Posted on 10/24/2003 5:54:55 PM PDT by blam
Stalin's Arctic dream left in the cold
(Filed: 25/10/2003)
Julius Strauss reports from Mulda on how towns are being abandoned and communities destroyed as Russia retreats from the desolate planes of its frozen north.
Tatyana Orlova will pile her belongings on to a government lorry next week and shut the front door of her shabby, freezing flat for the last time.
The following day the authorities will throw the switch on her electricity supply - the centrally provided hot water and heating were cut off in the spring - and the Arctic settlement of Mulda, once home to more than 1,000 people, will officially cease to exist.
"I've spent all my 42 years living here, working on the railways," Mrs Orlova said. "My mother and father are in the cemetery and my sons work at the local factory. But it's all over now."
In its heyday Mulda was one of hundreds of model Soviet settlements built in the icy Far North as part of a grand plan to harness its mineral wealth.
An ugly collection of rough tenement blocks, it housed several hundred hardy souls - railway workers, miners and employees at the local coal-processing plant.
In exchange for salaries two or three times those in the south and a host of pension and holiday benefits, workers endured a climate where winter temperatures fall to as low as -50 Celsius and there is only an hour of dim sunlight a day in December.
Now Mulda and a host of other settlements throughout the Russian north are being closed because the federal government says it can no longer afford the huge expense of maintaining them. For Moscow the decision represents the end of a decades-old effort to tame the Arctic, begun by Stalin in the 1930s.
It also heralds the largest population shift in the country since the dictator shipped millions of European Russians off to labour camps in the north and east more than half a century ago. Since communism collapsed, tens of thousands of northern workers have fled the frozen wastelands. Hundreds of thousands more are preparing to follow, although many lack the funds to buy new homes.
In Vorkuta, a decaying city 10 miles from Mulda and 90 miles inside the Arctic circle, the population has fallen by more than a third in a decade. A good flat in the centre costs less than £1,000.
City officials say with regret that they have only enough revenue to service a population of 80,000 and are urging more people to leave. Valery Belyaev, the deputy mayor, said: "In the past 10 years the city has lost seven out of 13 mines, all of its collective farms, a 10,000-worker construction plant, a factory making prefabricated housing and a geological institute employing 5,500.
"Our revenues have been decimated. We simply cannot provide housing, schooling and services for the population we have. It's the same story throughout northern Russia."
In Soviet times, such was the Kremlin's faith in the potential of the virgin north that it was willing to pay huge subsidies to finance industrial outposts there.
About six per cent of the Soviet gross domestic product was swallowed up by the so-called Northern Coefficient, which provided the subsidised goods, inflated wages and sweeping benefits for workers.
That figure has now been cut to less than two per cent and the federal authorities want to reduce it still further. In the Vorkuta region the authorities have been forced to make drastic cuts, closing several large settlements, sometimes against the inhabitants' will.
Yushor, like other towns in the region sprang from the Stalinist gulags set up in the 1930s. Now it is almost empty. Many roofs have fallen in and only a few bent figures can be seen shuffling among its ruins in the blowing snow.
"Peace to the World" - roughly stencilled in dark blue on one collapsing block of flats - is a reminder of more optimistic times. The untended cemetery is overgrown with coarse shrubs. In Severny (which means Northern), the football field has been neglected, the goalposts rusty and broken, and most of the blocks of flats are derelict.
In one flat the owners have left behind old shoes, children's ragged clothes and a music cassette with the tape ripped out. The walls are black with mould.
Tatyana Yegorova, 39, her mother and two children are the only family left in the building. As she nursed a 14-month-old child, Tatyana said: "We were offered a flat in the south but we had to contribute 30,000 roubles (£600) and we couldn't manage it. Twenty years ago being a northern worker was prestigious. Today everything is in ruins."
In Promyslenny Galina Lupashko, 45, was packing up her home this week. Her family is the last in the rotten two-storey building. Many of the windows have already been boarded up. Outside a child's broken swing stands covered in snow. She said: "My husband, Anatoly, still has some work at the local mine but he's going to be laid off any day now.
"It all seemed so different when we arrived 23 years ago. We were young and they offered us jobs and housing. But these have not been happy years for us. When we leave I think they're going to burn this house and I won't shed any tears."
The Lupashkos have received money from a World Bank pilot project that has earmarked £50 million to help Russians leave the north.
Each participant family is given around £3,300 towards the cost of a flat in the south. About 6,500 families are eligible and the project may be expanded if it is successful.
The Russian government also has two relocation projects running, but funds are sparse.
Alexander Kalmykov, a 53-year-old geologist whose institute was closed down, said: "Every country has had its grandiose schemes. The Chinese built a wall and the Egyptians made pyramids. We had our grand plan to tame the Arctic. It's painful for us who have given our lives for it to admit, but the whole thing was a terrible mistake."
This is actually an indication that the Russians are learning how to manage within a market economy.
In short, it's all good news!
I am shocked!
This was a stupid idea. Families and the infrastructure required to support them are just too expensive to build and maintain. Mining camps are much more efficient way to do this kind of resource retrieval.
You pay the workers high salaries to make up for the uncomfortable conditions and you provide only the bare necessities of life.
Desolate planes? I never did care much for that weird British spelling. 
Indeed, the scrubbing of this failed project is something that should make the economy healthier.
As to the sad sack comments of future homelessness and joblessness by those forced to move, bear in mind that you're hearing a peasant mentality speaking. There is little self-reliance or entrepreneurship in these forsaken outposts...because the government has been responsible for everything, their entire working lives.
They are dependents. And they don't have a concept of opportunity...
Well, the ranes in Spane...never mind.
Think of this is a major restructuring -- these settlements were hugely unprofitable with that many people. My god, six percent of Russian GDP? That's a huge amount, even for their much smaller economy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.