In "The Unknown Russian North" we join Øyvind Ravna on a journey to northern
Russia, a land unknown to many even though the people there are Western Europe’s
neighbours.
We visit the Pomor capital of Archangel and the timber port of Onega where many foreign
firms established at the end of last century and where English troops beat the Bolsheviks
in 1918. We go to Kargopol with its beautiful churches and chilling traces of the Red
terror, and we visit the monastery and the prison camp Solovets made famous by Alexander
Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago. We visit Solvichegodsk where Stalin spent
his years of exile from 1909 to 1911. We meet the Komi people by the rivers Pechora and
Izhma and join Nenets reindeer herders on the great frozen tundra.
"The Unknown Russian North" draws unique pictures of old towns, northern
villages, new peoples, little known cultures and a rich history. The photographs in this
beautifully illustrated book show dramatic moments of changes in Russia today and the
reality of a Russia that time never can change. They describe a country with a dramatic
past, a turbulent present and an exciting future.
...I am the daughter of Russia,
a country incomprehensible to you.
She was christened with a lash, torn to pieces, scorched.
Her soul was trampled by the feet, inflicting blow upon blow,
of Pechenegs, Varangians, Tatars,
- and by our own people,
much more terrible than the Tatars...
Yevgeny Yevtushenko in Bratsk Station
Endless forests, limitless tundra, mighty rivers, historical places and hospitable
people - their myths, their legends and their religions - the Russian North is a land with
a fascinating past, a turbulent present and a uncertain future; modern, sophisticated
Europe’s mysterious, exotic, dark neighbour.
It is more than a decade since Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed General Secretary of the
Communist party of the Soviet Union and glasnost politics began. Since then news
has poured out of Russia; most of it bad: pollution, lack of food, poverty, violence,
political chaos and crime. A murky stream of information colours our picture of
today’s Russia. Travellers’ tales portray a strange country with derelict
concrete blocks of flats, worn out copies of cheap Italian cars, frightening industrial
pollution, a black economy and a noveau riches whose life style few, even in the
West, can more than just dream of.
But the morning papers, the radio bulletin or the 30 second TV clip give no deep picture
of today’s Russia or any picture at all of the country’s divided and dramatic
history of the different nations and cultures which co-exist there. Russia is like a matrushka
doll; just as you always find a new doll inside the first, in Russia you always find new
mysteries beyond those you thought you had unravelled - and to the bottom you never come.
(title) tries to catch the reality which the press agencies, the newspapers and the
television companies leave out. This book is a portrait in words and pictures of a society
in transition. It is a tale of both adventurous travels and of the unknown everyday life
of the people of Northern Russia.
The Russian North, or more precisely, Northern European Russia consisting of Murmansk,
Archangel and Vologda counties and the Autonomous Republics Kareliy and Komi, represents
less than 9% of the area of the Russian Federation. With its 1.5 million square
kilometres, it is, nevertheless, the same size as Central Europe. Despite successive
mighty Five Year Plans and the dream of industrialisation so deeply rooted in the
communist ideology this region has never been «developed» like the West or even Central
Russia. It is still a sparsely populated, wild area with swamps, taiga forest and endless
tundra.
Archangels Oblast, or county, south of the White Sea, with its historical
connections to Western Europe, became a natural starting point for the book. This enormous
county, which includes the Nenetsky Autonomous Okrug and the city of Naryan
Mar, covers nearly 600.000 square kilometres, more than twice the size of Great
Britain but has a population of just 1.5 million. Most of the people live in the cities of
Archangel, Severodvinsk, Novodvinsk, Mirny, Kotlas, Korjazhma and Onega. The
historical cities of Velsk, Shernkursk, Mezen, Nyandoma, Kargopol and Solvichegodsk
with their exciting medieval architecture, appear today like small provincial towns from
which most of the citizens wish to flee. How different are these compared to the
neighbouring military monsters of the submarine plant at Severodvinsk and the
rocket base Plesetsk.
Since the first settlers arrived, the great rivers of the Russian North have been the
basis of existence here. They were the main roads leading to central Russia, to the Arctic
Ocean and further to Western Europe. They Were also the larder of northern Russia and the Pechora
River is still famous for its salmon. The megalomaniac ideologues of the Soviet Union
dreamed of turning these rivers around and forcing their life-giving water south. These
plans, extant until the advent of Perestroika, cast a dark cloud over the people
of the North.
In (title) we move from Onega, south of the White Sea, to Pechora and the Ural
mountains in east. We also move in time, travelling to the Northern Dvina, where in
pre-Slavic times evil raw-meat-eaters and white-eyed Tchuds once ruled. The
Vikings, too, probably visited this land which they called Bjarmia and in 1553
the English explorers Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor, searching
in vain for the fabled north-eastern passage to India, re-opened the ancient trade route
from Russia to Europe resulting in the founding of the city of Archangel.
The book follows the turbulent development of that once great city, from the first
settlement at Pur-Navalok, raised for trading with the English, through to the great age
of trading in the 17th. century and on to the Pomor trade, to the European timber export
in the 19th. century, through the Revolution, the Civil War and the Red Terror and up to
today’s new Pomor capital.
A little further west, the River Onega runs out to the White Sea at a point
where the Russia’s first port was established. Until the Revolution Onega was
important for timber vessels from west. The area developed with the expansion of the
Orthodox Church in the North and today the huge monastery of Solovets, built in the 15th.
century, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Here, too, we find the monastery of Kii and
further south the beautiful city of Kargopol on the banks of the of Onega River.
The Revolution and the Civil War caused a dramatic change in relations between Western
Europe and Northern Russia. The history of Harald Ormaas, a timber merchant and director
of a Norwegian sawmill here, gives us a clear picture of the dramatic days before the
English troops beat the Bolsheviks the summer of 1918 and for a short time ruled the White
Sea coast.
Russian folklore and the music of the accordion and balalaika provide a great contrast
to the deep, monotone forests of the Onega valley. Here in the north, between
pre-Christian cult and orthodox religion, folklore has its strongest foothold.
....(a part left out)...
The River Izhma has give its name to the northern part of the Komi
nation which belongs to the Finno-Ugric group. Together with the Pechora, the Izhma runs
through the heart of Komi. We meet the Izhmets in the villages Izhma, Mokhsha, Sheljajur
and Ust-Usa. The oil catastrophe in 1994 and the pollution in the Rivers Kolva and Usa are
described. The environmental damage associated with this and with the cellulose industry
at Novodvinsk provides a bleak picture of the consequences of development in the north.
Here, too, we meet salmon fishermen, fighting to save the River Pechora from ruthless
exploitation.
On the Bolshezemelskaya tundra - the great frozen land, we meet the Nenets
people, their culture and traditions, their nomadic reindeer husbandry - and shamanism. We
visit Pustozersk, the oldest trading centre in the Arctic, founded as a fortress
during conquest of the indigenous people of the tundra. These people are still struggling
- this time to accommodate to the new liberal market Russia described in the chapters
«The reindeer herds still move over Vangurey» and «From revolt against the conquerors
to reindeer husbandry in the new Russia».
A journey through the Russian North is a journey through a cold land of immense
interest, composed of remarkably warm-hearted people. Even if the exotic colours are
vanishing from the rural hamlets so the excitement and the joy of life remains.
Russia’s dramatic history, difficult present and uncertain future has not quenched
the indomitable optimism of these people of the North.
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