Петр Померанцев - Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible - The Surreal Heart of the New Russia

“At least she would have one profession to fall back on,” says Olga. “During the USSR being a ballerina was a steady job. That’s less the case now.”

The home video shows Anastasia practicing ballet when she was fourteen. She’s taller than the others, awkward, trips during her pirouettes. Olga winces at her mistakes; she herself is petite, every movement light and exact.

“She was a little uncoordinated, too tall and gangly to be a dancer. She was picked on by teachers; it was all one long humiliation. But everyone would tell her she should try modeling, her lankiness would be perfect there. She would nag: ‘Let me try, let me try.’ I made her wait until she graduated and then I couldn’t hold her back.”

In Moscow Anastasia placed in the top five of the Elite Model Look competition. Her ballet training meant she had ideal posture and movement. She was flown to the all-European tournament in Tunis, and ranked in the top fifteen.

When Olga saw her get off the plane from Tunis, she knew that was it, her daughter was a different person now: “She had seen a new world, yachts and cars and wealth I could never give her. What can you say to a child who’s set to be earning more than you? What could I teach her?”

In the first years Anastasia would return home bubbling over with stories about Europe, all the people she had seen and all the parties that she’d been to. She decided to make Moscow her base. And slowly she changed.

“She began to be more, how shall I say, materialistic,” says Olga.

The mother’s friends are less gentle on the daughter:

“ ‘I need a man with money, with a top car, who can give me a house and holidays,’ that’s how she began to talk,” says Rudolf, a former Ukrainian high-jump champion and Olympic bronze medalist, who dated Olga. “She could be very specific in her desires. But in a way I could understand her. A model is like a sportsman. You have to grab everything when you are young.”

Anastasia was trying to play the Moscow game. She had affairs with wealthy married men who promised to house her in smart places on Rublevka. Anastasia would tell friends she was “made.” Her favorite phrase was “I’m going to cling on in Moscow, cling on!”

But she wasn’t any good at playing that game at all. She kept falling in love, wanted to be the only focus of a man’s attention. But she was in relationships a priori based on other rules. And so she was always in a muddle and getting hurt. Her relationships with married men kept breaking down; she would be housed in some penthouse and then would find herself out again, crashing with friends or sharing small flats with other girls. Her modeling career went sidewise. It wasn’t a disaster, but neither did she become a cover girl. By the time she was twenty-four, the age of her death, she knew her career in modeling was ending.

In the last year of her life her behavior started to change radically. She became aggressive. On her last trips to Milan, in the spring before her death, she would miss castings, get into fights with other girls. Her agents would get calls from their Italian partners complaining about her behavior. They couldn’t understand it; she had always been professional.

When Anastasia came home that final summer she was unrecognizable. Terribly thin—her hips just eighty-two centimeters. Silent, with her head down. She looked like she knew some awful secret but couldn’t tell anyone about it. She had always been the buoyant life of any party; in restaurants she would laugh so loud people at other tables would turn around and stare. Now she wouldn’t leave her room. In 40-degree heat she sat scrunched up under a duvet. She complained of stomach cramps and switched off her phone. She didn’t wash her hair for a whole week. When she had an interview for a new job she broke down when she couldn’t decide what she should wear. She walked around the flat, rocking, repeating, “there’s no way out.”

“It wasn’t her, it was some different person,” says Olga. “She’d always told me what was going on in her life. Now she was silent.”

After Anastasia’s death her mother searched her room. It was strange walking inside without her there. She didn’t really know what she was looking for. A diary, clues, anything. She came across a folder she’d never seen before. There were two “diplomas” that looked like university diplomas, but the name of the institution caught Olga’s eye: the “Rose of the World.” The Rose of the World? What sort of name was that?

One diploma was for passing the foundation course, the other for the advanced course. There were papers with Anastasia’s writing on them—saying how she must transform, change herself, become a different person. There were pages and pages on which she listed the worst traits in her personality: laziness, lack of aims, drugs, the wrong men. And there was a postcard, with a note addressed to Anastasia:

“ When you understand who and what you really are, then everyone around you recognizes you without a word of opposition. Anastasia: you’re on your way. Your lullaby is ‘winter’s end.’”

What did it mean, “You are on your way?”

Now Olga remembered the Rose of the World. A year and a half before Anastasia had mentioned that she had started to attend what she referred to as “psychological trainings” in Moscow.

When Olga asked her what went on there, Anastasia was vague—something about remembering childhood experiences. Telling all your secrets. She explained that she had signed a contract promising not to tell anyone what went on at “the Rose.” But she explained that these courses would transform her, perfect her; if she could pass them she could do anything, anything at all.

Olga told Anastasia she was a healthy girl and didn’t need any self-perfecting. She should stop.

Olga thought little of Rose of the World back then, but now she wanted to know more. After the funeral she took Anastasia’s friends aside to ask whether they knew anything.

Did Olga know Anastasia had spent another year at the Rose of the World? they asked. She’d been going until a few months before her death.

No, Olga answered, she hadn’t known. Anastasia had told her she’d stopped going over a year ago.

Did Olga know how much money she’d spent there?

No.

Thousands of dollars, thousands and thousands. And did Olga know Ruslana went there, too? They went there together. Ruslana stayed three months, Anastasia over a year.

“We think it might be a sect,” said the model friends. “Though we can’t quite be sure.”

Olga started to look online.

“Trainings for personality development” is how the Rose of the World describes itself. “Our seminars will teach you how to find your true self, realize your goals and achieve material wealth,” its Web site states—lit up by photographs of happy, shiny people standing on the top of a hill, shot from the bottom up, their arms out embracing a strong wind so it looks like they’re almost flying.

The Rose also specializes in corporate training.

Olga went through Anastasia’s papers from the Rose. She found the names of two men mentioned there and matched their numbers to Anastasia’s phone (a gold-plated Vertu, given to her by some lover). One number didn’t answer; another did. When he picked up the phone and Olga told him who she was and what had happened to Anastasia, he was shocked. But, no, he didn’t think the Rose was that important. He couldn’t say exactly what happened there, he also had signed some papers, but he mentioned there was lots of crying. He had only finished the first basic course before he quit. Anastasia had stayed much longer.

On Internet forums and in chat rooms there is some discussion, though not much, about the Rose. A couple of people write that it changed their lives forever and they are transformed. Others write that it’s a con. Still others write that they think it might be dangerous. The posts in the chat rooms are all anonymous.