
RED
SQUARE BLUES: A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET UNION
BY
KIM TRAILL
In 1990, Kim Traill set off for the
former Soviet Union with a smattering of vocabulary, a lust for wild adventure
and a swag of youthful idealism about the great Communist experiment. It would
take some time for the scales to fall from her eyes.
Over the
next 17 years Kim discovered a Russia few tourists see. She ate some of the world's
worst food, went to places few of us would venture, made good friends and met
a lot of seriously dodgy people. On collective farms and on 40-hour train journeys,
at red carpet parties and in marriage agencies, on nuclear bases and in the frozen
wastes of Siberia, she navigated the country's changing fortunes, bearing witness
to the horrific events of war, nuclear accidents, drug and alcohol addiction and
ethnic rivalries. She even tried to make herself into a good Russian woman, abandoning
her uniform of jeans, boots and Russian prison coat for heels and a skin-tight
dress.
'Red Square Blues' is a full-blooded charge through
a crumbling empire as it lurches from dark power to open society and back again.
It is an eye-opening portrait of an eternally surprising country, leavened with
the kind of bone-dry humour only life in a repressive police state can produce.
'Red
Square Blues' is available now.