June 19, 2005
Dear Friends and Family!
Greetings to you in the love of Christ!
Al is back in Russia, the children are safely in Pennsylvania
with their aunt and uncle, and I am home from the Magadan Region.
Magadan. As I told Russian friends that I was going to Magadan,
a look came into their eyes and they would ask, “Does anyone
choose to go to Magadan?” The place is infamous.
The Magadan Region is a remote corner of Russia in the northern
Far East. It is beyond Siberia, lying on the Sea of Okhotsk (an
arm of the Pacific Ocean). The city of Magadan lies on the neck
of a peninsula that has one of the best deep-water ports on Russia’s
Pacific Rim.
The area was explored during the reign of Peter the Great, but
it remained largely uninhabited (except by native peoples) until
gold and silver were discovered in 1929. The Soviets wanted a
cheap source of labor to tap into this mineral wealth, so the
Gulag system was established. From 1932-1956 thousands of prisoners
passed through Magadan on their way to camps in the interior where
they worked to build the needed infrastructure.
Some of the prisoners were criminals; others were merely victims—Christians,
Muslims, Jews, prisoners of war from World War II (many soldiers
taken prisoner by the Germans was labeled traitors and sent to
the camps), dissident writers and poets, kulak farmers (those
who showed skill and initiative). They built roads into the mountainous
interior (the Kolyma), they built towns to house geologists and
support staff, and they dug the mines. Many died.
I spent a week in the Magadan region with a group of three from
First Presbyterian Church in Palatka, Florida. The endpoint of
our journey was actually a small city beyond Magadan, also named
Palatka. It was built by prisoners from the camps some 70 years
ago to house geologists. In 1991, a sister city relationship was
established between the two Palatkas. The relationship was the
brainstorm of Wally Stembler, a member of FPC, Palatka, when he
discovered the second Palatka on the far side of the globe. In
1992, a group of 17 traveled from Florida to the Far East; a group
from Russian Palatka visited Florida the following year.
The relationship was established soon after the collapse of the
Soviet Union, when hopes were high for a bright future. It was
a bright start, but the challenges of communication across the
16 time zones with poor telephone, mail, and Internet connections
in the Far East wore down the relationship. Still, FPC struggled
to maintain connections with new Russian friends and with a small
Orthodox church in Russian Palatka, the Church of our Lord’s
Transfiguration. It was difficult. Three years ago, Wally contacted
us to see if we could help. I must admit that we too were daunted
by the distance and challenges, but we began to talk. I visited
Palatka, Florida, while on interpretation assignment last year,
and since then we have been working on the plans for this trip.
On June 6, the FPC group arrived in Moscow. Within three hours,
the four of us were in flight for the next eight-hour leg of the
journey, arriving in Magadan the next morning. Flying in, I was
amazed at the mountains stretching out before us and the emptiness
of those mountains. Warmly welcomed by a group from Palatka, we
loaded into vehicles and headed up the road. The “new”
road was under repair, so we began our journey into the Magadan
Region on the old road, the road built by prisoners, the first
leg of the Kolymskiy Trassa, the highway across the Kolyma mountains.
There were in fact two agendas for this journey to Palatka. The
first was renewing the connection between the two congregations,
but the group from Florida also sought ways to help the two cities
reconnect. They had brought with them a letter from their mayor
and a key to the city. They also brought greetings from the two
Rotary Clubs in Palatka, Florida, to the Rotary Club in Palatka,
Russia. Our itinerary, developed by our Russian hosts, also reflected
the two agendas. At times I felt caught between the two agendas,
aware that our friend, Stanislav, coordinating the tourism and
city connections, did not fully understand the importance of the
congregational connection to us. Fortunately, Father Sergey did
understand what we hoped to accomplish and found space in the
overall plan for fellowship with his congregation and deep conversation.
The first night of our arrival, we gathered for dinner with members
of the congregation and spent the evening getting to know one
another. I felt the usual tentativeness at the beginning of a
relationship, as our Russian friends begin to explore who had
come into their midst. There was more food than we could eat,
along with the expectation that we could succeed. We did the best
we could, but I’m afraid we let them down. Still, it was
a good beginning.
The next morning, we set out across the Kolyma to visit a hot
spring resort. They had told us that we would be traveling 200
kilometers to visit Talaya, but they forgot to tell us that we
would be spending the night until we were well on the road. It
took us five hours to get there. For our hosts, Talaya was the
treat. For me, it was the journey through the mountains that was
the greatest reward. It was beautiful and desolate at the same
time. Ice still covered fields and lakes and there was snow on
the peaks above. We went great distances without seeing habitation
and there were few cars. Along the way we passed two ghost towns.
One had been built to support an oil pipeline to the interior,
but it had not proved profitable. The other had been built around
a gold mine that they thought would last 100 years. It lasted
14. Once home to thousands, only a few hundred pensioners remain
in each community, trapped by poverty in the middle of nowhere.
The resort in Talaya was built around a hot spring by prisoners
in the 1930s. It had once been very beautiful but fell into disrepair;
many parts have crumbled away. It reopened about three years ago
and renovations are ongoing, but they have a long way to go. Still,
it has great fame for the healthful properties of its spring and
provides one of the few large swimming pools in the Far East.
People come from Chukotka and Yakutia to vacation there. The town
of Talaya also shows signs of great decay, but perhaps in another
5 to 10 years the current renovations will wipe away the face
of poverty. |
