a quarter of the way around the world. To get there in 1969 would have
meant two to three weeks on the Trans-Siberian, the tracks unspooling
into the future with agonizing slowness like a real-time progression of
Eurasian conquest and collapse. Khabarovsk is situated at a strategic bend
in the Amur River, less than ten miles from its confluence with the Ussuri
and the Chinese frontier. One hundred and fifty miles to the south, just
over the Primorye border, lies the Bikin valley and the site of Sobolonye,
a village that did not exist when Markov first arrived in the region.
The magnitude of such a move for a provincial like Markov cannot be
underestimated. Beyond the language, nothing would have been the same,
and many of his new acquaintances would have been outcasts of one kind
or another. There was no tradition of serfdom in the Far East and,
historically, the region has been a haven for a multiethnic rabble of
bandits, deserters, poachers, fur trappers, and persecuted Old Believers (a
conservative branch of Orthodox Christians), all of whom favored
voluntary banishment over a wide range of unappealing alternatives. Add
to this the exile population—both Russian and Chinese, and the Cossack
soldiers sent by the czar to settle and guard this new frontier—and the
results become uniquely volatile, more crucible than melting pot.
Today, the Bikin valley is seen by many outsiders as a place as
dangerous for its human inhabitants as it is for its animals. It is dotted
with small, isolated villages, many of which operate off the grid and
outside the law. To a pair of foreign journalists, a friend of Markov’s
once exclaimed, “You came here alone?^4 Aren’t you afraid? Usually,
outsiders only come in big delegations.”
Evidence suggests that Markov found this environment more liberating
than frightening and, in Soviet Russia, liberty was a rare thing. In any
case, Markov adapted and, ultimately, adopted this frontier as his home,
and it may have been thanks to the army. According to friends and
neighbors, Markov was trained in reconnaissance, and these skills—
wilderness survival, orienteering, stealth, and the handling of arms—
would serve him well in ways he never anticipated. Denis Burukhin, a
young trapper from Sobolonye who knew Markov as Uncle Vova (a