I have a tattoo, the Tatar word çiksez, which means without borders or endless, done by a Spanish artist in Edinburgh. My close friend Ksyusha Shachneva, who is half Russian and half Jewish, living in Tatarstan, wrote this word in Tatar, and a Spanish artist tattooed it on my Tatar skin. This kind of unity itself proves the world is çiksez; there are no real borders.

I really liked the word çiksez, in regards to infinity and borders. Plus, I've learned that in a certain context, çiksez can be used to describe a person who doesn't know when to stop. This also works for me [laughing].

I returned to Kazan from London this year before the first wave of the pandemic and then I couldn't go anywhere.

Like, how they can even ask this? Moreover, they're not close friends, but people who don't know me very well. For me, it's obvious and totally normal. It was spring when I returned, when I felt very strongly that borders were conditional, that it was a social construct. I can live anywhere; I could live in the UK. But now I want to work in Tatarstan.

Elsa, my Tatar language teacher, and I were talking about this. She often gets asked

Because it's my cultural code; it's a part of me. It is me. For her, it's obvious, and it became obvious for me, too, at some point: what I receive here is a part of me, and I want to give back, too.

It sounds very pretentious, but I really want to do what I can in Tatarstan. I want to use what I learned at one of the best universities in the world, Birkbeck College, the University of London, in the place I consider home.

I had been offered a job in Tatarstan a year ago, and, at the same time, I got an offer from Germany. I actually made lists, columns, wrote out the pros and cons.

And I had this thought, like, "I can't just go back, that would be strange." Inside I understood that I wanted to return, but, in my head, something clicked ... I wasn't ready, and I turned down the offer from Tatarstan.

And then the pandemic hit, and now you can't leave Tatarstan. That's when Natasha Fishman-Bekmambetova offered me a job with the department of architectural projects of the Institute for Urban Development of the Republic of Tatarstan in small towns, state farms, and villages. And I enjoyed it. We drove all over the republic: Aznakaevo, Zelenodolsk, Menzelinsk, Nurlat ...

And you also get the feeling that you are changing something: you can come and change something, and you know what exactly you can change.

Also, this is my homeland, although that's not entirely true: I was born in Tobolsk, but my parents are from here, from Tatarstan.

I'd really like to go on a road trip throughout Tatarstan: I liked every city of the republic so much!

As part of the project of the Institute of Urban Development of the Republic of Tatarstan, we worked with the cultures of small towns, found out how people live there, what they like, where they go, what they eat.

And that makes you want to try it for yourself.

You learn from these townspeople, because no one but them knows what's best for their city; no one knows the taste of Bonduzhsky bread better than them.

No, no one will know better than the townspeople themselves.

When and why did you leave Tatarstan for Great Britain?

I left when I was ... I feel like I wasn't quite at a conscious age yet. It was 2015, so how old was I then? 28. There is this general idea that life is better abroad, that if you manage to leave Russia, then that's an achievement. I felt like that too. And that when I met David, who would become my husband. I was interested in British culture in general.

I've always dreamed of studying abroad, not to live there (I didn't plan to move), but to study.

In 2015, I left for the UK, but it wasn't to study—I was leaving to see David. Then I decided to apply for a grant, but the first time I did it without putting too much thought into it and I didn't get it: there was a list of fields, and culture wasn't on it.

The next year I thought: even if culture isn't on the list, I'll explain why it's important. And I wrote an application in English with a bunch of mistakes, but I explained: culture in Russia, in Tatarstan, is very important. Why did they try to shut down Kirill Serebrennikov [Russian stage and film director]? Because they understand how theater can influence people, especially in Russia. And I got the grant.

At the university, we talked a lot about "diversity," which can't quite be translated into Russian, something like raznoobraziya, "giving a voice to different communities."

Even working at the Kamala Theater didn't give me this feeling.

And sure, I left, but I still worked remotely for Tatarstan, with the Living City Foundation and the Kamala Theater. I was the theater's international relations manager. I wanted to expand borders even then. I wanted to change these rigid borders between Tatarstan and the world.

What do you see as these boundaries?

In the feeling that we live only in Tatarstan, that we should stay only here, only in Russia. In our way of thinking, within the framework of the topics that we speak to, those that we represent in the theater. I want to feel as if I'm a citizen of the whole world, but at the same time understand the value of this specific place.

I recently spoke with one of my acquaintances in London. She's from Chelny, worked in Kazan, then left for Great Britain, married an Englishman, and stayed there. I told her "You know, I've lived in Tatarstan for five months in a row for the first time in a long time, and I like it. I want to stay and work here."

For some reason, people can't understand that returning home is a success. Coming back with all the knowledge that you acquired. For me, the fact that I received a great education, and that it was in one of the centers of knowledge in the art world ... bringing that home with me is, like ... a very important mission.

For myself, I already decided at the time: you can live happily anywhere you can create comfort for yourself. If you have a good job with a decent salary, if you have housing, if you are pretty sure that you won't be blown up on the street on your way to buy bread, then you can be happy there.

It's now impossible to buy housing in the UK, simply impossible. There's a very unpleasant, even hostile atmosphere towards immigrants. And not from the people who live next to you—on the contrary, they have a very positive attitude towards you—but from the political decisions that the British make. They even call this strategy itself the Hostile Environment Policy.

You said that at the Kamala Theater you didn't feel your ethnicity identity. Why not?

Honestly, I didn't reflect on it at all; I don't know why. Great Britain has an education system in which you reflect on things in class. The main goal of this type of education is not to provide knowledge, but to develop critical thinking, work on how you treat information.

When I worked at the Kamala Theater, I don't remember reflecting on the Tatar language, the people, or why we would choose a particular work.

I asked Ilfir Ilshatovich many times, "What is the mission of the Kamalovsky theater?" He said: "Preserving the Tatar language." But why didn't I feel it in the repertoire? At that moment I didn't reflect on it or discuss the issue. Perhaps that's why I didn't feel my ethnic identity.

Tell us about Tobolsk. What's it like?

There was an economic crisis in the 80s, and my parents had to earn money somewhere. My ätiem [father] got a job as a construction worker in Tobolsk, and he's very good at it. They were given a three-room apartment. They moved there, and I was born.

We lived next to the forest, and ätiem would go hunting, sometimes overnight. It only just hit me: wow, he could stay out there in winter and summer. He came back from hunting with game, rabbits, because there was no meat in the shops due to the crisis.

My first-grade teacher was a Siberian Tatar who changed her name and became Klara Nikolaevna. I don't remember what her real name was. Kadriya I think.

Recently I heard the story of a black blogger. She has a complicated name, Uzoamaka Aduba. She was bullied at school because of her name. One day she came home and told her mother: I want to change my name. It's very difficult to pronounce. And her mother says "they learned to say Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky—they'll learn to pronounce your name too."

That's what David's mom calls me: Flower.

In Tobolsk, did you hang out with other Tatars?

No, I had no connection to them at all, there was no such awareness. Before kindergarten, though, I didn't speak Russian at all.

I remember it vividly, the moment when I went to kindergarten. I had a teacher named Olga Nikolaevna. I always greeted her like this: Isänmesez [hello in Tatar]. But then I was retrained.

When we went on excursions in Tobolsk, there was not a word about the Tatar history of the city. Everything was connected with the period of the Decembrists, because Tobolsk is a city of exiles.

Did you feel that you're Tatar? Like you're different from others?

No, no one paid attention to my name. There was no self-identity associated with Tatar at all. And all my life, for me, I called mom and dad äni and äti. I always called them that, in front of everyone.

For others it was probably funny, some girl was shouting who-knows-what in some foreign language. But it was normal for me.

Every summer we left for Tatarstan, to the avylga [village]... And I was my grandmother's favorite. We always spoke Tatar with her, because she and my grandfather didn't understand Russian. That was the kind of village it was. And, at the end of the summer, when I returned to Tobolsk, I spoke Tatar again. But that passed pretty soon.

Why did you leave Tobolsk?

There was another economic crisis in 1998. There was no work, and my dad started getting paid in juicers and books. We went back to Tatarstan and he got a job at the Kazan Aviation Institute as the chief foreman, repairing everything there.

In the evening he would go to the collective farm market, where he worked as a janitor. He did everything just to make sure there was money for the family.

And I went to help him, although I hated that job. He would assign rows to me: "This is your row, and this one is yours."

And when äniem [mother] got here, she got a job on television right away—no one knew Tatar as well as she did. She's not a journalist, she's a teacher by training, and she worked as a teacher in Tobolsk. But she came here and got a job on TV. And she still works on television in the Tatar newsroom.

We lived in Zelenodolsk. I studied in the PR department at Kazan Aviation Institute. It was one of the first in Russia. It was a very prestigious faculty. Even Kazan State University didn't have one like it.

But I always wanted to do theater, and in Zelenodolsk I went to a theater studio. At the Aviation Institute I thought about how to combine PR and theater.

While I was still a student, I started working as a sales manager in a recruiting agency. Then I was finally able to afford to go to St. Petersburg. I saw the first theater laboratory there, and I liked it. I returned to Kazan and put together one like it called Exit 68 (I wanted to just call it Exit, but my friend Alisa Rozanova said that that would be too simple, and that it should be associated with 1968 and the theme of freedom). Kazan, I Love You was one of its projects, if you recall.

And the wheels started spinning. I went to Farid Bickchantaev [a theater director] for support, but he turned me down. But Niyaz Iglamov [a theater critic] really supported me, and he went to Mr. Bikçäntäyef, to try to change his mind.

And the Kamala Theater supported me. Then I became a PR director there. My first campaign was working with the play One Summer Day. And it's my favorite PR campaign. I remember how we released a video where Lucia Khamitova is driving a tram and Almaz Garayev is jumping with a parachute. We wanted to show that we're doing something explosive for the theater, that it's as new for the Kamala Theater as driving a tram is for Lucia Khamitova or chopping meat for Leysan Fayzullina.

And I tried approaching each performance in this way, but I soon realized that I couldn't; I didn't have the time. I couldn't reach the level that I wanted to achieve.

And I also came to realization that a PR person puts together narratives, but not the art itself. And I really wanted to influence the art.

For example, we made a commercial for the play Hodja Nasreddin and found a donkey. I said let's make the whole ad campaign as if Hodja [a Sufi satirical character] is traveling everywhere on a donkey and arrives in Kazan right for the premiere. As a result, Mr. Bikçäntäyef decided to put the donkey into the play itself.

And I realized that I liked to influence things, and that PR is a little too narrow for me. But that doesn't mean that I learned everything there is about PR, not at all.

How did you come to the Living City Foundation?

At the Kamala Theater, Niyaz and I shared an office. And Inna Yarkova, cofounder of the Living City Foundation, started visiting him. And they were constantly discussing something. I started to wonder what are they working on; who is this Inna person, anyways? At some point, they needed a PR person, and Niyaz recommended me.

I took it up. Not for the money, I was just curious. And plus, when you work for a long time at the same place, moss starts growing under your feet. This was something new.

Living City became a turning point for Tatarstan. Including for PR people: it's a completely different direction for theater.

What is the fundamental difference between PR for Living City and for the Kamala Theater?

I can't really say that there's a big difference: I used the same PR tools at both. But at the former, at the Ugol creative laboratory, each job is an independent project. That is, a new team is assembled for each production: director and actors, so there's always a new dynamic.

And from a purely physical standpoint, you can't stretch each premiere into a separate project.

Having decided to stay in Russia, were you dead set on Kazan, or were there other options?

Other than Kazan, the only other city in Russia I would have chosen was St. Petersburg. You feel differently in St. Petersburg. It has its own character, just like Kazan.

You know, there's a big difference between the strategy of the Ministry of Culture and the results of the research I had worked on. The Ministry of Culture kept stressing preservation, preservation, preservation. But every expert with I spoke with talked about development, that we need dynamics, movement. It's quite a dissonance.

I was at a meeting of the local Tatar community in London once, and I learned that it's important for them to come in their national costumes, dance, and eat Tatar dishes, and that's just something I don't need.

Those who left the country in the 90s still imagine that Russia; they sing songs of that period, watch those films. It's a kind of preservation, museification: you take your culture away and preserve it as an exhibit. But this hinders its development. Then it itself becomes outdated and becomes alien.

And since we're talking about disappearing, while I was in quarantine, I had another theory. I told it to a friend and he asked me to write a blog about it. It's a hypothesis about the memory of a people, like each representative of a nation somehow conveys its historical memory.

In short, it seems like Tatars have some kind of connection between themselves, namely, between men and women. Like the memory of the people includes a task, a programming to develop further and reproduce. I returned to Tatarstan and didn't expect such intense interest from Tatar men [laughing].

Moreover, it also appears at a conscious level, like when your parents say that your groom must Tatar bulsyn [be Tatar]. But there's also an unconscious craving.

Every time I see Alif [a Tatar ballet] I start crying for some reason and can't understand why. Where do these emotions come from?

Now I'm trying to figure it out. Most likely, this feeling arises because it is a part of us.

But it's difficult to explain this feeling to others, even to those closest to you. David is a musician; he's played in a band for a very long time. I had him listen to Ak Kalfak and said: very cool, sounds kind of like the English folk song "Scarborough fair." Then I listened, and to be honest, the motives are similar and also about a fair. At the same time, of course, it doesn't bring up the same emotions in him as it does in me.

It's something in the subcortex. What is important is not to forget about yourself. Because when we have this feeling, we'll be happier. Many of us shut it off: they shut off the need to speak Tatar, to do something related with Tatar. We've turned it off, and we don't have the feeling that something is missing; I didn't feel it. But when you turn it back on, you understand: now you're happy.