hotel, I meet Sergey Lebedev, a 36-year-old writer and journalist who has recently become a civic activist. I'm as curious about him as I am about his writings, and I'm as fascinated by his family history as I am by their knowledge of national history. I know that he was born in 1981 and that he is quite old to have spent most of his childhood in the Soviet Union and his teenage years in the chaotic years due to the fall of the regime. I also know he was a geologist. "I was born in a classic Soviet family," he says. Once we were seated at a table overlooking the street. "My parents were both geologists, they belonged to the Soviet intelligentsia." Lebedev is short and stocky, with a bushy beard. There is something invincible about it that makes me think of an animal that, once it catches its prey, never lets go. Lebedev tells me that in his adolescence everything was designed in such a way as to keep parts of the past hidden. His grandfather, for example, had been a tsarist army man before defecting to the Red Army. "It was normal for me," he says. "I lived in an incomplete world. Full of holes. With a series of questions that could not be asked." Perhaps many have a similar story to Lebedev's, I think. In all of us there is a mechanism that prevents us from talking about bad experiences and makes us reluctant to relive the past. Our identity is based on stories, on our history, on the history of our family, on the history of our people and our country. What happens when one of these stories, identities doesn't match reality? Suddenly we are not who we thought we were. And then who are we? I ask him what is the dominant narrative in Russia today. "It's very strange," he replies. "First of all, it is important to understand that the authorities do not follow a single line, a coherent ideology. They use elements from different fields: if something works, they get it. Take for example the party name 'United Russia'. The words 'United Russia' was a counter-revolutionary slogan coined in reaction to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who wanted to set up new republics capable of self-government. The current administration is building a state that was founded on nostalgia for the Soviet Union, but it makes no problem to adopt a counter-revolutionary slogan and it does not cause any controversy.”

Lebedev continues: “Every year that passes they seek to diminish the importance of 1917. They do this because in their ideal version of events there was no revolution. They are trying to build a connection between the Tsar and Stalin's Russia. According to current accounts, a hundred years ago we were driven to kill each other by foreign spies and traitors. This must not happen again. Therefore, we must stand together, we must all put ourselves under Putin's umbrella, we must stop any opposition, we must also sacrifice our civil rights because it must not happen again. That's pretty much how things are."

After the interview, we cross the city and reach the Kremlin. The streets are full of people, the sky is blue and clear. Accompanied by Lebedev, we arrive in front of the Bolshoi Theater. The square in front of the magnificent neoclassical facade is full of buses and police officers. "Policemen on the riot march," explains Lebedev. "Yesterday there was a demonstration, they are worried, they want to make sure that nothing happens". The crowd wanders between the halls of things to eat and drink. The atmosphere is cheerful, people laugh at jokes, the sun shines on their faces. Under the beautiful blue background of the sky, the towers of the Kremlin are also visible. "It's the harvest festival," says Lebedev. "Typical of Putin and this government. They invest in non-political events and public gathering places like this one. We're only talking about sugar here. They are trying to invent new traditions, the goal is to highlight Russia's riches."

We continue to walk in "Revolution Square", which was called "Revival Square" in the time of the Tsar. "As you can see here, there are no traces of the Revolution," says Lebedev. "We practically don't celebrate anniversaries, and we certainly don't talk about the violence and atrocities that have been committed. But if you want to understand what happened in this country in the 1920s and 1930s, it is impossible to ignore the violence and horrors of the five years between 1917 and 1921. It is impossible to understand why people were so worried about kill each other. There was a kind of war of memory in Russia, about what should be remembered and what should be forgotten. Today, history is only a matter of symbols, we have lost any idea of ​​mutual forgiveness and reunification". "But you'll see now that you're going in here," he says, pointing to the entrance to a subway station. We climb a long, steep escalator, and in the underground world where we're using transportation, time seems to have stopped. On the walls of the subway, on some platforms, there are several bronze statues of famous heroic figures. The first brings a rifle and a cartridge: it is one of the revolutionaries. Then come the common people, men, women, old and young, farmers, fishermen and workers. The wonderful enchanting scene ends with a child being raised by an adult, a symbol of the future. It is so full of hope and faith that the fact that it is a work of propaganda does not matter, because we are dealing with a vision of life, of an earth, of a future, and there is nothing false about it. Just beauty. This was also the Revolution: the dream of a better life for all. All the art of that time vibrates with a wild energy and optimism like that of the idea of ​​a new beginning.

Women are first in line, not as sex objects, but in their entirety. Artists experimented: it is the era of Mayakovsky, Einstein, Kandinsky. But it is also an age of death, violence, brutality, hunger, hardship, misery and, over time, a system that sclerotizes and closes the doors of the world to block it from its truths. The subway station on Revolution Square is the most beautiful place I visited during my trip to Russia, but this time beauty cannot be put to use in any way, because it is connected to a concept of reality in which no one believes no more and therefore can never be realized.

Not for that, though, it's a lie. The Tsar statue in front of the Bloody Cathedral is a lie because it manipulates the past. And yet the Moscow subway sculptures were to change the future. Then the fact that the imagined future never came, never came true, does not make this underground vision false, it only made it tepid and beautiful. And few things are more beautiful than lukewarm hope.

Karl Ove Knausgard is a writer from Norway, author of an autobiography in six volumes, "My Battle", published in Italy by Feltrinelli. This article was published in “New York Times". The text was translated and adapted by Valmira Dalipi, while for the first time it was published in Albanian on the portal windows.net.