Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“Siberia?” skeptically.

“Yes, Tomas, Siberia. I kind of wish I knew an ode to Siberia, but I doubt there are all that many of them written in English — and I don't speak Russian. Smith mentioned it in his Wealth of Nations , and M. P. Price, another economist writing in the early twentieth century, did too, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, the paucity of references just proves the point to be taken away from all of this: the less information there is about something, the easier it is to manipulate the perception of it. Siberia proved to be a very easy target.

“Balaguez was first intrigued by the area after meeting with George Kennan — not to be confused with the notorious Mr. X of this century — who had gone to eastern Siberia in the service of a telegraph company based out of either Toledo or Akron — I always forget which one. The company wanted to explore the possibility of an Asiatic line that went from east to west as opposed to one that went from west to east. Kennan wrote a book about it, too. I don't remember its title — something about a tent. It's a fascinating read, I've heard; apparently there's a rather sardonic humor throughout it that one wouldn't expect from a nineteenth century travelogue. It sold well, too, as there was a market for books like that.” Tomas shoots Patrick an incredulous look. “Think of David Livingstone — he was incredibly popular at the time, and there was a great deal of public interest in adventures similar to the ones he…well…let's say endured.

“The point of the matter is that the book gave Kennan his career. During the seventies he lectured throughout America, and by the end of the decade he had established himself as one of the leading American experts on Russia.”

“Did he spend any more time in Russia besides that one trip?”

“I believe he went to Crimean in the seventies. It may have been during the Russo-Turkish War, but I'm not entirely certain. Beyond that, I'm fairly certain that he didn't go again until the eighties.”

“I see.”

“Regardless, Kennan and Balaguez met sometime in either eighty or eighty-one. I'm not entirely certain where this meeting took place; all I know is that the two spoke of Siberia for a long while, particularly about the land's mineral resources and the exile system. Balaguez took a serious interest in the subject — after all, nonexistent labor laws and untapped resources, both human and mineral, in the same locale meant one thing to a capitalist like him: profit. The only thing that the area needed, the two men agreed, was a transportation system — a railroad.

“Now, Kennan was initially in support of the tsarist regime. As a consequence of his trips to the country — again, I know not how many — he established something of a rapport with some of the more notable members of the Russian government. They thought him an important ally in the fight for a better image of a ruling class, which, at the time, was rather brutally attempting to suppress a nihilist insurrection. I don't know how familiar you two are with late-nineteenth century Russia, but it is not an exaggeration to say that public officials were being assassinated at the rate of one every other week — perhaps more. Many of the nihilists were ruthless sociopaths. If you're familiar with Sergei Nachayev, then you know just how deranged the leadership of the insurgency was.”

“Sergei who?”

Patrick shrugs. “I guess it's immaterial.” He takes a long sip from one of his cups. “Now, the Russian government didn't want the international community to think that the country was in crisis. Having a history of inferiority complexes in regards to European opinion, this was something of a given. On the other hand, the leaders were not exactly eager to disclose the niceties of the exile system, as most of these exiles were not political prisoners — which was something Dostoevsky touched upon in his pseudo-memoir, The House of the Dead , though this book was written significantly earlier than the era with which were are currently dealing. No, the majority of the exiles and the prisoners to walk the Sibirskii Trakt were guilty of relatively innocuous offenses — kind of like the majority of American prisoners today. Rather than clean up their act, the Russian government decided to do some PR. Guess who they recruited?”

“George Kennan.”

“Very good! Around eighteen eighty-five or so, they asked Kennan to go to Siberia to examine the prisons firsthand. The hope, presumably, was to have Kennan report that the horrors of the prisons — which were, by then, well-known to most of the educated public…kind of like Darfur today — were just exaggerations contrived by the sensationalist media. Kennan's testimonial, in other words, was meant to counteract all of the negative press. He was even granted access to areas no foreigner had been able to examine in order to easily trump the argument that he had been restricted from witnessing the truly horrendous conditions in which many prisoners were living. Without going into the details, I'll just say that the plan backfired terribly. Mr. Kennan was appalled by what he saw, and he immediately began writing a series of articles condemning not only the exile system, but the barbarity of the Russian government, as well.” He pauses. “I think he was banned from Russia as a result.

“Regardless, newspapers throughout the world jumped on the bandwagon. The New York Times even published selections from the Russian penal code at one point to show just how draconian the regime really was. It's really amazing stuff — you could actually get exiled to Siberia if your house accidentally caught on fire.”

“Holy shit,” exclaims Tomas.

“A few papers, however, rejected Kennan's claims. Among them, as you can probably guess, were those published by Balaguez— mercedibus emptae . It wasn't because Balaguez himself was a monarchist. He was just a man who was never blind to an opportunity.”

“Is this the fucking theme from Taxi ?”

“You mean ‘Angela’.” Caesura . “By Bob James.” Tomas and I look to one another. “'Sun Runner', another track on this album, sounds almost like the Grateful Dead of the mid- to late-eighties. Are either of you fans of the Dead?”

“Fuck no,” Tomas grunts.

“I'm not a fan, but I don't mind their music.”

“I see.” He takes a small sip of beer. “Well, as I was saying, the Balaguez papers were skeptical of Kennan's findings. That much is clear. But the reason why…well, there is little evidence to support the why, but here we go. Kennan's investigation of the Siberian penal system at the request of the Russian government coincided with the beginning stages of the planning and construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the critical piece of infrastructure that was necessary to transport the prodigious natural resources of the land to the world market — shipping was out of the question for much of the year because of the ice in virtually every Siberian port. When Kennan refused to be the apologist for the exile system, Balaguez saw an opportunity that he couldn't pass up. And he made a few things happen.

“First, as I've already said, he started publishing pro-tsarist articles in his paper. This is the very late-eighties now. And although the majority of these people writing editorials for Balaguez have never been to Siberia — had never even been to Russia for that matter — the public began to think of the tsarist regime a little less critically — for even a ham-fisted apologist can draw some support. Not all of these editorials came from hack American journalists, though. Some came directly from Russia, from diplomats and other pro-tsarist camps, in order to appear more authentic, more accurate.