[cws for anyone who might read the thread: vasiliy's an ethnic russian (privileged majority) who was in a position of power in the 1930s, when arctic indigenous peoples were being forcibly relocated, forced to self-identify a nationality, religiously/spiritually oppressed by forced secularization/"""modernization"""/sovietization attempts, etc. while he's more left-leaning compared to the party line on indigenous peoples, a) traditional soviet treatment of indigenous people will probably come up and b) he's still quite ignorant and has a lot of lack of exposure/misconceptions! racism and russophobia/subjective whiteness will probably come up in this thread. ]
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[ ...Curious. Vasiliy watches the young man as he scoops up snow from the tops of mailboxes with two mittened hands and dumps it onto the sled he pulls behind him, then goes to the next one, and so on, and so forth. He's making... something unrecognizable to a 20th-century urban Russian; his best guess is... an igloo or something, or maybe he's just having fun with it, although he seems a bit old for the latter. Whatever the case is, he clearly knows more than Vasiliy does, judging by the intent with which he goes about collecting materials.
He's very obviously not white (or "white", if you're Russian, he thinks sourly) or black like most of the people here—he looks, to a Russian eye, like he might come from one of the indigenous Arctic peoples in Siberia and further north. Chukchi, maybe? Yupik? Nenet? There are so many, and the distinction is lost on him. Having never travelled further West than Moscow or further North than the now-St. Petersburg, he's only encountered maybe four or five people from the tribes of the North in his lifetime; for the most part, they'd had no interest in mingling with Russian society, and his fellow Russians (and Tatars, and Cossacks) had had little interest in intermarrying, themselves.
But right now? In this moment? The young man, whatever tribe he comes from, feels a hell of a lot more familiar than any of the people around him. At least they're probably from the same continent. When he stops at Vasiliy's own mailbox, he pauses in shoveling snow, sticking the shovel upright into the tall bank bordering the driveway. ]
iv-a at long last... cws in post
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[ ...Curious. Vasiliy watches the young man as he scoops up snow from the tops of mailboxes with two mittened hands and dumps it onto the sled he pulls behind him, then goes to the next one, and so on, and so forth. He's making... something unrecognizable to a 20th-century urban Russian; his best guess is... an igloo or something, or maybe he's just having fun with it, although he seems a bit old for the latter. Whatever the case is, he clearly knows more than Vasiliy does, judging by the intent with which he goes about collecting materials.
He's very obviously not white (or "white", if you're Russian, he thinks sourly) or black like most of the people here—he looks, to a Russian eye, like he might come from one of the indigenous Arctic peoples in Siberia and further north. Chukchi, maybe? Yupik? Nenet? There are so many, and the distinction is lost on him. Having never travelled further West than Moscow or further North than the now-St. Petersburg, he's only encountered maybe four or five people from the tribes of the North in his lifetime; for the most part, they'd had no interest in mingling with Russian society, and his fellow Russians (and Tatars, and Cossacks) had had little interest in intermarrying, themselves.
But right now? In this moment? The young man, whatever tribe he comes from, feels a hell of a lot more familiar than any of the people around him. At least they're probably from the same continent. When he stops at Vasiliy's own mailbox, he pauses in shoveling snow, sticking the shovel upright into the tall bank bordering the driveway. ]
What are you making?