THE ERA OF GREAT GEOGRAPHICAL SHUTDOWNS

Diary of a traveller from Moscow

THE ERA OF GREAT GEOGRAPHICAL SHUTDOWNS

In the times when hundred of thousands of prisoners were being dispatched to eternity with a stop-over in the camps of Northern territories, the official Soviet propaganda was teaching the rest of the nation to love the place. Under Stalin, Bolsheviks were forcing their people into a world which was totally disconnected from normal economic realities, and now that I have seen Chukotka, I begin to understand that, in this context, repressions were becoming inevitable, almost necessary.

A huge effort was being made to inspire enthusiasm and to make people go up there and do their job for free. Regiments of politically motivated writers, bred by the unique Gorki Writers' College, produced countless novels, scenarios and stories about heroic pilots, captains and discoverers, like Chkalov or the Cheluskin crew, flying, sailing, drifting on ice packs and conquering the North. And yet, there was never enough volunteers. So many more people were needed. Too many precious resources were in the Northern territories: nickel in Norilsk, tungsten and tin in Chukotka, gold in Yakutiya, to name just a few. Railroads had to be laid down on permafrost, convoys of ships had to be led through thick packs of ice, just for starters.

It was all too clear that the gigantic job at hand would not be done based on enthusiasm alone. A good pay for good work was totally prohibited by the dictatorship of proletariat, the Soviets' gospel. Therefore, the only other option left was to impose labor in the North as a form of punishment. Thus, lots of innocents were «punished» and a huge slave workforce built up. Tough luck, boys; the socialist mother country, endlessly threatened by evil forces, was in big need of alloys for tanks' armor, acethylene to cut steel, tin to can food for soldiers, coal to power engines — all those little things on which world supremacy stands.

After Stalin, targets set for socialist development shifted, but not enough yet to relate to economic common sense. Families were encouraged to have children up there in the North, kindergartens were built, and also huge swimming pools with a good potential for maximizing loss of heat through evaporation. But who cared! Repressions were finally out of fashion, and good pay was at long last proclaimed to be the right thing. Those were the days when the best salaries and the best shopping of the country were to be found in the Northern territories.

This bonanza could not last long. When realistic economic norms were accepted and began to rule, all things from the North — tungsten, gold, coal and certainly those grand swimming pools — proved to be big money losers.

I don't like comrade Stalin. I do dislike all possible communist experiments. I have my doubts about enthusiasts. And I hate Northern territories, which give me the creeps. And yet it is the enthusiasm of one of those new Russian oligarchs which made me get on a plane and fly to Chukotka. This oligarch hopes he can clean up the mess left after communist experiments in that distant part of the country, so I went to see how much is there to clean up, and I had a good look around.

I have never been there before, and I was seeing for the first time things about which I had heard and read so much before. Those of you who happen to live there, you must be used to the place. You may even love it by now, no matter whether you came originally as a romantic settler or as a pragmatic bread earner. Time teaches love, doesn't it? and you tend to forgive many things to your loved ones. You simply don't notice those small nuisances anymore. But through the eyes of a newcomer like me, you have a chance to have a fresh and unbiased look at your place, so take it.

FIRST PROBE

After eight and a half hours in the air aboard an Il-62, we finally land in Chukotka. I put my wrist watch in synch with local time, which is nine hours ahead. I remember when I was a kid, they used to say on the radio: «It is midnight now in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.» It was still morning in Moscow, and I never failed to marvel...

To imagine the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug, think of a territory the size of one and a half France, or more than twice as big as Italy, or like a herd of 24 tiny Belgiums. Remember the ten million people who live in one Belgium alone, and then compare them to the scanty seventy thousand ones stuck in Chukotka. There are almost no roads there, all connections between district capitals are by plane only, twice a month if weather permits. Which very often it doesn't, not even in summer. Which, in turn, brings life to a virtual standstill.

Chukotka is not only a heavily subsidized but also a depressive province. Both economically and psychologically. An unprepared spectator — such as myself — is in for a shock treatment. In my boyhood, I read in some book about travels that pellagra was sometimes called a «despair disease». Well, Chukotka looks like it is just one big, very bad case of pellagra. I have never seen so much destruction, tears and despair in my life.

There are three regular weekly flights on nice big jets from the Domodedovo airport in Moscow to Anadyr, capital of Chukotka. This might lead anyone planning a first visit there to assume that, even though lost in the middle of nowhere, it is still a normal town like all the others where people live normal lives. What a gross psychological misconception that would be, which will have multiple painful effects on the morale of the naive traveller. There is no normal life there, only survival.

In my case, I began to dive into depression right at the airport, even before I reached Anadyr. In the rest of the world, it would have been normal to take a taxi for a ride to a downtown hotel. Not in Anadyr. First, there are no taxis. Second...

All of us latest arrivals from Moscow boarded a small bus which crossed a sandy beach and got onto an old primitive ferry. The bridge was lifted behind us and the ferry left for Anadyr, right across the bay. For the next thirty minutes, both the ferry and our bus were subjected to bad weather coming from the Bering Sea.

I wondered why the Soviets had decided to build the town and its airport on the opposite sides of a bay. Should you want to go by land, around the bay, you are in for a 700 km trip and anyway there is no road. In summer, the link is by ferry or motor boat. In winter, a drive on ice is the only way. Between the seasons, when ice prevents navigation but is not yet thick enough to carry safely a vehicle, the only ride available is by helicopter, at 600 rubles one way (roughly $ 20).

A flight to Moscow costs ten times more. An average monthly salary in Anadyr — some 3,000 rubles — is about half that amount. There are also much lower salaries: three, five hundred rubles per month. Prices are two to three times higher than in Moscow. No matter how meager these salaries, pay days are frequently delayed, sometimes for years. To survive, people catch fish and collect berries and mushrooms which, ironically, have names derived from names of trees never to be seen in the surrounding tundra.

Since salaries are not paid and there is little cash around, life goes on with something similar to both food stamps and plastic money. There are no bills or other paper notes, only personal accounts in shops, allowing locals to «buy» groceries for a total of 500 rubles per month. Purchases are registered in a book, the assumption being that eventually, salaries will be paid and some of that «food money», recovered.

Life in Anadyr is tough, but not as bad as in some villages where, last year, starvation became a real threat and people ate husk to survive.

There are some 11,000 people in Anadyr. Or maybe slightly less. Or maybe more. No one cares to count them nowadays. It used to be a big town, though, with a population of 17,000. But so many have sold their homes and fled. There is something cheap in Anadyr: flats. You can buy a standard one bedroom apartment for less than 400 dollars. But the market is very slow. Buyers are few, and all sellers are eager to leave forever.

Anadyr is today in very poor shape and looks like a mouth full of bad teeth. Every second or third house has empty windows without glass. Either they have been deserted by their inhabitants, or constructors left them unfinished, with no hope for a better future, and they stand out as «bad teeth». The more fortunate ones are only slightly «damaged by caries». There are still tenants living there, but fresh paint is needed and entrance doors are missing. The outlandish impression is worsened by the fact that they all stand above ground on pylons because of the permafrost. Their plagued guts — plumbing and sewage tubes — are spread open, on display between the pylons.

The general view of the town is sickening. Standard grey apartment blocks are surrounded by junk yards, mounds of refuse, collapsing fences, rusting cranes and broken blocs of concrete. Beyond them, the smokes of the local power station go up in the air. It all looks like an industrial landscape slightly affected by the shock wave of a minor nuclear explosion nearby.

I can't say I was pleasantly surprised by Anadyr, oh no I wasn't! Seeing me in such distress, a man told me: «This is not the worst! Wait till you cross the country and stay in some of the villages, you will then remember Anadyr as if it were promised land. In here, at least, they've got heating, electricity and hot water. Not out there, not always. On one of my trips, we had to sleep on tables, and for food they gave us bowls of frozen soup with a topping of cold fat.»

The man talking to me was Roman Abramovich, Representative of Chukotka in the Duma recently elected the governor of Chukotka.

ROMAN THE OLIGARCH

Few — if any — are the oligarchs who care to come here...

This brings me to the most difficult part of my account. Of my own volition, I call upon myself the wrath of all liberal progressive democrats of «Big Power» Russia. From now on, all these refined intellectuals will be pointing at me their elegant fingers better fit for playing piano in the evenings. I know so many other intelligent people who tell the truth as they see it without first checking Yavlinsky's book, and I know how difficult their lives are made, and reputations spoilt, by all these intellectuals with the ambition of being sole guardians of the nation's soul and virtue.

Anyway, to cut the story short, there goes my confession. Gentlemen! I went to Chukotka in the company of Roman Abramovich, the monstrous oligarch, enemy of everything living and yearning for progress, the evil in pure form. Over there, since there is practically no local transportation available, I also traveled on planes and helicopters rented by Abramovich's team. Even worse, I happened to like the man. Come on, don't throw these wrotten eggs at me! Please don't... Gentlemen, you are real animals. There is nothing I can do, believe me. He has got personality, he is different, and I do enjoy meeting people like him. Abramovich is now part of my collection of interesting characters, fixed with a golden pin (suitable for an oligarch) in a place of honour.

...He's 34, prefers jeans and jerseys, and has an easy laugh. He thinks and makes decisions fast. He speaks English. His life is as comfortable as his status may imply, but he can easily live without it. If his toothbrush is missing, undisturbed he will wash his teeth with his finger. We used custom made corporate planes and helicopters with few seats and lots of leather in the cabins. Sometimes, they were getting packed to the limit, there were not enough seats; Roman did not have any problem: he sat on a table, happily swinging his feet... You know how young tycoons are: they walk out of a restaurant, drop on the back seat of their huge SUV and disappear in a cloud of smoke from burnt tires. Abramovich let the girls on his team have his car and walked across town with the other boys. Some smart editors of our magazine would call him a manager of the new type. Not being as smart, I just say Roman is a nice guy.

Something else about him which I found attractive. I have been on many official promotional tours in distant provinces. During the day, local bosses worked hard showing the bright side of things, and in the evenings they threw big drinking parties to «befriend» the press. It has never failed to unnerve me. Not when travelling with Abramovich. Even though local staff assumed that, based on their vast experience, any such team of muscovites will love a good drink after a long cold day, glasses put on the tables for us remained untouched. Abramovich and his team don't drink.

One day, one of his bodyguards, a giant who certainly bends a rail by punching it with his forehead, roared as softly as he could to the flight attendant that it would be great if they could make it back to Moscow by the 1st of September, since he had his daughter to take to her first day at school. Coming from this gorilla, it was really touching. But Roman had more and more meetings scheduled across all of Chukotka, and no one on the team knew exactly when he would decide it is time to go back.

After one particularly demanding day I asked him: «You must be tired?» «I'm O.K.», he answered with ease. I am not an oligarch, I like my little comfort, and local shortages, lack of the very basic and depressing landscapes never failed to make me feel groggy. Abramovich, on the contrary, was energized by all new challenges, big and small. He likes to be challenged, and to be up to it. In his mind, Chukotka must be like one big integral challenge he has never faced before.

Like all those whining frailish intellectuals who must be so angry with me by now, I used to think that Roman «The Shrewd» Abramovich was after something very lucrative in Chukotka, that he knew he was in for some big profits hidden from the public eye. Otherwise, there was no reasonable explanation for him getting involved at all. Well, I have spent enough time in the tundra following Abramovich and his team, and I have seen enough of this collapsing and depressing country, to tell you that if you want to lose your money, Chukotka would definitely be the place to go; but if your plan is to make a good investment, better think twice. If Abramovich ever manages to turn things round up there, and to generate profits instead of wasting subsidies, he will have achieved a miracle and should be made a local saint. Or, at the very least, his statue should be erected next to those of Dejnev and Bering, for his achievement would be equal to a re-discovery of Chukotka.

One thing is already true: Roman has a reputation among locals for helping the poor and fighting injustice. There must be a good reason for this. If, of the roughly 5,000 letters received every month by all the members of the Duma some 1,500 are adressed to Abramovich alone, that means that in his case there is always a follow-up action. Otherwise, people wouldn't even bother to write those letters.

When in Chukotka, each time we moved to a new place, a temporary reception office was set up. Locals came in big numbers and waited patiently to tell their griefs to Roman's assistants. There were days when, to listen to all the visitors, the office had to stay open all night through.

A foundation, «Pole of Hope», has been established by Abramovich some time ago. 2000 year alone, it paid in full for a holiday in the southern parts of Russia for every third (!) kid in Chukotka.

To better understand Abramovich, I also watched his team. You know, a king is what his retinue makes of him. Abramovich is certainly no king, neither is his entourage a bunch of courtiers. Just as I said, they are a team, a great one. They love fun and they laugh a lot, just as their «oligarch» does. But they are also good tough professionals. In the midst of all the misery and hardships they shed no tears and keep their emotions under control; to be of real help to the locals, they need all their strength to perform a precise and efficient job, which they do.

CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD

Cape Schmidta, as first seen by me, was chilled by a strong wind and threatened by packs of ice crawling in from the Arctic Sea. I was walking through the village, trying to assess the true extent of the damage... The place must have sustained a long and vicious siege. It must have been bombarded relentlessly for at least two or three days. Half of the houses are nothing but ruins. Those remaining won't stand much longer either. That house over there must have been hit by a high explosive bomb, all its wooden structure is gone. This other one must have been shot at with armor piercing rounds, there is a big hole in the wall. Other walls and roofs have been scarred by shrapnel.

I wonder how on earth could this kind of damage have been inflicted without weapons, just with bare hands. All this is testimony to the unlimited abilities of the Russian man.

Pipes of stoves stick out of all windows, like barrels of guns. People here had fiercely defended their village. At some point they ran out of fuel, electricity, running water. They had no more lights in the dark of the night. Remember, polar night lasts six months... Now, if they had to use small portable stoves to heat up their homes, where did they get the wood? Trees don't grow in this part of the world. So this is what really happened: they collected the few logs washed ashore, and they stripped empty houses of everything wooden.

There are 800 people left in this village. Of which 50 belong to the police squad. They enforce law and order in Cape Schmidta and other settlements in the vicinity. A sad end for a place which used to have thousands of people around, and a big officers' mess to which happy ladies walked hand in hand with their husbands for a dance. The army had its stronghold here, to protect the permafrost from alien conquistadores. More recently, the army left, generals led their troops away. As they were leaving, not to have too much to carry, they bombarded the tundra with 2,000 rounds of good ammo. They had an airfield here too, so to protect it there were guns, ground-to-air missiles, which all ended up in the tundra. As to the airfield, it had probably been built to deliver heavy equipment, like guns, ground-to-air missiles... I am still uncertain though, as to whom these defenses, in that distant corner of the Arctic Sea, were supposed to deter.

Schmidta's population today is made up of the unemployed and of those employed by the housing service unit, which provides the service to the unemployed. That is, it is supposed to, but it can't since it has no fuel. No fuel means no heating and no light. Logically, all the villagers must be evacuated, but the government does not have the money to pay for it. Nor can it afford to bring in fuel. Not long ago, a man died here of a knife cut: after three days of waiting, he bled to death, but the ambulance plane never showed up. Kids in the local school have free meals, the allocation being five rubles per day per kid. A hundred grams of bread cost two rubles.

After this long walk in the chilly streets of Cape Schmidta, I missed home badly, I wanted back to the resort town of Anadyr!

Alexander NIKONOV