New York, Siberia: Same Story, Same Language

by Oleg Olizev

It was a pleasant summer afternoon. I was walking along Lexington Avenue near 50th street unusually quiet. Then, suddenly, black SUVs emerged from nowhere. Men in uniforms, straight out of a sci-fi film, stepped out with machine guns pointed directly at my chest, pushing me back against a building. A machine gun. Have you ever felt the cold presence of a real weapon inches from your heart? Have you felt death linger that close dangling from the finger of a stranger? This wasn’t some banana republic. Welcome to New York. George W. Bush’s motorcade was passing by. Was that show of force really necessary? Pushing people, maybe just me, against a wall at gunpoint?

Not long ago, I saw his father, George H. W. Bush, walking through the streets of Yale University like an ordinary old man without security in sight. Just last year, I saw Henry Kissinger and Nancy Reagan quietly having coffee at a nearby café. A year ago, I walked shoulder to shoulder with Hillary Clinton during a gay pride parade on the streets packed, no guns in sight. So what was that recent security spectacle about? What point were they trying to make — by shoving a few scattered pedestrians against the wall on an almost empty street, aiming machine guns at our chests? Who exactly was the threat?

I knew this would never happen in my home town in Siberia, not in my time. For all the horror stories one might hear, machine guns pointed at random passersby simply wouldn’t happen. Maybe this is the price I pay for freedom in America: the risk of being shot at the flick of a finger, without warning, by someone in uniform. Maybe that’s part of the deal. Maybe that’s fine.

When I told this story to a German colleague in our shared office, he didn’t laugh. He didn’t ask questions. He just looked at me with contempt and said, “If you don’t like it here, go back where you came from.” My American colleague gave me a look — polite and skeptical — as if I had made the whole thing up.

Maybe I would’ve never written about it at all, if not for what happened fifteen years later — something that reminded me, unmistakably, of Siberia. To explain that, I have to take you back to when I was a high school student in my hometown.

It was a late evening. My classmates and I had just come out of the theater. The city was glowing, dressed up for New Year’s Eve — a celebration as big in Russia as Christmas is in New York. Lights shimmered along the streets, and in the main square stood towering ice sculptures, each carved from a folktale or fairytale — gleaming and magical.

My classmates were the pride of the school: handsome, athletic, the kind of boys Hollywood would cast but couldn’t compete with. And they weren’t just beautiful; they were model students. Committed young Komsomols, always receiving not just “satisfactory” or “good,” but “exemplary” marks in school conduct. Yes, back then, behavior was graded and they had nothing but the highest.

As we passed the main square, walking casually by the ice figures, a police van appeared out of nowhere. Officers jumped out, grabbed each of us, covered our heads with hats or hands, and shoved us into the bus.

Here’s a refined and literary version of that scene, keeping the truth intact:

“What’s happening?” we kept asking — confused and stunned.

“You little pieces of shit were breaking the ice sculptures,” one of the officers snarled. “Now we’re going to teach each of you a lesson — bend you over and make you squeal, you little faggots.”

The words hit like a slap. I had never heard language like that, not from adults, and certainly not from anyone in uniform. My brain struggled to match their words with their badges.

Another one chimed in, grinning:

“Yeah, we’re gonna make you suck us off — isn’t that what you little fairies want?”

“You have no right to talk to us like this!” I shouted, my voice cracking with disbelief.

“We’re still kids,” Aleksandr added, trying to appeal to some shred of decency.

“Kids?” they laughed. “What kind of kid walks around with a dick too big to fit in a pickle jar?”

One of them, especially vile, more thug than officer — leaned in and nodded toward Aleksander. “With a cock like that, you’re no kid.”

And it was true — Aleksander was the most well-endowed boy in our entire school. In the showers and in the restrooms, you saw everything. There was no privacy back then, only exposure. But how the hell did they know? We were all wearing long, heavy fur coats. Did I miss anything?

“Listen,” I said, “we didn’t break anything. We just came from the theater.”

“Oh, the theater,” the officer mocked. “Hear that? We’ve got ourselves a troupe of little ballerinas.”

He turned to the others. “Say one more word, and we’ll beat you so badly your mother won’t even recognize what’s left of you.”

Then he looked back at us, eyes narrowing.

“It’s time you little shits learned a lesson. A lesson in respect. You think we’re just a bunch of dogs chasing criminals? Is that what you think? That we bark and run when someone yells ‘Catch!’ You think I’m a dog?”

He laughed, low and bitter.

“You’ve got it backwards. We’re not dogs. You are. You’re the ones we grab. We don’t chase criminals; we take whoever lets themselves be taken. That’s how this works.”

He stepped closer.

“And if you go around telling people you didn’t break anything out there on the square, we’ll beat you so bad you won’t remember your own name.”

He paused and then delivered it coldly:

“You’re hooligans. That’s what we’re writing down. And you’ll do time for it. Because you’re the animals. You’re the dirty dogs. Not us. Understand? Pray some of your parents are big shots — if not, you’re all done.”

“I want to call my parents,” one of us said.

I don’t even remember if they let him. Maybe they ignored him, maybe they didn’t. What I remember clearly is how they kept trying to humiliate us — with words I had never heard from any adult before. Filthy insults, crude threats, like a wave of sewage pouring out of their mouths.

Then they started to push us around, roughing us up just enough to make us flinch — pretending they were about to hit us, enjoying our fear. It was surreal, absurd and terrifying.

But after about an hour, the door of the van opened. A new figure stepped in. I remember the stars on his epaulettes — a major. He didn’t say much. He looked annoyed, mostly with his subordinates.

“Uncuff them,” he said. “Let them go.”

Just like that — we were released.

But the experience stayed with me. It was truly frightening, especially for someone like me, raised under glass. I wasn’t built for that kind of darkness. Not yet.

And here I am now — 2015, Manhattan. A warm late-summer evening. I’m a university professor, just finishing dinner with colleagues at a restaurant near Times Square. Before stepping out, I went to the restroom, and the buckle on my belt snapped off. I had lost a lot of weight recently — the belt was the only thing keeping my pants from slipping down. I figured I could manage. I’d ask someone for a safety pin or something small to hold things in place.

We walked out into the emptiness of Times Square — all lights, but no noise, no crowds. My pants started to slide. I asked my colleague if he had a pin. He said, “No need, take my belt — I don’t really need it.” He slipped it off as we walked, continuing his conversation with the rest of the group, all professors like me.

I paused for a moment to put the belt through the loops and in that moment, two policemen appeared out of nowhere. They grabbed me, twisted my arms behind my back, and cuffed me. “You’re under arrest for public urination,” one said.

It’s worth noting that Times Square is littered with urine puddles — New York City has no public restrooms, and people out drinking do what they have to. But I hadn’t done anything.

They radioed for a car. My colleagues, deep in animated conversation, drifted ahead — no one noticed. The officers moved me toward the darker edge of the street. That’s when the insults started. First in a whisper, then louder.

“You know damn well I didn’t do that,” I said.

One of them laughed. “Why do you think that matters? Whether you did it or not.”

“Who do you think we are?” the other one said. “You think we’re here to chase actual criminals?”

One leaned in, just enough.

“We take who we can take. That’s the job.”

Then the words came again, nearly identical to what I’d heard decades ago in Siberia.

“You think we’re dogs?”

And yes there was a ‘good cop’ who was telling me to comply not to make this worse and the ‘bad cop’ who was cursing me out with expressions as bad as those I heard in Siberia.

All of a sudden, I realized I might be able to get out of this. I said, calmly, “Listen, you may not be a dog chasing down people who actually urinate on the street, but I’m innocent. And I have proof.”

“Proof?” one of them echoed.

“Yes,” I said. “Proof that I didn’t do it.”

For a split second, something shifted. He froze — uncertain and maybe even afraid. As if he’d suddenly realized this could be a setup, some internal affairs sting to test his honesty.

“I have witnesses,” I said.

Both officers went pale. Their tone changed immediately. The slang disappeared. I started calling the names of my colleagues. They heard me — turned around — and ran back, startled to see me in handcuffs.

“Professor N.?” one of them gasped. “What happened?”

“Professor?” one of the officers repeated.

Everything changed. The handcuffs came off. One of them radioed to cancel the pickup car.

“Heh… just a mistake,” the other muttered. “That’s all.”

I stood there in disbelief. In my head, the scene from Siberia replayed — almost the same script, almost the same lesson. And just before they let me go, the “bad cop” leaned in close, right next to my ear, and whispered something so vile, so grotesque, so unspeakably obscene that I will never repeat it aloud. No literary journal would print it.

But that whisper — that was the real voice of power. Very, very scary. Almost crippling. Not because of what it said, but because it could be said quietly, with impunity, face to face, breath to ear.

It was a final reminder that power doesn’t always roar; sometimes it leans in softly, knowing it doesn’t need to shout to ruin you. Yes, what happened in Siberia and what happened in Times Square were not different stories. They were the same story, told in two languages. The uniforms had changed. The setting had changed, but the logic — the logic was identical.

*****

But human memory is short. I had almost forgotten both of those stories — Siberia and Times Square — until 2020, when I saw thousands of people marching through the streets, carrying banners that read Defund the Police. At first, I didn’t understand. Why defund the police? Aren’t they the ones who protect us from criminals? I remembered my students telling me they were afraid to walk home in their neighborhoods now that police had been pulled back. It all seemed like madness — at first.

But then I began to ask myself: Why do people want to defund the police? And I remembered. I remembered what happened to me — not a criminal, but one of the most obedient citizens you could find. A citizen of two hemispheres. And I understood: it wasn’t about abolishing safety. It was about defunding power, the kind of power that doesn't need guilt, or reason, or facts. The kind that punishes simply because it can. The kind that only retreats when it fears being seen.

I remembered the fear in that officer’s eyes, just for a moment, and I remembered something else too: the cold breath of death radiating from the barrel of a machine gun pressed against my chest that day on Lexington Avenue.

That’s the kind of power we’re talking about. The kind that doesn’t ask questions. It only takes.

BIO: Oleg Olizev is a poet and writer based in New York City. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fjords Review, Audience Askew, BULL, PANORAMA, Beyond Queer Words, Night Picnic, Half and One, Neon Origami, and Untenured. He has completed two novels and is currently seeking a publisher. Connect with Oleg on Facebook.