This chapter moves beyond the landscapes of origin into something entirely different — culturally, emotionally, and geographically.
It is a period marked by contrast: between familiarity and foreignness, stability and change. The environments are more distant, but the experiences often more immediate.
Here, the memoir expands outward — not only into new places, but into a broader understanding of self shaped by movement, adaptation, and reflection.
Reflections in this chapter
Essays and memory pieces linked to Yoshkar-Ola, Kazan, Volga, Moscow, St Petersburg, Nikolaev, Odessa.
Place and memory
Some of these places are preserved through photographs made during the years themselves. Others survive through later returns, where the camera arrives after the life that once filled the place has already passed. And some remain with no image at all, except the one memory continues to hold.
Related visual pages
What remains from these years is not only what happened, but what the places continued to mean long after youth itself had passed.