The View from Anadyr

The View from Anadyr

Eighty years ago this spring the Soviet Central Executive Committee created the distinction Hero of the Soviet Union. The earliest recipients of the accolade all showed exceptional service to the state in the Russian Arctic where, in the 1930s, a major program was initiated to transform the Northern Sea Route* from a theoretical navigational possibility
into an operational waterway.

On a bright Tuesday morning in September 2008, the president's Ilyushin jet descended over the waters of the Anadyr Estuary for a perfect landing at the airport on the north side of the bay. For Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (pictured above), a one-day visit to the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug was a chance to address several agendas at once. Anadyr is Russia's easternmost city, and the Chukotka region has a shared maritime frontier with the state of Alaska.

Medvedev's day out to Chukotka came just as then Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin was being mercilessly parodied by Tina Fey, who mimicked Palin and said Alaskans knew exactly where Chukotka was: they could see it in the West as they gazed out their kitchen windows. While fanciful, it nonetheless put Alaskans one step ahead of Muscovites, for even today many residents of the Russian capital would be hard pressed to identify Chukotka as anything other than the source of many good jokes.

Medvedev made a helicopter tour with a ground stop to meet Chukchi reindeer herders on the tundra at Kancalan. They posed in front of a traditional yaranga for a group photo with Medvedev and then Chukotka region governor Roman Abramovich, whose business interests span the globe and include the London-based Premier League soccer team Chelsea.

In Anadyr, a community of five-story khrushchyovki painted in bright primary colors, Medvedev met kids wearing Chelsea caps, listened politely to Chukchi folk songs, and made an upbeat speech reminding the world that “Our biggest task is to turn the Arctic into Russia's resource base for the twenty-first century.”

In the space of one day, Medvedev thus deftly played the eastern card, the northern card and the indigenous peoples card, while reaffirming Moscow's commitment to northern development. In the two years that followed, then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin became a regular commuter to the Russian North, his travels taking him to Nagurskoye, a Russian military outpost on Franz Josef Land archipelago (where he came face to face with a sedated polar bear), and to Khatanga, on the remote Taymyr Peninsula, where his plane had to make an unscheduled landing in bad weather while en route to the northern Siberian mining community of Norilsk.

moscow is rediscovering its northern dream. Medvedev's remarks in Anadyr echoed Stalin's in 1932: “The Arctic and our northern regions contain colossal wealth. We must create a Soviet organization that can, in the shortest period possible, include this wealth in the general resources of our socialist economic structure.”

Eighty years after the Soviet Union tried to enliven the northern economy by creating a viable waterway along Russia's Arctic coast, that prospect is becoming a reality. Speaking in Arkhangelsk in September 2011, Putin was optimistic: “We shall turn the Northern Sea Route into a key transport artery of global importance.”

On the streets of Anadyr, the mood is buoyant. Roman Abramovich's ample investment in the region, during the eight years that he was governor and since, has boosted incomes and seeded a number of major infrastructure projects. Chukotka cuts a dash as “the land where the new day breaks” – a promotional slogan that alludes to just how far east the region is. So far, in fact, that part of the territory lies east of the 180th meridian, which nominally marks the International Date Line. But Chukotkan optimism is born of something more than its link with Abramovich and its position on the very edge of time. Community leaders in this okrug hope that growth in traffic on the Northern Sea Route will transform Chukotka from a remote outpost of the Russian Federation into a key staging post on a new Eurasian maritime highway.

the idea of a Northern Sea Route is far from new. Early European cartographers, who identified two potential high-latitude routes from the Atlantic to the Pacific, often referred to it as the Northeast Passage. They thus distinguished it from the Northwest Passage, a potential alternative route to the Pacific via northern Canada.

The sixteenth-century Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator speculated: “The route to Cathay by the Northeast... is no doubt short and easy.” It turned out to be anything but, and the first successful transit of the Northern Sea Route did not take place until more than 300 years after Mercator published his celebrated 1569 world map for mariners. The failure of even so distinguished an explorer as Vitus Bering to sail the entire Northern Sea Route (on his Great Northern Expedition from 1733 to 1743) suggests that Mercator was wildly optimistic in his assertion that sailing to Cathay around the north of Russia would be a doddle.

By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, interest in sailing between the Pacific and the Atlantic via one or the other of the Arctic sea routes was growing steadily. Both routes attracted their share of bold (and sometimes foolhardy) mariners.

That the Northwest Passage, rather than the Northern Sea Route along the coast of Muscovy, saw the first transit – by Robert McClure between 1850 and 1854 – was prompted by the lure of a series of prizes offered by the British Admiralty for mariners successful in mapping and establishing the route to the Bering Strait via Canadian** waters. McClure did in fact abandon his ship along the way, making the last part of the journey on foot over the ice, thus raising a few eyebrows among explorers who felt that this was not quite so magnificent an achievement as to warrant a handsome prize. Roald Amundsen's expedition from 1903 to 1906 was the first transit by ship of the entire Northwest route.

The northern Eurasian landmass showing the general line of the Northern Sea Route.

With so much focus on the Northwest Passage, one might have expected Imperial Russia to attend more to its own Northern Sea Route. Yet even Tsar Alexander I was inclined to back the Northwest Passage as the more promising shortcut to Russian America (now known as Alaska and the Pacific Northwest). He sponsored a number of imperial expeditions to search for viable routes.

There was during the nineteenth century a growing appreciation of the wealth of Siberia: sable and other furs, timber and a range of minerals. And while the tsar's cartographers were developing better maps of Siberian terrain and hydrology (and particularly the great rivers – such as the Lena, Ob and Yenisei – which flow north into the Arctic Ocean), there was no appetite for sponsoring imperial expeditions to the Russian North. This was left to private entrepreneurs like Mikhail Sidorov, an investor with interests in gold mining in Siberia who organized two expeditions in the 1860s.

Swedish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld made the first successful transit of the entire Northern Sea Route in 1878-9 – very much helped by Russian financier Alexander Sibiryakov who, like Sidorov, was keen to exploit gold reserves in Siberia and thus stood to gain mightily from any opportunity to export minerals via a new Arctic shipping route. Forty years later, Amundsen retraced Nordenskiöld's route and so became the first mariner to complete both Arctic routes connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The route from the Barents Sea to the Bering Strait extends to over 3000 miles, covering some of the most difficult maritime conditions in the world. It includes the Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, East Siberian Sea and Chukchi Sea, all of which freeze solid in winter.

Until 1932, there had only been three successful transits of the entire North Sea Route: those by Nordenskiöld and Amundsen, who both sailed from west to east, and one by Russian mariner Boris Vilkitsky who in June 1915 left Vladivostok and in fifteen months completed the first westerly passage.

the year 1932 was transformative for Soviet aspirations in the Arctic. Nikolai Zubov completed a successful circumnavigation of Franz Josef Land (see Russian Life July/Aug 2012) and Otto Schmidt set out with the aim of completing the fourth-ever transit of the Northern Sea Route (sailing from west to east). Otto Yulyevich Schmidt came, as his surname implies, from German stock, but he was a man fully committed to the Soviet cause.

Schmidt had speculated that it might be possible to complete the voyage in 100 days. He set sail in the Sibiryakov, a vessel named after the Russian financier who had sponsored Nordenskiöld's pioneering voyage over half a century earlier. Alexander Sibiryakov, by then an octogenarian living in retirement in Irkutsk, no doubt followed Schmidt's progress with considerable interest. Apart from the crew of three dozen, the Sibiryakov carried journalists and a film crew. There was even an official expedition artist on board.

Schmidt and his team on the Sibiryakov made the crossing in just ten weeks, despite the vessel suffering major propeller damage and losing all power before reaching the Bering Strait. With the help of improvised sails and benign winds, the Sibiryakov entered the Pacific on October 1, 1932. When Schmidt returned to Moscow two months later, traveling by rail from Vladivostok, he received a hero's welcome. No previous expedition had managed to traverse the Northern Sea Route within a single season. All had been forced to overwinter in the Arctic.

Stalin immediately appointed Schmidt head of the newly established Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route, an agency often known as Glavsevmorput (short for Главное Управление Северного Морского Пути).

The mission of Glavsevmorput was simple: to ensure that the one-off success of the Sibiryakov expedition was replicated hundredfold, even thousandfold. Soviet planners in Moscow wanted to see a steady stream of vessels using the Northern Sea Route without any greater risk to their crews and cargoes than might attend a long voyage in ice-free waters. Schmidt was assigned huge resources as Glavsevmorput took over responsibility for transportation, as well as economic and social affairs, in the northern regions of the Soviet Union. Before long, the Glavsevmorput flag was a common sight from Kola to Chukotka.

Schmidt spent the early months of 1933 creating basic structures for his growing agency, poring over maps to secure a better understanding of his vast empire. But, with a full beard that very much gave him the look of a classic polar explorer, Otto Schmidt was not one to be tied to a desk. He spent much time planning a summer expedition that would, he averred, demonstrate that the achievement of the Sibiryakov was just the beginning.

His voyage with the Chelyuskin in 1933 was thus highly anticipated. Yet it turned out to be a disaster, but one that Glavsevmorput and the Soviet Government transformed into a public relations triumph.

Schmidt started too late in the season, and on a vessel never designed to withstand the pressures of pack ice. Nonetheless, their progress was good as far as the East Siberian Sea, reached in late September, but the Chelyuskin then got stuck fast in slow-moving ice in the Chukchi Sea. When the hull of the Chelyuskin was punctured by ice in February 1934, everyone aboard – more than 100 in all – quickly abandoned ship and set up a makeshift camp on the ice.

Glavsevmorput had an aviation arm, and its pilots saved the day – and Schmidt's reputation. Over a period of some weeks, the canny pilots perfected the art of landing their small planes on moving ice and eventually all at Camp Schmidt were rescued without serious injuries, providing the Moscow media with an endless stream of good news. The seven pilots involved in the rescue operations became the first recipients of the newly created distinction Hero of the Soviet Union.

The skill of Glavsevmorput aviators underpinned a subsequent series of Arctic successes, including the polar flights of Valery Chkalov and Mikhail Gromov, for which both pilots received Hero of the Soviet Union awards. In 1937, Glavsevmorput relied again on its aviators in setting up NP-1 (North Pole 1),*** the world's first floating ice station, which brought eight new Hero of the Soviet Union medals to those involved in the expedition – among them one for Schmidt himself.

The cult of the Soviet aviator as a bold pioneer brightened life in grey Soviet towns just as Stalin's purges were beginning to bite. The public appetite for stories of daring adventures in the Far North was insatiable. Yet no journalist dared report that the Commissariat of Ice**** was failing to attend to its key job of developing the Northern Sea Route as a commercial and military waterway.

It was therefore perhaps no surprise to Otto Schmidt when, in March 1939, he was nudged out of Glavsevmorput. The agency's leadership was assumed by Ivan Papanin, who had distinguished himself as head of the ground team on the NP-1 expedition. And Papanin succeeded in facilitating some use of the Northern Sea Route, but Glavsevmorput never came close to shifting the quantities of cargo anticipated in successive Five Year Plans. Eventually, its work was taken over by other agencies and attention to the Northern Sea Route largely languished until century's end.

by the yeltsin years, the Northern Sea Route had slipped entirely from Russian horizons. Small ports along the Arctic coast suffered from neglect. Some, like Dikson and Tiksi, lost over half their population in the 1990s. But global warming is changing Arctic hydrology, and thinning ice, although bad news for polar bears and much of the planet, offers the prospect of more and easier transits of the Northern Sea Route.

So it is that, from Murmansk to Anadyr, there is a new mood of optimism in the air.

Medvedev's visit to Anadyr in September 2008 was a clear turning point. It signaled a new start for the Northern Sea Route, shifting the balance of Russian maritime activity decisively northwards. Four commercial vessels used the route in 2010. The following year the figure rose to 34, then to 46 in 2012, and 71 in 2013.

This activity should be seen in the context of a renaissance of Russian interest in its northern hinterland, prompted in part by a appreciation of the region's hydrocarbon assets, but also by Russia's renewed sense of its role as a global power with a particular mission in the Arctic. In 2007, members of the Arktika expedition fueled this mood when they placed a titanium Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole. Echoing the history of 80 years previous, three of the Arktika team were rewarded with the medal Hero of the Russian Federation upon their return to Moscow. Subsequent to this move, Russia appointed Anton Vasiliev as its new Ambassador-at-large with special responsibility for the Arctic, his title emphasizing a goal of “Arctic Cooperation.”

Other countries with strong northern interests (particularly Canada, the US and Greenland) are eyeing Russia's every move. Meanwhile China, potentially one of the greatest beneficiaries of the opening of the Northern Sea Route, is conducting its own Arctic adventures. In 2012, the Chinese icebreaker MV Xuě Lóng used the Northern Sea Route to sail from Shanghai to Iceland. Observers of Arctic affairs were then surprised when she sailed northeast, slipping quietly past Svalbard and boldly pushing through the pack ice on a transpolar course back to the Bering Strait. It prompted speculation that there could one day be a high-latitude route through the Arctic that would be less subject to Russian control.

In fact China has already started regular use of the Northern Sea Route for merchant shipping. In late August 2013, the MV Hong Xing became the first Chinese merchant vessel to sail the Northern Sea Route, carrying a mixed load of cargo for Rotterdam. Interestingly, she sailed around the northern edge of Novaya Zemlya, rather than taking the more southerly option through the Kara Gate, achieving the fastest crossing of the 2013 season. No other vessel last year came close to matching the MV Hong Xing's average speed of over 14 knots. By taking the Northern Sea Route, she cut over 3000 miles off the regular route from Shanghai to Rotterdam via the Suez Canal.

In August of 2013, Sergey Frank, head of the state-owned oil and gas transport company Sovcomflot, was able to brief (now President) Vladimir Putin on how the Northern Sea Route was developing. “This route is coming to life before our eyes,” said Frank, indicating that, with the help of a new generation of icebreakers, the operational season could be progressively extended to year-round operation. That, for the moment, is but a distant dream, but the stage is set for a busy 2014 season, with over 100 vessels expected to passage the Northern Sea Route, seeking to repeat the 2013 success of the MV Hong Xing, cutting two weeks off normal passage times via the alternative Suez Canal or Cape of Good Hope routes. Some experts already predict that by 2020 ten percent of China's international trade may be transported via the Northern Sea Route.

Last year, the first eastbound vessels left Murmansk on June 25. Unseasonably warm Arctic temperatures, particularly in March, have led to an early break-up of winter ice in the Kara Sea. The Northern Sea Route Information Office in Murmansk (arctic-lio.com) is suggesting that ice conditions for 2014 will be even more favorable than last year: the first eastbound vessels may pass through the Kara Gate in mid-June.

Over the last year, the safety and operational procedures (and the fees) for vessels using the Northern Sea Route have been meticulously codified. A new Northern Sea Route Administration was established in March 2013, and, though it may be in some senses a successor to Glavsevmorput, its wings were clipped from the outset. The decree that established the agency limited it to employing no more than a score of staff. New search and rescue centers have been established in Murmansk and Dikson with sub-centers in Arkhangelsk, Tiksi and Pevek. To provide better coordination of port facilities along the Northern Sea Route, the port authorities in Murmansk will from later this year control all Arctic ports – a big boost for Murmansk, but not a move that pleases Arkhangelsk. Facilities at all ports are being upgraded and in 2013 work started on an entirely new port at Sabetta, on the gas-rich Yamal Peninsula.

Russia may be in the driver's seat, but the wider maritime community also has a stake in the Northern Sea Route. Last year, more than one third of the vessels sailing the route were non-Russian. That cohort of 71 vessels carried the flags of eleven different nations, including a Maltese vessel carrying mixed cargo from Vietnam to the Baltic, a Greek tanker shipping oil from Norway to Japan and a Panamanian bulk carrier transporting coal from western Canada to Finland.

the northern sea Route's expansion signals a significant shift in world trade, one that changes the geopolitical valence of commerce in the northern hemisphere. If the figure of ten percent of China's trade using the Northern Sea Route is realized, that alone will represent cargoes valued in excess of 700 billion US dollars.

Norwegian ports such as Kirkenes (on the Barents Sea coast) are keen to get a piece of the action. Finland, deprived of its own Barents Sea port at Petsamo after the Second World War (it is now the Russian town of Pechenga –Печенга), is considering extending its rail network, which already crosses the Arctic Circle, to one of the Barents ports.

Meanwhile, both Finnish and Russian ports on the Gulf of Finland fear that they may lose out. Kotka, on Finland's south coast, which is presently a major port for Russian imports and exports, is watching developments carefully. The development of the Northern Sea Route poses a significant challenge to two Russian ports at the head of the Gulf of Finland: St. Petersburg and Ust-Luga. The much larger port of Primorsk feels more secure. It is the largest oil terminal in the Baltic region and its position as the hub of a pipeline network means that its customers are less easily able to switch their loyalties to Barents Sea ports.

The reverberations of developments in the North are also being felt at lower latitudes. Russia's largest port (in terms of tonnage handled) is Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, and while its dry bulk trade (mainly grain) is unlikely to move north, the port authorities see other commodities as being less tied to Novorossiysk.

Meanwhile, folk in Anadyr, the small port on the Chukotka coast, know what it's like to live on the very edge of Russia. Before the development of the Northern Sea Route, the fastest maritime option from Anadyr to western Russia was across the Pacific and through the Panama Canal. Now Anadyr is a way station on the route to the fast developing North, with all its resources.

In fact, the streets of Anadyr are the perfect place to observe the collision between old and new. The ends of some of the town's bright apartment blocks sport massive murals depicting scenes from traditional Chukchi life. There are smiling faces from the tundra, faces that are half-thawed and full of rugged warmth. But a new generation of Chukotka residents smile at the prospect of life on a new maritime highway of global importance, working in the merchant marine, the oil and gas industry, or in one of the new commercial enterprises that are blossoming on the back of the explosion of traffic and trade along the Northern Sea Route, rather than herding reindeer on the tundra.

For two centuries, Russia's attempts to modernize Siberia were limited to major centers of population and to rural areas south of the 60th parallel. Where there were significant investments in settlements further north (particularly north of the Arctic Circle), they were inevitably linked with the Gulag. Now, in the twenty-first century, global climate change and the decay of Arctic ice are opening a new path. RL

* Сeверный морскoй путь in Russian, often abbreviated as Севморпуть (Sevmorput).

*8 Of course, “Canada,” originally a term reserved for the French territories along the St. Lawrence River, did not exist as a country at this time. The Canadian Northlands were known to the British as the Northwest Territories, a term still used today to refer to a more limited area of the Canadian North.

*** Drifting ice station research has fallen victim to global warming. In late March 2014, Russian scientists recommended that the program be terminated, so fragile has the Arctic ice become. The last in the series was NP-40. The most distinguished ice station was NP-22. It survived for over eight years, drifting some 10,000 miles through the Arctic.

**** Commissariat of Ice” was coined by John McCannon to describe Glavsevmorput in his authoritative book Red Arctic (Oxford University Press, 1997).