Roman with Chukotka: velvet season in the polar circle

With the word “Chukotka”, associations instantly arise in the mind: yaranges lost in the snow, strongly drinking the Chukchi, melting herds of deer ... A year ago, power was replaced by power in this land. Did the new government manage to correct life?

Yaranges in the snow

The helicopter flies from anadyr to the camp for an hour and a half. Nomadicose - these are three yaranges, sledges, undersized people in kitchen women, deer skins, folded in neat feet. The tractor, on which the Chukchi today transported belongings to a new parking lot, looks quite exotic against the background of dog teams.

By the arrival of journalists "Chum Worker" Valentina Tenvital brought order in Yaranga. Above the bonfire diluted in the center of the fur house, food gurgles in the boiler. The youngest daughter, 14-year-old Ira, crushes the ax on a deer bone stone with a butt of an ax. Then they will be scattered for a long time, and when fat appears on the surface of the water, they will remove from heat, cool and smear, in the manner of butter, for pieces of venison. The family buys cereal and pasta in the village of Kanchalan on plastic cards of MDM Bank. "Living" money for reindeer herders is not issued. There are no ATMs in the village, again, due to the inevitable drinking of salaries: there is no cash - there is no cheap faded vodka.

Manuals are also transferred to the card. And in order for the children not to depend on parental sobriety, three meals a day to be introduced everywhere in schools.

The authorities fight drunkenness not only cards. In winter, a psychotherapist came to Kanchalan, to treat from alcoholism. In the village of 700 inhabitants, ten people enlisted in the group. Mostly women came as the most responsible contingent. The treatment, the local paramedic says, turned out to be productive for the three. Elena Zakirova, a 37-year-old mother of four children, has not been drinking for four months, and her house has become different, he says, and her daughters have cheerful. Drinking friends are watching. If at least fifty people come to the next course, this will be a real revolution.

The main medicine for the Chukchi should be the restoration of the original fishing. Reindeer husbandry was ruined not only by the universal drunkenness of the reindeer herders themselves, but also by the inability of the former authorities. Governor Alexander Nazarov applied the laws of a market economy in relation to the indigenous local people in the most murderous way. He simply stopped paying them a salary: they did not deserve it, they say, because they did not give profit. Then, in the unkind memory of the nineties, the Chukchi cut deer without an account, trying to help out at least a little living money. It was necessary to buy salt, shoes and clothes, equipment, fuel for tractors. Mass slaughter dropped the price of venison in 94 to five rubles per kilogram. 800 were given for the carcass. The number of three was three times.

Today, payments have resumed. Herds in the same size have not yet recovered. However, the reduction, as they assured me in Kanlanna, did not happen this time.

Five alive

Feldsher Andrei Amryn - from the "indigenous". He graduated from the Magadan medical school in the early 90s. It looks like a movie Indian: a thin face, long hair collected in a “tail” on the back of the head. Holds with dignity. Today he is on duty in the Kanchalan hospital, taking care of thirty patients, mainly with a cold. He says that tractor drivers are more likely to get sick: they carry fresh water from the homes carved by ice cubes from the surface of the river. Contrary to the legend of the frost resistance of the Chukchi, they often live and tolerate the disease heavily. Andrei loves a profession and worked with zeal even when the salary was almost not paid.

- Once they reported on the radio that at the fourth department, 120 kilometers, a family fell ill, all ten people. It looks like poisoning. They did not give a helicopter. I went on foot. He put medicines, canned food, water into a backpack. He walked for three days, spent the night in the forest. Beasts? No, they didn’t touch, they are well -fed in August. I was worried, no matter how everyone died there. When I got it, I understood a little more, and I would not have found anyone alive. He lived on the camp for a week: he made injections, cooked food. I went out of everyone.

Most of all, Feldsher Amryn worries the size of the current first -aid kits, which are given to the Chukchs in the spring - one at a time for Yaranga. Previously, they were not an example more and more substantial. In fact, these are ordinary auto -wraps. Andrei is sure: the authorities can easily save on the resumed helicopter flights for patients if in the fall they can be thrown on the nomadic on the first -aid kit.

Not everyone can find themselves in another, not tundra life. Nikolai Tenetsal, for example, left school after the fourth grade. It has grown an excellent hunter. He won Buran reindeer races, made a family happy. So what - Down with education? Is there at least a hint of a solution to the problem? It turns out that there is even a reasonable plan of action that is not a sin to call a real reform of school education on Chukotka.

Without illusions

“We are too early to tear off children from parents,” said Dora Polukst, head of the district education department. - An elementary school, after which the child is taken from the village to the district center, to the boarding school, should be extended for two years. Then the decision is to continue their studies? - It will be more balanced. Of course, teachers need to be retrained. Already rebuilt the program of the pedagogical school. Today, students study for five years, receive several specialties.

Freemers Lena Kulina and Valya Murashko do not know that they participate in some experiment. Do they believe in the future of Chukotka? Girls witnessed the speed of even Soviet already, but a new, farmer way.

“We had a family in the island,” says Lena, “they kept cows, pigs.” They hired schoolchildren for the summer. Then the hostess died. Her husband and sons began to drink. And everything broke up. Once, one of the village residents of the pig at night, they quietly killed them. Then others did the same. And nothing is left.

“In our village,” Valya continues, “one family started goats.” They were also stolen and killed ... In order to revive Chukotka, you must first educate people, the local population. That's when people understand how to relate to others, then maybe there will be a sense.

The local population, meanwhile, without having time to "be brought up", unpacks the suitcases. After decades of a rampant flight from Chukotka, people want to stay here. In part, you can understand the causes of the phenomenon. It is enough to see how Anadyr has changed.

Holiday on Otka Street

Today, almost every second house in the capital of the district or in construction forests, or freshly renovated, or is just built. Two brand new, from a needle, hotels decorate the central Avenue of Anadyr, OKOK Street. On the roof of the bank a luminous scoreboard: temperature, pressure, time ... The modern cinema is being prepared for delivery, in line a multi -storey shopping center, ready to oust dozens of small shops of the semi -Derevyan appearance. There is still no good road, and the boiler house still falls asleep for snowdrifts, houses and pedestrians, but a year later, they said in the administration, there will be a road and gas.

According to official figures, Governor Roman Abramovich only last year invested thirty million dollars from his own funds. According to the unofficial - two hundred ... The chairman of the district Duma Vasily Nazarenko said: not a single construction in Anadyr is conducted with budget money.

Today at the Chukotka they pay salaries in time, there are no interruptions in electricity and water. And the incredible thing happened: the outflow of the population ceased. Back in 2000, it decreased by eight thousand people over the year, and for the whole of 2001 the government managed to persuade only one and a half thousand pensioners to leave for the mainland. The company "Nadezhda" promises not only the apartment on the mainland, but also a significant increase in pension for three years. Do not want! What keeps them in this ice paradise?

The historian, the eternal opposition and just cheerful man Igor Riga invited me home. A small apartment is filled with books that stand and lie on the floor, on tables, on shelves and mezzanines. We have to move on narrow paths between them.

- Books survive from home! - laughs Riga. “You ask why people are not leaving?” Each has their own. For example, if I move, then to my daughter, to Moscow, and her apartment is small. And it’s scary to change the climate at my age. Do you know that readaptation for an elderly person leaves him his life for five years, no more? And most importantly - this is our homeland. Does Russia not need Chukotka? Here the Americans are Alaska - they need it!

“The Northern Sea Route will be opened anyway,” says Riga. “And then this earth will not be price.” Does the owner of the region believe in the fast doors?

Do not sleep - you will freeze!

Abramovich makes an appointment with reporters for a deep evening. Comes with the team, young metropolitan specialists, who are forwarding questions. Judging by their words, the extravagant victory in the election of a year ago did not profit for the oligarch. Seven oil wells out of ten planned - black gold were not found. Gold is natural, mining, too difficult to develop and requires state investments that are not expected.

The other day, Roman Abramovich made a message to the deputies of the Duma: "... our district still remains highly submitted," "... the revival of reindeer husbandry did not happen." The document that was handed out to reporters breathes fatigue. It seems that Abramovich is very tired of that people see in him a reliable Santa Claus. The governor opened a "hot line" where you can call around the clock. And what? They ask to build an underground transition (it's good that not the metro). Demand to appoint a non -native chief of the boiler room. Or "at least little -smaller." In a fit of romantic despair, Abramovich in the text of the message highlighted the paragraph with a fat italics: "... until people themselves are imbued with responsibility for their lives and the lives of their fellow countrymen, all the efforts of the government will be unsuccessful."

The governor firmly stated that for the next period he would not run. It is clear that with the departure of Abramovich, his team will not remain in the north. So, did you rinse the steep slides? If so, it is a shame, since Chukotka is not the same as to today's governor.

It is encouraging, however, that Abramovich treats Chukotka not only with money. He proposed and tested the scheme of pulling out of the Boar of a rather big region from the swamp - with people, construction sites, and minerals. Now the state, leave the Chukotka Abramovich, will not be able to refer to justify your eternal inactivity, to the lack of a recipe.

On the wall of the house in Anadyr - a ten -meter, Soviet times a poster: "Do not sleep, otherwise you will freeze!" Komsomol member in the image of the motherland-mother. Every day the picture is more and more relevant.