Train to Samarkand

Humanity is more than ideas. In her latest novel, the Tatar author describes the rescue of children from the famine-stricken city of Kazan in the Volga region. The year is 1923, and the train that is supposed to transport the children to distant Samarkand lacks everything, including food. The year is 1923, and the Bolsheviks and the promise of a better tomorrow have definitively triumphed in Russia. How much better that tomorrow is, five hundred children between the ages of two and twelve from Kazan's children's homes and orphanages are about to find out firsthand, as they would likely starve to death due to the famine in the Volga region. “A field without winter crops. Barns without animals. Granaries without food. Hospitals where no one is treated. Schools where no one is taught…” Although the Bolshevik authorities dispatch a train to take the children thousands of kilometres away to Samarkand, it lacks suitable carriages, fuel, professional staff, toys to keep the children entertained, and, most importantly, food. The train commander is a young front-line soldier, Deyev, and the crew includes a determined and resolute commissar named Belaya. Deyev and the doctor, Bug, try to get food for the children at every stop. In vain. The trains loaded with food are not intended for starving children. But the two of them never give up… Belaya and Deyev do eventually accompany the train to Samarkand, but after what they have experienced on the journey, they will never be the same again.