Siberia’s Surprisingly Australian Past

It was at one of the smaller towns along the Trans-Siberian Railway, one of the two-minute stops that are so easy to miss altogether between Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk, that the government inspectors boarded our train. My husband Timothy and I were alerted to their presence when the stewardess who had taken our tickets came to our cabin shortly after 9 p.m. and told us that “inspectors of the regime” were aboard, and could we please lock our door and not open it for any reason until she came to fetch us. We did as she said, and also closed the window curtains. It was not necessary to turn out the lights, for we had not figured out how to turn them on or indeed whether they were working or broken. The last thing Timothy said before we lapsed into silence was, “This supports my bribe theory.”

We had good reason to suspect that our presence on the train was not perfectly legal. When we had presented our paperwork at the station in Ekaterinburg, the stewardess had furrowed her…