Siberian Education: Growing Up in a Criminal Underworld - Hardcover

Lilin, Nicolai

3.71

4,504 ratings by Goodreads

9780393080858: Siberian Education: Growing Up in a Criminal Underworld

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393080854 ISBN 13: 9780393080858

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011

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"Marvelous and illuminating. . . . Forces us to reassess our notions of good and evil."―Irvine Welsh

In a contested, lawless region between Moldova and Ukraine known as Transnistria, a tightly knit group of "honest criminals"―exiled there by Stalin-live according to strict codes of ritualized respect and fierce loyalty. Here, tattoos tell the story of a man's life, "honest" weapons are separated from "sinful" ones, and authority is always to be distrusted. Beyond the control of any government and outside the bounds of "society" as we know it, these men uphold values including respect for elders and an unwavering adherence to the truth with passion-and often by brute force.

In a voice utterly compelling and unforgettable, Nicolai Lilin, born and raised within this exotic subculture, tells the story of his moral education among the Siberian Urkas. A bestseller in his home country of Italy, this unique tale of an extreme boyhood "will produce a thrill of pleasure that is hard to forget" (Roberto Saviano). 12 black-and-white illustrations

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About the Author:

Nicolai Lilin grew up in Transnistria, which declared its independence from Russia in 1990 but has never been recognized as a state. His previous book, Siberian Education, was also a bestseller in Europe and has been made into a movie with John Malkovich. Lilin lives in Milan, where he has founded an art gallery called Kolima Contemporary Culture.

From Publishers Weekly:

There's honor aplenty among the noble thieves in this glamorized memoir of post-Soviet gangster life. Lilin, a tattoo artist living in Italy, where this mafia-positive saga was a bestseller, grew up in the 1980s and '90s in a Transnistrian town (on the border of Ukraine and Moldova) settled by hereditary criminal clans exiled from Siberia. Their "Urka" subculture is thick indeed: switchblades are religious icons, elaborate tattoos depict criminal exploits, and a strict ethical code parses purification rituals and dietary rules. (Take note: an outlaw never accepts food from a cop's tainted hands.) There are gory rumbles—"to leave him a souvenir from Siberia, I cut the ligaments under his knee"—and lurid prison gang rapes, but Lilin paints the Urka underworld as the last stand of pious morality ("We didn't use swear words... we never talked disrespectfully about elderly persons") against Kremlin despotism and Western decadence. Many of his reminiscences, which contain "combined" characters, "condensed" events, and "imaginative recreations," have a distinctively Russian, folkloric tone: "how beautiful and generous Plum's soul was," Lilin writes of a friend who allegedly murdered 12,000 policemen over three decades. Factual or not, his portrait of high-minded banditry—"The exploitation of prostitution had always been considered an offense unworthy of a criminal"—never feels true to life. (Apr.)
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