Back in early May I was awarded the Maeve Binchy Travel Award 2015 for a rather modest project: make the 1,851 mile-trek from Zurich to St. Petersburg and write about Vladimir Lenin. Simple. The only catch being that I didn't want to get there on a plane. Rather I fancied the backroads. I wanted to replicate the bumbling route taken by Lenin in April 1917. When he, his wife Nadya, $10 million worth of gold, and a merry band of 30 or so Communists, crammed themselves into a sealed carriage and began – with unlikely help from the Germans – chugging towards Mother Russia and the scent of revolution.
It took seven days for Lenin to arrive in St Petersburg, from April 9th to ten past eleven on the 16th. I hope to have slightly more wiggle room when I head off next spring to follow the horseshoe trail of his near century-old ticket stubs. Arriving first in Zurich, where Lenin lived in exile, I will make my way north through Switzerland and its mountain slopes of deep, deep pine, cross through Germany and sail across the Baltic Sea, rush onwards then by way of Sweden and Finland before finally swooping down into Russia. And like Lenin, my journey will rely solely on train and track (apart from one measly ferry). With only a notebook for company. As I said: Simple.
The idea for this journey really came from images. I had held a passing curiosity for Lenin as a leader. Among the great upheaval of that period, the goosesteps and the bonkers politics, he had seemed noble in his desires. At least in comparison to others.
But I was mostly interested in the mythic Lenin: his very Star Wars mausoleum, the jam-red propaganda posters, the doctored photos with Stalin, the iconic Lenin on the pulpit with the clenched cap. So when I first read about the sealed carriage I began, as I always do with stories that interest me, to pick out images, ignoring the historical bluster. I saw the air within the carriage: brown from the tobacco and reeking of oniony sweat. I imagined the laughter of the giddy crews of Communists. I pictured Nadya sitting patiently beside her husband as he angrily scrawled (I constantly pictured Lenin angrily scrawling about something). Sketches more than anything. But in the days after reading about the sealed carriage, I found myself wondering more and more about the couple in the middle of it. What was going through their minds? Suddenly when I envisioned Lenin it wasn’t as an unflappable titan of history but as a husband.
I became engrossed about how they might sleep, how they got on with the others in the carriage, even how they all managed the toilet. The general day-to-day stuck with me. The entire journey was such a surreal, crucial and Hollywood moment, that changed the course of modern times, and yet none of that enticed me. I was fascinated by the small details, the slits of personal history that were within this carriage. Like how a shoddily dressed Lenin was sent to the Stockholm department store, PUB, by his comrades to shop for new garments before his big arrival. I wanted badly to describe the scene of Lenin stomping about the linoleum floors, testing the heel of some mass-produced boot, because it was a part of history we never see, because we’ve all done the same.
I don’t believe human is a word we readily associate with any radical historical figures that aren’t American or Fenian, but for me that’s what the sealed carriage was opening out as – something universal that went beyond the historic consequence and fact. A romantic idea.
And train-travel, in and of itself, is another romantic idea. Since I was a lad, it had seemed like the most civilised way of traveling. A king would surely take the train if given the choice. To this day that romanticised view hasn’t wavered – I blame the Disney steam-trains. I believe trains represented perfectly the gap between decisions. For once you’re on a train, once you have the bought the ticket, there is no going back. In a way there is no present, just your departing station and your future one. It’s this quality of fluxion – musing upon past decisions while racing towards future ones, the present neither here nor there – which helped cement for me the universal nature of Lenin’s journey. Within the confines of the sealed carriage, Lenin is just a man, a husband, a thinker, returning home with the belief that he was on the cusp of greatness. Destined, he felt, to do good for his country and its people. But not yet sure, not yet free from a past that could literally chain him.
For those days spent on that train, there was no present for Lenin; there was only the red shimmer of tomorrow and the tense shadows of yesterday’s war. And his fears then, or at least the fears I imagine he felt, are ones we all have struggled with – will I reach my dreams or will the past rob me of the chance? Lenin in that sealed carriage represents an intimate part of humanity, that in-between fragility that makes life, I suppose, so human. And that’s what I want to write about.
Personally, this award means a huge amount. For any writer, young or old, established or aspiring, it’s an honour to be associated with Maeve Binchy. I feel very privileged in that regard. Recently, I have finished both my first short-story collection and college studies so selfishly this has come at the perfect time. Just as I am going through post-academic blues, when you question why you ever bothered to fall in love with English literature and, even worse, creative writing, I get to escape.
I want to finish with a word of thanks to the enormous generosity of the Binchy family and the faith and encouragement of Margaret Kelleher and many others at UCD, who have made everything possible. This award is a wonderful way to remember Maeve Binchy. It allows her to directly inspire more writers. I wouldn’t have been able to afford this trip if it wasn’t for this award, nor would I have allowed this idea to flower beyond images. I’m very lucky to have been granted this opportunity to pursue the ghost of Vladimir Lenin. And for that my upmost gratitude goes to both the Binchy family, especially Gordon Snell, and UCD for honouring Maeve’s name in such a lasting manner.
John Patrick McHugh was born in 1991 in the west of Ireland. He was awarded the Corsair Bursary at UEA, and his fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly.
