White Fever: A Journey to the Frozen Heart of Siberia (2011) is set in 2007
when the author, for a 50th birthday present to himself, travels alone in
winter from Moscow to Vladivostok. It is a journey in a modified 1995 Russian
Lazhik Jeep (or Ulaz), from 24 November 2007 to February 2008, halted for one
month so that he could return to Warsaw to spend Christmas with his wife. He rejoined
his journey where he left the vehicle. It is a journey of 12,968 kilometres
(8,058 miles) taking 55 days and 2,119 litres of petrol.
He meets with a range of people along the way: musicians, hippies, herders,
nomads, and former celebrities. In the Ural Mountains he travels to Kazan,
Izhevsk, Ufa, Chelyabinsk, and Kurgan. In Kazan he meets Miss HIV-Positive
2005, by public online vote, leading the Russian campaign against AIDS. In
Izhevsk he meets with weapons designer, 88-year-old Mikhail Timofeyerich
Kalashnikov, who won a design competition at the age of 28 for his AK-47.
Hugo-Bader travels to Kazakhstan to visit a Cancer Hospital, collective
farms, and nuclear testing sites in Semipalatinsk. The hospital jars of
formalin have labels, such as anencephaly, exencephaly, hydrocephaly,
iniencephaly, sirenomelia, and osteochondrodisplasia.
In Siberia there are ‘three of the world’s six living Christs.’ He visits
one of them. The community of Vissarionites, which he describes as ‘the
happiest place on the journey’ is 8 days drive from Moscow, near Abakan, ‘at
the heart of the taiga’ (the forest). There residents ‘rise above [their] own
egoism and thrive on the happiness of others.’ Also in Siberia, near the Mongolian
border, The Great Shamaness gives him a purification ritual involving milk.
The further into Siberia, the more tragic the real-life narratives become.
In Khabarovsk, eastern Siberia, he meets the indigenous Evenks herders. Of
three brigades, he follows the life stories over a 16-year period of Brigade
One – 17 herders (2 women) with 3,500 reindeer. And finally he meets a female
doctor who treats people with alcoholism and the white fever – the ‘delirium
tremens.’
The unique part of the book is that at the end of each chapter, Hugo-Bader
includes excerpts from the 1957 Hvastunov and Gushchev book, Report from the Twenty-First Century,
that describes what life in the Soviet Union will be like in 50 years – in
2007. In some cases the predictions made in 1957 were amazingly accurate, other
times not so much, and occasionally far from reality.
The author is a Polish journalist. This is not a travelogue. This is not an
uplifting ‘life-on-the-road’ story. This is not a ’50-year-old man traveling in
Siberia in winter overcoming challenges’ story. Instead, it is a series of pre-arranged
and opportunistic interviews with people. This is reportage, with no
embellishments or descriptions of his jeep, his journey, his life, his lovely
landscapes, and his interactions with amazing animals. But it is fascinating,
engaging, and astounding.
The facts, figures, and statistics in the book are alarming. Descriptions
are comical, satirical, empathetic, disturbing, or distressing. This book
focuses on each unique individual, each unique community, shining a dim light
on people – their faces, families, routines, aspirations, challenges,
religions, loves, losses, influences, traditions, celebrations, tragedies, and
coping mechanisms. It is grim, and it is sad, as Hugo-Bader explores the
psychology of survival and human endurance in an inhospitable environment. With
each story, the hardships of people’s everyday life in Siberia become so
terribly, terribly tragic.
MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:-
The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends
(2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan
Curse (2009).
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