TIME EUROPE
FEBRUARY 7, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 5
Surviving on the Edge
Abundant natural resources provide only cold comfort in Russia's Far East
By ANDREW MEIER Vladivostok
"Out here, the warm joy of independence is something we only feel in the cold woods," says Zhenya Voropaev, a former submarine officer, a trapper since childhood and a lifer on Russia's far eastern edge. Far away in relatively temperate Moscow, Russians marvel at how such hardy souls as Voropaev--some 2.2 million of them--are surviving the coldest winter in decades in the Primorye, or Maritime, region. The answer: with daily electricity failures, frequent nights without heat and a return to the local tradition of self-preservation.
In 1992, when Vladivostok lifted its veil of military secrecy and opened to the world, the locals surveyed their bountiful inheritance--a huge merchant fleet and a cornucopia of timber, fish and furs--and dreamed of becoming "a Russian Hong Kong." They envisioned a free economic zone blooming as freighters filled the ports, forming a bridge to the Asian markets only a few hundred kilometers away in Japan, Korea and China. Some still believe the dream, insisting that Primorye--no longer a pliant appendage of Moscow--will unite with the Pacific Rim and arise from its Soviet hangover in a hearty economic rebound.
But these days, locals are more likely to speak of another future. "We're trapped in a press," says a former border guard, as he drives an old Toyota pick-up past the Hotel Hyundai, a graceless concrete slab that towers over the city center. "Between the masses of China and the wealth of Japan, our days are numbered. The only question is to whom we surrender."
Many fear a Primorye ravaged by Asia--the last Russian frontier soon to be despoiled by Chinese traders, Korean loggers, Japanese fishermen and Vietnamese laborers. Since the Soviet collapse the nearby border with China has become porous. In Ussuriisk, alongside the tracks of the Trans-Siberian railway, a Chinese bazaar of shipping containers has swelled into a veritable village. In stall after stall, clothes emblazoned with imaginary Western labels ("DKZY") touting fictitious origins ("Santa Acapulco") pander to Russian tastes. But the return of Primorye's Asian neighbors is but a handy excuse to revive an indigenous xenophobia. Locals fondly quote the czarist-era Governor General Pavel Unterberger, who declared a jingoist preference for "a Russian desert over a Korean-made paradise."
For the politically astute, however, the favored target is Moscow, not Seoul. The Kremlin, they say, has failed to tame their governor, Yevgeny Nazdratenko, one of Russia's most muscular satraps. Freshly re-elected in December, Nazdratenko rules the region as a private duchy. Moscow, they say, only takes and gives nothing. Primorye, however, lies seven time zones and as many worlds away from the capital. Even Siberia, the map-makers claim, ends to the west of Vladivostok. But today the region's isolation is no longer merely a matter of geography. Chinese, Korean and Japanese broadcasts crowd the airwaves, while nearly every car is a used Japanese import. Only the obituaries in the local papers--the growing list of hometown boys killed in Chechnya--and the daily vigil on the ruble's plight betray Primorye's ties to the Russia that extends to the west.
The toxic legacy of the past abounds, however. The Golden Horn, Vladivostok's famed bay, no longer freezes--thanks to Soviet chemical effluents. Military officers and their families, some 400,000 in all, remain stranded by the decline of military prestige and failure to pay salaries. They bridle at the word konversiya--denoting the painful process, lavishly funded by U.S. taxpayers and by financier George Soros, of trying to beat the Soviet military-industrial complex into plowshares. The end of the empire has been particularly hard on sailors. The once-mighty Pacific Fleet sits rusting and its arms depots are looted while admirals and generals build commodious dachas.
Separatist talk may still carry currency in other corners of Russia's fractious federation, but the stalwart inhabitants of Primorye tend toward self-reliance over secession. Once a sanctuary for czarist explorers and scofflaws, then a refuge of White partisans and Old Believer sectarians, Primorye's taiga--the swaths of forest not yet clear-cut--is now a preserve for 21st century hunter-gatherers. Those who inhabit its remote stretches have become, by default, survivalists.
Take, for instance, the listless souls left in the one-street village of Vesyoly--"Cheery" in English. One recent morning, workers came to cut off, literally, the electricity from the hamlet's ramshackle two-room homes. "It's true we haven't paid them," Valentina said, as she and her trio of sallow-cheeked children stood outside in the numbing cold, all in slippers and in shock, watching the workmen clip the wires. "But what do we have to pay them with?"
Those who live on Russia's far eastern edge--despite the burden of their local despot and Moscow's malignant neglect--shy away from complaining. In part, they are too busy surviving. But they also know all too well the irony of their predicament: Primorye may be a land apart, but only after it is robbed of its riches will it become theirs to inherit.
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