Captain of Teriberka

Today, Teriberka and the Murman Coast are at the center of Russians’ discussion about how their country is presented to the world (Critic Andrei Plakhov called the film “a powerful and epic wonder that has crawled out from inside the guts of Russian life.”)

Ten years ago, a very different drama unfolded along the Murman Coast.

In October 2005, Valery Yarantsev, a fishing boat captain, was fishing off Spitsbergen when his ship, the Elektron, was boarded by the Norwegian Coast Guard. Accused of poaching, Yarantsev was ordered to make for the port of Tromsø.

But he did not go quietly. Instead, he defied the Norwegian order and headed for Russian territorial waters, with two Norwegian officers (who had boarded his ship to inspect his cargo) on board. Over the next five days, a cat and mouse game played out in the Barents Sea. When Yarantsev and his ship finally arrived in Murmansk, FSB operatives awaited him on the pier.

While the feat earned Yarantsev respect among sailors, he was nonetheless charged with illegal fishing and kidnapping. It took two years, but he was cleared of the worst charges against him.

Another two years later, in March 2009, Yarantsev was elected mayor of Teriberka. And his tempestuous tenure in that position (from which he was ousted in 2011) has Russian media comparing him to the protagonist of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s movie Leviathan, which is set in Teriberka. Oleg Klimov first interviewed Yarantsev in July 2009.

July 2009

“Mr. Yarantsev, I know that you are a captain, yet I also heard that you are a poacher and a communist....”

“In general, I am a captain of the Northern Fleet. As to all the rest, they can call me whatever they like.”

“Excuse me, captain, but people are saying all sorts of...”

“Ask the sailors. Ask the fishermen in our village and not the bureaucrats in Moscow or Murmansk. Almost everyone here is a fisherman or a man of the sea. At least they all were fishermen of some sort. They will tell you who I am.”

“I would like to hear it from you, considering that you are now also a bureaucrat.”

“I will say it again: I am a sailor, despite the fact that they have deprived me of the title of captain of the fleet. I’m a sailor, just without the epaulets... Years ago, I entered the port of Teriberka as a trawler captain, hauling fish for the local factory. It was a huge port, with lots of people. But look around, what is it now? Disorder and poverty, and I am not a trawler captain but a landed bureaucrat.”

“Are you a captain of the port, the captain of Teriberka?”

“Unfortunately...”

“Why unfortunately? Captain Morgan was also governor of Jamaica.”

[Laughing] “Captain Henry Morgan was a pirate, and Jamaica is not Teriberka.”

“Of course, but as I understand you, a sailor is always a sailor...”

Valery Yarantsev is not a tall man, but stocky, with the typical red face of a northern seaman. Around fifty. Like all sailors, he walks with a bit of a waddle – on land as on the sea. It would be hard to conclude that before you sits a bureaucrat and not a sailor. He moved to Teriberka, a god-forsaken village on the shores of this distant sea, from Murmansk, along with his wife, after being elected mayor. Yarantsev is a communist, and he defeated the Kremlin’s United Russia party to gain the post.

“It’s funny, of course,” Yarantsev says. “There are just three communists in Teriberka, myself included. And I myself was never even a communist. You could say that I was forced to become one for social justice, or justice in general... Because there is no one else to stand up to this system of power. The KPRF [Communist Party] is also part of the system. But it is still more or less the opposition party...”

On April 26, 2007, a judge in Murmansk acquitted the trawler captain on the unlawful detention charges. As to the poaching charges, he was ordered to pay R100,000 (about $3,000). Just under a year later, Norway refused to file any charges in the Electron affair.

“My first mistake,” Yarantsev said, “was allowing the Norwegian inspectors on board. I should have immediately refused them. But who knew? As captain, I was fully within my rights to not allow the Norwegian inspectors on board the trawler. But, according to established practice, I met them halfway, not wanting any kind of difficulties of hindrances to our future activities. ‘You want to check us out? Go ahead, check.’ But as a result they sought to incriminate me for illegal detention. Formally speaking, perhaps it was. The inspectors were limited in their movement to the confines of the ship, just like the rest of the crew.”

“And what were the ‘crude violations of fishing regulations’?”

“Nothing of the sort. I did not violate a single international Law of the Sea. In fact, the waters off Spitsbergen are considered neutral when it comes to fishing. All the sea powers accept this, except for Norway. There have been similar incidents with Spanish and Dutch ships... and all their captains were taken to the port of Tromsø under arrest. What does that mean? That the ship captain must suffer colossal losses.”

“So what did you do?”

“I refused to go to the Norwegian port and set a course for Murmansk, after first detaining the inspectors.”

“You simply locked them up in the hold?”

“They had a separate cabin and they spent most of the time sailing to Murmansk on the bridge. But I didn’t have any other option, I could not return them to their ship.”

“Did they [the Norwegian navy] harass you?”

“Harass me? What do you think it is like to have the Norwegian navy pursuing you for five days, throwing a net over your propeller, shooting at you, threatening you over the radio and a loudspeaker. Can you imagine what it was like? You consider that harassment? That’s not what I would say. I consider it to have been an attack on a ship flying the Russian flag in neutral waters.”

“Did they fire at the ship itself?”

“Me and my entire require were in mortal danger. Four ships, two of which were armed with twenty missiles apiece, a plane, and two helicopters tried to stop our ship, which was at that time located in neutral waters. It was a crude violation of human rights. Of all the Laws of the Sea. The captain of the Norwegian ship understood this, so he shot at our ship just once, and for that he was later kicked out of the service.”

“Did you have any idea how it might turn out?”

“Well, long after the events we met with a Norwegian admiral. Several times. He apologized. Seamen understand one another and don’t understand politicians. One missile could have sent our ship to the bottom. Perhaps the admiral had such powers, I don’t now, but he did not use them. All we could do was maneuver. We did not have any weapons. We were fishermen, not the navy. I stayed on the bridge for five days, and we escaped only due to our maneuvering of the ship.”

“And how did Russia – our navy – react?”

“As to that, I can only say that our guys, Russia, simply betrayed us, informing the Norwegians of our coordinates, or else they would not have been able to find the Electron in the open sea. I communicated with the Russian navy, and explained that we were under attack and needed help. We did not receive any. It’s funny, the navy staff told me that ‘the weather is stormy, we cannot go to sea to defend you.’ Our guys had stormy weather, but not the Norwegians? They hovered around our ship – from the air and sea – like wasps. I understood there would be no help. But I still hoped. I headed to the port of Murmansk, knowing full well what consequences awaited me.”

“It is surprising to me that you took this position, based on professional and personal calculations, despite the fact that two states, Norway and Russia, firmly opposed your decision. You know, it’s like in the movies, yet I look at you and understand that this is no film.”

“Of course I had my doubts during those five days standing on the bridge. When they were shooting, demanding, threatening, when I received no support and was simply alone on the sea. It is difficult when you are alone and everyone is against you. But there was my team. I had no other choice. As captain, I had to show that my choice was correct. We fled the Norwegian navy to Murmansk and there were arrested by our own, the FSB. Then there was the trial. The Russian court ordered me to pay 100,000, but the government of Norway exonerated me of all guilt. They understood that, according to international law, these are not their waters, and they did not have the right to detain me. I have now filed a lawsuit in the International Court in the Hague. Many sailors from other countries are supporting me... It’s not the first time Norway has tried to seize control of those waters. Simply because there are lots of fish there, and everyone needs fish. It is a state policy.”

“And what now?”

“I cannot go to sea any longer; I don’t have a license... But I did win something, mainly the elections, and became the mayor of a fishing village. If I succeed in my case in The Hague, I will receive several million and invest it in the economy of the village of Teriberka. I have already told the locals this. They don’t believe that I will win, but I will.”

Captain Yarantsev is not, on the surface, a very appealing person, but I liked him, and, truth be told, I have never met a seaman who is outwardly appealing, despite the romantic pictures we are shown in films.

Teriberka is the only place on the entire Kola shore or Russia where you can see the Barents Sea, the full horizon. Everywhere else it is forbidden, whether because of this secret base or that. And it is shame, because there is a certain inalienable freedom in seeing the expansive horizon of the sea.

I drove to the edge of the open, free sea. There was a small storm. Rain and wind. The end of the earth.

September 2010

I am on the Volga, in Uglich, and a report comes over the radio from Murmansk, relaying “the continuation” of the story of Captain Yarantsev.

“Gazprom plans to build a gas processing plant in the village of Teriberka... The head of the company said that gas will begin to be extracted in 2011... and is planned for export.”

Further: “Today, when President Medvedev divided the shelf of the Barents Sea with the Norwegians, the Kola Regional Court temporarily relieved Teriberka Mayor Valery Yarantsev of his post. According to the prosecutorial investigative committee of Murmansk, Yarantsev is suspected of criminal activity. The mayor has been accused of overstepping the bounds of his authority.”

Of course, I rushed to fumble through my old notebooks to find the phone number in Teriberka. I reached Yarantsev by phone. His reply was direct: “I am no longer the captain of Teriberka. I am again a non-party seaman.”

In November 2011, the court found Yarantsev guilty of wasting state money on a fishy construction contract.

In his defense, Yarantsev said he had to forego the formalities of a competitive bidding process for the contract to rebuild Teriberka’s heating plant, so that the village would not freeze during the winter of 2009. In January 2012, Yarantsev was formally removed from the post of mayor and ordered to pay a fine of R80,000.

January 2015

In an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda in January, as debate in Russia boiled over about the movie Leviathan, Yarantsev said that things are far worse in Teriberka than the film makes out.

“Life there is very difficult, an eternal struggle,” Yarantsev told journalists Maria Pashenkova and Veronika Seliverstova. “What is shown in the film is just a small fraction of what takes place. The authorities are portrayed very well, yet they are actually far worse… Maybe many are disturbed by the film because they see themselves in it. Yet I would not link Leviathan entirely with Teriberka, it is a collective impression of Russia. Yet, on the whole, the film is inspiring. We have this hopelessness now, a lack of faith in goodness and justice. The film shows that not all people are bad, it shows that all things end. And not only the bad, but the good.... We have to show the good and the bad both, so that people can see it, analyze it, and draw their own conclusions. Otherwise, we cannot understand the mess we are in. But the main thing is that there should be no hatred. There is nothing worse than when a person hates the place where he was born and raised.” RL