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60.4450706,96.2411324. I have no clue what this place is. I've speculated that it is some sort of mining operation, or oil refinery,
took a walk with pleasure) “Four years of waiting, a good time for a vacation, 14 days, 20,000 km of track, 114 tr. money and ... and first things first. Part-1 "Zabroska" www.ermite.ru...
Some were idealists who came to carve a new socialist world from the frozen wilderness. Many were lured by the promise of wages three times what they could earn anywhere else. Others sought adventure on the new frontier.
Together, they tightened the Soviet grip on the icy Chukotka Peninsula across the Bering Strait from Alaska, using huge federal subsidies to build towns, factories and military bases on the edge of the tundra.
But today, the Russians are in retreat. With the Cold War lost and the economy in disarray, their dreams have turned to desperation, and their pioneer spirit has succumbed to the daily struggle for survival.
More than half the people of the Chukotka region have moved away in the past six years, and more are leaving daily. In town after town in Russia’s easternmost region, crumbling apartment blocks stand abandoned, windows broken. The potholed streets--empty of people--are lined with shipping containers packed with the household goods of Chukotka’s refugees.
Officials say they want to attract tourists, but there are few hotels, transportation services are primitive, and the government refuses to relax restrictions that keep visitors out. Further, Nazarov has blocked a 10-year-old plan to create a U.S.-Russian national park encompassing both sides of the Bering Strait for fear it would interfere with oil exploration.
Some officials pin their hopes on the idea of building a tunnel under the Bering Strait to Alaska, linking Europe, Asia and America with an intercontinental highway. But they acknowledge that few people would want to spend weeks driving from, say, Los Angeles to Paris by way of Siberia.
Authorities in the Chukchi Autonomous okrug in northeastern Siberia have expelled a group of Greenpeace activists. The environmentalists wanted to investigate the deaths of some 10,000 reindeer in the remote Arctic peninsula this past winter. They have accused the local authorities of failing to take the necessary measures to save the animals.
In many ways, Russia's Chukotka Peninsula on the Bering Sea is a geographical reflection of Alaska, with similarities in landscape and wildlife. At least three trips to this little-visited region are scheduled in July.
Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris of Vashon, Wash., will take a group of 17 travelers from Provideniya through the Bering Strait to the Chukchi Sea aboard the Suchotsky, a 285-foot, ice-strengthened marine research vessel built in Finland. The trip, from July 5 to 18, will be led by Dennis Paulson, a biology professor at the University of Puget Sound. The price is $3,995 round trip from Provideniya, including a night's stay in Anchorage before and after the cruise. Air fare to Anchorage is extra, as is air fare between Anchorage and Provideniya.
About 700 reindeer have died of hunger in Russia's remote Chukotka Peninsula and another 150,000 are facing starvation, officials said today.
The region's civil defense chief, Yuri Zhulin, said the animals were going hungry because rain and snowfall during the past two weeks have turned up to 70 percent of their pastures into ice sheets.
The weekend developments, in which the two Chukotka officials met with leaders here and toured Alaskan Eskimo villages to examine art works, follow an agreement two years ago between President Bush and the Soviet President, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, to allow the native people to travel across the Bering Sea without passports and other bureaucratic formalities