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In the Kitchen with Mother Linda At the Movies with Mother Linda
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February 2006 THE OTHER SIDE OF RUSSIA: A SLICE OF LIFE IN SIBERIA AND THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST, Sharon Hudgins,(Texas A & M University Press, hardback, 2003; paperback, 2004).
In a phone interview, Sharon told me that with a future book in mind, she took extensive, detailed notes during the three semesters she and her husband taught in Siberia. But due to the possibility of those notes being lost or tampered with, as she explains in the book, she had to make provisions for their safety. While in Irkutsk, known as the Paris of Siberia in the 19th century, she carried her notes home during a summer vacation. While in Vladivostok, Russia’s major Pacific port with more international business travelers, she was always able to find someone willing to carry them back to the United States and drop them in a mailbox to her parents in Texas. Here are some fascinating Siberian facts. Siberia is larger than the United and Europe (excluding European Russia) combined. But, while southern Siberia encompasses only 15 percent of Siberia’s land mass it is home to 80 percent of the population. Southern Siberia is served by the Trans-Siberian Railroad. At 6,000 miles long, it is the longest continuous railroad in the world. Due to the increasing dangers of flying with Aeroflot, Sharon and Tom had to ride its rails to get around Siberia. While this was indeed a cultural experience, it was far from pleasant. Sharon’s engaging tome, now required reading for some university courses in Russian/Siberian Life and Culture, is a snapshot in time of one of the world’s biggest and most prominent countries just as it was emerging from the long sleep of communism. My two favorite chapters are “Feasts and Festivals” which discusses Siberian food traditions, and “The High-rise Village,” which recounts life in ubiquitous high-rise pre-fabricated concrete apartment buildings typically located miles from downtown. In the early 1990s, I experienced these same concrete high rises in Bulgaria. The Bulgarians euphemistically refer to them as “Druzhba,” which means “friendship” in Bulgarian, as they were erected in joint ventures with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Some friendship!!! |
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THE REINDEER PEOPLE: LIVING WITH ANIMALS AND SPIRITS IN SIBERIA Piers Vitebsky, (Houghton Mifflin (December 8, 2005). Sharon Hudgins, the author of the featured above book, recommends this book as a scholarly, but well-written look into the life of northern Siberia. Author Vitebsky is head of anthropology and Russian North Studies at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge. |
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In 2003, Sharon Hudgins
published a memoir of her travels in Siberia and the Russian Far East and sent
me a review copy. Being too busy at the time to read it from cover to cover, I
set it aside, vowing I would get to it someday. I finally had the time it
deserves and heartily recommend it. Hudgins recounts her time teaching with her
husband Tom for the University of Maryland’s University College for a joint
Russian-American undergraduate degree program preparing “Russian students for
future positions as business managers in the emerging market economy of the
Russian Federation.” The Soviet Union had just broken up, so 1993-1994 was a
time of transition. Sharon vividly records their experiences through the eyes of
a scholar—and the wit of a comedian. I burst out laughing several times from
Sharon’s witty and insightful social commentary.