Over the past decades, while I pursued a career and raised a family, from time to time I’d think of Zhenya, my unforgettable friend from the Soviet Union. I’d remember playing ultimate frisbee on Palace Square in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s. Or I’d recollect Zhenya’s story about getting kicked out of the Soviet Air Force. Recalling those memories made me smile or shake my head in disbelief.
And then I’d wonder what happened to Zhenya during the years of economic troubles and disintegration following the collapse of the Soviet Union? I imagined him struggling to make ends meet. Had his work ended up crossing a local mafia? Had life’s ups and downs finally cratered his zest for life? Was he still alive?
Would I ever know? Could I ever know?
***
Zhenya Klimishin and I met in Leningrad in 1989. I was improving my Russian in preparation for graduate school in the U.S. Zhenya was a restless Soviet citizen, studying in university but drawn to politics. We bonded immediately. We were children of the Cold War, from countries closed off to each other. But we shared a love of sports and a deep interest in each other’s society. We were curious. We learned from each another and taught one another.
Zhenya, on the right, and I, center, with friend Damir in Moscow before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Our friendship straddled the end of the Soviet Union and the birth of 15 independent countries in its place. On the wreckage of communism, I built a career as a journalist and gained insights into how people cope with upheaval. Zhenya was not so lucky. As my career progressed, his life cratered. For a time he lived on trains, hustling cigarettes from Poland into Russia. When I was working in Russia a few years later, he made his living as a solo money exchanger, eluding organized crime rackets. At night, he slept on the worn couch in the kitchen of my Moscow apartment. I last saw him in 1994.
***
A popular film from the 1990s, A River Runs Through It, describes the place of memories in our lives, using a rushing river as a metaphor: “The river . . . runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.” It’s a poignant statement about how life’s meaningful moments beckon us to look back. And so it was with Zhenya. Something pushed me to turn over the stones, to discover the meaning of our relationship. After more than two decades, I went in search of Zhenya.
Jeffrey Lilley Writing 