Valentina

From Kalmykia, and Harry’s next-door neighbour when she lived in Bali (@ka.vv.asaki). She told him to come to her republic if he was ever in Russia, did not expect him to actually do it, and then hosted the entire Elista video.

She is the guide, the interpreter and the reason Harry gets past the surface of the place. She takes him into the Golden Temple, into the Soviet block of flats where three generations of her family grew up, and to her grandmother’s table; her sisters arrange a yurt, camels and archery on no notice, and the family pay for the meal and refuse to let Harry pay for anything all day.

She is also the source for most of what the pages record about Kalmyk life: that the republic produces almost nothing and is among the poorest in Russia, that the young leave for Volgograd and Moscow and that this is what is killing the culture, and — told without drama — that in the 1990s a relative of hers was attacked by nationalist skinheads in Moscow, left paralysed for ten years and died three years ago. Her assessment of the present is that Moscow is more open now, and that speaking good Russian and holding a Russian passport is what makes the difference.

Her best contribution is the explanation Harry builds his conclusion on. Russians, she says, do not trust quickly — but once they trust you it never stops. They are direct: if they don’t like something they say so, and you will never be shown a face put on for your benefit, which she argues makes everything easier because nothing is hidden.

Appears in

• I Traveled to the Russian Republic No Tourists Visit 🇷🇺 — hosts the whole day in Elista.