The images on these pages are available for one time use in conjunction with review or promotion of ARKTIKA The Russian Dream that Failed provided that appropriate credit is given. For image files please contact CBC International or Face to Face Media at the addresses below.
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A Saami family of reindeer herders, on the Kola Peninsula, ca 1910 . The mild climate, rich nickel deposits, and strategic location of the Kola peninsula attracted the attention of the new Soviet government. Settlers began moving north in the 1920s and collectivization of reindeer herds began before World War II. The current Saami population in Russia is around 2000, largely concentrated in the village of Lovozero. Photo credit: Lovozero Museum |
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Kavarai was one of the leading whale hunters in the Chukchi community of Lorino on the Bering Strait when Oleg Egorov was a child. Many smaller communities were uprooted and resettled in villages like Lorino, raising its population from 200 to more than 1200. When Oleg Egorov returned after 1990 he found a depressed, unemployed community with a high rate of suicide and alcoholism. Photo credit Oleg Egorov |
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Norilsk, originally build by slave labour, is the largest of the mining and smelting cities built above the Arctic Circle. With a population of more than 250,000, the it was a model city in the Soviet plan. But the smelters emit a million tons of sulphur a year, polluting the Arctic and damaging the tundra. The cost of maintaining the northern cities has proven prohibitive and more than a million residents are expected to leave. Photo credit: AMAP (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program) |
Cold War rivalries turned the Arctic into a military zone, encouraging secrecy. Soviet dumping of nuclear waste was not revealed until after the Soviet collapse. This image shows the USS Skate surfacing at the North Pole in 1962. In the late 20th century the military were the principal explorers of the Arctic. Photo credit: US Navy
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Imagining the North The uncharted North fired the imagination of Europeans and North Americans in the 19th and early 20th century. Many believed in a warm open ocean existed, on the other side of a ring of ice. John B Sheldon of Hillville, New Jersey believed that the pole was made out of diamond. But the idea of a perpetually frozen landscape was alien to farming peoples in the warm and fertile south. Few people, in Russia or the West could conceive of a life among the sophisticated hunter gatherers who had lived in the Arctic for millennia. Credit: Face to Face Media |
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Men Against the Ice The Soviets, like all other explorers, pitted themselves against the ice and cold, in a battle to conquer the north, from the Arctic Circle to the North Pole. From the 1930s onward Russia maintained bases on the polar ice cap and developed submarine and icebreaker fleets that could operate in the Arctic waters, year around. The Soviet government made the conquest of the North, and of nature in general, a priority. "We must not wait for nature to grant us her favours" was an official slogan, "Our task is to take them from her."
This illustration is from a Soviet poster at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Credit: Soviet Aviation |
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Sources of images for reviewers
Face to Face Media
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Vancouver BC Canada V5L 2Y8
604 251 0770 Fax 604 251 9149
email: carson@smartt.com
www.facetofacemedia.ca
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CBC International Sales
P.O. Box 500, Station A
Toronto, Ontario M5W 1E6 CANADA
Tel: 416 205 3500 Fax: 416 205 3482
email: cbcis@cbc.ca
www.cbcis.ca
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