Jigsaw puzzle by Nina Torr
Buy online
A Polish Tourist in the USSR
i
Sukhumi. Photo by Juliusz Strachota
Fiction

A Polish Tourist in the USSR

Juliusz Strachota
Reading
time 14 minutes
Juliusz Strachota:
is a writer and photographer born in 1979 in Warsaw. He’s the author of several novels, including “Turysta polski w ZSRR” [A Polish Tourist in the USSR] (2018), which was nominated for the prestigious Nike and Gdynia Prizes.

In his travels through the most iconic places of the former USSR – from Baku to Samarkand and from Dushanbe to Leninabad – the protagonist of this contemporary Polish novel is led by the memory of a Soviet-era guide book that he browsed as a child. But can these trips to the other side of those guide book pictures heal the incurable nostalgia? Or will they rather become just another addiction to which the protagonist, straight out of detox, is especially susceptible? Can this excursion to the crossroads of memory and fantasy actually be a way of finding a sense of self? And is there anyone there to find at all? An excerpt from a novel by Polish author Juliusz Strachota.

Russia, August 2015

This guide book has become for me a healing balm for the intermediate state between childhood and today. I’m no longer messing around with plans for my life, because when I come back from a trip I start preparing an excursion to the next page. I’m opening this book on new plans and I’m closing it on further reminiscences.

Between the pieces of faded paper, something is beginning to appear that I thought would never happen. At the cafeteria in Agora, where I eat lunch, I’ve been meeting for some time with a woman from Żoliborz called Kasia, who has a dachshund, and I tell her about my three or so unusual trips and my heroic struggle with addiction. I’m stretching my stories a bit and that’s a little embarrassing, but on the other hand I’m already packing for Russia and that gives me credibility, most of all for myself. I haven’t got high or drunk anything for three years now. We have something to talk about, and this talking even starts to brush up against the truth. So I yammer away like it’s my job, because this Kasia is incredible: she’s the only person I know who can tell Koreans apart from Chinese people. She knows both languages. And two more besides. And Polish too. Soon she’ll give up corporate life, to become a seamstress. Never before have I gone for pierogi with a person who’s a genius, who in addition has been kicked out of Mensa for not paying her dues.

But it’s not all rosy: I’ve been hit by a strong recurrence of alcohol

Information

You’ve reached your free article’s limit this month. You can get unlimited access to all our articles and audio content with our digital subscription. If you have an active subscription, please log in.

Subscribe
Juliusz Strachota:
is a writer and photographer born in 1979 in Warsaw. He’s the author of several novels, including “Turysta polski w ZSRR” [A Polish Tourist in the USSR] (2018), which was nominated for the prestigious Nike and Gdynia Prizes.
Translation: Nathaniel Espino
Publish date: 11.11.2020

Also read:

Watercolours Under a Spacesuit
i
From Galina Balashova's archives/DOM publishers
Science

Watercolours Under a Spacesuit

The Story of Galina Balashova
Konstanty Usenko
Konstanty Usenko:
was born in 1977 and has been connected to the Jelonki residential district in Warsaw ever since. He plays the cello. His post-punk and industrial tastes were shaped by the sounds of sirens coming from the nearby factory, which woke him every day at 6am while he slept in his 12th floor flat. Today, he wanders between Berlin, Warsaw, and the republics with large ethnic minorities in Volga Federal District. He published a book about counterculture in Russia 100 years after the revolution.

Androids may dream of electric sheep, but Soviet cosmonauts dream of flowery meadows and white birch tree-trunks. Fortunately, there was someone who painted their dreams and sent them along up into space.

The Soviet space-exploration dream left its mark in various forms. There are monuments and streets named after Yuri Gagarin in most cities and towns, numerous Cosmonaut Avenues and Cosmonaut Boulevards, countless statues of rockets and sputniks. There are space-themed murals and mosaics on buildings and bus stops, as well as sports venues and brutalist-style circus buildings shaped like flying saucers. There is also science-fiction literature, electronic music played on Soviet analogue synthesizers that once blasted from speakers in parks and department stores, and children’s films such as Visitor from the Future and Adventures of the Electronic. There are all the posters, stamps and pennants you can still find at any of the Russian barakholki, or flea markets. In the early 1980s, smoke-enwreathed dance floors were filled with dancers bopping to the hit of the band Zemlyane (meaning ‘Earthlings’): “Earth in the viewpoint that I see / Like a son missing his mother / We miss our Earth – we have but one […]”.

Continue reading