Absolutely. Ilya was born June 15, 1991. The Soviet Union ceased to exist December 26, 1991. Ilya grew up in the wreckage.
The post-Soviet nineties were a time of economic, social and political crisis in Russia and the other post Soviet states. And Ilya wouldâve been a child during that. His father wouldâve been a high ranking police officer in Moscowâs police force, but when Ilya was six months old, suddenly Grigori wouldâve lost his job.
The Soviet state collapsed at the end of 1991 and pretty much everybody except the air traffic controllers walked off the job. Because they knew the country no longer existed and they would no longer get a paycheque. The economy had been sliding towards disaster for years, but nobody had expected the disaster to hit so fast or so comprehensively.
Clearly Grigori managed to regroup within a few years of 1991. He reinvented himself from loyal Communist Party apparatchik to loyal high ranking police officer in capitalist Russia, sucking up to the new oligarchs. It probably helped that he was high up enough to know where the bodies were buried. The KGB, for example, was soon rebranded as the FSB, with much of the same personnel. Vladimir Putin was a KGB lieutenant-colonel until 1991. Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss.
But Grigori was 50 when his country slid into virtual anarchy, taking his good job with it, at least temporarily. And he had a young wife, a preschooler and an infant to support. At a time when the currency had collapsed, peopleâs life savings had evaporated, there was mass unemployment, previously good jobs could barely pay for food, etc. It was an incredibly turbulent time.
Ilya was a perceptive child. He would have realized pretty early on that whatever prosperity anybody (including his parents) had was precarious. That the entire society he lived in was lurching from one crisis to another and the social safety net was nonexistent.
Thereâs a reason so many ordinary Russians were thankful when Vladimir Putin first took over. He promised stability, and theyâd had a decade of chaos. Hell yeah, Grigori and Irina wouldâve been hiding diamonds and gold bars if they could get them. Likely bought with bribes Grigori could extract. And Grigori and Irina likely wouldâve taught their boys to do the same.
Also, in The Long Game, Ilya says his father was 50 when he was born in June 1991. Meaning Grigori was born in late 1940 or early 1941. In June 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Approximately 26 million Soviet citizens died over the next four years.
Directly when soldiers died in combat and civilians were wiped out in SS atrocities. Including among the civilian atrocities Soviet Jews killed in the Holocaust. Indirectly in mass famine and crowd diseases starving people couldnât fight off. Obviously this was across the whole Soviet Union, not just Russia, but the numbers are still pretty boggling. And only 9 million of the 26 million Soviet dead were military combatants.
Grigori likely lost at least one family member as a small child during WWii. He probably went hungry quite a few times as a toddler and preschooler, given the chronic food shortages everywhere and outright famines in large parts of the country. His mother and any older sisters might have been raped by soldiers. It was a common tactic to terrorize the civilian population. And then, after the war ended, Stalin started the purges again.
Yeah, Grigori is a horrible person, a terrible husband and father. But he was likely also traumatized by his own upbringing. That may be partly why he was such a horrible person. He spent his childhood in a society that was always either fighting off invaders or ruled by a power mad dictator.
Iâm not excusing Grigori. Plenty of Soviet citizens his age lived through that and didnât go on to make their own families miserable. But it certainly provides context. He wouldâve been even more likely than Irina to have contingency plans. Even more so since the postwar Soviet Union ceased to exist when he was fifty and he had to reinvent himself to feed his family.
So yeah, absolutely, Ilya grew up looking over his shoulder. With multiple exit plans. He only looks like a dumb jock. Heâs smart enough to have exit plans and contingency plans. And those plans would have been drilled into him by his parents. Itâs probably one of the few things Grigori and Irina could agree on, making sure their boys had contingency plans.
And yeah, getting to Ottawa must have been weird for Ilya. Grigori and Irina are dead, he no longer talks to his remaining family in Russia. Yuna and David are kind, probably think gold bars and go bags wr ridiculous. But old habits of looking over his shoulder probably die hard. Especially given heâs hiding a secret romantic relationship with another man, his greatest professional rival.
Also, if Yuna was born in Canada, she may be the child of Japanese Canadians who were interned in camps for the duration of WWII and had all their property seized. Even though many were Canadian citizens born in Canada. Yuna herself will probably not understand Ilyaâs paranoia. But if her parents are still alive by The Long Game, and that is their background, they would likely understand it perfectly.
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