We climbed aboard. Brawny, sun-bronzed, and about forty, Georgy untied the mooring ropes and switched on the engine. We lurched away from the dock and out onto the Lena.
The previous day we had arrived in the capital of the sprawling Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, whose 1.2 million square miles of taiga and tundra are home to fewer than a million people, about half of whom are Sakha, descendants from Turkic tribes from Central Asia. (Yakutsk itself has about 270,000 people.) This part of eastern Siberia was long called Yakutia, but after the Soviet Union ended, as nationalism rose, it renamed itself Sakha Republic. The Sakha now claim that the names Yakutia and Yakut were given to them by Russian colonizers, but Sakha is what they call themselves, their land, and their language. Most of the republic’s non-Sakha are ethnic Russians, in addition to small numbers of Evenks and Evens, people of Tungusic stock. During the Soviet decades, Russians involved in resource extraction made up a majority of the republic’s inhabitants and accounted for about 500,000 people, with the Sakha and other local peoples accounting for 300,000. Today indigenous folk far outnumber the Russians. And although the Kremlin has called for settlers to head out to Siberia and the Russian Far East, there is little evidence of new arrivals.
In mineral resources, Sakha is the richest administrative territory in Russia and ranks fourth globally in diamond production. Nevertheless, Yakutsk and its port were chaotic and shabby. The actual port building resembled an oversized, blue-and-white cement shoebox sitting atop matchbox pillars. A dock on the river served larger boats, but most craft had to make do with rickety piers and even gangplanks. This, in the wealthiest region of Russia. Where was all the money going?
The Lena, at 2,779 miles in length, is the third longest river in Russia and the eleventh in the world. It is the only major river flowing entirely through zones of permafrost; almost half of Sakha lies within the Arctic Circle. Unique among bodies of water, the Lena freezes from the bottom up. It originates as a narrow rocky stream in the mountains just west of Lake Baikal and courses northward to emerge into the Arctic Ocean’s Laptev Sea. At Yakutsk’s latitude, the Lena’s bed is some seven miles wide but strewn with a multitude of sandy islands overgrown with saw grass, so called for its serrated blades that can reach six or seven feet in height. Tributaries flow into the Lena from numerous tiny lakes—Yakuts say they are as many as stars in the sky—nestled away in the surrounding taiga.
Cossack explorers first reached this part of Siberia in the early 1600s. They took the name Lena from local appellations—Elyuene or Lenna, meaning “big river,” in the Manchu Tungus language. The Lena’s majestic expanses so impressed Vladimir Ulyanov, who did a stint of exile near its banks, that he adopted a version of it for his pseudonym, Lenin.
Georgy piloted his craft out onto the magnificent Lena, which resembles the region through which it flows—undeveloped and little exploited, despite its riches. We inhaled fresh air—there are no factories anywhere near. We watched the reedy islands slide by as we sailed south, against the current, our bow splitting the glassy turquoise panes of water spreading from shore to sandy shore.
Georgy, sounding bitter, commented on how strange Sakha and its chief river were.
“There are so many minerals out here. The Yakuts have a folk tale: when God was distributing riches around the world, he got so cold in Yakutia that he dropped all the minerals—a whole periodic table of elements of them. But they aren’t exploited as they should be.” He then pointed toward the banks and changed subjects. “Look at the grass on the islands. It only grows here and is so invasive that if you come back in five years, these islands will have been overtaken by the grass. Of course, in other places this growth would be managed. Here people leave the river alone.”
The Lena’s most famous natural wonder is the Lenskie Stolby (Lena Pillars), some 160 miles south of Yakutsk. There the river cuts through uplands, forming a channel of steep yellow-and-brown limestone and slate walls that, in places, reach more than a thousand feet in altitude. The pillars rival the Grand Canyon, although few outside Russia have heard of this Sakha marvel.
We would not make it that far, but Georgy often did.
“I make a lot of money taking people to the pillars,” he said. “For a group of eight I charge as much as a hundred thousand rubles a day [about $1,700]. All the Russian officials and diamond businessmen who come to Yakutsk want to visit them. The pillars, the beauty of the scenery, the vodka, the shashlyk (kebab)—they have a good time out here with me.”
We peacefully glided up the Lena, which now was growing astoundingly asymmetric: the eastern shore was flat, the western steep, high, and rocky. And the farther we got from Yakutsk the more stunning it was, erasing our memories of the messy port and docks.
Over the course of the next few hours, Georgy regaled us with his story, which was typical for this part of Russia—the difficulty of keeping a small business going and a desire to move out west, to the better lands with more opportunity. He had grown tired of Yakutsk and its ethnic tensions; he was thinking of moving to Novosibirsk or Krasnoyarsk and starting up a similar boat service on one of the rivers passing through them, the Ob or the Yenisei.
Part of the reason Georgy was thinking of leaving had to do with what happened to the port following the Soviet collapse of 1991. Here, as along so many river towns across Russia, in the Yeltsin era the government privatized the port, dividing it up between a number of owners. Owners tried to squeeze out as much profit as they could from their sections, bribing local authorities as necessary and creating, as a result, a generalized chaos that suited no one. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Russian railroads languished in similar disarray, owned by multiple proprietors. When Putin became president, he made it his priority to put crucial pieces of Russia’s infrastructure under full Kremlin control. And although he managed to reorganize the railroads, the exploitation of natural resources, and even the postal service, which he restructured, the waterways are still waiting their turn.
“Imagine,” Georgy complained, “despite its size, the Lena has no bridge across it. A bridge was in the works, but with the Crimea annexation the state shifted funding to Crimea, to the bridge that is being constructed there” across the Kerch Strait.
We nodded sympathetically—this Crimea diversion, we had seen, had happened in many other places across Russia. Reporting on the news of its opening in May 2018, one Italian newspaper quipped that Putin “built his career on bridges”5—in Ulyanovsk, Vladivostok, and elsewhere. It is also worth noting that the Crimea bridge construction dream dates back to the last czar. Stalin also made an attempt to build it in 1945, but it was quickly destroyed by ice. Putin then succeeded where the previous greats had failed, which must be a tremendous point of pride for the current Kremlin leader.
Answering our question about his own future, Georgy insisted that all ethnic Russians, like he is, would leave Yakutsk soon enough—a lack of opportunity and rising ethnic chauvinism were to blame. His sister had already moved to Krasnoyarsk—“a nice town, less to compete with than in Novosibirsk. They need entrepreneurs more there, so I am getting ready.”
Judging by his almond-shaped eyes, Georgy probably had Yakut blood, even though he spoke passionately of his Russianness, with a whiff of disdain toward the indigenes.
“The Yakuts don’t even know how old they are,” Georgy said. A giant banner on top of the port building announced Yakutsk’s 380th anniversary. Yet on Lenin Square it is listed as 385, and 384 elsewhere.
Nevertheless, Yakutsk is indeed old. Once a settlement in the taiga, it existed long before the Cossacks, led by the Ataman (chieftain) Pyotr Beketov, who reached it in 1632. The Sakha had fled north from the rampaging armies of Genghis Khan and finally settled here, where the freezing winters and summer swarms of mosquitos and midges would dissuade intruders. The Sakha herded reindeer and cattle, hunted, fished, and even bred horses—diminutive, robust ungulates capable of surviving on limited fodder during fierce winters. The coldest winters on earth—temperatures
at times hit −94 Fahrenheit—preclude much in the way of agriculture. Not surprisingly, in recent decades scientists have found more remains of woolly mammoths—three entire specimens—in the republic than anywhere else. Proud of these discoveries, Yakutsk hosts a mammoth museum—the only one in the world—though its unique exhibits, as we would see, could use better upkeep.
The indigenous peoples lived in harmony with nature, unforgiving as it was, whereas colonizers brought their own habits and rules. In the seventeenth century, the newly arrived Russians were brutal in establishing themselves here, killing Sakha by the thousands, according to numerous sources, when the natives rebelled against taxation or relocation.6 The Russians trapped for furs but also prospected for gold and diamonds, resources not previously exploited in the region. Unfortunately, they also introduced alcohol. As is the case with Native Americans, the indigenes lacked the enzyme that metabolizes alcohol efficiently, which left them prey to alcoholism. Alcoholism is a plague now as it was then, with a frightening death toll, more than three times higher than in the rest of the country.7 During the week, we noticed an unusually high number of intoxicated young Sakha begging for money on the streets but saw few Russians out and about. Russians joked to us that they work while the Sakha drink. On weekends, though, the ethnicities mix and tipple together. The climate here, at least in winter, surely drives many to drink.
Walking around Yakutsk, we couldn’t shake the feeling that even after almost four hundred years since the Cossack arrival, the Russian world is still colliding with the indigenous one. It was hard to call Yakutsk Russian at all. Russian towns, as a rule, have a certain logic—there is a Lenin Square, a Lenin Street, and central avenues and streets, usually well maintained, radiate from there before falling into disarray further afield. Here, from Lenin Square—the only one in good shape—radiate streets as dusty and rough as gravel roads.
Just stepping off Lenin Avenue to a side street, we encountered a huge pile of dung—from the times of the woolly mammoth, perhaps. It was a few yards before we got to the Treasury of Sakha, an ultramodern structure of slate-gray glass and steel. Inside we would gaze upon the pride of the republic, the national treasures of Sakha: gold, precious stones, diamonds, and figurines carved from bone depicting hunters, animals, and scenes from traditional family life. Wouldn’t someone think to clean the street in front of the building housing such a stunning collection? To be fair, though, even if Yakutsk were to spend a fortune paving and maintaining its roadways, it might not do much to make the city more livable. During the all-too-brief summer, temperatures reach 104 Fahrenheit, and, we discovered, midges and gnats swirled around our faces all day long and even after sunset. No surprise, really, given that the terrain surrounding Yakutsk is bog. Locals say, “Repellant doesn’t help, but a paste of reindeer fat and gasoline does.” But who wants to walk around town smelling like a car!
The Siberian chain of cafés, Traveler’s Coffee, often provided us with some consolation, though we spent thirty minutes waiting for a cappuccino. We took greater pleasure in the flower market covering the giant Ordzhonikidze Square. Even stands selling simple petunias drew scores of buyers—Russians, Yakuts, Evens, and others—from all walks of life. In Sakha, where it is cold nine months a year, petunias must seem as fancy as orchids. One Sakha woman confirmed that any flowers are better than none: “With this climate we have here—the pole of cold—we do like flowers.”
Yet just a couple of blocks from Lenin Square, in the wooden quarter of town called the Old City, we came upon tall, yellow-orange-scarlet-pink Siberian lilies (the Lilium dauricum, scientifically speaking) peeping through patches of overgrown grass. Elsewhere such flowers would be considered precious and rare, but here they grow unattended, unnoticed. The Old City itself seemed more rundown than antique—a few dilapidated Russian huts, a handful of “traditional” restaurants, and incongruously standing amid them, the boutique Mascotte; a beauty salon called, puzzlingly, Lime.Fink; and the log-cabin Museum House of Maksim Ammosov, one of the founders of the Yakut Soviet Autonomous Republic and one of its first leaders. Nearby stood the nineteenth-century Cathedral of the Transfiguration. In front of it lay another pile of dung. No one was rushing to clean it up.
We did find a stately and well-kept street in Yakutsk—Dzerzhinsky Street, named in honor of Felix Dzerzhinsky. Iron Felix, as he was known for short, was the founder and first leader of the dreaded Soviet Cheka, or secret police, a precursor to the KGB and other Soviet security organs. Putin’s own KGB past may have contributed to Dzerzhinsky’s standing in Yakutsk. Still, if the notorious Dzerzhinsky is no longer considered the villain he was before Putin, few cities rush to memorialize him with statues and street names. In Yakutsk, Dzerzhinsky’s bust rests in a little birch park on Dzerzhinsky Street next to the imposing, sleek, cream-and-chocolate Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Sakha Republic, which looks more like a five-star hotel than a Sakha version of the FBI. Next to it stands the less pompous but still impressively sleek police headquarters. Such is the current Russian trend—public infrastructure for simple citizens might be deteriorating, yet the karatelnye organy (punitive organs) are doing just fine.
This is no accident: the city has even tried to rehabilitate Stalin, in a way. Plans were made to install a Stalin bust in the Veterans Park further down the street, but Yury Zabolev, then mayor of Yakutsk, supported by the journalist and media entrepreneur Leonid Levin, pushed to sway public opinion against the idea. Surprisingly, they won out. Off the dusty Chernyshevsky Street, though, in a private yard belonging to the Diamonds of Anabara company, a Stalin bust was nevertheless erected. Beneath his stern gaze, veterans, pensioners, and communists now gather to remember the Soviet’s grandeur during his decades in power.
We wondered, why would the Sakha still esteem Dzerzhinsky and Stalin? After all, their republic for centuries suffered under the Russian yoke. Only since 1991, with the emergence of a movement for self-determination, have they begun to reevaluate their history. In fact, Sakha was originally determined to achieve independence. Its first post-Soviet leader, Mikhail Nikolaev, negotiated with Yeltsin and won the right to be called president and quasiindependence from Moscow. Not that Yeltsin meant it, really—two Chechen separatist wars followed his declaration. The Sakha would not revolt against Moscow, though. Eventually, the independence movement waned. The Kremlin no doubt rejoiced, since the republic paid so much in taxes to the federal government. Yet the movement had a salutary effect on Sakha’s finances: revenues from at least some of its resources—fur, gold, diamonds, copper, and other precious and semiprecious metals—would go to the development of the republic. In previous years, only limited funds went to local projects, leaving the Sakha to mostly drink and waste away in poverty.
Enjoying, for the first time, revenues from their minerals, the Sakha have turned away from the phony internationalism that was such a strong part of Soviet communism and begun to reevaluate their own heritage. Glorifying Dzerzhinsky and Stalin, we thought, should have had nothing to do with that. So what was going on?
To seek answers, we arranged to meet Leonid Levin, one of the opponents of the Stalin bust, and editor and publisher of the Vecherny Yakutsk (Evening Yakutsk) newspaper, in his office, a wooden two-story bungalow on the outskirts of town. (It happened to stand adjacent to the London Hotel, another bungalow whose only connection to the British capital was a painting of Big Ben on the front wall.) Upbeat and charismatic, Levin, to our surprise, blamed the local government for the glorification of Stalin, but he absolved Putin.
“Putin is not a Stalinist,” said Levin. “He just uses elements of Stalinism as tools to unify the country.”
Isn’t it the same thing, we wondered? In Russia, there is almost always a desire to justify the central state even among those who suffer from it. We were surprised to hear such words from one who militated against glorifying Stalin.
Our talk turned to other topics. After 1991, Levin told us, when the Republic began receiving revenues from its dia
mond mines, the leadership chose to spend them on transforming the city into a megalopolis, at least as the Sakha understood it, rather than on health care and education. Yet they did designate some funds for the cultural sphere. The resulting ethnic revival helped quell separatist aspirations, with the Sakha finding themselves free to be Sakha in their own land. A more practical question did arise: namely, just what purpose independence would serve. Yes, Sakha’s resources would make it the richest country, at least per capita, on earth, but most businesses, particularly those in the diamond sector, are run and owned by Russians. Ethnic divisions do remain: the Sakha tend to hire Sakha; Russians prefer to deal with Russians.
“A balance between ethnicities has not been found on the republic’s level,” Levin said.
He was right. Time and again, we heard from Yakutsk Russians, who had little positive to say about their city, “We’ll all leave, and those Yakuts can stay and do what they want.” On the flight from Blagoveshchensk, a young Russian woman sitting next to us kept repeating, “I can’t wait to move to Blagoveshchensk, from this godforsaken Yakutsk—hot, cold, dirty, with mosquitos and nothing to do.”
Yet these Russians vastly underrated their Sakha conationals. We saw evidence of this in Vecherny Yakutsk, where Russian and Sakha journalists worked side by side, and a young Sakha photographer whose name, Saidam (“talented, savvy” in translation), described him well: he really impressed us with his knowledge of cities via 2GIS, a Russian search engine company (developed in Novosibirsk). He was also an expert on New York jazz clubs, though he had never traveled abroad. So removed from the world, the Sakha were as ambitious as anyone. Perhaps, in fact, their remoteness gave them special incentive to nurture their ambitions.
In Putin's Footsteps Page 21