A Lost Diary I’ve found 1987 in a Russian Forest.

Late confessions

Memories about childhood are like dreams. Their transparency and fragility get covered with continuous re-membering. Year for year. They are changing inside of your mind. Finally, what you remember becomes something completely different from your experiences. Only notes, photos, recordings can bring some constant into your past life (do you need it really?)

Geese hunting for ethnologists.

Anyway, I remember a lot about my childhood. Partly because of the photos. Because of saved things. Because I hope these were real memories. And you never know.

I was born in Moscow, but we also traveled a lot with my parents. Once, we were in Valday. It’s was just another beautiful piece of nature somewhere far from the Soviet Reality, which was about to run into a brick wall. 1987. Four years before the country disappeared. I was a teen. I was full of hopes, dreams, books and nonsense.

I remember a lot of things in the villages in Valday. Usual people. Cool children (sparks of teenage sympathy, naive and stupid). Beautiful nature.

Collapsed houses. Waiting for a bus (2x a day). Dusty bookstores (it was a duty of every Soviet region to have bookstores in every small town or even village — and there…