Bending the Truth

Bending the Truth

by Michael Bobick
TRANSITIONS ONLINE
28 October 2010

A newly translated account of life in a Transdniestrian town tramples the line between nonfiction and salacious yarn.

Siberian Education: A Shocking Exposé of an Extraordinary Criminal Underworld, by Nicolai Lilin, translated by Jonathan Hunt. Canongate Books, 2010.

BENDER, Moldova | Outsized allegations of crime and weapons trafficking have plagued Transdniester throughout its short history.

A European Parliament delegation to Moldova designated Transdniester a “black hole” in 2002, but even before that, the region was linked in the Western mind to organized crime and the smuggling of arms, humans, cigarettes, and assorted contraband

Perhaps we should say not only in the Western mind anymore.

In Siberian Education, Nicolai Lilin, one of Transdniester’s own, declares his project to chronicle the world of the underground in the town of Bender, which sits on the border between the breakaway region and Moldova proper. In a recent interview with the French online magazine Mediapart, he said, “They [Transdniestrian officials] sell drugs, they sell weapons, they traffic prostitutes. … They work with pedophilia societies in Europe. It’s a dangerous situation inside. If you talk about it, you die. It’s impossible to live inside of this state because it’s a criminal state. I’m talking about it here in Europe because I prefer that Europeans know what happens, because Transdniester is not far away, it’s very near.”


Nicolai Lilin





The work is ostensibly a memoir of his youth among the urkas, Siberian criminals – not an ethnic group, as Lilin claims – who came to Transdniester in the 1930s. The author creates the character of Kolima to represent himself and includes a disclaimer that “certain episodes are imaginative recreation.” Readers who know Transdniester, and Bender, are likely to think that true of more than “certain episodes.”

Originally skilled robbers even before the Russians settled Siberia, the urkas were, according to Lilin, deported to Transdniester by Stalin in the 1930s at the height of the purges. History tells another story, however, since from 1918 until 1940 Bender was not part of the Soviet Union, but part of Romania.

After World War II, Transdniester attracted people from around the Soviet Union, of which it was now a part, to work in the region’s busy factories. And far from being a haven for the Soviet Union’s criminals, the region drew servicemen who sought to retire in one of the more temperate regions of the union. The descendants of these settlers today populate the region and remain the core constituents of the Transdniestrian state.

Lilin sets his tale in Bender’s Low River district, not that that matters much, given how stripped of context and chronology the book is. An impoverished region of Europe’s poorest country, Transdniester is fertile ground for social commentary, much like London was for Charles Dickens and New York was for Brett Easton Ellis. But this is not that commentary.

Instead, Siberian Education feels like a compendium of the dark fantasies that Westerners have about Transdniester as a place where people are left to fend for themselves or establish their own law. The reader is led to believe that the laws of the Siberian urkas are but one set of these surrogate forms of authority that exist in the black hole of Europe. It is a laughable portrayal.

For one, Lilin reverses the fortunes of Bender and Tiraspol, positing the quiet, clean Bender as a hive of criminality while Tiraspol, filled with workers and soldiers, is the place where people kept out of crime:

Tiraspol is the capital of Transdniester; it is about 20 kilometers away, on the opposite side of the river. It is a much larger town than ours, and very different. The people of Tiraspol kept out of crime; there were a lot of munitions factories, military barracks, and various offices, so the inhabitants were all workers or soldiers. We had a very bad relationship with the kids of that town; we called them ‘mamas’ boys,’ ‘billy goats,’ and ‘ball-less wonders.’

Bender, on the other hand, is the home of legendary criminals like Plum, the son of a scientist and a literature professor from Moscow State University. After his parents were arrested as enemies of the people in the 1930s, Plum found himself in the notorious gulag of Vorkuta. After the deaths of his father, mother, and sister, Plum was left to fend for himself. He ingratiated himself with the old, established criminal kingpins in the gulag and eventually became their executioner, practicing his trade both in prison and on the outside. A prolific killer of police officers, Plum had amassed a death toll of 12,000. In the book the collection of bloody badges inspires awe in Kolima. To amass such a death toll, Plum would have had to have killed one police officer a day for nearly 33 years. "He remembered everything about each man with total precision," carefully noting their names and the details of their deaths in a notebook, Lilin/Kolima tells us.


A banner celebrates 'All Our Victories' from 65 years ago in World War II to the conflict 20 years ago that won Transdniester its breakaway status.

But while the book purports to be a “shocking expose” of a criminal underworld, it avoids discussion of the very real criminal rackets operating in Transdniester in the 1990s. Crime in Transdniester is not a forbidden topic. Residents speak freely about the likhie devianostye, the crazy 1990s, and readily describe the spectacular shootouts and assassinations that occurred as power and authority was consolidated.

Nor does the book give away much about its protagonist. The reader gets only the faintest outline of the author through his violent exploits and subsequent confinement in juvenile detention facilities. During one of the more revealing episodes, a criminal named Rope asks if Kolima is indeed the famous “writer,” slang for someone skilled at using a knife. Kolima, it turns out, is also a “stinger,” skilled at tattooing (the book jacket says that Lilin works as a tattooist). The book’s sadistic violence and torture and obsession with sex (the last third of the book is devoted to avenging the rape of a local girl) clearly marks it as chernukha, a genre known for its naturalistic depictions of bodily functions, sexuality, and sadistic violence set amid a backdrop of poverty, broken families, and cynicism.

‘NO FUTURE HERE’

Most residents of Bender would not recognize the city portrayed by Lilin. Despite the destruction of much of the city in 1992, today Bender remains cleaner and more orderly than Tiraspol.

Visitors to the region come expecting to find Beirut or the Soviet Union, but end up with a wallet lightened by a hefty “registration fee” and stories to tell. Those adventurous enough to spend some time in Transdniester find a provincial region with the same social and economic problems that exist across the former Soviet Union.

Sasha, a native of Bender in his mid-20s, took me on a late-afternoon stroll one cold September day. As we made our way past the local House of Culture (located on the street where Lilin is said to have lived), we walked to the riverbank, with its Soviet monuments and neat promenade. Looking downriver, Sasha gestured toward the sunken ships, the abandoned barges, and the decrepit port that dominated our view. "There’s no future here, nothing will ever change," he said glumly. A massive banner hangs on the abandoned port and explicitly connects the 65th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War with Transdniester’s 20th anniversary, celebrated on 2 September: “All Our Victories!”

The prison that plays a central role in the book still stands, a short walk from the Low River neighborhood. A large structure shrouded by trees, the prison has a reputation for being Transdniester’s finest, a place where the moneyed do their time. Punishments, like much else in Transdniester, are negotiable.

A few hundred meters from the prison is a neighborhood called the “local Rublevka,” a reference to the prestigious residential area west of Moscow. This is where, according to locals, police officers and civil servants built their houses. As we walked past these houses, Sasha said they were far beyond the means of most residents, whose monthly salaries average between $75 and $150. I was reminded of what a friend once told me about the Transdniestrian conflict – that it would never be solved, since there were no incentives to change. Moldova uses Transdniester as a scapegoat for its lack of development, and Transdniester blames Moldova for any problems in the region.

Lilin is no exception, having forsaken his criminal upbringing in favor of a successful literary career in which he peddles Westerners their own deepest, darkest fears about Transdniester and Russia. Astutely aware of the region's outsized reputation, Lilin has found a literary niche, a captive audience uninterested in the facts.

It’s been a profitable angle: a film version of the book is set to appear in 2011. In the Mediapart interview, Lilin said that he is wanted in Transdniester for defamation. The seasoned criminal, born and raised as a true urka, is now the literary outlaw, wanted not for robbery or murder but for literary crimes. Let's hope that Lilin saved some of his hard-earned money to ensure a favorable outcome should he ever face trial in his homeland.

Story and homepage photo by Michael Bobick, a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at Cornell University who is writing a dissertation based on field research conducted in Transdniester.