Circling the Midnight Sun

by James Raffan

  He talked about two types of ancestral homelands that were recognized by the Russian government: one based on territory, and another based on family. Either way, he said, now that everything was happening in a free market economy based on private ownership, a person or a group of people actually had to apply to establish a case for being granted an obshchina by the Russian government.

  Semjon and a group of friends and family members had been trying to establish this obshchina based on family ties, and they had been assigned this tract of land on the southwest Kola Peninsula to see if they could make a go of getting back into the reindeer herding business. “It hasn’t been easy,” he said. “We bought reindeer from a neighbouring obshchina and drove them here a couple of winters ago, but in the spring they all walked home. And we worried that they might drown in the river. But we got them back. And now I hear that there is a pipeline that is supposed to come through here and we might have to move.”

  At that point Anna interjected and said that was not the case at all. She added that the Russian energy giant Gazprom, the largest natural gas producer in the world, had widely promoted a series of public meetings to explain what was happening to the local people, including herders on all the affected obshchiny, but that attendance at these had been very poor. “Semjon might have done well to get to one of those meetings,” she told me in English.

  But he was building a reindeer herd, as his ancestors had done since time immemorial. And seeing as how we had come all this way, it would be Semjon’s pleasure to take us out to meet the reindeer.

  By now it was after one in the morning. The sky was luminescent and full of stars, and a moon was casting shadows on the ground, but it was difficult to see. Having come out of the generator-driven electric light of the trailer, where Alexi and another herder were fast asleep in skinny metal bunk beds at one end, we fumbled along without flashlights behind Semjon, through a fence that appeared to be made out of an old fishing net and on through ankle-deep reindeer moss. The bananas we had brought were distributed among everyone’s pockets.

  As a way to get the animals to be more compliant, and to keep them properly nourished, Semjon explained, as we walked, the herders had been feeding them a bit of grain. But there were no reindeer anywhere nearby. Semjon started to call, his young, strong voice echoing through the forest and fading into the silence of the Arctic summer night. He called again and again, each time waiting and listening to see if his animals had heard. And then, almost imperceptibly, through the still air came the hollow tinkle of cowbells. Different pitches from different directions, getting progressively louder.

  Suddenly, we were surrounded by grey ghosts in the darkness, and one of them had just nudged me in the backside, aiming for the banana in my pants pocket. Fuzzy antlers were bumping against us. Bells were clunking as the animals jockeyed for the pocket spoils. Peels and all, they were devouring the bananas, sometimes wrangling them whole and other times biting through them and having pieces fall to the ground where, guided by furry noses, grazing teeth nibbled on shoes in search of the tasty treats from town. Anna was giggling. The normally stoic Yuri was telling them to stay out of his crotch. Olga was talking to the reindeer in her vicinity as if they were clients. And Semjon was lecturing his leaders not to be too bold, to let some of the females and smaller animals have their share of bananas as well.

  The herd at this point was just several dozen animals. Semjon explained as we finished the visit and made our way back to the trailer that he and the others were hoping to build that number in the years to come. But it was going to be a stretch. They got a small stipend from the government to help, everyone hoping that the herd would provide meat for the Sami community and perhaps become something of a tourist draw in the area as well, but the actual work with the herd was mostly volunteer, he told us. The herders took their turns on the land with the animals, but they all needed other wage work in town, or wherever, if they could get it, to supplement their stipends.

  Given the offer of a ride, which doesn’t happen all that often, Semjon opted to return to Murmansk with us. As we headed back east on the Lotta Road toward town, Anna, Olga, and I again snug in the back seat, the young herder talked about everything from his view of Russian resource politics to how his reindeer all had different personalities. He explained that when he met new people, he remembered them by thinking of the animal in his herd that most matched their character and disposition.

  By four in the morning, the sky was brightening and graded blue-grey mists shrouded the surrounding lands. There were no mines on this road, but the land as we got closer to town again took on a ravaged look. Semjon eventually fell asleep in mid-sentence. Anna told me quietly that she was ever so proud of Semjon and his irrepressible optimism, but that she feared for his vulnerability within a political system that could shatter his dream in ways he could never begin to imagine.

  In truth, for all the novelty of this magical night among the reindeer at Kilometre 108 on the road from Murmansk to the Finnish border; for all of Semjon’s optimism in thinking that this obshchina that his family organized in 1992 would somehow be the key to a happy future for Sami on the Kola; for all that hope in the face of what seemed like insurmountable odds, which was one of the most inspiring things I’d encountered to date on my travels around the world—for all of that, there was a sadness that covered the whole experience like a post-nuclear pall.

  Even after a drink at four thirty in the hopping all-night disco in the Meridian Hotel with Anna and Yuri, I was wide awake and very much moved by the seemingly hopeless enormity of the challenges the Sami face. Back in my room, looking out on the grimy stacks of Murmansk, I took the cellophane off a CD that Anna had pressed into my hand as we left the hotel bar.

  It was by the Sami singer Mari Boine. Mari’s song “Conversation with God,” Anna intimated, could be an anthem for Semjon if he ever chose to ground his youthful optimism and see the world as it was. Sipping cheap Armenian Araat brandy from the minibar in my room, staring out the window with Semjon’s sun-livened face very much in my mind, I listened to Mari’s soulful voice through the tinny little speakers of my computer, releasing the day’s many emotions.

  Our Father,

  They say you are in heaven,

  Could You please tell me

  Why things are the way they are?

  Our Father,

  Through Your name, they hallow and maintain

  Injustice in the world.

  Why do you allow this?

  Our Father,

  Why do You not deliver us from evil?

  Are You not the Almighty?

  7: A MASK FOR LUCK

  On my own again and eager to build connections that would carry my research through Russia’s 172 degrees of longitude and nine time zones, I parlayed contacts from my first visit into a multi-entry cultural research visa from the Russian Consulate in Ottawa. But there was more work to be done to secure the contacts and connections to get beyond the Kola Peninsula, and this all had to happen in Moscow. Through the Canadian Embassy, I was invited to deliver a series of lectures on Arctic Canada at various schools and universities in and around Moscow—part of Canada’s ongoing efforts to support cross-cultural dialogue with its northern neighbours—and this circuit would prove instrumental in moving the research forward.

  When I flew in this time, the impression I got of Russia while circling over Moscow in preparation to land at Domodedovo Airport was much more welcoming than the depressing scenes I’d glimpsed through the grimy windows of the bus from Norway. There were forested rolling hills on the city’s outer rings, lined with orderly rows of commercial buildings and individual dwellings, all circling the bustle of the city’s inner core. The scenery wrapped around a meandering oxbow of the Moscow River was more reminiscent of London, England, than of anything Cold War. But for me, a canoeist and geographer, the river—a secondary tributary of the mighty Volga flowing through the city and eventually south to the Caspian Sea—was not the kind of water
I was hungry to experience. It was the north-wending rivers like the Lena and the Ob, which flow over and beyond the Arctic Circle for hundreds of kilometres—these were the rivers that would reveal the stories I’d come to hear.

  Nevertheless, I was in Russia. I was closer than I had ever been to the secrets of Siberia, feeling more than a little apprehensive and giddy with jet lag and anticipation. In that state of mind, I perceived the chaos at customs and immigration control through a Dr. Strangelove lens, wondering whether the fellows in bad suits in the arriving throng were intelligence operatives spying on the texts I was hammering out on my phone. Eventually I emerged on the happy side of Russian officialdom and an embassy driver took me directly to meetings with embassy personnel about my speaking itinerary.

  All of the presentations on this tour had simultaneous translation, which took some getting used to for the presenter and the audiences, especially when it came to parsing stories and information into bite-sized pieces that could be translated in a flow that built its own rhythm and cadence. (Note: jokes that work in Canadian English don’t automatically translate into Russian.) The one exception was a professor in the Department of Regional Studies and Foreign Languages at Moscow State University who requested that I present without translation so that her students could practise their English.

  Without question, the sleeper item on this remarkable itinerary was listed as “Luncheon at OR hosted by DHOM Gilles Breton, Duration: 2 hours.” “OR,” I learned from my embassy host, Elena Gaisina, was short for “official residence,” and, by a process of jet-lagged deduction, I eventually figured out that Gilles Breton was the deputy head of mission (DHOM) in Moscow. “Guests,” the itinerary went on, “will include Russian Arctic experts as well as representatives of Russian regional governments in Moscow (Komi, Yamalo-Nenets, Yakutia, Chukotka, Khaborovsk, Murmansk); International diplomatic community; CERBA, RACS (Russian Association of Canadian Studies).”

  Having but the vaguest idea what happens in foreign missions generally or at OR luncheons in particular, I assumed that all these people had been invited but only one or two would turn up for a perfunctory hello and a very nice free lunch. Elena suggested that I might work up a brief illustrated presentation about my project. “Nothing fancy,” she said. Nothing fancy. Right.

  Having rushed in from a presentation to grade nine students at School N59, right across the street from a yellow and white art-nouveau-style chancery that houses the ambassador’s official residence, I said hello to some of the embassy staffers and to Nathan Hunt from CERBA (who had encouraged the Sami ladies to sing in Murmansk) and was getting ready to relax a bit when in walked Anton Vasiliev, Russia’s Arctic ambassador.

  After my brief chat with Vasiliev, who, as it turned out, had spent quite a bit of time in Canada, Elena took my elbow and steered me toward other guests. It became clear that this would be far from “nothing fancy.” As promised, there were people from various northern embassies, academic institutions, business, and government, all interested in the Arctic and all keen to have a conversation about the future of the North as it is being shaped by shifting climate, politics, and business opportunities.

  Tatiana Vladsova, a leading researcher in the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Geography and head of the Russian Geographical Society, had me spellbound with the tale of her Integrated Arctic Socially-Oriented Observation System. I could have spent the rest of the lunch talking to any one of these kindred spirits, but out of the corner of my eye I saw a face that seemed very familiar. Full white beard. Oval, slightly tinted glasses. Balding, tanned, Semitic-looking features. Late sixties, maybe early seventies, but with the body and movements of an athlete half his age. Tailored blue suit. Maybe a Nova Scotia tartan tie. Two handlers. Serious twinkle in his eye. And then it dawned on me: that was the man who had dropped the flag on the ocean floor at the North Pole and single-handedly stirred up more controversy than a proverbial arctic fox in the northern henhouse. Arthur Nikolayevich Chilingarov. The very one!

  But just as I was about to step forward to meet the Hero of the Soviet Union and Hero of the Russian Federation (so says his business card—honest!), Elena and the staff began gathering people in the living room of the official residence and directed me to move toward the podium for the DHOM’s introduction and welcome and the start of my presentation.

  To this august audience, I explained that my plan was to put a human face on climate change by travelling around the world at the Arctic Circle. After asking for advice or suggestions from anyone present, I mentioned that part of my draw to northern Russia was my previous book, a biography of the Hudson’s Bay Company governor Sir George Simpson, who had circumnavigated the northern hemisphere, including a long overland portion from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Black Sea in 1841–42.

  At the risk of the joke going horribly wrong, through a simultaneous translator who was standing beside me and speaking to the crowd, I slipped a portrait of Sir George onto the screen and mentioned that scholars reckoned he had sired seventy children across Canada, in and out of wedlock, during his tenure with the HBC. I added that although there had never been any mention of procreative activity during the Russian leg of his round-the-world journey, I was quite sure that Simpson’s carnal appetites would have been just as enthusiastic on Russian soil as they were on his travels in North America. So I was hoping to meet some Simpsonian offspring on my journey across Arctic Russia from west to east.

  With that, the Hero of the Soviet Union started speaking and pointing at the very dignified Ivan V. Rozhin, special advisor to the Russian vice-president for international affairs, representing Yakutia. I’d met Rozhin earlier and was hoping he would be instrumental in helping to set up a visit to Yakutsk. “He looks just like him,” Chilingarov said in a loud voice. “Maybe that’s the connection you’re looking for right here in this room.”

  Happily, Rozhin smiled—or it might have been a diplomatic grimace—but with that utterance as an opener, I approached Chilingarov immediately following the presentation and in the spirit of his good humour said, “I am very pleased to meet the man who made so many politicians in my country mad.”

  He smiled broadly and said, “I don’t know what the problem is. Your country and mine have been cooperating with science in the Arctic for many years. It is all about the science.”

  “Right,” I replied. “It’s all about the science. Say, when you were down there at four kilometres under the ice, did you happen to see the Canadian flag that was dropped through a hole in the ice at the North Pole by Fred Roots, one of our senior scientists, back in the 1970s?”

  “No,” said the Hero, with a slight rise in his eyebrows. “I have met Dr. Roots. He has done some very fine work.”

  “He has. It’s all about the science.”

  “Absolutely,” he said with a broad grin.

  For all the contacts and connections that happened as a result of the embassy luncheon, an equally important reason to make a special trip to Moscow was to present my project to the leadership of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East—RAIPON for short. I hoped they might endorse the project and link me to possible hosts across Siberia and the Russian Far East.

  Unlike Canada, whose North is populated by just two indigenous groups, the Dene in the west and the Inuit throughout the central and eastern Arctic, or Scandinavia, whose North is the traditional land of just one main cultural group, the Sami, the vast Russian North is populated by dozens of indigenous groups in a number of language groups. Although all of them were subdued and assimilated into Russian culture—as were Christians and people of other faith, language, and ethnic groups—in the Stalinist era, the tatters of these peoples gathered and regrouped as best they could after the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1990, in the waning days of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, with support from indigenous groups around the world, leaders from these disparate oppressed ethnic groups from across Russia created an umbrella organization to represent
indigenous interests in Russian affairs, particularly in the Russian parliament, or Duma.

  Elena and I caught a cab at the embassy and accelerated down toward the Moscow ring road. The drive immediately felt more like a race or a demolition derby. At Zubovsky Square, just west of a big oxbow of the Moscow River, we had to cross at least sixteen lanes of seething traffic, maybe more. Had there been marked lanes, or if people in this honking, pulsating automotive mass had behaved as if there were lanes, getting over the river and across to the RAIPON office might have been less like doing a few laps at the Daytona 500 or the Monaco Grand Prix and slightly more relaxing.

  But this was all in a day’s work for the driver, who chattered incessantly, glancing at the road occasionally. It was never clear if he was talking to Elena, who was beside him in the front seat, or to other drivers out the window. Either way, he was right at home while I was quite sure we were near death. Somehow, by the grace of Providence, we made it through the chicane that funnelled the sixteen lanes into a measly six lanes on the Krymsky Bridge and up into the narrow streets of the old Moscow neighbourhood we were looking for. Eventually we pulled up at 44/2 Bol’shaya Polyanka.

  This was a handsome old building made of what appeared to be hand-cut white stone. Architecturally, the place was Stalinist, with its arched windows and quoined corners, so distinct from the rough-poured concrete aesthetic of the drab Khrushchyovka boxes in the Moscow suburbs and beyond. But as well cared for as was the exterior, the interior showed the ravages of time and the want of maintenance rubles. The elevator was non-functional. The stairs were worn. And the corridor walls were long ago painted a smog-grimed pink, well chipped since then by passing people, furniture, and, by the look of the corners, perhaps the odd errant taxicab. The RAIPON office was of similarly tired Spartan decor, but it had its own kind of dignity, drawn from various photographs, paintings, and examples of hand-wrought aboriginal arts and crafts by members from sea to sea to sea.