Heirs to Gagarin

When we asked photographer Igor Shpilenok to offer a few words about his wilderness images that comprise our 2004 Wall Calendar (see ad, page 1), here is what he said:

Most of my fellow countrymen who were proud of Russia’s achievements in space exploration or the arms race find themselves frustrated today.  Yet I have found another reason to be proud of my country: over the past 80 years, Russia created one of the largest and most effective systems of protected areas in the world.  Unlike space exploration or the arms race, this system continues to expand and it would be even more effective if only one percent of the resources spent on those programs were dedicated to the protected areas system.  Zapovedniks, or strictly protected nature reserves, form the core of this system.  While it is difficult to describe the magnificence of Russian wilderness preserved in zapovedniks in words, I have tried to capture some of its beauty in these photographs.

Interestingly, Igor had no idea that the lead story in this issue of Russian Life, which also features his photographs of Kalmykia (page 32) and of zapovedniki across Russia, was the Russian Space Program (page 24). Yet his comparison is well put. Russia can truly be proud of the wilderness areas it has preserved. But cordoning off these areas is one thing. Securing them for the future through an ongoing commitment to nurturing and protecting wildlife (from poaching and industrial waste, to name but two) and funding a modest system of rangers, is another thing altogether.

Meanwhile, as the story in this issue clearly shows (page 46), the rangers and researchers maintaining Russia’s fragile wilderness areas are doing truly heroic work. It would not be an overstatement to call these dedicated souls the heirs of Yuri Gagarin. Instead of exploring the cosmos, they are exploring an equally unknown realm: what happens to nature when we just leave it alone.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s political leaders have repeatedly cast about for The Russian Idea, a new ideology to guide the country’s development. Russia will find a “Third Path” into the future, they insist, one that involves neither the petty greed of Capitalism, nor the authoritarianism of Communism. Experts, meanwhile, have scoffed at the notion. History has ended, they say. Communism lost and Capitalism is now the only kid on the block. Get with the program!

Yet there is a Third Path, and it is staring Russia in the face, from 100 zapovedniks stretching from Bryansk in the West to the Kuriles in the East. It is the radical idea that Russia, with its amazing wealth of natural resources and human potential could become a zapovednik among nations: a society set apart, one that worships not Production and Profit, but Sustainability and Sanity, one that sees the land not as something to expropriate and exploit, but something to cherish and nourish, so that our grandchildren might also be able to enjoy clean air and water, to know that there is (not was) such a thing as a demoiselle crane. Imagine: Russia as the world’s leading Ecological Power. One-seventh of the Earth gone Green.

It’s an awesome possibility to consider. But of course it is totally unrealistic.

I’m sorry, what was I thinking?

Enjoy the issue.

Paul Richardson

Publisher