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“These guys come from Moscow and don’t know where they’re going. There’s a crowd of them, more than a hundred… their arms veiny and eyes pacing the train car…. guys lining the walls in passageways and corridors, sitting, standing, stretched out on the berths, letting their arms dangle, their feet dangle, letting their bored resignation dangle in the void. They’ve been on board for more than forty hours now, crammed together, squeezed into the liminal space of the train: the conscripts.”
Aliocha is a twenty-year-old conscript, who hoped he would manage to avoid military service as all young single men in Moscow attempt to do. Without the necessary means that might erase the threat of service, they try for reprieves, false medical certificates, bribery, and finally try to find a woman, because at six months a pregnancy will grant an exemption.
But Aliocha is now one of a hundred on this train. As the trainrushes towards the unknowable destination, the idea of escapingsuddenly floods his very being. Run away, get out, defect, jump.
A country I will probably never visit becomes real in Eastbound, and as grim as it sometimes sounds, made me want to see it, want to be there myself, (want to experience the sight of Lake Baikal as the Russians do, with cheers, and tears, and glasses of vodka).
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