The Symbolism of Terrain in Tom Rob Smith's Child 44

An analysis of the meaning of terrain in Tom Rob Smith's Child 44.    

In Child 44, Yuri is a devoted officer in the Russian military, and in many ways the cold, harsh Russian terrain symbolizes his family, his career, and his journey to self-realization.
    Yuri starved as a child. His poor, diminished family was stuck living on the back-burners of a war-driven, communist country in a town all but forgotten by the government, where in the dead of winter people killed each other over a stray cat.
    Out in the forest, in the snow, as a child he takes his younger brother to hunt said stray cat. The fact that they venture into this forest for the cat (which could be a symbol of survival, since this is what will supply their sustenance) foreshadows that he will lose his brother, and that is just what happens. The forest they venture into both foreshadows and symbolizes how they become lost as well as the loss of each other in the hunt or quest for survival. They take each other for dead in the cold night and as they emerge from the forest they are each forced out of their adolescence and into the darkness of the world.
    Yuri flees the town after the 'death' of his brother and becomes a stern officer in the KGB whose cold rationale perfectly matches that of the Russian winters. Coincidentally, his younger brother becomes cold to match the terrain of the land in a much different way. Seeing his successful brother on the cover of war posters and knowing that his high-ranking brother knows nothing of his existence, he is driven to gross serial murders to get his attention.
    The way that these murders are carried out is of great importance given the early symbology of the forest and the cat. He takes his victims and feeds their stomach (an organ perhaps representing his ability to digest the circumstances of his life) to his pet cats and drags the bodies of the victims into the snowy forest. This is his way of trying to drag his brother back down into the cold darkness with him to realize he's there. It takes many, many murders to catch the attention of the KGB, but it works. Yuri is the officer delegated to investigate these murders.
    The terrain then turns to represent the Russian government itself and the social prison Yuri begins to find himself in. When Yuri realizes there is a serial murderer, the government shuts him down, because under the communist rule, there is no crime, no fear, no one outside the rules. The snow (representing the cold blanket of lies and harshness) encases everyone. The government even goes so far as to arrest any person on the street who is slightly out of favor and charges them with the next murder and tortures them until they confess.
    When Yuri has had enough and runs from his commander who begins to order these innocents to death, he runs through a forest (ironically) and across a white, snowy field until he falls into the river. After nearly freezing to death, he comes out of the nearly frozen river alive, no longer lost in the web of government lies. Everyone knows that being submerged in water and coming out means rebirth. He has been reborn into moral innocence.
    Without a career, instead he has a new determination to find the truth about the murders, he is forced to live on the streets, running from the ruthless government while being surrounded by them constantly, like the snow in the villages. Without a home he feels the stinging bite of the winter, the bite of corruption more than ever. He realizes he used to be a part of this winter: ruthless and cold, covering everything with a blanket of white lies pretending to be an innocent truth.
    As he slowly discovers the truth of what happened in the forest when he was a child, and the truth of the bodies found in the forest; that his brother is alive and is vengeful, the circumstances of the past are frozen as the present's reality. His brother is still dead to him, even though he is found to be alive. They say it's always winter in Russia.