What a strange, unlovely book Siberian Education: Family, Honour, and Tattoos: An Extraordinary Underworld Life is. A memoir by Nicolai Lilin of his early and teen years, during the 1980s and 1990s, in a criminal community of displaced Siberians in Transnistria (a lawless semi nation within Moldova). There is much to find fascinating in the earnest depiction of a world possessing a weird moral compass. Violence occurs almost randomly, yet is codified in hatred of police and other gangs. Endless rituals, most of them seemingly nonsensical, prescribe daily life. Guns are revered alongside religious icons. Comradeship between gang members enriches life, yet most of life is fighting and prison. Everyone is brutal and homophobic. Lilin learns to be a tattooist and the most interesting section of the book describes how Siberian tattoos can be read like a book of a person’s life.
All of which suggests an intriguing read, especially for anyone interested in true crime or the nature of evil. Yet Siberian Education fails badly at all levels of narrative craft. It is bookended by two horrific sections describing post-teen life in the Russian army, killing people in Chechnya, a structure that offers no overarching tension. Sections read like shaggy dog stories, endlessly discursive. The only three abiding characters – the author, his simpleton friend and an elderly patriarch – remain cryptic. No moral lessons are learnt or even resisted – the world is described flatly, as if via a long interview. A longish, harrowing section on prison life is particularly difficult to even read. Lilin’s ‘tell it like it is’ prose is boring. Siberian Education ends up as a turgid, unpleasant slog.
Possibly valuable as a record of a bizarre and morally dysfunctional society, Siberian Education offers very little indeed to the general reader. 2 stars.