Живая Арктика. 1999, №3-4.

N8 3-4 (17-18) к р а е в е д е н и я век Ж декабрь 1999 0 0 3 8 6 0 6 0 MGOUNB W * T t I'» 1^ '" !^ 1^ f y w y I"Т іу я у ч щ р ^ n f f E X P L O R A T I O N A G E They, who want to see the human genius in its up- most generous struggle against superstition and gloom, should read the history ofArctic travels, should read about men, who met the Unknown with fluttering banners. No­ where probably the Knowledge was acquired at a higher price of privations, disasters and suffering. These words of the outstanding polar explorer Fridt­ jof Nansen are also used as epigraph to this issue of our anthology “The Vivid Arctic”. Mastering, assimilation of the Kola Land by Man be­ gan ages and ages, not less than eight thousand years ago. The exploration however, the knowledge, where from are the land and people on it, started shaping compara­ tively lately. Unfortunately, the Russian brief and capa­ cious term краеведение has no analogue in English. Dic­ tionaries suggest “study of local lore" for it. Край is “land” or “territory”, but it is also “brink” : we are here on the northernmost brink of the European continent. And the verb ведать means not only “to know” but also “to mas­ ter”, “to manage". Thus, we are studying, but also manag­ ing this land. Russian Lapland, even in the XIX century, was still a quiet, almost reserved nook of Russia. For most people of our world it и/as “a land without name and without ter­ ritory", as Mikhail Prishvin said, the Russian author, who poeticized the Man in his organic connection with the Nature. However, the iron hand of the XX century at first crossed with its metals the polar circle, reaching the Ocean, and then, after the revolution and the Civil war, an un­ precedented “domestication of natural resources" start­ ed. Geologists and scientists were followed by trainloads ofprisoners and “special resettlers” - the main labour force of the industrial giants in construction. At the same time, in the twenties, together with the colonization move­ ment, started the explora­ tion one. Eminent scien­ tists and public men Vass­ ily Alymov and Herman Kluege were founders of the “Study of the local lore society" in the Kola penin­ sula. The range ofthe Mur­ mansk society activities was highly extensive, from geological and ethno­ graphic expeditions up to organization of museums, ■ sanctuaries and reserves. Meanwhile however the totalitarian regime was gaining the force in the USSR. And among the first ones who was brought un- іи Ы | der the knife of purge and repression, were scientists and the environment protectors: they were standing up for sav­ ing their “small fatherland”, and this position was incom­ patible with the ideology of the new State, with dictator­ ship, militarization, subjugation of Nature and of Man. After Stalin’s visit to the famous Murmansk Biological station in the Koia Bay, the false “Case of saboteur biolo­ gists” was produced. Director of the Station Herman Klue­ ge and other scientists were arrested, the Station was liquidated... Instead, a military base was established, now Polarnyi town. Among the huge number of “cases”, which are now possessions of openness, was also the “Case on Lapp conspiracy”; the main prisoner at the bar here was the outstanding researcher of local lore Vassily Alymov. In 1947 Nickolay Volkov, the outstanding ethnogra­ pher, was arrested and died in the camp. His book “Rus­ sian Lapplanders" was published only in 1996. Research­ ers of local lore Nina Hagen-Torn, Vladimir Charnoluskij and other explorers of the Kola Peninsula were torn away from their work in the Kola North by many years of con­ finement in camps and banishment. Professor of the Military Medical Academy Sergey Zlatogorov was subjected to repression for negative esti­ mation of sanitary and hygienic state of the industrial units being in construction in the circumpolar North. Did not escape repressions the academician Yevgenij Kreps (fol­ lower of the great Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov) and his brother Herman Kreps, founderofthe Lapland reserve. Under the load of framed-up “cases" people died, whose only guilt was their talent and sharp-sighted love for their native land. "Wolf-hound age” did exterminate the best representatives of the XX century. These losses were irreplaceable for the sci­ ence, for nature, for the society. . ___ Mission of the great Ж * . : - . Newyounger generation of the Third millennium is not only to revere the memory of the fallen, but to accept and continue their noble aspirations. Only the cog­ nizing and solicitous love for the native land, for this brink of ours will make pos­ sible a long and happy life for all of us. The reader will find in this issue of our anthology a number ofpublications by representatives of this new generation of researchers. Authorized translation by Roman A. Kravchenko- Berezhnoy, Phd 99