Siberian Education by Nicolai Lilin, an exceptional read.

Posted on May 11, 2011 by andres 6 Comments

A close up of a man’s face veiled by his tattooed hands is the book-cover of Siberian Education. That alone compelled me to pick it up from the new arrivals shelf at the public library for a quick glance. I tend to do just that with true crime books, a quick glance and if it seems interesting enough I just Google whatever caught my attention. I ended up reading about a hundred pages of Lilin’s book then and there.

The library labeled as a “Biography” but it feels more like fiction. What this book really is is an oral storytelling account of the Siberian Urkas captivating criminal code. Lilin’s authors note states that certain episodes are imaginative recreation., Nevertheless, his exposition of the traditional Siberian Urkas community is one of the best crime reads out there.

I specially liked Lilin’s narration of elder Urka criminals life stories, there is one in particular that stuck with me, about a cold blooded killer nicknamed Plum. Here is the gist of it;
Plum was not born into the criminal underworld he was the son of a scientist and a teacher. When the Soviets came to power his father was believed to have connections with american and european spies, deemed a traitor he was condemned to a camp along with his wife and two children, Plum age twelve and Plum’s sister age three. Plum’s father was beaten and did not survive the train ride to camp. In a senseless interrogation Plum’s mother was ordered to strip naked along with her children out in the snow. The guards tell Plum that they will break all ten of his fingers one by one unless his mother breaks Plum’s little sister pinkie finger. The guards had gone through six of his fingers when he begged his mother in pain. She smashed her daughter to death and tried to kill Plum too but she was stopped by the guards and then beaten to death. Plum was left to die, he would eat the snow hoping to die faster. Some prisoners took him in and nourish him back to life. He grew up to be an avid killer responsible for the death of thousands of cops. On his batter hand there is a tattoo of a skull wearing a police hat and reads I will avenge you.
The torture element in this story is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Lilin dedicated about six pages to this Plum story, that should be a clear indicator of the fullness and fast paced writing of this 440 page book, just that one story alone could be the base of a good movie.

The whole book has high cinematic value, I constantly found myself recreating scenes in my head, finding the best way to visually tell the story. It would take a masterful script writer to make it a good movie because I fear that Nicolai Lilin’s life story alone wouldn’t hold up on screen and I don’t know about branching out for every character to tell their story. It works in the book but with so many characters, the absence of a love interest, (He barley writes about his love life, at one point in the story he talks about a girl, promises to tell their story later on in the book but never delivers.)  and no clear story climax for the main character I doubt it would be a fine movie, I believe it could be great if a lot of artistic liberties were to be taken with Lilin’s story.

All and all Siberian Education is a uncharted, different and entertaining take on what we believed to be the stereotypical mafia.