Subsuming my Elektrichkaland Project Into an Automythopsychgeobiography

    I haven't written anything on this blog mainly because after my previous post my time in Russian ended,  provoked by the countries invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022. Leaving the town of Balashikha in late March, I also left behind much of the material (books, printed articles, and other collected materials) which I had collected in order to write on the subject. I also intended for psychogeographical walks to be a major part of my project. However, this project occasionally returns in my mind - it is an impossible project and yet I can not quite bury it. It looks for other outlets. I try to imagine a Ligurian elektrichka land from Sarzana to Ventimiglia (given that I am based here). Yet, there appears no way of subsuming such a project. And yet there is something about the project which I can not leave altogether. 

    In recent days I have been musing over/recalling other places and encounters that were important to me before I moved to Zheleznodorozhny in 2008 and places that I had visited on trips of varying periods. Should I not write in a much more biographical way about place? And, therefore, this concept of elektrichka land would be a chapter in a much larger project on place. I want to hide the autobiographical part as much as I can but I cannot deny the fact that it has a strong solipsistic bias. I want to write on all (as many as possible of) the places that I have visited, passed through or even imagined and the encounters/discoveries I have made in these places. 

    In a way this is a recognition of my defeat. For four years I have barely written anything upon the understanding that after February 24, 2022 my reality had radically changed. If I had had an academic post, my reaction would well have been different. There would have been an objective need to somehow carry on. But my status as an 'independent researcher' and my material situation determined (and in part allowed) a path of greater silence. It prompted me to search for other work, or, more accurately, try to search for another line of work. As my translation work almost completely dried up, last year I trained to become a environmental/nature guide in Liguria. Which mapped me on to other places, locations to learn and think about. And hence pushed to the background the locations or territories where I wanted to fix my gaze back in 2021 and 2022. And yet I couldn't dismiss this territory which I had started to think so much about. 

    There is also another aspect to the question which I can not be silent about. The desire to talk about Moscow-Petushky or Pod Moskovia or elektrichka land felt to me like a painful ethical dilemma. I could not ignore the fact that Russian missiles were raining down on Ukrainian cultural sites including local history museums killing some of their staff How then to speak of Russian local history using any of the material from Russian local history museums, some of whose directors may have approved of Russian attacks on Ukraine (and therefore justified or legitimised the attack on Kupiansk and other cultural sites)? One can't know, of course, what the attitude of local history museum staff in Russia was since speaking out would immediately entail dismissal from their post. And being outside of Russia with one's gaze no longer directed towards it meant that I was rarely aware of what people in the kraevedchesky community were thinking about this. 

    After all, for me there were other places which I had thought about or written about or wanted to write about and these were located in Ukraine (Odesa) or had been occupied/annexed by Russia (Crimea). Odesa, in particular, was a city where I had stayed and visited a considerable amount of times (I've lost count of how many). And many of the places that I've loved visiting in Odesa have been damaged by Russian attacks. In fact just yesterday I discovered that of the 515 cultural sites damaged in Ukraine, 63 of them were in Odesa or the Odesa Region several of them which I have visited. Some of them were especially dear to me because of extraordinary encounters. I remember the time I heard Rezo Gabriadze speak at the Museum of Western and Oriental Art and my memories of Odesa's Literary Festival back in, I think, 2011 and visiting the museum at various times meant that learning of it being damaged in attacks by Russian armed forces was extremely painful. The attack on the Privoz market (not mentioned as a cultural site) was also something which deeply affected me as it has a special place in my personal list of locations which I have an emotional attachment to. 

    Pondering on such subjects, I have come up with an idea to write about as many places that I have in some way been attached to. As I say, it is a very solipsistic way of thinking about a topic but I can't find other threads that hold together all that I want to write about. So I've considered devoting some time to what I would call My Automythopsychgeobiography (with apologies to Enrico Baj!).