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People said that I was conceived with all of the luck in the world.
I was born in Soviet Russia on Christmas Day in the West. The same day that Ceaușescu was shot. Two years before our glorious Soviet Union itself fell. None of these things affected me. I don’t remember any of this time, but it’s important to remember these forgotten things.
Everything was in disarray. My family was not poor, but not in the party. We lived in that grey zone of being just connected enough to survive without the full power and conceit of being members. My mother waited in those endless lines, I restless in her arms. We got a bit more each week than others, and it caused some ill feelings. We were never accepted in any group in those days. Some of those feelings have carried over, but most people try to put the past behind them. We are no longer good comrades.
I was given to my mother thin and weak. Not that I was going to die, but modern Soviet medicine was at its zenith. I survived those first few days, grew, learned to walk, fall, and charm my way into everyone’s good graces or bad tempers.
“You were born for The Road,” my festering Great Aunt Vasilisa would say. I took it to mean wandering around aimlessly, unable to sit still for even a second.
It wasn’t until after my first medal that I understood. I was born for Siberia and exile. She never did adjust, not fully for the new world of not speaking in code and double meanings. She grew up in a different time- a survivor of the war, the purges, and finally unchecked capitalism. Every statement designed for insolent innocence.
She was probably right about my fate if not for skating. The gulag system had also fallen thirty years prior, but one could never be too careful.
At six, I was taken to the local rink by my mother. She was exhausted after chasing me around laundry. It was always cold, and our sports gravitated towards the ice and snow. I could never warm up until I was out skating. I would glide around, stripping off mittens, scarves, and jackets. A military parade of Russian winter clothes. It was always a challenge to keep me bundled up as I did jumps and spins. I’d get hot, and the thick coats hindered certain movements. I learned quickly to adapt. To practice in short sleeve shirts and shorts to combat the heat and the cold, then to put on more and more clothes until nothing phased me. I can do a triple axle in a fur coat if I want.
I was a natural, and word spread quick.
Even in those days of the new, the post-Soviet figure skating system was still a fearsome politburo. It had rebranded, and some of the more… coercive methods had changed with it (not all). I was skating full time three months later. “In the old days,” I would have been required to skate by the state, but most things are much better now. The Grand Prix was created a year later, and quickly became my eight year old obsession. There were bigger, greater tournaments, but the Grand Prix was mine.
At seven, I was forced to eat to get my weight up. At nine, I was forced to diet. None of this affected me. It was simply how things were done. I accepted it just as I accepted the loss of family, schooling, and endless pain. As much of a talker as I was, I earned the nickname “The Little Stoic” from my coaches. I didn’t harden or cry as so many other skaters did during practice. Their eyes too old from the abuse. I excelled in the pressure, eyes glittering during the stretches to keep me agile. I’m not double jointed as some of the luckier kids had been, but I took the exercises in approving silence. That scared some of the trainers. They could handle tears- having been there themselves, but they couldn’t handle tacit consent from a child. I simply took it as part of training. There were rumors that older skaters had heard of me, watched my training, recognizing a fellow member of “The Old Ways,” but that might be my Russian ego at work.
I ignored the pain, and redirected my performances with powerful fragility. Everything was new then in Russia, especially when I went into the senior division and created a different way. Soviet power figure skating was dead. I created a career of joy and sadness- I could emote innocence and weakness even in the most complex of performances. I didn’t have to prove the geopolitical might of the Soviet Bloc. I made soft tenderness, even effeminacy, into weapons of power and force. I am a genius on that end, but there is more than simple ability. I am a man of vices and distractions. Those push me forward, to anchor away from the safety of my life. But I know who I am and my actions. Performance is everything.
The first year of the new scoring system was mine. Everyone was weak-willed, not understanding how it worked. 6.0 was "the" score to get. But perfect scores were dead. I refused to mourn, and adopted it as a younger brother when everyone else were still doing conversions.
I’ve seen other training facilities around the world, and they look weak. I never would have succeeded with that much pampering, but I’ve seen other skaters perform at my level without the shadow of the Figure Skating Federation of the USSR guiding their careers and lives. Things are much better, but I still see some old methods being applied at times, and I still don’t know if they go too far.
We Russian skaters are in a slump, and I can’t carry them forever.
Neither can Yurio. He is the last of our kind.
Lillia and Yakov have seen to that.
There is a new way.
I have seen it.
In Yuri.