It Smells of Smoke at Home

A view from the plane window on the way to Tomsk in Siberia, Russia. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, the EU and UK both closed their airspace to Russian planes. Russia responded with tit-for-tat restrictions on countries banning its flights, and traveling back home from Germany became more difficult and expensive for Aliona. 

Aliona took this self-portrait in the room she slept in as a child in Tomsk, Russia, in an attempt to work through how it felt to be back in the place she grew up. Did she still belong in this bed, to this house, in this country? 

The letter Z, which went from a military marking to become a symbol of public support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, shines among Christmas decorations, in Tomsk, Russia.

A party at a club in Tomsk, Russia, where DJs played a few tracks in Ukrainian. By 2023, playing Ukrainian music in Russia was perceived as civil disobedience.

Aliona’s sister Sanya swims with her son in the Ushayka River, which runs past the family dacha (country cottage), in Tomsk, Russia. Once gold was washed in the Ushayka, but nowadays the water barely reaches their waists, and they are happy if they manage to find the polluted river free of old tires and rusty metal. 

Aliona’s mother looks out of a window at home, in Tomsk, Russia. At the end of winter, there is so much snow in Tomsk that it starts to reach the windowsill and seems to be squeezing the walls.

Aliona’s grandmother rests after a walk, in Tomsk, Russia. She never leaves the house alone, too afraid of falling or getting lost. Grandma gifted Aliona her warm, downy shawl, a gospel, and Aliona’s old baby towel to take back to Germany. 

Masha, Aliona’s niece, has been swimming for nearly an hour, at home in Tomsk, Russia. The sun has almost set, and the heat of the day is gradually being replaced by evening coolness. Masha's lips are turning blue, but she refuses to get out of the water. At times like this, she reminds Aliona of herself at that age.

Aliona (left) sits with her younger sister Sanya, a mother of two, at the house where they grew up, in Tomsk, Russia. Aliona says there has long been an unspoken consensus between them that they are too different to be friends. Aliona has never talked to Sanya about the war and has no idea of what it must be like to raise a son in wartime Russia. 

A faded copy of a picture by the Russian-Jewish romantic painter Isaac Levitan hangs draped by plastic ivy and surrounded by hoar frost in the summer kitchen at Aliona’s parents house in Tomsk, Russia. Everything is frozen until spring, and the kitchen is unused. Aliona stood mesmerized by this relic of her childhood.

Ice crunches and cracks as the Tom River in Tomsk, Russia, begins to flow again with the spring thaw. Aliona and her parents come to the banks to watch it – as do many other people from the city: the ice drift each year is a major event, and makes the TV news.

Aliona’s sister Sanya relaxes at the family dacha (country home) in Tomsk, Russia, with her nine-year-old son. Aliona has never once talked to Sanya about the war. She doesn’t know what Sanya thinks about the future, nor what it is like to be the mother of a son in present-day Russia.

Aliona’s grandmother stands at the gate of the family home in Tomsk, Russia. She is 95, and lived in a small village all her life, until moving to a one-room apartment in Tomsk five years ago. She loves her new home, but Aliona’s parents‘ house reminds her of a past she misses. 
 

Russian flags and those of various units of the Russian defence forces and Wagner Group fly over the graves of soldiers killed in Ukraine, at a cemetery in Tomsk, Russia.

The potato harvest from Aliona’s parents’ dacha (country cottage) vegetable garden in Tomsk, Russia, could feed the couple and their neighbors for a whole year. They tend the garden with great care: the watering, weeding, harvesting each summer almost amounts to a second job. 

Aliona’s parents sit in the living room at their dacha (holiday home), in Tomsk, Russia. The Christmas tree remains in the corner year-round, to give a feeling of coziness.

Tanya, a friend of the photographer, cradles her two-year-old son, in Tomsk, Russia. Most of their mutual friends left Russia after the government introduced conscription, but Tanya remains because her husband cannot leave, and she won’t go without him.

Impromptu memorials like this one in Tomsk, Russia, sprung up around the country after a 22 March attack by Islamist extremists on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, which killed 145 people. White cranes became a symbol for tragic events in Russia after a 1960s poem used them to portray WWII soldiers who did not return from battle.

A view of the Stepanovka neighborhood of Tomsk, Russia. Stepanovka looks more like a village than an urban neighborhood, yet it takes just 30 minutes to get to the city center by bus. Aliona’s parents bought a house there after they married; she was born there and lived there for 27 years.

Aliona’s parents breathe in the cold March air outside their banya (wet-steam sauna) in Tomsk, Russia, after dousing themselves with water. Her father used to try to break his temperature record each time he used the banya, with the thermometer sometimes hitting 120℃. But the older they get, the milder the banya becomes, so that, finally, it has turned to pure pleasure.

Since Aliona’s grandmother very rarely leaves her house in Tomsk, Russia, television (here broadcasting an address by President Putin) is often her window to the world.

Aliona’s mother learns German while using an infrared device to heal a broken leg, in Tomsk, Russia. She really wants to visit Aliona in Germany one day. Neither parent has ever been abroad, and they have not seen Aliona’s new home.

On the last night of a visit back to Tomsk, Russia, in February 2022, Aliona went for a walk in the forest with her parents. It was their 34th wedding anniversary. She had bought them each a smartphone, so that they could communicate more frequently. They talked a lot, and her father showed her the constellations. On the next day she flew back to Germany, three days later days, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Footage from a drone attack on a Ukrainian target is displayed alongside trophies from the front, in an exhibition “People from Tomsk in the Special Military Operation” at a local history museum in Tomsk, Russia. Videos from the front, soldiers’ personal belongings, and “mementoes” such as a plaque taken from a school (upper right) were on display.

At the age of 94, Aliona’s grandmother votes for the president, in Tomsk, Russia. She says: ”God bless me, old fool, that I can vote for Putin one more time!”

Yarik and Masha, Aliona’s niece and nephew in Tomsk, Russia, share the same age difference as Aliona and her sister, and play the same childhood games. Aliona says: “My parents did their best to make our childhood in the turbulent and poor nineties the best time to remember. I wonder how my niece and nephew will remember theirs?”

Aliona’s nephew Yarik in the family banya (wet-steam sauna) in Tomsk, Russia. The experience and rituals of the banya are among Aliona’s most vivid associations with home: “The fogged window, the smell of birch brooms and the fir oil that my dad pours on the hot stones, hot tea with currant leaves, dusk, a few mosquitoes, and steam enveloping me in the cool August air.”

A military recruitment billboard in Tomsk, Russia, entreaties passers-by to “Join your people”. Putin’s announcement of a partial mobilization of military reservists in September 2022 caused a surge in people leaving Russia. The state has raised payments to soldiers, veterans, the wounded, and families of those killed. 

Aliona, her parents, and grandmother sit on the porch of the family home in Tomsk, Russia, before her return to Germany. She says: “I love this Russian tradition of ‘sitting on the road’. You all sit down together for a minute to think about what you leave behind.” 

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