People are whispering

Laying a stone at the site where the monument to the fallen submariners will be erected. (Photo: Vladimir Sergeev )

From a journalist's point of view, closed cities fall into three categories: those that can be entered with a few packs of cigarettes, those that require money to penetrate, and those that are practically impossible to penetrate. There are few of the latter, and among them is the military town of Vidyaevo, where the Kursk submarine was based and where, according to some sources, about 500 relatives of the dead submariners are now located.

The whole country knows that Vidyayevo has its own, separate reality. There, for example, mourning was cancelled. Judging by the words of one of the relatives with whom the television crew was able to talk, the relatives believed that mourning would be canceled throughout the country - this was supposedly promised by the president and this is a kind of guarantee that the bodies of the submariners will someday be raised. However, who knows what they really think in Vidyayevo, a military town that has essentially turned into a psychiatric hospital. It’s easy to imagine what kind of atmosphere reigns when 500 grief-stricken people gather in one spot. Every day, planes bring psychotherapists sent from all over Russia to Murmansk. According to the official version, they constantly hold conversations with relatives - they even took them to the Kursk twin submarine for therapeutic purposes. At the end of last week, the world went around the world with footage demonstrating a completely different type of psychotherapeutic assistance: a woman who made a fuss at a meeting of relatives with Deputy Prime Minister Klebanov is given an injection, from which she immediately goes limp and sinks to the floor. The world community was once again choked with indignation. However, the actions of doctors, which flagrantly violate the law on psychiatry, fit quite logically into the context of the entire Kursk story.

Any attempts by journalists and others to find out what is happening in Vidyayevo are nipped in the bud. Buses with relatives rush through the checkpoint at the entrance to Vidyayev without stopping: the guard, seeing a bus with a sign on the windshield from afar, raises the barrier (other cars are slowed down, passengers' documents are carefully checked).

The relatives have no other means of transport. From the town itself to the checkpoint it’s at least five kilometers, maybe even ten. Some women travel this route on foot. On the eve of going to sea to the scene of the accident, one of the relatives came out and asked the journalists on duty at the checkpoint with a minibus to take her to Murmansk for wreaths. A day earlier, five women came out to make a statement - ORT correspondents recorded their call not to stop the rescue work. Apparently, they had to regret it later. In any case, when I miraculously managed to catch one of these women at the Vidyayevo checkpoint, she shied away from me in horror: “No, no, I won’t talk to journalists anymore.”

The chairman of the Murmansk Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, Valentina Fomina, complains that employees of her organization are not allowed to see their relatives, even to hand over the money collected for them. “We were promised a meeting at the plane, but the bus drove right up to the plane.”

Closed edge
For residents of the Murmansk region, closed cities and towns are the norm. Some are closed because military units are stationed there and ships are stationed there, others simply because they are located in the border zone. Military camps consist of crumbling five- and nine-story panel buildings. The only newly renovated building in Severomorsk (entrance = cigarettes + money) is the House of Officers, something pale blue in a neoclassical style. In the lobby there are two huge stands with a photo report under glass about President Putin’s visit to the Northern Fleet. Putin is in a naval uniform, with a courageous gaze directed into the distance. Putin on board the submarine. Putin with officers in full dress uniform, among them the deceased Kursk captain Gennady Lyachin. The planes on which Putin and his entourage flew off.

If relatives who come from afar have to be pacified with the help of injections, then for the surrounding residents, humility is the norm of life. At the sea station in Severomorsk, conscript sailors are sitting - just from training, waiting to be sent to their unit. They are reluctant to engage in conversation. “How are you feeling? It’s calm so far.” Immediately, the man who came to pick them up for educational work runs up: “Service is service. Accidents happen. There was “Baton Rouge”, “Komsomolets”. In any case, in the service the guys are much less likely to die than in civilian life. Two hundred thousand people "They drown in various bodies of water every year, and in the army there are only 250 people in various accidents. Here they will not get stuck on a needle or crash on a motorcycle. Here they are under control." The statistics raised doubts among me, but not among the sailors.

It seems to them that no authoritative statement can raise doubts. My other interlocutor, 25-year-old senior sailor Alexey, was one of the first to learn about the accident: he works at a military radio station. "A message came that the submarine had crashed. They thought it was nothing special - just some minor thing." And when did you realize that it’s not a small thing? “When I watched TV. Well, even when they said about the degree of destruction, that the control room was damaged, we have a former submariner there, he said, that’s it, screw it, no one is alive.” Is it right that mourning was canceled in Vidyayevo? "Probably right." They were probably indignant that they didn’t tell the truth about the deaths of people? “It’s annoying, of course, but you can’t deprive your relatives of hope so quickly.” It seems that if I had asked whether it was right for people to be lied to, he would have answered: “Of course it is right.”

“Accidents happen” is a typical phrase in Severomorsk. A pensioner who has lived here since 1963 says that it has always been like this: the authorities were silent, local residents fed on rumors. Somehow there were explosions at ammunition depots. "Many people's windows shattered, closed military vehicles arrived and took away children. The mood was much more alarming. And now what? The reactors are nearby - so they are always nearby."


In the officers' house, where relatives have established a round-the-clock watch, a woman who has collapsed from fatigue is sleeping. (Photo: Vladimir Sergeev )

Radiation hysteria
Residents of the open city of Murmansk are less calm about the radiation danger. On Wednesday, August 23, Murmansk meteorologists said that background radiation had doubled. An hour or two later, city officials issued a denial. After a week and a half of the Kursk, this was interpreted by local residents as confirmation. Taxi drivers began stocking up on gasoline, prices immediately jumped (95 to 18 rubles per liter, 10 rubles more than in Moscow). It seemed like everyone in town was talking about radiation. When asked where this information came from, everyone answered with one voice: from Teriberka. This is a fishing village 150 kilometers from Murmansk. Closed, of course.

Entrance to Teriberka is a pack of cigarettes. Dying northern village. Rotting wooden houses. Sandy roads, remains of wooden sidewalks. By five o'clock in the afternoon, it seems that only old women and a few visitors are still standing in the village - two women from Severomorsk selling tracksuits and underwear, several builders sent by the Murmansk authorities to patch up the administration building (the crumbling bricks are sheathed with hardboard), and a Murmansk team that came to cut rusty boats for scrap metal.

There is always, according to local residents, a mysterious announcement on the wall of a closed dairy store: “Attention. The administration of the Teriberka municipal settlement and the border service appeal to fishermen and all residents of the village with a request if unfamiliar objects such as buoys are found on the shore or in the water, boxes, floating debris of any structures, do not touch them under any circumstances and immediately report to the outpost. For information: the background radiation in Teriberka is normal, constant monitoring is being carried out." It is not entirely clear who this announcement is intended for: there are almost no people in Teriberka who are both sober and literate. And most of them don’t care about radiation.

“I take it calmly,” says the saleswoman in the store. “I went through all this radiation, I have this disease. I can live: I survived, everyone will survive. But in general, everyone is calm, we watch TV and believe everything.” I had no idea that in such a remote place they could so masterfully beat off a journalist. The exhausted customer agrees with the saleswoman: “They said that they turned off the radiator. They have zero-zero. And if it happens, so be it.” In the hospital, the nurse to whom the drunken nurse took me says the same thing: “We are not worried. If something happens, it will happen.”

“You understand: there is radiation, there is no radiation,” sighs a builder from Murmansk. “People need to live. You write how people live here. They simply exist here. We are here on a business trip, when we return, we will undergo a medical examination "And the aborigines - what can they do except drink vodka?"

Rumors about radiation in Teriberka concern only visitors. “Today I turn on the radio: there’s a refutation,” says a trader from Severomorsk. “But it’s all true. Yesterday I had a headache, she had a headache,” she nods at her partner, “and the child had a headache. And when a headache starts to hurt, we know: increased radiation. And when the streets begin to be washed. And now they wash here from morning to evening. Yesterday I went out with the dog at seven in the morning: not only was the street washed, but the yard was also washed."
“They washed us with soap and foam at the fleet headquarters,” echoes my partner.
“In 1996, Kuznetsov was standing there; there was something wrong with its reactor,” the first one chimes in again. “They washed it then too.”
Maybe the streets are being washed because high-ranking officials fly to Severomorsk every day?
“No,” the trader waves her hand. “Four years ago they were transporting a rocket, something happened there, and a cloud came over the city. Then they washed it too. The husband came running and said: “We’re leaving for Murmansk.” She goes to her husband, who is sitting in car to ask where the accident was then, and here our conversation ends: the husband jumps out of the car and shouts at the traders to pack their things and get ready to leave. But the first tradeswoman, an older one, comes up to me again to say that The boat lies about 80 kilometers from here, if the crow flies. She explains that her husband died, so she is not afraid to talk to me. She is only afraid to say my name or be photographed.

“Yes, she’s nine kilometers from here in a straight line!” — there is not a shadow of doubt in the voice of the Murmansk scrap metal worker. Like this? She's in neutral waters! “It’s all a lie. She’s right here. A couple of days ago they came to the lighthouse and took away all the documentation from the 10th. From this I conclude that what they tell us about the 12th is nonsense. Only you Don’t call me. And there’s no need to take it off.” What about radiation? The guy replies that from the first day he came here on a business trip a week ago, he has been measuring it: the background is normal, it doesn’t jump. True, it is not a fact that his “household” dosimeter is sensitive enough: “An army one would show it.”


Senior sailor Alexey. Whatever you ask him about, he agrees with everything. (Photo: Pavel Gorshkov )

Additional details
"Do you know where she lies?"
"In international waters?" - I answer with a question.
“Well, come on, all this happened in Russian territorial waters.”
I don't know my interlocutor, but he claims to know everything. He makes it clear that he serves at fleet headquarters, that all the details of the disaster have been known to him for a long time and that he has all this in a beige “diplomat.” “It’s impossible to blow up a submarine,” he says. “A couple of years ago we had a real seizure of a boat. One conscript sailor, for some reason, threatened to blow up the boat. But this is impossible to do. All life support systems are protected from interference. Well, they had to shoot him."

This fantastic story is followed by an equally exotic version of the death of the Kursk. Such inventors or, if you like, charlatans always breed in an atmosphere of secrecy. However, over the past two weeks we have heard enough from officials that perhaps his words deserve no less trust than the statements of the same Klebanov.


A week and a half after the Kursk disaster, the next graduating class from the North Sea training camp is leaving for its duty station. (Photo: Pavel Gorshkov )