Shine

On February 16, the life of Alexei Navalny ended in IK-3 “Polar Wolf”. “And you all remained the same” - some supporters of the politician hastened to draw about such a conclusion when they entered the HARP Harp Ploks and found that the inhabitants of the village did not organize spontaneous memorials and generally do not discuss this tragic news. The journalist of the “New tab” Ivan Kozlov did not limit himself to the study of public - he visited the Arctic Circle, where a small village of Harp was located in the permafrost zone, and was convinced that the matter was not the indifference of its inhabitants, but in the way of their life, which, it seems, is nothing capable of shaking. And at the same time, he saw with his own eyes a place that at once gained sad world fame.

Caution and attention

If I had a conspiratorial legend, I would have failed it on the approach to Salekhard.

- You are not by chance in the HARP? - a man of about forty asked me, sitting on a neighboring chair.
“In HARP,” I answered mechanically.
“Be careful,” he reacted.

At the tiny airport of Salekhard, we spread a couple of insane phrases; My interlocutor advised me a cheap application for calling a taxi (which I was not going to use), said goodbye and forever, as it seemed to me at that time, disappeared from sight.

I arrived in the capital of the Yamalo -Nenets Autonomous Okrug on the morning of February 24 - on the second anniversary of the beginning of the war. It seemed important to stay here for a short while - at least because there was no need to rush to Harp: the body of Alexei Navalny, who had died there, was lying in the Salekhard morgue for several days. In addition, in Salekhard, unlike Harp, at least there was an impromptu memorial of memory of the politician.

Before this memorial near the monument to the victims of political repression, I already reached Twilight. In the morning, judging by the photographs from social networks, flowers lay at its foot, but now everything was carefully cleaned. The monument hid from prying eyes an arcuate granite wall, because of which, while I was taking photos, a policeman appeared. Having taken a few steps, he saw that in my hands not flowers, but a camera, and he had a familiar script. The policeman froze and said after a couple of seconds:

- Hello.
“Hello,” I answered.

The dialogue was somehow stuck on this, and we stood in silence for a few more seconds.

Two more colleagues were waiting for a policeman behind a granite wall. Apparently, they were on duty here all day, since people managed to organize an alternative memorial near the memorial sign “who performed a journalistic duty”: no one followed it, and a photograph of Navalny, like several modest bouquets, managed to sprinkle with snow.

The snow was large and humid. Neither Salekhard nor Harp in the following days did not correspond to my ideas about how February should be behind the polar circle: it was about zero on the street, and in the daytime the temperature rose to the plus.

From the memorial, I walked to the Obdorsky prison , and from there to the city garden. The trees in the snow, hung with garlands, the large bulbs of which exuded warm light, made a completely magical impression. The canopy of the same garland stretched over a pedestrian street passing by the garden. They illuminated a street exhibition of photographs: there were portraits of women on the stands. Stepping closer, I read the signatures: in one photo there was a widow of a war participant in Ukraine, on the other - the mother of another murdered military man.

Obdorsky prison

Wooden fortress that laid the foundation for the city of Salekhard

I examined the rest of the city areas fluently. Basically, the clumsy buildings of “capitalist romanticism”, patriotic murals at the ends of buildings and almost nothing from five hundred years of city history were remembered. At the end of the walk, I read the news that Alexei Navalny was given his mother. Probably, Kira Yarmysh spoke about this with some delay, because around the morgue it was already quiet and deaf. I had nothing more to do in Salekhard.

Between the owl and the wolf

The road from Salekhard to Harp with a transfer to Labytnangi - along the ice crossing through the Ob and further, through the stunted coniferous forests - takes a little more than an hour and a half. In the village of Ob, the bus is filled in the uniform of the FSIN located on the way, who go to work. Two elderly women dangle in the front seat. They discuss how best to spend the accumulated pension.

- All my life I wanted to go to the Crimea, now it is even possible, to Sverdlovsk by plane, then by train. But it is dangerous there now.
“It’s dangerous, it’s dangerous there,” her interlocutor is annoyed. - Now it is dangerous around. What now - not go anywhere, or what?

Another half an hour drive along the snow -covered copses, in the meadows between which the plague of reindeer herders are occasionally visible, and the bus arrives at Piglet - the main transport hub of the Harpa village.

Piglet is the very center of a small, six thousand inhabitants, the village. To the south-a hospital, a kindergarten, a fish plant and IK-18 "Polar Owl". There are such celebrities as the Bittsev maniac Pichushkin and the mass killer Major Evsyukov sitting in it. To the north-administration, school, club, cemetery and IK-3 "Polar Wolf". Here, in 2005-2006, Plato Lebedev was sitting, immediately Alexei Navalny died on February 16, 2024.

Alexander Pichushkin

The Russian serial killer, known as the Bittsev maniac and the killer with the chessboard. Committed at least 49 killings in the Moscow Bitsevsky Park and its environs, most victims killed the hammer in the head of the hammer

Denis Evsyukov

Former Major of the Russian Police, who, on April 27, 2009, in a state of intoxication, killed two and wounded seven more in the Moscow Supermarket "Ostrov"

Plato Lebedev

Russian businessman, co -founder of Menatep Bank. In May 2005, he was convicted in the same case with Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He left for 10.5 years of imprisonment in a colony of general regime on charges of theft, tax evasion and legalization of stolen funds

“Owl” is located on the outskirts, and the “wolf” is visible from the windows of the local school and is adjacent to residential buildings. In some of the publics on VKontakte, a resident of one of these houses complained that it was impossible to sleep because of the proximity of the colony, because already at five in the morning they began to sweep the snow noisily there. I did not notice anything like this, although I settled very close to the IK-3-in the only hotel "SHO", more like a dormitory-in-the-instrument, clamped between the river shore, walls of the colony and the territory of the tuberculous hospital.

Harp is translated from Nenetsky as a "northern lights." This phrase lives in the names and on signs (the so-called, for example, the sports complex and the railway station, although I was still more impressed with Salekhard, in which the hotel with the name “radiance” was discovered), but I could not see the very natural phenomenon.

Well, okay! Firstly, as you know, the Earth will soon fly on the heavenly axis, so that the radiance can be seen even in the Perm Territory today. Secondly, Harp shines differently: illumination, bright street lighting and a huge amount of garlands, from which it is light on the central streets at night. A few years ago, the village looked much more depressing, but the locals with whom I had to communicate with, the local authorities thank the local authorities: by 2024 they managed to update the entire infrastructure, bring the streets into a decent look and repair the facades of the Khrushchevs, which are today faced with “under the brick” tile. The seemingly new apartment buildings, standing among the old wooden two-story buildings, even look somehow unnatural, as if in simulation: only the old, drying window frames that have been preserved in some apartments testify to their true age.

In fact, these updated houses are already half a century or more. At first there was a railway station-one of many in the “ 501st construction site ”, on which several thousand prisoners died. This project of the transponding highway was never completed, after the death of Stalin it was closed. In 1961, near the station on the basis of the former Gulag division, a colony was built, which will subsequently be called a "polar wolf". And only seven years later, in 1968, the village of Harp was formed.

About the period of the history of the village in the 80s, 90s and zero-before the local authorities repaired the streets and houses, and in addition to the colonies, a fish plant, a deer processing workshop and several other enterprises, appeared on the territory of the Harp, an unknown for me unknown for me will tell me better:

“Until 99, everything worked. Career, prey, etc. <...> Russian Railways wagons were loaded with gravel of different stamps and sent. And the 2000s came-businessmen, the huevo Muscovites who bought up and abandoned, ruined the village, which from the dashing 90s at least a little held a little. They thought that people were slaves in the village that would work for a penny without any benefits. Yes, in the winter, in minus forty Mercedes and Bentley do not start, it is only necessary to ride UAZs and Urals, but this transport is not for Muscovites. That's all the workshops, warehouses, etc. - thrown, stolen. Where the patriotic Russian, the Moscow spirit comes, always devastation and ending. ”

Severe conditions, temperature, dropping in winter to minus 50 and below, the gloomy atmosphere, associated with the fact that the fair part of the local everyday life is concentrated around the colonies, the tragic background of the Gulag construction - all this is true. But the truth is that the HARP (in any case, in the absence of extremely low temperatures) gives the impression not of a bear angle, where Putin’s most terrible maniacs and the most sworn enemies, but the most ordinary village, which could not be distinguished from dozens of similar settlements in the Perm region or, say, in the Sverdli region, if not for the most beautiful mountain ridges, are taken to live. On the horizon and no less beautiful hills framing the village.

"Well, died and died"

On one of these hills near Harp there is a helicopter site; She acts as the main species point for tourists, so several years ago a local entrepreneur made a gift a gift, setting a frame in this place, through which the panorama of the city is visible. The frame is bordered by metal letters, folding to the phrase "Happiness is not far off." On the rights of Permyak, in whom this phrase has been sewn into the cultural code for ten years, I considered it important to find this frame, but along the way I got lost among wooden two -story buildings. Fortunately, I met a woman of about fifty, who was just standing in the middle of the yard. I glanced over her.

- What? She instantly reacted.

Upon learning that I was looking for the site, she volunteered to spend me - she, according to her, was still nothing to do, just went out to stand under the snow and would have stood so.

- You are probably tired of the attention of visiting journalists here? I asked her.
- A? No, there is no one. Well, there is a lot of these, like them, builders. All strangers. Well, they now built a school here, they will build a club, and there are many of them.
-I see, otherwise I thought that there were a lot of strangers here because of Navalny.
- What? - She did not understand again. She did not have to hear this surname before.

The woman showed the road to the site incorrectly, and I buried in some kind of bus dead end. Its main attraction was the anti -aircraft gun glued from scraps of tires, on which its creator wrote with white paint “We will win!”. Well, also not bad.

In the morning, that dialogue with a woman seemed stupid and insignificant to me, but in the evening I was convinced that he was more than characteristic of understanding how and what Harp lives. I walked and chatted with the locals, but the attempt to speak with the FSINCOV was unsuccessful (one of them promised me to “clarify”), and ordinary passers -by, although they knew Navalny’s last name, did not show any interest in the dialogue. Expelled sympathy about the death of the politician had to be caught in social networks, but even there they either ignored me, or refused comments. It was evident that this topic was annoyed: especially considering that in almost all Harp publics, after the death of Alexei, commentators appeared from somewhere with impersonal accounts who offended and insulted the locals for insufficient empathy, repeating the idea that "the whole village is one large colony."

There was no reason to abandon the conversation only for those who did not care. For example, a woman, in whom I first tried to rent an apartment for rent, noticed that the attention of the world media in the life of the village was not at all reflected. Changes in recent months and years have occurred in Harpe, but they were mainly connected with the development of tourism: the more popular the Harp became for the hiking, who went from here to the mountains of the Polar Urals, the more expensive housing took.

“Demand has always been large, the last five years for sure,” the woman said. “Very few are handing over here, and now the industry is being developed , and we will be the center.” In recent months, no one has come, besides lawyers and a couple of journalists. And after death, the mother [Navalny] was here for several days, and no more move, no colors to the colony and other things. Generally quiet. Residents did not react to the death of Navalny in any way.

A local resident Olga spoke with me more more unfolded (I changed her name, because she asked for anonymity, explaining this by the fact that her work is connected with Federal Penitentiary Service). Olga had sympathy for Navalny's mother, and great respect for her behavior after the death of her son. But about him, he himself was not the highest opinion:

- The death of Alexei did not cause [local] special emotions. The reaction of people in teams is almost unambiguous: “The traitor died” or “well, died and died”. These events did not arouse much interest: it is a policy, it is a lot of money, it is a opposition to the two states, while there are victims. To say that he is a traitor, I cannot: he is not a military man, not a guardian of GOSTaina. And the fact that he sold his conscience to another state is to remain on his conscience. In a humanly, it is a pity that still a physically strong, smart man put his energy in the wrong direction ... He would have remained with power now, would be the same wandered official, Olga thoughtfully concluded.

"Yamal has its own state"

Olga herself was at work near the colony on the evening of February 16 and did not notice anything unusual at all, even the parking was, as always, half -empty. True, the very next morning the entrances to her were blocked, fearing the hype, since the parking is within the limits of the regime zone in which it is impossible to remove. But these security measures turned out to be excessive: in the evening of the next day, Olga noticed only a little more cars than usual, and there were no public actions or impromptu memorials in Harpe either on that day or subsequent ones. She is sure that there was no one to lay flowers: Olga herself adheres to moderately patriotic views, and she considers interest in Navalny to young maximalists, which, according to her, is extremely few in the village.

It is difficult to say how many “maximalists” in Harpe is actually, but, as elsewhere, they are not much more active in the public field, but supporters of the regime. It became especially noticeable just after the death of Navalny, when journalists became interested in local publics. They tried to find out or buy information from the inhabitants of Harp, which provoked the locals to reasoning. Here are just one of the characteristic examples :

“Who cares about Navalny here? There is his state on Yamal, he is nobody here and to call him in any way, and if there are supporters, they are sitting and nervously smoking on the sidelines, they will not support them here. ”

On my remark that the colony that happened behind the walls seemed to be absolutely not interested in the village, whose everyday life is closely connected with this colony, Olga replied:

- The people do not live separately, just the people here have a slightly different mentality, and this is noticeable for almost unclaimed nightclubs, restaurants and so on. People work, engage in everyday life, and the opposition is considered marginal. Not because they are completely satisfied with the authorities, but because the power hears them here. The mayor can personally respond to the complaint in the local public about the quality of the roads.

In confirmation of her words, Olga threw me a link to the post from the public “Labytnangi. Info ". Its author complained that the door handle was broken at the Bus Stop of the “Arctic” (the stopping pavilions were made closed in Labytnangi and Harpe so that people would not freeze in anticipation of transport). Forty minutes after the publication, an account of the housing and communal services of the city administration answered the post, and two hours later the same account reported that the handle was replaced and the problem was solved.

“Here is a specific example for you,” Olga concluded and added: “Well, what oppositionists can be here?”

Before the storm

On the morning of Monday, I woke up from a loud conversation between the concierge outside the door: she told someone on the phone that a storm warning was announced in the village. Beautiful snow slowly fell outside the window, the sun was visible, and it was difficult to believe that the weather was approaching.

I packed things, handed over the key and, in between, asked about the situation in the village.

- Are you talking about tourists? - She did not understand. - No, there are always very few tourists, soon the road for several billion should be built to the mountain resort, then maybe there will be more.

I said not only about tourists.

- Ah, you're talking about that. Well, how Navalny died, so these [investigators] began to come here, ask who the new notice was settled to us. They came literally yesterday. So I say: you are not looking there! If journalists come, then they rent private apartments for a day, and look there, but then they will only take them away?
“Yeah, yes,” just in case, I agreed and hastened to say goodbye.

In a few night hours, snow was on the anklemus: snowboards were driven along the Harp, and the workers threw fresh snowdrifts from the roofs of buildings. If it were not for their operational work, the HARP would have been brought in snow in a week: it is possible to understand this only by the cars left in the courtyards and the sidelines that turned into giant snowdrifts. There are simply anomalously many of them here: apparently, their owners have long left the village for watch or earnings.

In the Harpe itself there are jobs in the service sector, but they do not seem to be popular. In the only local "magnet" a tense atmosphere: the cash register has accumulated a giant queue, and people are furious.

“It's always like that,” says one elderly woman another. - No matter how I come, there are constantly no sellers. Hey, well, open the second box office!
- What can I do? - the seller reacts sluggishly. -For some reason, you can’t drag the locals here.

A cashier named Andrei lives in Harpe recently - he came by distribution.

“The locals do not go to work,” he repeats doomedly to me. - I was sent to the opening of the store here. Usually they send for two months, for some, these two months are stretched, and for me too.

In five minutes that this stupid scene lasted, the weather on the street has changed radically. Harp was deceiving: it is worth relaxing, as it turns out that investigators in the hotel were interested in you; It is worth pleased with pastoral snow, as you have to recall the "storm warning." The wind flies instantly, and its strength is such that it becomes difficult to walk through the streets.

It was possible to get to the local cemetery only from the edge: the snowball players did not reach there, and the road was brought by snow. Therefore, at the rest of the time before the train, I knocked on the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in the local square (another temple - Sergius of Radonezh - is located behind the fence of the “polar wolf”, and only a small chapel in the “Polar Ivas”), but it was closed. With her abbot - father Mikhail, who has been serving here for more than ten years - we later contacted the phone. This was already in those days when the body of Navalny was taken to Moscow, and his associates barely found a priest to take him. We talked about life in the village (Father Mikhail also said that nothing seemed to have happened, no one put candles behind the repose of the servant of God Alexei and did not submit notes about the commemoration), and then I asked him, he would agree to catch on Navalny.

“He, as I understand it, did not commit suicide and did not belong to another religion,” the priest answered, “but I do not see other reasons for him.”
-Well, for some reason in Moscow, for some reason, they could not find the one who would agree, barely found.

Father Michael did not understand why the priest could not find for a long time, and when I told him, he asked:

“But they found the same?” And what happened to the person who plunged him? Nothing?

It seems that he did not even understand why I ask these strange questions: the situation in which Navalny got in Moscow after death, here in Harpe, where everything happens in a calm established manner, seemed unimaginable.

Stopping on the threshold of the church, I made a second attempt to get to the framework of “Happiness is not far off”, and she was successful. Apparently, there are really few tourists in Harpe - or they simply do not know about this place. There is no path to the thickets of alder, which was lost in the thickets of alder. It is assumed that through the metal rectangle, the panorama of the village and mountain peaks on the horizon should be visible, but the snowstorm was descended from the mountains and the tops were not visible: only two -story houses, freshly revealed Khrushchevs and the territory of the colony, in which the life of Alexei Navalny ended, fell into the frame of “happiness”.

I hoped that in HARP it would never bring me again for any need, so I wanted to have time to buy a magnet for memory, but there was nowhere to keep up with: the Northern Light railway station was a brick bag with a waiting room from six chairs. It did not sell not only magnets, but also tickets that were proposed to buy in advance.

In addition to me, only one man who chatted with station workers was waiting for me. When the train came up, one of them shouted after him:

- And take it warmly with you!
-Where is the warmth? - another was indignant. - Better let the wind take it with him.

The wind, meanwhile, became completely unbearable, and not only distant crests, but also the hills surrounding the village disappeared in the snow beran. It seemed that if a man takes the wind with him, then the HARP would so hang in the middle of this emptiness.

At the end of the first day spent in Salekhard, I spontaneously wandered into the Polyaris art residence: the posters promised an exhibition of modern art, and the project was supported by the Federal Air Force, so I became interested in what art is shown during state support behind the polar circle. I studied the list of participants in the exhibition, the listed in the lobby, when I heard behind me:

“I hope you will not seem to you that I am following you.”

My fellow traveler, with whom we flew together, was here-he abolished some kind of business meeting, and now he just walked around the city and thought what to do. I figured that it would be impossible to adjust all this specially (for this, at least it was necessary to know my plan, but it did not exist), so we could not find a single reason not to drink beer. A new acquaintance, however, asked for anonymity, but I can say that by virtue of his work he knew Salekhard and Harp very well, and the life of indigenous peoples, including.

“What do you want to find there, in Harpe?” - He told me among other things. - Do you know how they say about the rest of Russia here? They say "on earth." That is, they have a clear distinction: there is something that is on Yamal, but there is everything that happens in the country, "on earth." And the story with Navalny, although he was sitting here, they perceive as part of some game that unfolds “on the ground” and applies to it. But they are not to them.

At some point, we went out to smoke, and I still asked him:

- And how do you understand that I am flying in the HARP? For me, you can see somehow somehow?
“You took pictures of a box with an airplane lunch, so it was clear that you were flying for the first time, and I already suggested about HARP,” he answered.

Apparently, I really pierced on the fact that I took pictures of the box. On the inside of her lid was printed by an advertising quiz. It was proposed to note the reasons for visiting Yamal: in the vast list were the northern lights, cloudberry, mammoth Lyuba and various other attractions and attraction factors.

Mammont Lyuba

The fossil mammoth-samk, found in May 2007 by reindeer herder Yuri Hudy in the upper reaches of the Yuribey River on the Yamal Peninsula. Received the name "Lyuba" in honor of the wife of the reindeer herder

“I even came up with a signature for Twitter to this photo,” I said, “like“ They didn’t guess, the guys: the reasons why I fly to you is not in this list. ”
“Well, yes,” he sighed, “no and will not appear.” Or maybe it will appear. But very soon.