The Time I Celebrated New Year's Over and Over Again with Right-Wing Communists on the Trans-Siberian Railway

The Trans-Siberian Railway. Photo via Flickr user Andrew and Annemarie

My last New Year's was a unique trip. I had recently graduated from a Canadian university, where I'd been doing research on contemporary Russian politics. After spending the past years exploring Russia theoretically, I had decided to use my newly found free time to travel from Russia's far eastern outpost of Vladivostok, across seven time zones, to Moscow. It was exciting to finally get to experience the full length of world's largest and weirdest country by train. Third-class, Soviet-style.

That I was going to be spending New Year's on the train, which would be somewhere between Lake Baikal and the Urals, just seemed like an odd bonus. There is something appealing about being in a non-place at the right time. What I didn't imagine was that I'd be celebrating the proverbial ball drop with fanatical activists who would make the political condition I'd written my thesis on come to life in all its amazing absurdity.

By New Year's Eve, I'd been on the train for almost a week, and smelled accordingly. Unsurprisingly, there are no showers in third class, and not much privacy either. Rather than having discrete compartments, each car is divided into a dozen or so open segments. During the afternoon the train had nearly emptied, and I was starting to worry I'd end up with no one to clink glasses with.

I started the night by pre-partying in the restaurant car, which was deserted, save for the staff. In proper Russian fashion, the attendants asked me to join them for traditional appetizers and vodka shots. Thus began a Groundhog Day–style approach to the celebration, fueled of course by copious amounts of booze.

The thing about New Year's on the Trans-Siberian is that time is ambiguous. While all Russian trains run on Moscow time, the passing villages will be on theirs. Meanwhile, passengers and staff will generally go by their home time zones for the magic hour. So by the time I returned to my car, after one round of drinks and the first of many rounds of the ubiquitous New Year countdown with the restaurant staff (Pacific Time), my night had only just begun.

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