Hudgins is a food and travel writer, so there is much detail about the food, cooking and grocery supplies in Russia. In fact, several chapters seemed pretty much one party after another with the hospitable Russians, who love a get-together with good food and drink, and party hard all night. It's a good way to ignore the intermittant electricity, lack of running water and other infrastructure problems that plague the crumbling post-Soviet urban landscape.

The most interesting part of the book was a stint in Ulan-Ude, capital of the Buryat Republic. The Buryat are a Mongolian people, cousins of the Mongol Horde of Genghis Khan. The only Tibetan lamasery (monastery) is in Ulan-Ude. The Buryat Republic borders Lake Baikal, the deepest, oldest lake in the world, home to unique species of flora and fauna and a fascinating place to read about.

This is a fascinating travel book, with a lot of fun anecdotes and stories about horrific train rides, scary food (a sheep's head with the wool still on it, and blood pudding in a sheep's stomach, no way to say "no thank you" to the amiable hosts who are putting on a real spread for their guests.) If you are interested in Russia, in a part of Russia most Westerners never visit, you should read "The Other Side of Russia."

28 of 30 found the following review helpful:


Welcome to "Absurdistan"  Sep 03, 2003 By Dennis Littrell
This extraordinary work is quite a bit more than "a slice of life." It's more like a seven-course meal replete with a different wine for each course topped with cognac, coffee, tea and cigars--not to mention a steady stream of songs, dances, toasts, speeches, gossip and other staples of Russian life east--far east--of the Urals. Relying on her experience as visiting professor at the Irkutsk State University in Irkutsk and the Far Eastern National University in Vladivostok during the years 1993-1995 when the fledgling Russian Federation was crashing headlong into the realities of the new market economy, Professor Hudgins has penned an amazingly detailed, colorful and often painfully vivid reminiscence of life in a place she and her husband Tom rightly dubbed "Absurdistan."

Much of the book chronicles their day-to-day life amid the dreary poverty, the revolting filth, the depressing pollution, the mind-altering inefficiency, the endemic corruption, the physical danger and the stubborn backwardness and Big Brother paranoia that still characterized the Russian reality. Living in a drab high-rise "village" often without electricity or running water, with elevators that seldom worked, in small rooms often without heat in below zero temperatures, where toilet paper typically consisted of pages cut from Soviet era books, subsisting on their wits and craftily purchased food and drink, Sharon and Tom made an adventure out of what most of us would rightly experience as a horror story.

Consider this from Chapter 7: "The water that ran through our taps...ranged in color from clear to amber to orange to purple to black, with accompanying aromas of petroleum, sewer gas, ham, rotten eggs, or fish." Consequently they pumped all their water for drinking, cooking, and tooth brushing through a portable filtration device they had brought with them. When the electricity was on they used the opportunity to boil water for future use, storing it in plastic bottles and an emergency 10-liter plastic container. They saved and used and reused plastic bags for many purposes, including carrying home fresh meat from the market that was cut from the animal and placed in their hands. They even reused the foil from Cadbury chocolate bars since there was no aluminum foil available.

Siberia is a cruel place, one must conclude from reading this book, yet a place where people survive in a hardtack economy buffeted with long cold winters and brief, sometimes sweltering summers, away from the dependable comforts of our world, a place pitifully short on glamour and indoor plumbing, a place I would rather read about than experience first hand.

That Hudgins did experience this first hand surprises me. I wonder why she did it. Part of the reason was her love of adventure no doubt, and part was to write a book about a country that she had been interested in since childhood, and part was to experience a culture in transition.

Central to that experience was her love of food and drink as exemplified by the way she describes in the most amazing detail the bizarre and sumptuous feasts she attended as well as exactly what she and her friends and neighbors ate on a daily basis. Additionally she recounts ritualistic ethnic meals featuring strange dishes and the frequent imbibing of even stranger drink. In one of them Tom is forced to eat raw salted liver still warm from the butchered sheep (while she was able to make herself otherwise busy away from the table!) The food in general was so heavy and the accompanying drink so relentlessly alcoholic that I was weighted down by the mere experience of reading about it! How Sharon and Tom could walk after some of the gluttonous meals forced on them by the dictates of the social graces, is beyond me. Sharon never once admits to regurgitating, even though some days the eating and drinking began full force in the morning and continued throughout the day and even into the wee hours of the next morning. One especially recalls tarasun, a liquor distilled from sour milk by the Buryat people that had the "unappetizing aroma of a baby's wet diaper." (p. 139)

So outrageous was the cuisine that at times I felt like I was reading about a drunken episode of the TV reality show "Fear Factor"!

Yet there is great beauty in this forlorn land of corrupt petty bureaucrats, dirt poor peasants, and mafiya cowboys in shark skin suits. There is the fabled Lake Baikal and environs, the land of the Buryats, historically a nomadic people akin to the Mongol hordes that once ruled half the world. There is the extraordinary white of the Siberian winter when all imperfections are covered in a pillowy down while in the snowy forests Siberian tigers (God save them) still roam.

But most of what Hudgins describes made me realize how far the Western world has come from the days when the serfs still tilled the land in Russia, and how little removed the present day people of Siberia are from that way of life. This sense is illustrated on the cover with the photo of the leather-skinned and shifty-eyed babushki in shawl selling radishes and onions from her dacha at market much as her ancestors did more than a hundred years ago.

Hudgins's book is attractively presented, well-edited, and written in a style that is at once thoroughly professional and as readable as a travel log. There are four maps, a couple of dozen or so black and white photos of buildings, people and scenery, an Index, and a splendid "Bibliographic Essay and Notes" on the literature of Siberia and the Russian Far East.

12 of 13 found the following review helpful:


Realities of the joys and absurdities of living in Siberia  Dec 09, 2003 By Linda Linguvic
From 1993 to 1995 Sharon Hudgins and her husband Tom lived and worked in post-Soviet Siberia, teaching at the university level through the University of Maryland's overseas programs. Originally from Texas, they had formerly worked in Germany, Spain, Greece, Japan, Korea under the same program in which he taught economics and she taught cross-cultural communication. Ms. Hudgins was particularly interested in Russia and her first master's degree was in Soviet-US relations. Both she and her husband had also learned the language, which made communication possible. This book is about the two years they spent in Siberia, specifically in Vladivostok and Irkutsk.

Ms. Hudgins' descriptions are rich with detail and the book is full of anecdotes that transported me immediately to the world she describes. I had always heard about the inefficiencies and breakdowns that were common in Russia. But after I read about their living conditions, the reality of it hit me immediately. In both cities they lived in high-rise apartment buildings, a commute of 1-1/2 hours each way to their jobs. These high rises were built with shoddy material and shoddy workmanship and were nowhere near food shopping or any other conveniences. The elevator never worked and they would have to walk up and down eight floors. But the worst thing of all was that heat, water and electricity were intermittent. They would suddenly be without heat in the middle of a Siberian winter. And even when the undrinkable and polluted water did come through their pipes, it could be cut off at a moment's notice. Same with electricity. As a result, they learned to be very creative, especially in their preparation of meals.

Speaking of food, in addition to all Ms. Hudgins' other accomplishments, she is also a trained food writer. And so her descriptions of food were some of the most memorable parts of the book. She and her husband are experienced gourmet cooks and befriended some Russian people who were also good cooks. There's a lot of interesting food descriptions and I was fascinated by the time and trouble they took to prepare even the simplest meal.

One incident in particular stays in my mind. They went out to countryside to buy fresh milk at a farmers' market. In this Siberian area the farmers milk their cows, fill a pail and leave it outside to freeze. However, they put a branch of a tree upright in the pail. Later, they lift the frozen milk out of the pail. It now looks like a huge popsicle. These "popsicles" are then loaded on a wagon and brought to market. The Hudgins purchased milk this way, carried it home on public transportation and it actually stayed frozen the whole time. Naturally they had to boil it before they used it. But they said it was delicious.

Another area which particularly interested me was the education system. Formerly, it was all about privilege and favoritism. People paid teachers for good grades. Bribes were considered a fact of life. And students themselves could never really understand the idea of plagiarism. But now that the Soviet era was over, this was gradually changing.

Yes, there were many challenges that the Hudgins had to meet. But they did it all with a spirit of good will and adventure. That's why this book was a pleasure to read. It's only 295 pages long, but so dense with insights and information, that I purposely took my time reading it.

I definitely identified with the Hudgins and know my understanding of Siberia has certainly been enriched. Highly recommended -- especially for armchair travelers such as myself.

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:


One of the best modern personal introductions to Siberia  Jun 01, 2005 By J. Jacobs
The Other Side of Russia emerged from Barbara Hudgins experience of living in Siberia for a year and a half, from 1993 to 1994. Working as the onsite program coordinator for the University of Maryland University College in Siberia and the Russian Far East, she worked and lived in Vladivostok and Irkutsk.

Hudgins book is the first book about Siberia I'd come across written by someone who spent extensive time in Siberia. This gives her a depth of understanding that adds a lot to her memoir.

The structure of her memoir is unusual. She's divided the book into two sections. The chapters in part one focus on place - Irkutsk, Vladivostok, Lake Baikal, etc. - and the chapters in the second part focus on aspects of life and culture in Siberia - housing, education, food and festivals. Hudgins supplemented her first-hand experience with extensive research. This offers readers an in-depth source of information about many aspects of Siberian place and life.

What's lost in this non-chronological format is Hudgin's own adaptations and reactions over her time in Siberia. She does insert some feelings and personality, but the focus is on the topic, rather than on her personal experience or characters who change and develop over the period.

Hudgins seems to have thrown herself into Siberia with a remarkably open mind. She expertly captures the small details of Siberian life and renders vivid pictures of feasts shared with Russian friends. For those who have been to Siberia, this book will take you back there. For those planning on going, The Other Side of Russia provides a great overview of the life and culture.

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:


Under the midnight moon  Jan 22, 2005 By Joseph Haschka
In THE OTHER SIDE OF RUSSIA, the University of Maryland University College has established a joint undergraduate degree program in business management with the Far Eastern State University in Vladivostok and the State University in Irkutsk. In the summer of 1993, author Sharon Hudgins and her husband, Tom, packed off to Siberia and the Russian Far East to serve as teachers in this cooperative venture, while the former was also Maryland's on-site program coordinator in both cities. This book chronicles their experiences from their arrival until their departure in December 1994.

Whether she's describing the immensity of pristine Lake Baikal, the problematic living conditions in their high-rise apartment, local customs and food of the Buryat people, the vagaries and perils of shopping for household necessities, maddening water and electricity outages, local festivals, the growing pains of a free-market economy, the university students' learning ethic, or the conviviality and generosity of their Russian friends, Hudgins has a keen eye for small details, as when describing an open air market:

"An Uzbek woman ... sold raisins and nuts in small paper cones made out of official forms from the Irkutsk Municipal Water Department ... In one part of the market, a pretty teenage girl, wearing a garish, flower-printed dress and a thousand-yard stare, held a handful of peacock feathers and sipped a can of Dr Pepper, while in another section two older women, both drunk, tried to punch each other out in a fist fight."

I haven't been so engaged by a travel essay about Russia since Hedrick Smith's 1976 bestseller, THE RUSSIANS. My only criticism is the relative lack of photographs - only a couple at most per chapter. Luckily, Sharon's poetic prose paints pictures almost as effective as snapshots, as this from her vantage point on the Trans-Siberian Railroad:

"A profusion of wildflowers carpeted the meadows, like an Impressionist painting exuberantly expanding beyond the limits of canvas and frame: undulating shades of yellow, gold, and blue, maroon and magenta, soft pink and pristine white, the pale purple globes of wild onions gone to seed, thousands of red-orange tiger lilies, whole fields of dark purple Siberian irises, and occasionally a single red poppy or two, like a stubborn symbol of politics past. Outside Chita a small lake glistened under the midnight moon."

For me, a travel narrative is all it can be if it makes me want to go there myself. THE OTHER SIDE OF RUSSIA accomplishes that. Well, maybe for just a brief visit, perhaps, because I certainly wouldn't want to live there.

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