Siberian Education: growing up in a criminal underworld by Nicolai Lilin

When Nicolai Lilin was five, he was given his first knife.  At twelve he was charged with attempted murder. After that, things went downhill. In his teens, he did a stretch in an appalling juvenile prison where bashings and rape were routine; on release, he took part in crimes of increasing violence, culminating in multiple murder.

Lilin was born in 1980 into the  ‘Urkas’  – the name given to the Siberian criminal class.  According to Lilin, some time in the Stalinist era, when the government was moving troublesome populations around the Soviet Union in order to neutralise potentially dangerous nationalist ethnic movements, a group of Siberian Urkas had been forcibly moved to Transnistria, a region between Moldova and the Ukraine. In Transnistria, the Urkas maintained their culture through traditions, rituals and a strictly hierarchical society.  Lilin maintains that, far from being common criminals, they observed a strict moral code that values honour, loyalty and humility.

I’m sceptical about this claim after reading Lilin’s ultra-violent memoir, Siberian Education. Lilin – who now lives in Italy, where this book was originally published – claims to have renounced violence. But he speaks with nostalgia about the ‘education’ he received from his community in Transnistria.

Lilin wants us to see the Urkas as political Robin Hoods, fighting against an unjust system.  Clearly the Siberians were treated appallingly by Stalin. However, their own treatment of classes of people they disapproved of – among them Jews, homosexuals, drug users and sexually active women – was hardly any better.

Throughout the book, words like ‘justice’ and ‘honour’ are invoked to justify brutality. Much of the second half  involves Lilin and a group of teenage hoods hunting a bunch of crims from a neighbouring suburb who have raped a local girl.  Eventually they track down five guys whose guilt seems doubtful at best. The guys -  against whom there is no evidence beyond rumour – are stripped naked and machine-gunned down by Lilin and friends. The narrator is surprised to find that he does not feel happy afterwards. “What still tortures me is her pain, against which all our justice has been useless.”

In reality the ‘justice’ meted out by the Urkas was brutal and arbitrary.  Lilin recounts the case of a couple of ‘junkies’ who allow their baby to die of neglect. A local criminal goes round to their house, beats them to death, and throws their bodies out of the window “where the people trampled them underfoot until they were reduced to a pulp.” When Lilin hears that a group of Georgians, who offended the Siberians’ honour, have been massacred by members of his community, he thinks: ”How wonderful it is to be Siberian!”

The book has some redeeming features. Lilin’s accounts of the Urkas’ way of life are interesting examples of folk anthropology by an insider. No male “honest criminal” is allowed to talk to the police. So when the cops come around, the chief crim calls his  wife and uses her as a mediator. “Tell this piece of filth that no one is going to point weapons in my face …”  Interminable rituals surround who is allowed to look at and speak to whom, what they can say, and what the consequences are (usually very unpleasant) if they get it wrong.

Lilin is fascinated by Urka tattoos and trains as a tattoist. The language of tattoos is complex. As a Siberian criminal goes through life he adds more and more to the gallery on his skin, which gradually builds up into a narrative that tells his life story. Not knowing the right meaning of a tattoo can get you killed – as an undercover cop finds out when he tries to fake it.  One of the most prized tattoos is of the Virgin Mary - religion is constantly invoked by the Urkas - holding a machine gun.

How true is all this? Lilin maintains that he is writing partly from  his own experiences and partly from stories told him by elders.  These days, according to Lilin, Siberians have forgotten their grand old traditions. Rather than living by the old code, they are obsessed with consumerism, mobile phones, and the pursuit of wealth. Lilin despises the modern trend, but despite his rambling self-justification, it is hard to believe that the Urka culture he describes so warmly was any better.

Nicolai Lilin was recently interviewed on the ABC’s The Book Show.

Here’s Nicolai again, speaking about his book on youtube. Check out the amazing tattoos.

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