Barentsburg

 

 

 

Autumn 2022. It’s the seventh month of war when I recall Barentsburg… 

 

The rusty shingle crunches loudly under our rubber boots. The egg-yellow jacket of New York’s DJ Spooky flashes up ahead in the white mist. Because of his yellow jacket and because of his need to jog every day, the other members of the expedition have resorted to calling Spooky ‘The Running Banana'. Our guide, Russian ornithologist Sergei who has a rifle about his person, is running behind Spooky swearing under his breath, trying not to lose sight of him. Sergey is responsible for accompanying, and maintaining the safety of, the members of our expedition. Here, in the Arctic, ‘safety’ is not a matter of empty rhetoric. Most of the polar bears we will encounter have never seen a human before and will feel no fear towards us - which lends an undeniable degree of risk to our expedition. 

 

Incidentally, the Arctic offers other dangers for the unprepared adventurer. For example, while gazing at the unbelievable landscapes, you can easily fall into a crack in the ice, powdered over by recent snowfalls. One day, I sat for a long time next to just such a crack, listening to the melting water gurgling about thirty metres beneath me, like silver, ringing bells. If you fall, you’ll go tumbling… tumbling… tumbling… 

We regularly visit glaciers – bright blue from the oxygen compressed under a gigantic pressure. The snow, which fell over the last thousand years, is compressed under its own weight into ice – a metre thick, meaning that ice ten metres below the surface of this glacier contains information about snow which fell ten thousand years ago. That thought thrills me, eliciting something akin to hallucinatory visions. Snow was falling the day that primitive men dragged a sledge along – its runners made from mammoth’s tusks. Primitive child dropped its toy in the snow, a fur-rattle stuffed with pebbles, and started crying – so they all turned around to pick it up. Then they set off again – and the snow kept falling and then turned to ice, which I’m now watching as it sparkles in my glass of whisky in the electric light of the wardrooms. There are no glaciers on the island where we hear the crunch of brittle moss under Spooky’s running feet as well as Sergey’s restrained swearing through the mist. We are surrounded by mist, but September on Svalbard is warm. Our whole expedition, myself along with twenty scientists and other artists, emerge at a shallow stream, in which pieces of chiselled ice are bobbing around. The water flowing down from the hills constantly sharpens these pieces of ice and then tumbles into the sea. As if a thousand deposed mountain kings threw off their icy crowns. But really it’s just an ordinary stream. There are endless streams like this one, around here. 

 

We gather around David, the expedition leader, to clarify what we’re doing here. David has been organising expeditions like ours every year for the past ten years. The idea behind these expeditions is simple and wonderful. Lots of artists know about global warming, and yes, there are even numerous artistic projects appearing on this topic, but not many of them (not many of us) perceive this problem on a personal level. David had the idea of bringing together artists with the scientists who are researching the problems of a changing climate, and sending them off together on a joint expedition, so that artists could be persuaded through personal experience that global warming and other signs of ecological catastrophe are not abstract, but rather they are the most real and present danger imaginable.  

 

David draws our attention to a stream. Spooky and Sergey have returned to the fold and are also listening to the river. “We are standing on a glacier which has lain here for hundreds of thousands of years. It is one of the largest on Svalbard. Millions of tonnes of frozen fresh water. Everything you see has happened to it in the last fifty years.” We look again at the stream. The peak of the moss-covered hills from which it flows, is lost in the mist. All of a sudden, a stuttering noise can be heard emanating from the mist, like a thousand leather drums. Descending from one ledge to another, above us, stomps a herd of wild reindeer. They almost reach us – they’re only about twenty metres away – when the herd divides into two and, smoothly flowing around us to our right and left, they continue their descent. It’s another five minutes before the sound of drumming subsides. The only sound is the murmur of the river, which used to be a year-round glacier not very long ago. 

 

The following day our schooner arrives in Barentsburg. 

Actually, before telling you about Barentsburg, first I must say something about Helsinki. I arrived in Finland after the war had started and I hadn’t reminisced about my time on this expedition, which had taken place in the now-distant year of 2011, until a chat-message appeared on my mobile from an unknown number.   

 

“I heard that you’re in Finland. I need help. My daughter and her husband are passing through Helsinki, they need a place to stay for one night.” 

 

I cautiously ask who has written the message. 

 

“Anatoly.” 

 

Which Anatoly? 

 

“Anatoly from Barentsburg.” 

 

And that’s when I started reminiscing about Barentsburg. 

 

 

According to the Spitsbergen Treaty of 1920, all signatory-countries have the right to mine natural minerals in the archipelago, as long as they recognise it to be the sovereign territory of Norway. One of the few countries to make use of this right was the USSR, which bought a piece of coastline from Norway in the Grønfjorden bay in the 1930s. The first miners’ homes, mines and coal storage appeared earlier, as early as 1912, and when Barentsburg became Russian, the Norwegians left the fjord, and the first Soviet state company Arctic-Coal (Artikugol’) shipped over its workers.  

 

Barentsburg is one of two Russian settlements in the archipelago and the second largest locality after Longyearbyen, the administrative capital of Svalbard. The other Russian mining village, with an African name Pyramid, has now been abandoned. In fact, Barentsburg is not going through the best of times either and the reason for its continued existence is unclear. Its tunnels are closed, coal is mined only to fulfil local needs – warming the homes of polar explorers. But one thing at a time. 

 

Our schooner reaches Barentsburg towards evening. A day before, some members of our expedition – who, the month prior to our journey, had been longing for contact with civilisation – clapped me on the back, announcing that this evening there would be a real “Russian vodka bar”. By which they meant that I would have to teach them how to correctly use that beverage. We had only five Russians among the twenty-five members of our international expedition – myself; Sergei - our guide; Darya - the curator of a contemporary art gallery; Lyonya – the artist with his writer-wife – Marina, who would later write about a wonderful book about our expedition: Goodbye, Arctic. It wasn’t clear exactly why I’m designated as the “Russian vodka bar” expert, but I feel responsible anyway and worry about it.       

 

To start with, the mooring lights of Barentsburg shine in the darkness, and then we moor our boat to the dock, blackened by coal dust, and get out onto the shore. As the expert on the “Russian vodka bar”, and as an individual who speaks Russian, I walk ahead. A poorly lit wooden staircase rises in front of us. The coal dust is so ingrained into the wood that it sparkles in the light of the lamps. It’s raining. Or rather, there’s a drizzle which settles onto our faces, like a watery dust fired from a spray-gun. Out of the darkness, a huge figure emerges, as if hacked out of coal. I feel a rising dread and, as the others are shoving me in the back, I ask where the bar is around here. The figure silently studies me. His face is not visible. Then his coal-stained hand rises and points into the darkness. We walk in that direction, as indicated, and about ten steps later I look back. The figure still stands as it was standing before, arm raised, like a Lenin statue ushering the people towards a bright future.             

 

After another hundred metres, there’s a wooden bungalow with a large cardboard matryoshka on the porch. It is the very same, sought-after “Russian vodka bar”, and our merry band stumbles noisily inside. But I hesitate. The dim light behind the small building catches my attention. I walk around to the other side, I take several steps and I fall… into my childhood. 

 

Even now, it is hard for me to say why a perfectly ordinary children’s playground made such a strong impression on me. For a whole month, we hadn’t had any internet, nor had we seen any signs of civilisation except for the short jetty used by the scientists in Ny-Ålesund. But even that had faded from my mind, lost beneath the heap of impressions of glaciers, islands, mountain peaks and snowy expanses. Encounters with whales, walruses, bears and seals, never-ending polar sunrises and sunsets had seemingly wiped away some sort of protective layer, exposing a deep layer of memory.  

 

In any case, at that moment, I’m in a playground and, coming as a surprise even to myself, I fall into my childhood. Far north, my parents were simple workers hacking a path through the taiga for a railway. Droplets of water are falling through the lamplight onto the wooden decking. Created with wooden roundels, the little car has fallen back awkwardly onto its cracked wheels. Next to it is a little old donkey, carved entirely from a log. The rubbish bin looks like a penguin with an open mouth (Why should penguins swallow rubbish? Why are there even penguins in the Arctic?)   

 

In the distant 1980s, there was the very same naïve architecture in the taiga village of my childhood. The playground looks abandoned and solitary, as if the last child who played here was – me. Thirty years ago. Except then mum called me for dinner and I went inside, never to return and I lived a great life and grew up and suddenly – I’m back. And now I’m standing here shaken by how suddenly the circle has been completed.  

 

The burst of laughter from the windows of the Russian Vodka Bar behind me pulls me out of my stupor. I turn around and walk inside, continuing to feel a strange connection to this place.   

 

The next day, the sun illuminates the landscape and my feelings of recognising this place gradually dissipate. The red moss on the mountains, surrounding Grønfjorden, are ablaze in the light. The shafts of boarded-up coal tunnels are gaping on the slopes, as if the mountains have been drilled by a dark nothingness, and there are coal heaps sprawling at the foot of the mountains, like the coal is dripping towards the loading docks. 

 

Barentsburg consists of dozens of faceless, three-story brick buildings. In recent years, some of them were lined with poisonously bright plastic, which has done nothing to improve their beauty. Somewhat below them are a few rows of wooden miners’ homes – in cornflower blue. Nobody lives in them; they stand derelict with smashed windows. The buildings are connected by wooden heating pipes. In a small square, there is an obligatory granite Lenin and a concrete slab – a  monument, depicted in the spirit of socialist realism: miners against a background of space rockets and a poem. 

 

 

 

 

 

Everything in Barentsburg comes in ones, like a cosmic village of the future: one playground, one chapel, one stadium, one school, one administrative building, one shop. There’s nothing superfluous. One canteen, one museum. 

 

In the museum, I look at the embossed parquet flooring, on which there lies a huge whale vertebra – the exhibition, presumably. We came across these vertebrae frequently on the archipelago’s islands – thrown there by the sea. The museum also has the obligatory stuffed polar bear, walrus tusks and a portrait of the famous ballerina Maya Plisetskaya. A brief text under her photograph explains that the ballerina’s father was the head of administration in Barentsburg and this is where she spent her childhood. 

 

The museum workers tell me that, since any currency besides Norwegian kronas is prohibited in Svalbard, residents of the town receive their salaries on special cards which are circulated only on the territory of Barentsburg. They buy food with these cards and spend them in the canteens. They can spend the rest of their earnings only when they return to the mainland.  

 

The main thing which the museum workers try to convey in their tales is the mission – for which several generations of miners toiled. “We always understood that a lot depended on our labour and on us,” a woman tells me nervously – one of the museum staff. “Whether the mainland had light and warmth, or not – that was down to us. That’s why we were prepared to endure so much.”  

 

There’s yet another poetic inscription from Soviet times on the smoky wall of the only canteen in Barentsburg: 

 

 

 

It’s either prophetic, or a curse. 

 

 

2011. I returned from the expedition and tried to reach Anatoly. Our conversation was as follows: 

 

- Hello, this is Mikhail, I’m a playwright and I was recently on an Arctic expedition in Svalbard. Antonina Nikolaeva, who works at the museum, gave me your number. She said that you used to work in Barentsburg’s administration in the 1980s. 

 

 

There’s a long silence down the phone line and then a dry voice reluctantly emerges. 

 

- What’s it to you? 

 

- I’ve been commissioned to write a radio play. I want to write about Barentsburg. 

 

- Who commissioned it? 

 

- The BBC World Service. 

 

- BBC… That’s the Americans, isn’t it? 

 

- The English. 

 

- What’s it to them? 

 

- It’s for me. I thought – I’m Russian, so I can write about Barentsburg. Especially because it reminds me of my childhood. I’m from the Amur region, my parents were building the Baikal-Amur railway line… 

 

- What’s it to the English? 

 

- They’re interested in ecological theme and it’s an issue which matters to me too. Why don’t we meet in person and I can tell you about it – and answer all of your questions in detail. 

 

I wait for forty minutes by the Pushkin statue in the centre of Moscow and when I call Anatoly again, he says: 

 

- I came to take a look at you, but I didn’t like what I saw.  

 

- Sorry, I don’t understand, you actually came here? Why didn’t you come and speak to me? 

 

- That’s what I’m telling you, I didn’t like what I saw. It’s also the Americans… 

 

- The English. 

 

- Don’t call me again. 

 

 

Short beeps on the phone line. 

 

And that’s where this could have ended if the waiting at the Pushkin statue hadn’t been repeated in Helsinki in the autumn of 2022. I wait for forty minutes at the station by Kamppi for Anatoly’s daughter and her husband to appear, now that they’re fleeing Russia’s mobilisation. But as it happens, nobody turns up. I call them – I  call Anatoly but nobody picks up. He probably didn’t like what he saw, again – I decide, philosophically, and I travel back home. 

 

That night, my phone starts ringing. An unfamiliar number. I run into the kitchen, to avoid waking anybody else up. It’s Anatoly’s voice on the line, he doesn’t waste any time on greetings. 

 

- I talked them out of it. 

 

- Who? 

 

- I talked my daughter out of it – and her husband. His workplace promised him that the army won’t call him up. He didn’t believe them and wanted to leave Russia with his family. But I talked him out of it. 

 

- Why? 

 

- Well, why shouldn’t they believe it? 

 

 

 

Standing in the dark kitchen, I shrug, even though Anatoly will never see my gesture. 

 

- Did you write that thing for the Americans? 

 

- For the English. I did. 

 

- Did they like hearing about our Barentsburg? 

 

- To be honest, I’m not sure. The English always praise everything, but it’s never clear if they like it or not. 

 

- Barentsburg is the best town on earth. 

 

- I see… 

 

 

 

The conversation falters. I want to politely say goodbye but then Anatoly blurts out: 

 

- I worked there from ‘85 to ‘88. The last years weren’t good. What with the food supplies and all that. The chaos in our country had already kicked off. 

 

- I see. 

 

- But the lads kept working. Up there in the north, you’re either working or resting. It’s better to work. We loaded up coal every day. We loaded up every ship to the brim. We worked in three shifts. Then we took it off to sea and off it went – overboard. 

 

- Overboard? 

 

- Yes. Into the sea. 

 

- Why? 

 

- What should we have done with it? Who needed the coal? If we could shovel it off the land like that, it could become gold. More expensive than oil. That’s why we dumped it. 

 

- Wouldn’t it have been simpler to close the mines? 

 

- We received the order to work. To maintain our presence in the archipelago at all costs. 

 

- Whose presence? 

 

- Our presence. 

 

- And the miners? 

 

- What about the miners? 

 

- Did they know? 

 

- No need. 

 

 

 

I couldn’t stand this anymore. 

 

- So you persuaded your daughter’s husband to stay in Russia. Because you believe what the authorities tell you? Do you actually believe them? 

 

- What’s that got to do with it? 

 

- Seriously? They’re lying to you just like you lied to the miners! And yet you believe them! You carry on believing them! Even though they’ve always lied! Nothing has changed! 

 

 

A pause. Anatoly again. 

 

- I never liked you, even then. 

 

- Listen, it doesn’t matter if you like me or not. Tell your daughter and her husband your story about the coal! Tell them and let them come to their own conclusions… 

 

- Don’t call me again. Do you understand? Never call me again! 

 

 

The buzzing of an empty phone line. Exactly as it happened in 2011. And maybe exactly as it had happened in 1988. And maybe exactly as it had happened before then too. Nothing has changed. The only thing that has changed is me – sitting in this kitchen with my heart pounding in my chest and a telephone with a buzzing phone line – feeling my helplessness in the face of catastrophe. Beyond the windows is Helsinki. It’s autumn 2022. The war has been raging for seven months. 

 

 

 

 

 

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The essay first appeared in the publication Performance and Solidarity, published by Theatre Info Finland TINFO in 2023.