book. The institute offered a scheduling option perfectly suited to working people or young mothers: attending classes on weekends only. Maria spent the week with Philip and doing her activism, and the weekends, when her mother could take the baby, at seminars at the institute, only about a block from her old Arbat haunts. This was the first school where she actually made friends; by her second year there, a tight group had formed. They studied together and, in the evenings, attended any of the many readings that constituted Moscow’s poetry renaissance: by the mid-naughts, the city had more working, walking, and reading poets than it had had in decades. An annual poetry festival in May saw lines snaking down the block from any of several cafés that hosted readings. Most of the city, of course, was entirely unaware of the poetry or the poets: the reading and writing community was small but loyal and fiercely active. Maria and her friends represented a minority faction in the audience: people who were not poets themselves and did not know most of the poets personally.
Most members of the group planned a career in writing. One of Maria’s closest friends, a quiet, diminutive young woman named Olya Vinogradova, got a job writing book reviews for Moscow’s central children’s library. “I thought she would make a very good journalist writing about social issues,” Olya said of Maria. “She is very good at getting into places. But she really was undetermined, because—this would sound weird if not for what has transpired—she had this idea that she would change the world. She was always saying, ‘What is the point of all these prose exercises, how do they contribute to world change?’” Institute friends were sharply aware of Maria’s activism but foggy on its substance: Utrish seemed important but far away, and anyway, soon enough Maria seemed to start shifting focus. For all her passion and ability to “get into places,” she was no proselytizer, so aside from the fact that she was now concerned with both electoral politics and contemporary art, her institute friends knew almost nothing.
Maria had a bit more time now: when Philip was four or so, Nikita stopped drinking. He had had dry spells before, and she had always made use of them to get time for herself, but now he not only could pitch in with child care but craved time with Philip, because it turned out he was good at being the father of a small boy. They even went to a fitness club together three times a week: Nikita did yoga with the zeal of an addict, and Philip joined in kids’ activities. Nikita was not nearly as good at being a companion for Maria, nor did he really try: their relationship maintained its drifty rhythm, but the distance between them grew larger.
“She often tried to tell me something, but I wasn’t really interested,” Nikita told me with a kind of righteous evenness. “She had a lot of interests, while my internal resources were few. There was Utrish, then there were birds, some sort of ecocamp for migratory birds, then soap-making and anarchists. Then Putin showed up, and this really was incomprehensible. I mean, look at it from my point of view: I had only begun my recovery, and I was paying attention to my immediate surroundings—that would be Philip. Philip was real, while with Putin I wasn’t so sure. Maybe he was a doll of some sort. So by the time all those protests began, I had completely lost interest. And anyway, I didn’t know her friends, so it’s not like I listened to her when she told me where she was going and with whom.”
“I was always an outsider everywhere,” Maria wrote in her first letter to me, talking about the schools she had attended. By the time she was in her early twenties, she had, like many people who perpetually feel like outsiders, perfected the art of compartmentalizing her life. She made little effort to talk politics or literature to her mother or Nikita (Natalya and Nikita,
Most members of the group planned a career in writing. One of Maria’s closest friends, a quiet, diminutive young woman named Olya Vinogradova, got a job writing book reviews for Moscow’s central children’s library. “I thought she would make a very good journalist writing about social issues,” Olya said of Maria. “She is very good at getting into places. But she really was undetermined, because—this would sound weird if not for what has transpired—she had this idea that she would change the world. She was always saying, ‘What is the point of all these prose exercises, how do they contribute to world change?’” Institute friends were sharply aware of Maria’s activism but foggy on its substance: Utrish seemed important but far away, and anyway, soon enough Maria seemed to start shifting focus. For all her passion and ability to “get into places,” she was no proselytizer, so aside from the fact that she was now concerned with both electoral politics and contemporary art, her institute friends knew almost nothing.
Maria had a bit more time now: when Philip was four or so, Nikita stopped drinking. He had had dry spells before, and she had always made use of them to get time for herself, but now he not only could pitch in with child care but craved time with Philip, because it turned out he was good at being the father of a small boy. They even went to a fitness club together three times a week: Nikita did yoga with the zeal of an addict, and Philip joined in kids’ activities. Nikita was not nearly as good at being a companion for Maria, nor did he really try: their relationship maintained its drifty rhythm, but the distance between them grew larger.
“She often tried to tell me something, but I wasn’t really interested,” Nikita told me with a kind of righteous evenness. “She had a lot of interests, while my internal resources were few. There was Utrish, then there were birds, some sort of ecocamp for migratory birds, then soap-making and anarchists. Then Putin showed up, and this really was incomprehensible. I mean, look at it from my point of view: I had only begun my recovery, and I was paying attention to my immediate surroundings—that would be Philip. Philip was real, while with Putin I wasn’t so sure. Maybe he was a doll of some sort. So by the time all those protests began, I had completely lost interest. And anyway, I didn’t know her friends, so it’s not like I listened to her when she told me where she was going and with whom.”
“I was always an outsider everywhere,” Maria wrote in her first letter to me, talking about the schools she had attended. By the time she was in her early twenties, she had, like many people who perpetually feel like outsiders, perfected the art of compartmentalizing her life. She made little effort to talk politics or literature to her mother or Nikita (Natalya and Nikita,
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