Providence Bay. Chukotka, photo, nature, history, description of Providence Bay in Chukotka. Providence Bay is an example of how Russia is losing Chukotka. photo Providence Bay during WWII
Provideniya Bay (Chukchi Autonomous Okrug, Russia) - detailed description, location, reviews, photos and videos.
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One of the most beautiful places in Chukotka with one of the best local history museums in the region is perhaps a worthy reason to visit Providence Bay during your romantic journey through the harsh but beautiful peninsula. And the name of the bay matches it, beckons with ancient secrets and riddles. It was here that they settled for the winter, fearing raging storms and ships, and received reliable protection, shelter and shelter.
How to get there
In Provideniya Bay there is a very small, but international airport, located near the village of Ureliki, which is on the southern (that is, opposite from the village) coast. The airport receives regular flights from Anadyr of the Chukotavia airline, as well as charters from the American Nome (Alaska). You can get to the center of Provideniya Bay by bus, which also runs around the village.
If you believe the legend, the intricately indented bay in the Anadyr Bay of the Bering Sea was discovered in 1660 during a scientific expedition to Cape Chukotka. However, the name of this picturesque place appeared almost two centuries later.
History paragraph
If you believe the legend, the intricately indented bay in the Anadyr Bay of the Bering Sea was discovered in 1660 during the scientific expedition of Kurbat Ivanov to Cape Chukotka. However, the name of this picturesque place appeared almost two centuries later, when in 1848-1849. The English ship Plover, under the command of Captain Thomas Moore, had to anchor here and wait out the harsh local winter.
The ship set sail from Plymouth, England in January 1848, and cruised the Bering Sea in search of Franklin's lost expedition.
The bay became their salvation, because stormy winds and bad weather crept up quickly and unexpectedly, and only by providence itself this quiet and cozy harbor was sent to them literally in a matter of days from death. The name, understandably, was supported by the entire team - Providence Bay acquired its new name.
And from that very moment on, whalers and merchants periodically stopped here for the winter, for meetings or short-term rest throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Alas, not everyone treated the local population, let’s say, carefully. In 1875, the Russian clipper Gaydamak, under the command of Sergei Tyrtov, deliberately dropped anchor in the bay in order to secure a state monopoly on coastal trade. He distributed leaflets among the local Chukchi addressed to foreign merchants, after which he headed north to the Gulf of Lawrence, where he found the Timandra merchant ship from the United States, which was engaged in exchanging walrus ivory for alcohol from the local population.
The village of the same name in the bay appeared much later; only in 1937 was the decision made to build a port. Just three years later, the reliable harbor was already open and ready to receive cargo at the wall of the first berth.
During its heyday, when the port did not stop working literally for a minute, and the water surface opposite the village was full of huge dry cargo ships, more than 7 thousand people lived in Providence Bay. Today there are not even half of them.
Geography and climate
The width of Provideniya Bay reaches an impressive 8 km at the beginning, tapering towards its base, but the length measured along the center line is over 34 km. The maximum depth is about 150 m, but at the entrance to the bay it does not exceed 35 m, so from May to October the water is completely or partially free of ice.
Inside the bay there are several other small bays and harbors, but the village and the airport are located in Komsomolskaya Bay. The steep banks of Provideniya are beautiful cliffs and hills about 600-800 m high.
What to see
The main advantage of the village of Provideniya Bay (not counting the fantastic nature around) is the Museum of Local Lore, where you can learn almost everything about the life of the local population - the Chukchi, Evenki, Eskimos. It is small, but its collection is unique, as are the people who work within its walls. It would hardly be possible to hear more interesting stories about this harsh region than within the walls of the “providential” museum.
Pay attention to the cost of souvenirs - it is often indicated in dollars, which is not at all surprising: American cruise ships from Alaska often come here.
To the North, to the future!
Official motto of Alaska
Down with the corrupting influence of the West!
The ideal slogan for Chukotka
The master of European postmodern philosophy, Jacques Derrida, has a small but quite revealing work entitled “The Other Cape. Delayed Democracy,” at the beginning of which he suggests:
Old Europe seems to have exhausted all its possibilities, to have produced all possible discourses about its own identification.
This exhaustion looks very convincing, since then Derrida himself, instead of any intelligible description of this “other cape,” habitually delves into such a characteristic french theory verbal scholasticism. Where, according to the precise remark of one of Victor Pelevin’s heroes, “it is impossible to change the meaning of a sentence by any operations.”
This is a natural historical dead end of Eurocentric thinking, painfully immersed in itself - no matter how much it creates the image of “globally open”. Although the discovery that the Earth is round did not seem to affect him. This thinking still remains in a flat, two-dimensional coordinate system; to this day, “East” and “West” seem to him to be some kind of opposite vectors diverging from Europe itself and measured by distance from it - “near” or “far” - although they themselves residents do not define themselves that way and have a completely different picture of the world. And for “enlightened” Europeans it is difficult to imagine a natural coincidence of “East” and “West” somewhere on the other side of the globe. It is no coincidence that it was in European mythology that the characteristic definition of “the end of the world” arose, which migrated to postmodern philosophy in the image of some exotic “Other”.
In today's Russia, this Eurocentric thinking is also very widespread - giving rise to a humble recognition of its secondary nature and provincialism. Although it is Russia that is closely adjacent to this most mysterious region of the “end of the world”, and even includes this “other cape” in its own territory, from which all this “East-West” confrontation of the modern era looks like an absurd fantasy.
Political scientist Vladimir Videman demonstrates how easy it is to realize this obviousness:
The belief that Russia is “entirely” adjacent to Europe is largely due to a purely optical illusion generated by the usual perspective of the Eurocentric world map, where the American continent is located on the left. If we move it to the right (as is done, for example, on Japanese geographical maps), we will immediately be convinced that Russia is “kissing” America in the east, and the length of the Russian-American maritime border is no less than the land border between Russia and the European bloc. Moreover, looking at the globe “from above”, we will find that the Arctic Ocean is, in fact, a large internal Russian-American sea.
Cape Chukotka, from which you can see Alaska, has a very symbolic name - Providence. Figures of the modern era tried not to notice this “shocking” rapprochement of the Far East and Far West - it completely destroyed their dualistic model of the world. Including even the border between day and night - in this region, day and night are polar and do not obey the “normal” circadian rhythm. That’s why they simply took this region out of the brackets of history, declaring it a “world reserve” for the most distant future and citing the complete unsuitability of these frozen lands for life.
However, according to many historians who did not recognize this unspoken “taboo”, it was this region that was globally leading approximately 30-40 thousand years ago, before the “great glaciation”. Then, on the site of the present Bering Strait, there was a land isthmus, along which the “first Americans” came to their “promised land.” The unique archaeological coincidences of ancient Siberian and ancient American cultures fully confirm this version. Similar motifs in mythology, clothing, housing shapes, etc. are striking. peoples of Siberia and North America.
Reverse migrations of peoples probably also took place. For example, Lev Gumilyov expressed the opinion that in the 3rd-2nd millennia BC, Indians crossed the Bering Strait and, ending up in Siberia, reached the Urals. Even the etymology of such a “Eurasian” title as “Khakan” (“Kagan”, “Khan”, “Van”), which the princes of Ancient Rus' also called themselves, he traces back to the Dakota word waqan, which had the same meaning - military leader and high priest.
Paleontologists “dig” even deeper - for example, A.V. Sher in his monograph “Mammals and Pleistocene Stratigraphy of the Far Northeast of the USSR and North America” (1971) shows that over the last three and a half million years of the life of our planet, a land “bridge” between the Eurasian and American continents arose five, six, and maybe more times! Some modern researchers even propose a name for this “virtual” land - Beringia. However, if we are to develop the mythological version in its entirety, then why not assume that this mysterious isthmus could have been part of the original northern continent - Hyperboreans?
Geographer Alexey Postnikov states:
In Beringia, contact between the old and new worlds was constant, although, of course, the vast majority of tribes and peoples inhabiting the western and eastern hemispheres suspected nothing of this.
However, these “suspicions” themselves - about the existence of an “old” and a “new” world, a “Western and Eastern hemisphere” - from a northern point of view look like absolute conventions. This holistic thinking was most clearly manifested precisely among the aborigines of this land, who, when asked by “civilized” newcomers what kind of people they were, simply called themselves people. On the contrary, European cartographers who thought in separate hemispheres seemed strange to them...
Every story comes from myth. Rational scientific tools turn out to be completely inapplicable to the analysis, for example, of the relationships between heroes and gods, with which all ancient manuscripts are full. In addition, modern (modernist) historiography, as a rule, adheres to a flat, linear concept of history, completely ignoring the traditional, cyclical one. Namely, according to cyclical logic, the most daring projects of the future turn out to be a direct reflection of the deepest antiquity.
* * *
For us, the greatest interest is in the region where the “Far East” and “Far West” merge together, erasing this conventional border. Alexander Herzen, immensely surprising his Eurocentric contemporaries, back in the 19th century predicted the inevitable rapprochement of Russian and American civilizations in this very region, from where, as he believed, the construction of the “future world” would begin. And today it is indeed becoming quite real - when the last “great glaciation” is replaced by an equally great “global warming”, which, according to climatologists, will bring the weather of these latitudes closer to the average European one. Moreover, this will happen earlier than many people think - already in the coming century.
Lately there has been a lot of talk about a different kind of “warming” - the establishment of friendly relations between Russia and America after decades of the “Iron Curtain”. However, from the point of view of a broad historical perspective, it is hardly appropriate to call this friendship a “thaw” - this very word gives the impression of some kind of accident in the middle of the “winter”, which is considered the norm. Whereas, on the contrary, this “curtain” itself of the second half of the twentieth century was an unfortunate historical misunderstanding (“summer frost”) in Russian-American relations. Throughout the entire previous history of their relations, Russia and the United States not only never fought with each other, but were constant allies - even despite the profound differences between their regimes. And one cannot help but see in this, if you like, the “hands of Providence.”
Thus, during the American War of Independence, Catherine II openly supported the American “separatists” in their fight against the English metropolis - which caused incredible surprise among European monarchs. When these European monarchies fought the Crimean War of 1853-56 with Russia, many Americans, in turn, asked the Russian embassy in Washington to send them there as volunteers. And perhaps the outcome of this not very successful war for Russia would have been different... But just a few years later, during the American Civil War, Russia itself sent two large squadrons to American shores as a sign of support for the government of Abraham Lincoln. These squadrons, anchored off the western and eastern coasts of America, played a significant role in preventing possible intervention by European powers that sympathized with the slaveholding South. And Russia, which had just abolished serfdom itself, sided with the free northerners.
Exploring the differences between Europe and America, Georgy Florovsky was surprised:
The face of the Far West—America—is mysterious. In everyday life, this is a repetition and exaggeration of “Europe”, a hypertrophy of pan-European bourgeois democratism. And it is all the more unexpected to encounter under this crust a definitely heterogeneous cultural tradition leading from the first immigrants through Benjamin Franklin and Emerson to the self-made-man Jack London, a tradition of radical denial of philistinism and the path of life and the affirmation of individual freedom.
He expressed this idea in his work “On Non-Historical Peoples.” Publishing it in the first Eurasian collection of 1921, “Exodus to the East,” he, as we see, thought about the “East” much further than many of his colleagues... But modern “neo-Eurasianists” do not follow this distance. In their Eurocentric, modernist-dualistic thinking, they are practically no different from their favorite enemies - the “Atlantists”. Except that those with “individual freedom” have a little better...
The direct rapprochement of East and West “on the other side of Europe” has long given rise to extremely interesting interaction between Russian and American utopian projects. Many Russian revolutionaries left for America, including the hero of Chernyshevsky’s novel “What is to be done?”, the “special person” Rakhmetov. “New Russia”, which Vera Pavlovna sees in her famous dreams, judging by the detailed geographical description, was located somewhere in the Kansas region - which is mentioned in the novel and “in reality”.
According to historian Maya Novinskaya,
in the first half of the 20th century. (mainly in 1900-1930) Russian utopian communal ideas, in particular those of Tolstoy and Kropotkin, were played out on American soil; Moreover, we are talking not only about marginal communities of emigrants from Russia, but also about purely American utopian practice.
It is noteworthy that after 1917 this “interaction of utopias” not only did not stop, but acquired a new scale:
The first Bolsheviks treated America with great respect: it served for them as a real beacon of advanced industrial and even partly social experience. They dreamed of introducing the Taylor system in Russia, introduced American educational concepts, admired American efficiency and sent many people to study in America. In Soviet Russia of the 20s and early 30s, an almost American cult of technology and industry was implanted, and when it came to industrialization, Soviet heavy industry was simply copied from the American one, and thousands of American engineers built it. In those years, going to America and then publishing their impressions about it was a matter of honor for every major Soviet writer: Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Boris Pilnyak, Ilf and Petrov created a relatively sympathetic image of America in their books. Criticizing, as was customary, American capitalism, they did not hide their admiration for the technical genius of the American people, the power of American industry, and the breadth of American business scope. Nothing like this was written then about close Europe: on the contrary, Europe was perceived as an obvious enemy and future aggressor - it was precisely to prepare for war with it that American engineers built Soviet tractor, automobile and chemical plants. (1)
And even when the “Iron Curtain” arose between Russia and America after World War II, it fell over Europe. And the natives of Chukotka and Alaska continued to ride sleds to visit each other across the ice of the Bering Strait, surrounded by shamanic “invisibility” for the border guards of the two opposing empires...
* * *
In the fog of the narrow strait between Cape Providence in Chukotka and Resurrection in Alaska, space and time change. It is there that the illusory border between “East” and “West” disappears. This is where the “date line” passes. This is not just a sequential change of time zones in latitude - the time on both sides of this imaginary line remains the same, but the whole day changes at once. When a direct connection arises between these points, the utopia of a time machine is actually embodied.
On European maps since the 16th century, i.e. long before Bering, this strait bore the mysterious name “Anian”. Soviet geographer A. Aleiner put forward an interesting, but quite logical hypothesis about where this word comes from:
The Russian signature “more-akian”, which goes back to the Latin “mare-oceanus”, could be read by some foreigners as “more anian”, since the stylized Russian letter “k” in this name can easily be mistaken for “n”.
There is nothing surprising in such borrowing, since Russian “drawings” of those places unknown to Europeans (for example, Dmitry Gerasimov) date back to 1525! Another confirmation that Russian geographical horizons were then immeasurably superior to European ones is the fact that the legendary James Cook, who went to the Aleutian Islands in 1778 and believed that he had “discovered” them, unexpectedly discovered a Russian trading post there and was forced to adjust its residents have their own cards. As a token of gratitude, he presented the commander of the trading post, Izmailov, with his sword. Although it would probably have been more useful to him himself - the next year he died in Hawaii, trying to “civilize” the local aborigines. Although there had been a Russian trading post there for a long time, none of its inhabitants were eaten...
In this mysterious, magnetic region, the entire convention of the Eurocentric picture of the world is revealed. It was here that the most passionate, active and free individuals sought from different sides in search of their own utopia. In America, which itself was initially a utopian country, the most advanced, in every sense of the word, utopians were the pioneers of the “Wild West”, who no longer had enough freedom in the overly regulated Atlantic states. And around the same time, a massive movement of Russian explorers and sailors to the East began, “meeting the Sun.” This movement also consisted mainly of those forces that sought to escape from excessive state tutelage - free Cossacks and Pomors, who had never known either the yoke or serfdom. Such legendary personalities as Khabarov, Dezhnev, Poyarkov are representatives of this particular wave. The first ruler of Alaska, Alexander Baranov, was from Pomeranian Kargopol. Later, Old Believers naturally joined this wave, leaving the “fallen Third Rome” to look for the magical Belovodye and the saving city of Kitezh.
But the very first to cross the “end of the world” were the Novgorodians - bearers of the great Northern Russian tradition, brutally suppressed by the Tatar-Moscow yoke. The historian of Russian emigration in America Ivan Okuntsov writes about it this way:
There are some hints that the first Russian emigrants were some enterprising residents of Veliky Novgorod, who arrived in America 70 years later than Columbus. Residents of Veliky Novgorod visited Western Europe, the Scandinavian Peninsula and the Urals. Their resettlement to America occurred after Tsar Ivan the Terrible defeated Novgorod in 1570. The energetic and enterprising part of the Novgorodians, instead of putting their heads under the axes of Moscow, moved on a distant and unknown path - to the East. They ended up in Siberia, stopped near some large river (Irtysh?), built several ships there and descended along this river to the ocean. Then, for four years, the Novgorodians moved east along the northern coast of Siberia and swam to some “boundless river” (the Bering Strait). They decided that this river flowed in Eastern Siberia, and, having crossed it, they found themselves in Alaska... The Novgorodians quickly mixed with the native Indian tribes, and their traces were lost in the centuries of history. Recently, these traces were found in the Russian-church archives of Alaska, which ended up in the Library of Congress in Washington. From these archives it is clear that some Russian church parish reported to its bishop from America about the construction of a chapel and called its place not America, but “Eastern Russia”. Obviously, the Russian settlers thought that they had established themselves on the eastern coast of Siberia... In those early years, the Russians began to feel cramped living under the tsar’s heel, and they rushed to seek happiness in the other hemisphere. Columbus discovered America from the east, and the Novgorodians approached it from the northwest.
This sensational version is confirmed not only by church archives, but also by academic research. Thus, the American historian Theodore Farrelly in 1944 published a work about the specifically Novgorodian buildings he discovered more than 300 years ago on the shores of the Yukon! (2)
The pioneering activity of the Novgorodians, known for many centuries, Ushkuinikov(who were considered “robbers” in the Horde and Moscow (3)) makes us consider this transcontinental transition quite probable. Thus, several centuries before the famous campaign of Ermak, who then “bowed” Siberia to the Moscow Tsar, the Novgorod Chronicle of 1114 mentions the march of the Ushkuiniki “beyond the Stone (4), to the land of Yugra.” That is, they had already reached Northern Siberia! At the same time, the Novgorodians, although they separated themselves from the Muscovites, always used Russian toponymy (and the word “Russian” itself) in their discoveries. This explains the unheard-of surprise of later “discoverers” from Moscow and St. Petersburg, when local residents of distant lands reported that their settlement was called Russian Ustye (in Indigirka) or Russian Mission (in Alaska)...
St. Petersburg writer Dmitry Andreev, working in the genre of “alternative history,” reconstructs the chronology of this great Novgorod campaign:
At the end of the 15th century, the Novgorod Kochis reached Alaska along the Northern Sea Route and founded several trading posts there. In the 70s of the 16th century, after the defeat of Novgorod by Ivan the Terrible, several thousand Novgorodians sailed to the East and settled in the south of Alaska. Communication with the outside world is interrupted for a century and a half. The rediscovery of Alaska occurs in the early 18th century by Bering.
And he paints an equally great future for Independent Alaska. So, at the beginning of the 19th century there should have been:
Population - 500-600 thousand people, religion - Orthodoxy (pre-Nikon), Indians and Aleuts are mutually assimilated with the descendants of Russians. The political structure is a developed parliamentary democracy with periods of military dictatorship (during the war years). Alaska participated in the Crimean War on the side of Russia, starting in the 70s of the 18th century - gold mining, industrial growth, rapid immigration. By the beginning of the 20th century, the population was 5-6 million. Borders: r. Mackenzie, then the coast to 50 degrees north. latitudes, Hawaii (admitted to the republic on a federal basis in 1892), Midway, an enclave in California... Alaska, on the side of the Entente, took part in the First World War (patrolling the Pacific Ocean, sending an expeditionary force to the Eastern Front), then helped the whites armies during the Civil War. In 1921-1931 received more than 500 thousand Russian emigrants, bought out the Russian Fleet interned in Bizerte... The air group consisted partly of fighters purchased in Japan, partly of torpedo bombers from the Sikorsky-Sitha company. Friendship with Japan prevented Alaska from participating in World War II in the Pacific, but since June 1940, Alaska has been at war with Germany, Italy and Portugal (due to the death of many of its citizens in France and on sunken ships) ... A nuclear power since 1982, launches satellites from spaceport in Hawaii since 1987. The population in 2000 was 25 million people. GNP – $300 billion.
For some reason, Moscow historians especially like to “refute” the “Novgorod version” of the development of Alaska, not to mention the projects for its possible future. This reflects both a lack of historical imagination and a long-standing centralist hostility towards “too free” discoverers of new lands. Although, even if we assume that it was not the Novgorodians who landed first in Alaska, but, as the official version says, only two centuries later the members of the Bering-Chirikov expedition, then Moscow still has nothing to do with them, since this expedition was formed in St. Petersburg by personal decree of Peter I. Moscow has always remained (and remains) a typical city of the Old World, which is interested in geographical discoveries not in themselves, and certainly not in the perspective of new historical creativity, but only purely utilitarianly - in terms of joining “under the royal hand” » another disenfranchised colony. Unfortunately, the St. Petersburg Empire in relation to Russian America largely continued this Horde-Moscow tradition.
Russian America itself in those years was a kind of analogue of the “Wild West”, or – avoiding this geographical convention – we can call it “Wild Utopia”. Russian pioneers and settlers, of course, were not angels, however, unlike the British and Spaniards, they never set out to displace and exterminate the natives. The Aleuts, Eskimos, Tlingits and other inhabitants of this “end of the world” appreciated this, although they had absolutely no idea of the concept of “citizenship.” Looking ahead somewhat, it is appropriate to recall the claim of one Indian leader, expressed by him during the sale of Alaska in 1867: “We gave the Russians the opportunity to live on our land, but not the right to sell it to someone.” This is truly a different world, beyond the European standards of “colonial property.”
Russian America increasingly resembled the original, multicultural Rus'. Pomors and Cossacks willingly married Indians, Aleuts, and Hawaiians, and as a result, a completely new people arose with a special mentality. Unlike South America, where colonization was accompanied by the rigid imposition of Spanish and Portuguese canons of religion, language and behavior, here in the North real transculturation took place. Also, in contrast to the Horde invasion of Rus', which turned it into totalitarian Muscovy, a unique synthesis of Novgorod and Indian love of freedom was established in Alaska. Local residents learned from the Russians the basics of Orthodoxy and adopted many words, but in turn taught the Russians how to handle sledges and kayaks, and sometimes initiated them into their own mysteries. And it is no coincidence that many Russian settlers, even after the sale of Alaska, refused to leave it. This was not some kind of “national betrayal” - they were simply so deeply involved in the rhythm of this new world that they already felt their heterogeneity with the metropolis. In many ways, this was similar to the behavior of those immigrants from England who realized themselves as citizens of the New World and declared their independence. The only difference was that there was simply not enough historical time for the large-scale formation of a new ethnic group based on the Russian-Indian synthesis...
There weren't enough people either. Due to the harsh laws of the Russian Empire, which limited the right of movement for many classes, it was much more difficult for a Russian to get to Novo-Arkhangelsk in Alaska than for an Englishman to get to New York. The rulers of Russian America repeatedly appealed to city officials, the Senate and even the royal court with a request to allow the resettlement of at least several peasant communities, vital for the economic independence of Russian settlements, to Alaska and Fort Ross in California. But they were invariably met with a categorical refusal. Officials feared (and not in vain - judging by the existing precedents) that these several hundred peasants, having mastered the farming type typical of America, would have a revolutionary influence on the then economic system of the Russian Empire. Perhaps that is why Alaska was sold quickly almost immediately after the abolition of serfdom - in order to prevent the mass resettlement of freed peasants there.
Another version of such a hasty sale of Alaska is that the Russian government was concerned about protecting “national identity” from the overseas “mixture” that frightened it. However, the paradox here is that the true Russian identity in this case was embodied by those who mixed with the Indians and white Americans and thereby gave rise to a new people. The Russians themselves at one time arose precisely as an ethnic synthesis of Varangians and Slavs. “Patriots” of the Horde-imperial sense demonstrate by this only their provincial ignorance of the Russian tradition, which initially has a global character. St. Petersburg philosopher Alexey Ivanenko clearly explained this in his work “Russian Chaos”:
Our antiquity is not original. Surprisingly, according to etymological analysis, such ancient words as bread, hut, well And prince are of German origin. Old borrowings are being replaced by new ones. Where is the real face of Russia? The secret is that it doesn't exist. Byzantine icons, gilded minaret bulbs, Tatar balalaikas, Chinese dumplings - all these are imports.
* * *
Russian pioneers did not know the word “Alaska” at all and simply called it “Big Land”. Alaska could truly become a “utopia embodied” - like America, developed by Europeans from the Atlantic. In 1799, the Russian-American Company was founded and the Pacific exploration of America had its famous “founding fathers” - Grigory Shelikhov, Alexander Baranov, Nikolai Rezanov... But unfortunately, they did not have time to proclaim their Declaration of Independence, and therefore the Russian project America was ultimately suppressed by the Eurocentric metropolis.
The Californian base of Russian America, Fort Ross, was founded in 1812. If we perceive history creatively, from the point of view of new opportunities, and not endless redistributions of the Old World, then this event looks much more important than the war with Napoleon. Even if Napoleon had remained in Moscow, it would hardly have changed anything significantly in Russia, where the nobility spoke French better than Russian. Whereas the transfer of public attention to the development of the New World could set a completely different scale for Russian self-awareness, at the same time saving Russia from the shameful label of “gendarme of Europe.”
Even while performing these “gendarmerie” functions to save European monarchies from revolution, the Russians hoped in vain for any gratitude from these thrones. Moreover, for example, the Spaniards, who then constituted the majority in California, repeatedly tried to liquidate Fort Ross - either with a show of force, or bombarding official St. Petersburg with angry diplomatic notes for “invading their territory,” although their legal rights to it were very conditional and quite shaky. On the contrary, local Indians supported Fort Ross, hoping that the Russians, with their authority and extraterritorial status as a “third force,” would save them from complete civilizational destruction in the millstone between the Yankees and the Spaniards. And they repeatedly defended the Russian fortress with arms in hand from both!
Meanwhile, the Russian government behaved more than strangely. In response to the Spanish notes, it did not defend the Russian settlement, but... assigned the role of defendant to the Russian-American Company itself. However, the Company had almost no real international rights - and according to a long-standing Russian tradition, it was obliged to coordinate all its decisions with capital officials. Representatives of the Company were simply tired of explaining to them the obvious - what enormous historical advantages the existence and development of a Russian settlement in California promised. But they came up against a blank wall, or even stabs in the back - like the statement by Foreign Minister Nesselrode that he himself was in favor of closing Fort Ross, since this settlement caused “the fear and envy of the Spanish.” This apotheosis of “old world” narrow-mindedness and real national betrayal, perhaps, cannot even be compared with anything! The opposite, “mirror” situation – for the Spanish conquistadors to convince Madrid of the productivity of their American explorations, and for this they would be blamed and demanded to curtail their activities under the pretext of “fear and envy” of other nations – it is simply impossible to imagine...
However, this is not the end of the stupidity of Russian centralism - in the 20s of the 19th century, the government tried to prohibit the settlers of Russian America (which included Indians) from conducting direct trade with the Americans. This actually meant an economic blockade and, indeed, a real “corruptive influence of the West” - given that in relation to the Old World, Alaska is the “Ultra-Far East”.
The board of the Russian-American Company in Alaska, to the best of its ability and diplomatic skill, reduced these contradictions between the free development of Russian America and the delusional demands of the distant metropolis. The most prominent role in this reconciliation process undoubtedly belonged to the first “ruler of Alaska” (official title) Alexander Baranov. During the years of his reign, this great, but alas, almost unknown figure in Russia actually turned the entire northern part of the Pacific Ocean into a “Russian lake”, building on the American shore a new civilization equal to half of European Russia and developed much higher than the then Siberia. Alaskan Novo-Arkhangelsk (the city was clearly named by the Pomors) as the center of the most important fur trade at that time, under it was the first port (!) in the North Pacific Ocean, leaving Spanish San Francisco far behind. Moreover, it was not only an economic and military center, but also a cultural center: its library contained several thousand books - a number that was very impressive at that time and compared to the more southern colonies of the “Wild West”.
However, bureaucratic envy and its faithful weapon - slander - brought down this giant. Bringing millions annually to the Russian treasury, but himself content with a penny salary, Baranov was removed without explanation and recalled to Russia. Where he never reached, he became seriously ill and died on the way. A strange repetition of this route turned out to be the fate of another commander of Russian America, Nikolai Rezanov, who also ended his days on the way back to Russia, never again seeing his New World together with the daughter of the Californian governor who was in love with him. This is not just sad romance - the utopian Cape of Providence really does not let its discoverers go to the “ordinary land”.
Indeed, all the Russian pioneers of this “end of the world,” from the point of view of its “middle,” are dominated by some kind of evil fate. Starting with the disappeared Novgorodians and Bering, who died on his expedition, right up to the wave of inexplicable deaths in Russia itself of almost all of Baranov’s descendants and followers... However, if we perceive this situation less mystically, behind it we can discern quite “earthly” motives - the harsh dystopianism of the Russian government, which is extremely jealous and negative towards “dreamers” who dream of creating a new civilization. After all, this creation inevitably means the collapse of the old one.
Fort Ross was the clearest evidence that Russian life could be different. One day, its ruler turned out to be the energetic 22-year-old “Russian Swede” Karl Schmidt. And on the scale of a small garrison, a real “youth revolution” began in Peter’s style - with a new design of the fortress itself, the construction of its own fleet, the opening of new schools and even a theater! The “troublemaker” was soon removed...
The Decembrists, many of whom collaborated with the Russian-American Company, suffered much more seriously. Konstantin Ryleev, who developed the project for the independence of Russian America, was hanged. Another Decembrist, Dmitry Zavalishin, was not a separatist. On the contrary, he developed the ideas of massive and intensive Russian penetration into California and encouraged local Spaniards to accept Russian citizenship. He called his mission the “Order of Restoration” and tried to convince the Tsar of the grandiose prospects for the “Russification of America.” However, the Russian authorities rightly considered that these would no longer be “those Russians” who could be easily controlled. But Zavalishin and his petitioners remained “that one” and was sent to Siberian penal servitude.
Thus, the Russian America project was actually destroyed not by some external enemies or circumstances, but from within - by the authorities of the Russian Empire itself, who considered it “excessively expensive.” But Providence is ironic - soon after Fort Ross was sold for literally pennies in 1841, it was from the mill of its new owner, John Soutter, that the famous American “gold rush” began. So the Russian authorities, without waiting for the golden egg, slaughtered their pockmarked chicken. And in this river, which was originally called the Slavyanka, and then the Russian river, patient Americans are still panning for gold...
* * *
After the sale of Fort Ross, all of Russian America shrank to the borders of Alaska - although still grandiose, but already pushed far to the North - and without a regular and practically free food supply from California. In fact, it was the last bastion before the final retreat to the Old World.
However, history also preserves significant examples of Russian exploration of this mysterious date line, “the edge of the world,” much more southern than even California. They have been preserved in different meanings - as a memory of the “lost paradise” and the mediocrity of the “old world” government. And also, perhaps, as a hint to the future - utopia knows no historical boundaries...
Ivan Okuntsov cites facts no less amazing than the landing of the Novgorodians in Alaska. Jules Verne and Stevenson resting:
During long voyages in the Pacific Ocean, the currents and winds carried Russian sailors even to the equator. One day they ended up in New Zealand, east of Australia. At that time, there was one monk on the Russian ship, who had lost hope for a successful outcome of the voyage. The monk escaped from the ship at night to the island, where he took power into his own hands and declared himself the king of New Zealand. The Russian flag was raised on the island. Then the monk-king turned to Peter the Great with a request for help and to accept all Maoris - residents of New Zealand - into Russian citizenship. But for some reason no help was provided from St. Petersburg, and the monk died and was burned “royally” at the “sacred fire.”
And here is extensive evidence from the Kamchatka magazine “Northern Pacific” (5), little known in the flat world of “Eurasian-Atlantic” showdowns:
One day, the fishing ship "Bering" was carried far to the south by a storm. Having lost counting, the sailors did not even notice how the spikes of island corals grew through the bubbling foam. The ship was smashed to pieces, and people were carried to the fertile shores. After drying off and snacking on bananas, they soon discovered that they were on a desert island. For about a month, Russian sailors wandered through the tropical forests, eating exotic fruits. They were pretty worn out, but they didn’t lose heart and prayed for salvation. One of the sailors from Alaska, passing by the island on a ship, noticed six tanned men who were rushing along the shore and expressing themselves “strongly in Russian.” Of course, the Robinsons were picked up. Soon they were taken to the capital of Russian America - Novo-Arkhangelsk, where they told Baranov in detail about the island with “milk rivers and jelly banks.”
Thus began the great epic of the Russian discovery of the Hawaiian Islands. In 1806, with the light hand of Baranov, the sailor Sysoy Slobodchikov finally reached Hawaii. He brought expensive furs, from which the local leaders, despite the wild heat, did not get out. The King of the Hawaiian Islands, Tamehamea the Great, heard about the generosity of the “new whites”. He himself dressed in furs and expressed a great desire to trade with Baranov’s people. Gradually, the flame of sincere friendship began to flare up.
Slobodchikov “and his comrades” spent the entire winter under the shade of palm trees. They saw that the islanders lived in white semicircular huts, loved to sing and wear bright clothes. They value friendship and are ready to give up even their girlfriends to please a white guest. To the words of Hawaiian songs and inexhaustible supplies of Russian vodka, three months of winter flew by like one day. Our sailors liked the land of eternal summer so much that they concluded the first trade agreement with the Kanaks for the supply of breadfruit, sandalwood and pearls from Hawaii to Alaska. Tamehamea sent Baranov royal clothes as a gift - a cloak made of peacock feathers and a rare breed of parrots. In addition, the king himself wanted to come to Alaska for negotiations, but was afraid to leave the islands in the face of the growing maritime activity of the “other whites.”
Baranov was very pleased with this turn of events. He sent his friend Timofey Tarakanov to the islands, who stayed there for three whole years, studying the life of the islanders. King Tamehamea’s closest servant also lived with the Russians, teaching white travelers how to hunt sharks and telling local legends. One of them says: when the ocean covered the earth, a huge bird sank onto the waves and laid an egg. There was a strong storm, the egg broke and turned into islands. Soon a boat from Tahiti moored to one of them. On the boat were a husband, a wife, a pig, a dog, chickens and a rooster. They settled in Hawaii - this is how life on the islands began.
The king of the Hawaiian Islands liked the Russians so much that after a year of their stay, he gave the king one of the islands. The local leader Tamari received Baranov's envoys favorably. Under the sound of the surf, a Russian fortress-fort of St. Elizabeth was built on the island of Kanai. Domestic ships arriving at the fortress were no longer greeted by half-naked savages, but by people dressed, some in a hat and loincloth, some in a sailor’s peacoat, some in boots. Tamari himself, like King Tamehamea, began to flaunt sable furs.
Life on the island went on as usual. Soon the first Russian-Hawaiian dictionary was compiled. Ships loaded with Hawaiian salt, sandalwood, tropical fruits, coffee, and sugar went to Alaska. The Russians mined salt near Honolulu, from a dry lake in the crater of an old volcano. The children of local leaders studied in St. Petersburg, studied not only the Russian language, but also studied the exact sciences. King Tamehamea also grew rich. Baranov gave him a fur coat made from selected Siberian fox fur, a mirror, and a arquebus made by Tula gunsmiths. The Russian flag has been flying under the green palm trees of the coral islands for many years. And Hawaiian guitars got along well with Russian harmonicas.
* * *
Alas, the Russian tsars were too different from the Hawaiian kings... They, as usual, were preoccupied with strengthening their “vertical of power,” into which this utopia in the Pacific expanses did not fit in any way. On the board of the Russian-American Company, free explorers, sailors and merchants were gradually completely replaced by gray officials who understood little and did not want to understand anything particularly about the specifics of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean. For their centralist thinking, this space was nothing more than the “farthest province” of the Russian Empire, and, moreover, dangerously “cut off” from the metropolis. Therefore, from the middle of the 19th century, ideas about the sale of Alaska began to ferment in Russian circles around the government.
Let us note that there was never any talk about granting independence to Alaska. Although there was still a fresh example of how England nevertheless ceded to its American settlers the right to independently own the territory of the New World they had developed. What prevented Russia from doing the same with the part of America that had been developed by the Russians? Having established a strategic relationship with them transpacifist partnership like transatlantic relations between England and the USA.
The realization of this possibility was prevented by the fact that Russia belonged to a much greater extent to the civilization of the Old World than England. And in continental Europe in those years it was not yet customary to abandon their overseas colonies. This was considered a “sign of weakness,” although historical experience shows just the opposite - England has not lost a single European war since then, and the Commonwealth it created turned out to be much more durable than many Eurocentric projects. But in Russia it was Eurocentrism that won.
Of course, the sale of Alaska had its share of blame among its immediate residents at that time. They, unfortunately, learned little from the other, eastern, part of America the experience of civil self-organization, and, for the most part, silently obeyed the sale of their land, which for many was already native. The heavy totalitarian legacy of the centralized Russian state manifested itself even among the descendants of those who once fled from it...
However, even after the “Russian surrender” in Alaska in 1867, this land did not lose its special, free character. Only now he was resisting American centralism. To this day, the most winning election slogan in Alaska is: “We are Alaskans first, and then Americans.” Modern Alaska has its own unique flag, created by its children and made official - the golden constellation Ursa Major against the dark blue background of the winter northern sky. And the official motto: “To the North, to the future!” Finally, the Alaska Independence Party operates there quite legally and nominates its political leaders.
As for Russia’s sale of its New World, there was also a symbolic sign of Providence. The money for Alaska never reached the noble “sellers”. The agreed amount of 7.2 million dollars was paid in gold, which was transported from New York to St. Petersburg. However, the ship sank in the Baltic Sea...
Russian America was sung in the musical “Juno and Avos”:
Bring Discovery Cards
In a haze of gold, like pollen.
And pour moonshine over it and burn it
At the arrogant doors of the palace!
* * *
A mirror image of the development of Alaska was the landing of Americans in the Russian North during the Russian Civil War. Formally, they arrived there to support their Russian allies in the First World War in the face of a possible German offensive. But unexpectedly a closer alliance emerged. General Wildes Richardson, in his memoirs, “America's War in Northern Russia,” wrote:
On August 1, 1918, the residents of Arkhangelsk, having heard about our expedition, themselves rebelled against the local Bolshevik government, overthrew it and established the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region.
This department was headed by Nikolai Tchaikovsky, a very interesting historical figure, known for the implementation of his utopian projects in America itself. For a brief historical moment, Arkhangelsk seemed to embody the Alaskan Novo-Arkhangelsk - at a time when the Chekist terror was raging in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Russian North was an extraterritorial island of the world, where a free economy, culture, and press were preserved. But alas, in a strange way, the Americans soon discovered the same logic as the Russians during the exploration of Alaska - “far and expensive.” Although if they had remained, there would subsequently have been no “Cold War”, and indeed the Soviet Union in general!
Moreover, for this they did not need to undertake any aggression at all - the Bolsheviks at that time were themselves ready to give up all the territories they did not control, just to maintain their power over the Russian capitals. In 1919, Lenin invited William Bullitt, who came to Moscow on a semi-official mission from President Wilson, to recognize Bolshevik Russia, and in exchange for diplomatic recognition he agreed to record the results of the Civil War as they were at that time. That is, the power of the Bolsheviks would be limited to a few central provinces. But Woodrow Wilson, who believed that the Bolsheviks would soon fall anyway, and therefore refused this deal, turned out to be a bad seer...
* * *
The 21st century again provides a chance to embody the historical subjectivity of Cape Providence. In accordance with the forecasts of Kenichi Ohmae, Chukotka and Alaska can indeed turn into a special sovereign region, much more strongly connected internally than with their metropolises. There are all economic and cultural prerequisites for this. Moreover, such a formation, at least at first, will not in any way contradict the political centralism of the Russian Federation and the United States. Chukotka and Alaska may well remain associated subjects of these states, however, the very logic of the glocalization process will lead to a civilizational rapprochement of these regions and a weakening of centralized control over them. Exactly this utopian the earth will become the most real a criterion that the declared “strategic partnership” between Russia and America is not just declarative.
Vladimir Videman in his programmatic article “Orientation - the North or a window to America” (6) draws grandiose prospects for the future of Russian-American rapprochement. He predicts the creation of a “strategic transpolar alliance” that will inevitably dominate world politics and economics. However, this is a view from the position of some kind of global monopoly, strange for this author, who publishes many “anti-globalist” manifestos on his website.
In general, in the very title of this article there is an obvious allusion to Heydar Jemal’s metaphysical poem “Orientation – North”. But if Dzhemal is talking about the “transformation of the fundamental disharmony of reality into a fantastic transobjective being,” then Wiedemann’s “transpolar alliance” looks too mundane against this background. All his goals boil down, in essence, to some kind of mechanical connection of the real states of the Russian Federation and the USA - without the emergence of any new, special civilization.
The problem here is that this author still thinks in modernist categories of centralized nation states and, apparently, does not notice that the world has moved into a completely different era, when the regions themselves, especially those located on the borders of these states, become the main subjects of politics. Their direct cooperation is turning out to be more and more significant and effective than the diplomatic protocols of the central authorities. And the more “distant” the political centers of these national states consider themselves to be from each other, the more interesting and promising – in terms of creating a new civilization – is the interaction of their border regions. This is generally the ontological law of the “combination of opposites” - the more radical they are, the more unique the result of their synthesis turns out to be.
After the Eurocentric era of modernity, Europe itself today seems to be experiencing a “second youth” - the flourishing of regionalism in the Old World is already such that it makes one doubt whether nation-states still exist there, reminiscent of the times when they did not exist at all. However, today's Russia, with its hypercentralism and Eurocentrism, remains in a state of modernity. It can only be overcome by the northern regions reaching the level of direct transnational and transcontinental cooperation with the northerners of other countries. But for now it is being slowed down by the central authorities, who are reasonably afraid that an independent North will simply cease to support them.
The North and Siberia, occupying 2/3 of the territory of the Russian Federation, provide this state with more than 70% of export profits, but due to its total economic centralism they have a reputation as “subsidized”. And Moscow, which controls oil and gas pipelines, is portrayed as the “donor.” A less contrasting, but similar situation is observed in North America. Under these conditions, no “strategic transpolar alliance” between officials of the two countries will change anything for the northerners.
This “fundamental disharmony of reality” can only be corrected with a transition to a “fantastic transobjective being” - when power in the North moves from isolated and centralized state machines to networked, transnational civil self-government. It is then that “unipolar” America and hyper-centralized Russia will fade into history and give way to the global North.
The Russian, Siberian North is closer in its mentality to Alaska than to Muscovy. Likewise, Alaska is much more similar to the Russian North than to the “down states,” as Alaskans call the main US territory. Oleg Moiseenko, a Russian American who came to Alaska as a tourist, shares interesting observations on this matter on the Internet:
Alaska is a country of real men and real men's work: builders, lumberjacks, oil workers, hunters, drivers, fishermen, captains and pilots (surprisingly, but true - women do such work here too!). Alaska is a world outside the media, secular news and other products of civilization. This is an opportunity to belong to yourself. Be free from police surveillance (outside Anchorage). And finally (please look at this as just a fact) - this is still a white man's corner.
It is clear why a white man from the “lower states” is especially impressed by the latter. Unlike them, Alaska really does not have that painful political correctness, which is increasingly turning into inside-out racism. There is simply a healthy, natural, northern multiculturalism, where no one bothers anyone to be themselves and does not make anyone feel ashamed for not belonging to one or another aggressive minority. It is this “opportunity to belong to oneself” that is the most amazing feature of Alaskans in the eyes of carriers of obsessive media standards.
However, it would be inaccurate to portray Alaska as some archaic industrial appendage of the post-industrial world. There are proportionally no fewer representatives of creative, “post-economic” professions than in the “lower states” - but their worldview is significantly different. The majestic, beautiful, and still carefully preserved nature of Alaska, as well as the reputation of the “end of the earth” fosters a mentality of pioneers, rather than passive consumers of global pop music. And this will become more and more noticeable against the backdrop of ideological, demographic and regional conflicts in the “lower states”, fighting for a place under the dying sun of the passing world...
It is noteworthy that one of the Siberian Old Believer communities, which fate in the twentieth century brought both to China and then to South America, eventually found its place in Alaska. Their town of Nikolaevsk quite organically fit into both Alaskan nature and toponymy, where many Russian names have been preserved. Although their psychology, of course, has changed significantly - there is no longer a fearful suspicion of strangers and technology. But there is, however, no overly calculating “Americanism”... Exploring the whole phenomenon of this special culture emerging on the Russian-American borderland, Mikhail Epstein foresees their future unique synthesis:
In its potential, this is a great culture that does not fit entirely into either the American or Russian tradition, but belongs to some fantastic cultures of the future, like the Amerossia that is depicted in the novel by Vl. Nabokov's "Ada". Russian-American culture is not reducible to its separate components, but outgrows them, like a crown in which the far diverged branches of the once united Indo-European tree will re-intertwine, recognizing their kinship, just as the kinship of Indo-European roots is dimly recognized in Russian “sam” and English “same”. United in their deepest roots, these cultures may turn out to be united in their distant shoots and branches, and Russian-American culture may be one of the harbingers, prototypes of such a future unity.
When I think of a Russian American, I imagine an image of intellectual and emotional breadth that could combine analytical subtlety and practicality of the American mind and synthetic inclinations, mystical talent of the Russian soul. To combine the Russian culture of thoughtful melancholy, heartfelt melancholy, light sadness, and the American culture of courageous optimism, active participation and compassion, faith in oneself and in others...
It is on this “Bering Bridge” that the symbolic handshake of Semyon Dezhnev and Jack London will take place. Those who often recall Kipling’s lines “West is West, East is East, and they cannot come together,” for some reason forget the prophetic ending of this poem:
But there is no East and there is no West,
What does tribe, homeland, clan mean?
When strong with strong shoulder to shoulder
Standing at the edge of the earth?
(1) Magazine “Profile”, No. 19, 2002.
(2) Farrelli, Theodor. Lost colony of Novgorod in Alaska // Slavonic and East European Review, V. 22, 1944.
(3) A curious parallel with the “northern barbarians” in Roman history!
(4) That is Ural ridge
(5) № 7, 1999.
(6) Network log
Basov, for laziness and inaction in the field of writing, photographing and publishing all this, decided that it was still time to end the regime of silence and write something. Moreover, the reason is quite appropriate. My Providensky regime, already established in the “work-home-weekend-work” format, was violated by Evgeniy, and remembering last year’s plans to climb Beklemisheva, it was decided that on June 21 at 9-00...
A couple of days earlier, Basov presented his second (by no means the last) book, on the last page of which, among other worthy gentlemen, my name was modestly included. I never thought that it could easily happen to be published like this, but I won’t refuse yet! That's why you need to shoot!
Beklemisheva is perhaps the most important peak in the group of hills surrounding Emma Bay. using it, the seers judge whether there will be a flight to Anadyr today (visible or not visible?) or whether they will have to continue sitting on their suitcases. This is also the most visited hill, due to the presence of a road leading to the very top. At the same time, even after living in Providence all their lives, many manage to never visit it. And having heard about climbing it on foot, and not along the road, but head-on, without hesitation, they put their index finger to their temple and begin to twist it from side to side =).
At 9 am we are dropped off at the territory of the former border detachment in Ureliki, of which only a lonely 5-story house remains. Having walked along the spit separating the small lagoon from the bay, we find the first obstacle - a stream. Having decided that it would take too long to walk around, we move on, taking off our shoes.
1.You can still cross the second stream using the old wooden bridge... 
2. Further, a road made of wooden (in some places iron) flooring leads to the abandoned outpost. 
3. View from behind. 
4. Outpost. 
5. We climb up the watchtower. The structure is quite strong, but we walk on the flooring with caution. Below is a gallery leading from one building to another, reminiscent of a greenhouse. There is still waist-deep snow inside the gallery. 
6. Omsk residents are everywhere 
...
7. There is a shooting range/shooting range nearby. They shot at moving targets. Barrels filled with stones in a sieve... 
.
8. At this point the horizontal part of the ascent ends and we begin to climb gradually. We go not head-on, but diagonally, going around the top of the nearest hill, gradually gaining height. There is no point in climbing high - there must be a valley ahead. I don't want to lose altitude. We reach the descent. 
After a short break, the main ascent begins. By this time I’m starting to understand that I’m bound to get burned =). Long johns, taken thanks to excessive (it’s noticeably hot) forethought, become a turban.
9. Some time after the start of the climb, the first signs of an excellent view from above appear. Emma Bay begins to be visible from behind the slope of the neighboring hill. 
10. The climb, which seemed quite steep from the outside, is actually not so scary. But still, almost every 30-40 meters of ascent is a halt. Basov, understandably, is not satisfied with this speed; approximately halfway up the climb he breaks away. I always thought that you need to climb at least in pairs, just in case something goes wrong. But upon reflection, I decide that this is even better. He doesn’t have to sit on the rocks for a long time waiting for me to catch up with him, and I don’t have to try to keep up with the experienced one. Therefore, in my own rhythm, I puff upward in zigzags... the time has come for moral and strong-willed ones. 
11. After some time, the target becomes visible upward - the antenna. 
12. Got there. We decide to have a snack. After snacking on cognac and grapefruit, discussing the situation in the world, etc., etc., we begin our inspection. 
13.
14. Providence Bay 
15. The sea is not visible - above the water there is a continuous veil of fog, which, entering the bay with thin feathers, rises higher and becomes clouds. 
16. A village is visible in the distance. 
17. Abandoned ruins of Ureki. The territory of the border detachment reclaimed last summer. 
18. Cape of the Century. 
19. Some more antennas. 
20.
21. Inside the building, on the wall of the rest room, there is a nice panel of Russian pop music rhythms. 
22. Evgeniy climbs to plant the flag of the “Guardians of Chukotka” 
23.
24.
25. While I was looking for wire to attach the flag, I saw a toilet like a toilet. A closet at the end of the earth. 
26. After wandering around a little more, we find an excellent lounge area. Sit down. We collected melt water, which flows into the tank. Cold. 
27. On the way back, Evgeniy decides to take a walk to Cape Puzina through another hill. I don't have enough for this anymore. I will go down and wait for him on the spit from which we began our ascent. Taking the bottle of water he had collected from upstairs, he went on his way. There are hundreds of streams along the way. Many of them can only be heard from under the stones, but not visible. Murmuring everywhere. 
I'm going down to the airfield. I decide to go around the lagoon from the other side, because returning through the shooting range is now a detour for me. On the way to the stream that feeds the lagoon, I understand that the stream that seemed narrow from above is actually quite a river. Even as we approached it, the stones under our feet gave way to something spongy and swampy, and our boots, already wet, were now soaked through with water. Having jumped over the river, getting my feet wet once again, I continue on my way to the spit. On the way to the gathering place, a call will be made. Evgeniy will be there in 15 minutes. I sit down on some boxes and take off my boots. I'm drying myself. After drying out a little and getting bored from doing nothing, I begin to photograph the fauna. The fauna is not too keen to get any closer.
28.
29.
30. When the fauna ended, it was the turn of the enveloping inanimate nature. 
31. A few minutes later, Basov appears, having been somewhat delayed. The car is already following us. Let's go to Ureliki. 
The Chukotka Peninsula is replete with bays and coves, but one of them stands out - Providence Bay. The name fully corresponds to the bay because of the constant fogs that cover it almost all year round and the local waters of the bay are covered with a dense veil, through which it is difficult to see anything. Local residents have long been accustomed to this, but to a visiting guest it will seem like a big curiosity. However, it was not named because of the fogs, but more on that later.
This amazing phenomenon occurs due to the elongated shape of the bay. It is 34 kilometers long, but only 4 kilometers wide, while Providence Bay is surrounded by steep and steep banks reaching a height of 800 meters. The result is a kind of natural pipe, which is why constant fogs are formed here. But despite this, this place is very important on the northern sea route due to the fact that the sea here is ice-free longer than in other places, from May to October.
History of discovery
The first person to visit these places was Kurbat Ivanov, who was considered the successor of Semyon Dezhnev in the development of these places. Ivanov’s expedition reached these places in 1660, but like many of Dezhnev’s discoveries, this event was not given due importance, although the bay was an ideal place for the construction of a northern port and a stronghold on the northern trade route. The bay received its name only two centuries later in 1848. That year, a ship cruised in this area in search of Franklin's expedition and in October it was decided to winter in these places; the deep bay was an ideal place for overwintering and subsequently the British called it the Bay of Saint Providence. For the next hundred years, a hidden trade war was waged in the region. Russia fought for its monopolies in the trade of local goods and defended it as best it could from visiting American tour operators who exchanged furs and walrus ivory for whiskey. Light clippers periodically entered the bay and arrested American traders, but this stopped few people, because trade expeditions were extremely profitable.
The bay really began to be developed only in the late 1930s. In 1933, a commission came here and developed a project for the construction of a port. Construction proceeded at an accelerated pace and after the Second World War there was already a small town with a population of two thousand, and the population of all the villages in the bay reached 5 thousand people. Currently, these places are deserted and mostly only the local population remains here.
Provideniya village
The Chukchi have chosen these places for a very long time, but they only thought about a full-fledged city on the shores of Providence Bay in the 30s. A very small stronghold appeared in 1928, and it was only a warehouse with coal for passing ships. Starting in 1933, houses and a port were gradually built, and four years later, in 1937, mass construction began here. The village began to function fully after the war, and its population reached 2 thousand people.
The village experienced another surge in the 50s and 60s, when the confrontation with America gained maximum momentum. Military units were relocated to these places, which led to a sharp jump in population and there was even a plan to build a city for 12 thousand people, but it was never destined to come true. But even despite this, the population exceeded 5 thousand people, and the village of Provedenie became one of the largest in Chukotka.
With the collapse of the union, the collapse of the village also occurred. The military left, most of them were locals. From 1994 to 2002, no construction was carried out at all, and the local population gradually left for the “mainland” and it seemed that the village would soon disappear from the map of Russia, but this was not destined to happen and over the last ten years the village has been gradually restored, major repairs have been carried out everywhere , new buildings are being erected. But the village of Ghosts is unlikely to ever become as large as before, but will only remain a stronghold, an important port on the northern sea route and a fishing ground.
Tourism
As a military point on the map of Russia, the village is unlikely to be restored, but as an exotic tourist point it may well be. Lately, tourists have become increasingly attracted to the most unusual places on the planet, for example, an excursion to the North Pole costs a lot of money, and you have to wait in a long line to get the coveted flight ticket. Providence Bay is also the end of the earth with untouched northern nature, a real natural museum, almost like another planet. The village itself is still unsuitable for tourism, it has a small museum of the history of the region and that’s it, but it can be developed as an unusual tourist destination in the world.
Source: rus-globus.ru
Through the mountains to the sea with a light backpack. Route 30 passes through the famous Fisht - this is one of the most grandiose and significant natural monuments of Russia, the highest mountains closest to Moscow. Tourists travel lightly through all the landscape and climatic zones of the country from the foothills to the subtropics, spending the night in shelters.
Vasily Mitrofanov
Provideniya Bay
What is it like to live in the Arctic and cross the tundra on a snowmobile?
– Sometimes I miss communication, I just want to talk to someone. There are generally very few people in Chukotka. You can ride a motorcycle all day and not meet anyone. In principle, this suits me; I’m used to traveling alone. Sometimes for several days on a trip you don’t say a word, and I don’t like talking to myself.
I have lived in Chukotka since I was two years old, one might say, my whole life, and I was born in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, on the Taimyr Peninsula. This is also the Far North. In general, I have lived in the Arctic all my life. Perhaps that is why my place of residence seems ideal to me. For example, when I’m on vacation, in big cities I feel uncomfortable with all the fuss around. I want to quickly return home to Chukotka.
You hardly see any non-locals at home. There are tourists, of course, but mostly foreigners come on cruise ships: they wander around the village in crowds for several hours and then sail on. I think it is very difficult for an ordinary tourist to enter the territory of Chukotka. Firstly, this is a border zone, and secondly, it is very expensive. An airplane is not the cheapest form of transport. They fly here from Anadyr: once a month in winter and once a week in summer.
My main hobby is motorcycle riding. I love to climb mountains, walk alone on the tundra and visit abandoned, dead towns, which we have had plenty of since the days of the Iron Curtain. On our side of the bay is the village of Provideniya, and on the opposite side is Ureliki, a dead and abandoned military town. I go there often, just wandering along the empty streets, looking at the gaping, broken windows of the buildings.
This fall I inspected the local school, the building is in a very depressing condition, it would be like making a horror movie: broken glass everywhere, water dripping from the ceiling, wind blowing through the corridors. I know some graduates of this school, they are already adults, sometimes they come to their school, but cannot even gather in their own classroom. They sit in the courtyard, barbecue and complain that the alumni meeting now has to be held on the street, since only the walls remain from their home school.
I used to not be afraid to wander through abandoned buildings, but now I feel afraid. It seems as if there is something alive in these houses, so I completely stopped going into dark rooms: basements, long corridors and rooms without windows. But I am drawn to these houses, I love to wander through places that have no future: to visit old hunting and fishing lodges.
It’s always interesting for me when traveling to suddenly find an old geologists’ house in the tundra. I love reading inscriptions on walls. For example: “Andrey Smirnov. Chukotka. Summer 1973." Questions immediately arise in my head: “Who was this Andrei? What was he doing in Chukotka in 1973? What was his future fate, where is he now?” And so on. This all excites and interests me madly.
Active construction of the village began in 1937. A caravan of ships from the Providenstroy enterprise arrived here. First of all, it was necessary to build a port. At the end of 1945, the Kamchatka Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution on the creation of the workers' village of Provideniya in the Chukotka region. The village continued to develop rapidly, and military units were relocated here. The first public building, the canteen, was built only in 1947.
From the memoirs of Lyudmila Adiatullina, Perm:
- My father, Vasily Andreevich Borodin, reached Prague during the war. Then his unit was loaded onto trains and sent across all of Russia to the Far East to Providence Bay, where he served for another five years.
It was very difficult; for two years they lived in six-panel tents, among rocky stone hills. The bunks were made of stones, with reindeer moss placed on top. Four were sleeping, and the fifth was heating the stove. In the morning, sometimes my hair froze to the tent. This tent city was covered with snow, people dug each other out, made catering units, officer houses, defensive structures and even roads out of logs.
In the second year, little fuel was delivered, and in order not to freeze, the military looked for dwarf birch trees and tore them out by the roots; they split bricks and soaked stones in barrels of kerosene. The stoves were already lit with this. It’s good that the Chukchi suggested that not far from the unit’s location there were coal mines developed by the Americans. When they were asked to leave there in 1925, they blew everything up and covered it with earth. The soldiers re-developed these mines in a primitive way, carrying coal 30 km in backpacks and on skis. And yet they survived.
Then we rode dogs and reindeer, renting them from the Chukchi. The snow was cut with saws, carried on sleighs and made into water. Only in the third year did they begin to build soldiers’ barracks from wooden blocks. The barracks were large, the size of a division. There were no builders among the soldiers, but life taught us everything. In September 1950, everyone was demobilized. They were not at home for seven years: two years in the war and five years in Chukotka.
The village of Provideniya itself is an ordinary northern port town with monuments to the devastation of the nineties, bad roads and kind, sympathetic people. Some come here simply to earn a “northern” pension and leave. They don’t understand the beauty of the North; it’s for visitors – cold, snow and stones. Some people, on the contrary, are crazy about mountains, northern lights, whales, and other romance. I am one of those people.
All the most interesting things are located outside our village: a base for sea hunters, a whale cemetery, the remains of military installations, ancient Eskimo sites, underground hot springs. In the summer I go to the ocean on a motorcycle all the time, I like to walk everywhere, climb hills, wander through unknown places.
And what animals can you stumble upon! I saw: whales, seals, wolves, brown and polar bears, foxes, arctic foxes, wolverines, hares, eurasians, ermine, lemmings and a bunch of different birds. Only bears and wolves are dangerous to humans. A gun, I think, of course, is not a superfluous thing in the tundra, and simply in the wild, but it just so happened that I spent my entire life without it. Maybe I was lucky, but if I came across bears, I was always on a vehicle, on a snowmobile or motorcycle. But if you travel on foot, then it is better to take a gun or at least a flare gun: some kind of firecrackers to scare off predators.
One day I came across the wreckage of an airplane. Once I was driving along the shore of a lake and saw something on the side of a hill. I climbed in and it turned out that it was a LI-2 plane. He crashed here in the seventies. Below I saw a memorial plaque and sign. Many more aircraft wrecks can be found on the territory of military installations. All this remains from the times of the Soviet army.
