How do you remember the Kazan of your childhood?

I was born in Kazan in 1961. First I lived in the Sotsgorod neighborhood, then I moved to the Leninsky district, which was then renamed Moskovsky. I lived near Isaeva Street, where the Uritsky Palace of Culture is, and studied at School No. 7, which was nearby.

If you mean old Kazan, it had ... let's say, a lot of low-rise buildings. There was a lot of single-family residential housing. I lived in a house consisting of three buildings separated by an arch. In general, people of the same age bracket moved into it. It was a factory house, everyone on each floor and in the courtyard knew each other.

There were some surviving veterans, they were 50 to 55 years old, and they always talked with us, conversed, and we shared with them all the time. What I mean is, it wasn't like it is now, with these fourteen-story buildings where we often don't know which of the neighbors lives where, or who anybody is. People don't communicate. It used to be that we would visit our neighbors. During the holidays we gathered the children, invited our neighbors for tea, and so on. That was just how our relationship was.

And downtown ... well, first, Bauman Street wasn't a pedestrian walkway then; trolleybuses ran along it: trolleybus nos. 1 and 4, I remember them perfectly, even now. Off to the left and right it wasn't very scenic; it was abandoned. But the central streets were clean.

The Vuzovets movie theater was located on Butlerova Street, to the left of the Institute of Finance and Economics (called KFEI then); it was a nice, small theater.

How old were you when you decided to leave Kazan? Why?

I lived in Kazan until I was 20, and I left in 1982. I studied at the medical institute, at the Faculty of Pedagogy. I had planned to become a pediatrician. I feel too sorry for sick children though, and I love kids, so when I visited the children's clinics, I realized that I couldn't work in pediatrics; it would be too difficult.

Somewhere in my second year I decided to join the military. Really, I had wanted to be a military man even before I went to the medical institute, but I didn't get into military school; it didn't work out, so I entered the medical institute.

I applied to the Faculty of Dentistry, but they sent me to the Faculty of Pedagogy, and from there I could go to the Faculty of Military Medicine; it was decided.

After the fourth year, I transferred to the Faculty of Military Medicine at the Gorky Institute and moved to Nizhny Novgorod.

Nizhny Novgorod was a factory city, a car factory. For me, Kazan is my hometown, so it was bright and colorful, while Nizhny was very gray.

This feeling of dullness, apparently, was also due to the fact that the 1980 Summer Olympics were being held, and all "unreliable" people, say, those who drank too much and so on, were sent across Moscow Oblast and nearby cities and regions. And most of them ended up in Nizhny.

I lived in Nizhny for two years, my fifth and sixth years at university, and graduated as a career officer, a lieutenant in the medical service.

After that, I ended up on assignment in Kyrgyzstan and moved to the Central Asian Military District. I became a military man; naturally, I had to think about the future. For an officer, in order to later get sent to nearby regions of European Russia, first you had to serve in remote areas. Therefore, I went to Kyrgyzstan, so that later, naturally, I would be posted somewhere closer.

I served in the town of Rybachye, which is now called Issyk-Kul, like the lake. But I also visited Bishkek often, which was then called Frunze.

The airport was very nice then. It still is. It's called Manas. It's a luxurious airport. I've been to many airports, because I had to move often. But it was very advanced for that time, with separate access roads.

Was Kyrgyzstan much poorer than Tatarstan?

Well, at that time it was hard to tell whether it was poorer or not. There, you know, the Central Asian republics are very contrasting. Well-to-do people lived there, even at that time. There were also very poor people. But the poverty didn't stick out. I lived there for three years.

What do you remember about those three years? It's a southern republic, fruits grow ...

I remember the fruits and the mountains. I love mountains very much. I would go on work trips for two weeks, for a month, pretty often. Life in the mountains was interesting.

This when the Soviet Union entered the war in Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan was an outpost ...

No, Kyrgyzstan didn't perform any specific functions.

Did you have any desire to go to Afghanistan?

Afghanistan began when I had just entered the institute, in 1978–1979. And my peers and friends who did go to college for whatever reason, they were called up and served in Afghanistan in the airborne and others. They all returned, safe and sound, thank God; we later met up with them.

After Kyrgyzstan, I served for a year in the city of Alma-Ata, which is such an oasis, at least it seemed so to me. It's magnificent, located in a lowland, a hollow surrounded by mountains, with modern buildings for its time.

I was amazed at how the buildings in Kazakhstan were so different. Like those nine-story houses. We, for example, built gray box after gray box, but in Alma-Ata, if they built something identical, they would make colors of the balconies, the colors of the panels, different. Plus, the nature is gorgeous.

How did you like the Kazakhs? What kind of people are they?

They're also friendly. I'm pretty nonconfrontational; I got along with everyone. Kazakhstan, by the way, also has different nationalities. There are highlanders, for example, there, with large eyes. Some are very tall.

Did you visit home often?

I came home every vacation and spent the whole vacation at home.

I didn't feel like I was at home, even if I had an apartment and everything else, there was no inner feeling that I was at home.

Was that due to the fact that you didn't know anyone or didn't speak your own language?

No, not even that. Homeland is close by. I can't explain it; it's something inside.

You spent three years in Kyrgyzstan and a year in Kazakhstan. What happened next?

Then I entered the clinical residency at the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg, which was then called Leningrad. I lived there for two years and studied under the guidance of such luminaries—like Prof. Albert Kishkovsky, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences—he was the chief radiologist of the Ministry of Defense. I myself am a radiation diagnostician, a radiologist. Now I work with computed tomographs.

It was 1988–1990, during perestroika. When we arrived in 1988, it was still going on, like in the Soviet Union. Then the 1989, the market economy already started. That is, the production capacity stopped; suddenly there wasn't enough production. They introduced ration coupons for the purchase of goods, a certain amount for each person.

I had a registration, though.

How long did you stay in Petersburg?

For two years. St. Petersburg itself makes you euphoric, even just walking the streets. Everything was gorgeous there. Every day was like a holiday: after all, I was studying, not working.

Indigenous St. Pete residents are very friendly. You could tell who was from there in the following manner: if you ask for directions, a person from St. Petersburg will explain everything in detail, all the ins and outs, lead you, show you everything. If you come across someone who's not from Leningrad, you'll get a short answer: "I don't know."

When I graduated from the academy, I was assigned to Novosibirsk. We lived there with my family for ten years.

That was when the Soviet Union collapsed, right?

Yes, the 90s began. From 1990 to 1999 ... for me, it was a gray decade.

And why? You're a doctor, a military man, you had a job ...

Well, there was work. All these monetary reforms, all the denominations, all the defaults. The Chechen period began. There were terrorist attacks. It was such a hectic time. The attitude towards the military changed. There was a period when people would yell at you from behind your back if you were in a uniform. This was the late 90s, 1997–1998. They could beat up an officer just like that. That's how it was all over Russia.

And speaking of Novosibirsk, it was an industrial and scientific city. There's a left bank and a right one. The right bank is the industrial part, with factories, Sibselmash [an agricultural machinery plant]. The left bank is the old part of the city, which had its own sights. This city was formerly called Novonikolaevsk; it was a young city, and all the main buildings are from the 50s.

Twenty-five kilometers away, if you drive a little further along the Ob, you'll find Akademgorodok. It's like a small Switzerland, as I understand it, because there are many research institutes, nuclear physics institutes, and so on.

There used to be a lot of scientists there.

We rented an apartment near Akademgorodok and went there often. People there had a completely different way of speaking; it was like a cultural oasis.

Did you ever think about leaving?

I was a military man; that was off limits for me.

How did you get the idea to return to Tatarstan?

That was the end of the 1990s, and it was a complex situation all around. We'd been talking about it about for two years, probably.

Because our parents were here, they still are—my mother is alive and Lily's father is still alive, a war veteran. So I wanted to return to my native places, to my relatives, to nature.

In 1999, there were associations of military districts. We served in the Siberian Military District, which was then merged with the Trans-Baikal. What makes up the Siberian and Trans-Baikal Districts? Half of Russia, it turns out.

Here, it's like this: if in the civilian system you're called the head of a department, then in the military hospital system—a large district hospital—you are the officer in charge of the department. I was the officer in charge of the radiology department and I was the chief freelance specialist for the district, chief radiologist.

When they began uniting the districts, that meant I had to go to Chita in order to move up in my career—I was a lieutenant colonel of the medical service, and, to become a colonel, I would have to go to Chita, which is the capital of the Trans-Baikal district. Naturally, I didn't want to go to Transbaikalia from Siberia.

The whole period itself was very difficult. There were problems with my salary; it was getting delayed. Naturally, all this put together—the unification of the districts, my duties being cut back—all played a role in my decision to resign from the armed forces and just leave for Kazan.

Was it scary? It was. It was also not really thought-out: I hadn't found a place to work here yet. So, there was a lot of uncertainty ahead.

How quickly did you find a job?

In three or four months. I went to the Ministry of Health, I went to an oncological dispensary, I met with the chief doctors—I wanted to get a job in my specialty. In the end, I ended up in the Republican Clinical Hospital and worked there for almost twenty years.

Did you get the position that you wanted right away?

Of course not. I first worked as a radiologist. My specialty is radiology. There's routine radiology, there's ultrasound diagnostics, there's a doctor in the computed-tomography (CT) office, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A lot of different specialties, you see. Naturally, I was attracted to CT and MRI.

In Novosibirsk we had a CT scanner, but at the Republican Clinical Hospital we didn't, so I worked in ordinary routine radiology, which I had done before and now found myself doing again.

So you were bored in this position?

Yes, for sure. The Republican Clinical Hospital got a CT scanner only a year later, and year later, I went into CT scanning.

Were there moments when you thought "why did I come back? Maybe I should've stayed?"

I think everyone has those kinds of thoughts when they make radical changes. Moreover, I was a military man, and I had to completely abandon that in the civilian system. Naturally, there was an adaptation period. The relationships in the military and, let's say, the civilian system are completely different. It was also a difficult period psychologically. I didn't always understand why they did things one way and not another. And then, after some time, I guess I just became like them.

Now you work in an infectious diseases clinic. Are you afraid to catch the coronavirus?

Who's not afraid? Everyone's afraid. There are no fearless doctors either. Maybe they don't seem afraid, but everyone is still worried about themselves and their patients.

In Moscow, doctors lived in the hospital so as not to put their loved ones in danger. Were you offered this option?

Here it was like that in the first wave. In the first wave, the weather was warm, and I stayed in the country and didn't see my family at all.

I left for Sochi in October and there, for example, they have a very democratic attitude to it; no one wears a mask. We would tell people, if, for example, we're riding in a funicular, "it's a closed space, please wear your masks." They looked at us and were, like, "we don't have masks." There's a certain fearless contingent of people who, unfortunately, don't follow the guidelines and end up in hospitals.

You said that you felt like you were on a business trip. When you returned, did you feel like now you're at home?

Not at first, no. The first three years were very difficult, a period of adaptation and formation. And in material terms, these three years were difficult; our kids studied, the youngest was still in kindergarten then. It was all difficult.

But now I can't imagine myself in any other city.

What did you dislike about Kazan?

[Rustem Haydarovich's wife Lily spoke for the rest of the interview]:

We were born and raised in Kazan. Then we left for the cities and villages of this big country, and we always wanted to find an answer to the question: who are the Tatars and how are we different from everyone else?

You know, we tried to understand what is the secret to the fact that Tatars ... are a quite unfriendly people. At that time, it seemed to us that Tatars are envious, there was no sense of brotherhood or mutual support, and we were always looking for an answer as to why Tatars became like that? Kind of suspicious, envious, unfriendly ...

Why did the Siberians we visited, who had just met us, immediately want to help us? Why did they want to give us their ration coupons? When we said that we had just arrived, we have no coupons, they say "take ours, please, buy yourself some sugar," and so on. Why, when we returned here, to our beloved homeland, why did we not find such an attitude here?

The behavior of drivers was terrible. Back then transport was arranged poorly.

It wasn't thought out, like, how a person was supposed to get to work. Big public events would be held without any thought for the people: you could go somewhere for a celebration and not be able to get home afterwards, because the organizers hadn't thought it through.

We can easily see how Kazan and its people have changed in such a short time before our very eyes, since the city's 1000th year anniversary.

Maybe we started seeing ourselves differently. We saw that we represent something of ourselves, that we can arrange such a huge event—the millennium of Kazan—and realize that we are Tatars. And you can see the beauty of the downtown area; you can feel the joy of being Tatar.

We may not understand very well why Tatars are like that, but the most important thing is that now we know for sure when trouble happens, people will unite and come to the rescue. Our youngest daughter Louise was hit by a tram and lost her leg when she was in the tenth grade. We needed a lot of help and support from people then, and all of Kazan came out to help our Louise: the leadership of the republic, ordinary people, classmates with whom she studied, and children from the entire school. We made a video with the mayor, and like we said there, it turns out that, in that difficult moment, there were a lot of kind people who, not knowing us, were ready to help. That, of course, was a great shock for us. We are infinitely grateful to our city, our republic and the people with whom we live here.