||boek: Op de fiets door Rusland|12000 kilometer dwars door Rusland, Kazachstan en Siberië (met zwart-wit foto's)|Hollandia Reisverhalen

||door: Simon Vickers

||taal: nl
||jaar: 1994
||druk: ?
||pag.: 284p
||opm.: paperback|zo goed als nieuw

||isbn: 90-6410-236-8
||code: 1:000146

--- Over het boek (foto 1): Op de fiets door Rusland ---

A candid insight into the journey of four cyclists (an Englishman, Frenchman, American and a Russian) as they cycle 12,000 km from Leningrad to Vladivostock. The author tells of the people and places they encounter, their living conditions, and their views on Perestroika and the "New Russia".

[source: https--trove.nla.gov.au]

After negotiating with the Soviet authorities for one and a half years, Simon Vickers, together with three others, secured permission to cross the USSR with a freedom undreamt of since before 1917. Sensing that the current era of glasnost might be short-lived, they took advantage of the first - and possibly the last - such opportunity to gain an insight into a world divorced from Europe for so long. They decided to make their trip by bicycle, from Leningrad to Vladivostock. In their gruelling 12,000 kilometers journey, they crossed Russia, Kazakhstan and Siberia, spending three months alone in Siberia where black bears roam wild. The differences in national character of the British, French, American and Russian team members add a diverting element to this story of their six-months journey, which took them across ten time zones, from the Baltic to the Pacific. What makes it particularly extraordinary is the account of their daily contact with Soviet citizens, many of whom had never met Europeans before. Frequently guests in Soviet homes, they gained a true insight into their lives, hopes and fears. Through conversations the travellers had on these encounters, a picture of Russia emerges which is different from both their expectations and the picture we have of it in the West. This is an account of a country in turmoil, trying to come to terms with its history, and in many ways remaining curiously unchanged.

[source: https--www.amazon.co.uk]

Between the hammer and the sickle

It took me a while to figure out that the two books I am reading about cycling across the Soviet Union both describe travel at the same time. (The other is "Sovietrek.")

This is a chronological "adventure travel" book, and a fairly substantial one at that, over 300 pages, following the author and three others (one Russian, one Brit - the author, one Frenchman, and an American) who bike west-to-east across all of Russia. (Wasn't there a clever pun-title possible using "cycle" instead of "sickle" in the title? No matter, I suppose.) The author doesn't draw that much attention to the timeline of their trip, probably because the manuscript was completed just before the complete dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 (the book was published in April 1992). But as much as the cycling aspects are interesting, the description of their interactions with Russians in the spring, summer and fall of 1990 is the most compelling part of the book. The many Russians they met, mostly outside of Moscow in cities and villages, were almost all completely apathetic about their future during this "late Gorbachev" period, viewing the future as completely hopeless. Although the author and his two westerner "fellow travelers" (small joke) were hardly experts of the region, they noticed that any of the non-Russian minorities where they traveled were less pessimestic and apathetic than the usual Russians. One figures there were few westerners out in these parts to make these observations and record them at this time.

The travel was extremely difficult - that much is clear. While not heavy on details (such books never are) there is enough to realize that they had some truly difficult days of trying to keep moving - broken derailleurs, endless flat tires, other mechanical issues, and then of course seemingless endless swamps and closed military zones. All in their twenties and in good shape, much of it was an ordeal. Still they prevailed.

While not extensively described, the amount of logistical preparation was impressive - when traveling more than 12,000 kilometers just the staging of spare parts, tires, and supplies was complicated and in the dying Soviet Union I admire that they managed to accomplish any of it.

For its unusual views of the Russian people during the collapse of the Soviet Union this book is probably more interesting now than it was at publication, when the focus was on the immediate post-Soviet developments and not on life under the regime that was gone. And anything about a 12,000 km bike ride's gotta be good.

[source: https--www.goodreads.com]

--- Over (foto 2): Simon Vickers ---

Niets van te vinden op het internet (2020), dus ook geen foto