Providence bay on the map. Provideniya Bay (Chukotka Autonomous District, Russia)
Providence Bay (Chukotka autonomous region, Russia) - detailed description, location, reviews, photos and videos.
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One of beautiful places in Chukotka with one of the best local history museums in the region - perhaps a worthy reason to visit Provideniya Bay during your romantic journey through the harsh, but beautiful peninsula. And the name of the bay - to match, beckons with ancient secrets and riddles. It was here that ships got up for the winter, fearing raging storms, and received reliable protection, shelter and shelter.
How to get there
In Providence Bay there is a very small, but international Airport, located near the village of Ureliki, which is on the southern (that is, opposite from the village) coast. The airport accepts regular flights from Anadyr by the Chukotavia airline, as well as charters from the American Nome (Alaska). You can get to the center of Provideniya Bay by bus, which also runs around the village.
According to the legend, the bizarrely indented bay in the Anadyr Bay of the Bering Sea was discovered in 1660 during a scientific expedition to Cape Chukotsky. However, the name of this the most picturesque place appeared almost two centuries later.
A paragraph of history
According to the legend, the bizarrely indented bay in the Anadyr Bay of the Bering Sea was discovered in 1660 during the scientific expedition of Kurbat Ivanov to Cape Chukotsky. However, the name of this picturesque place appeared almost two centuries later, when in 1848-1849. the English ship Plover, under the command of Captain Thomas Moore, had to anchor here and wait out the harsh local winter.
The ship sailed from British Plymouth in January 1848, and cruised the Bering Sea in search of the lost Franklin expedition.
The bay became their salvation, because the stormy wind and bad weather crept up quickly and unexpectedly, and only by the very providence this quiet and cozy harbor was sent to them literally in a few days from death. The name, which is understandable, was supported by the entire team - Providence Bay got its new name.
And then, from that very moment, whalers and merchants periodically stopped here for the winter, for meetings or short-term rest during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Alas, not everyone treated the local population, shall we say, carefully. In 1875, the Russian clipper "Gaidamak" under the command of Sergei Tyrtov deliberately dropped anchor in the bay in order to ensure the state monopoly on coastal trade. He distributed leaflets addressed to foreign merchants among the local Chukchi, after which he headed north to the Gulf of Lawrence, where he found the merchant ship Timandra from the United States, which was engaged in the exchange of walrus bones for alcohol with the local population.
The eponymous settlement in the bay appeared much later, only in 1937 a decision was made to build a port. Just three years later, the safe harbor was already open and ready to receive cargo at the wall of the first berth.
During its heyday, when the port did not stop work literally for a minute, and the water surface opposite the village was full of huge dry cargo ships, more than 7 thousand people lived in Providence Bay. Today, not even half.
Geography and climate
The width of Providence Bay reaches an impressive 8 km at the beginning, narrowing towards its base, but the length, measured along the middle line, is over 34 km. The maximum depth is about 150 m, but at the entrance to the bay it does not exceed 35 m, therefore, from May to October, the water is completely or partially free of ice.
There are several other small bays and harbors inside the bay, but the village and the airport are located in the Komsomolskaya Bay. The steep banks of Provideniya are the most beautiful cliffs and hills with a height of about 600-800 m.
What to see
The main advantage of the village of Provideniya Bay (apart from the fantastic nature around) is the Local History Museum, where you can learn almost everything about the life of the local population - Chukchi, Evenki, Eskimos. It is small, but its collection is as unique as the people that work within its walls. Hearing more interesting stories about this harsh land, rather than within the walls of the "providential" museum, is hardly possible.
Pay attention to the cost of souvenirs - it is often indicated in dollars, which is not at all surprising: American cruise ships from Alaska often come here.
To the North, to the future!
Alaska's official motto
Down with the pernicious influence of the West!
Ideal slogan for Chukotka
The master of European postmodern philosophy, Jacques Derrida, has a small, but rather revealing work called “Another Cape. Deferred Democracy ", at the beginning of which he makes the assumption:
Old Europe seems to have exhausted all its possibilities, produced all possible discourses about its own identification.
This exhaustion looks very convincing, since then Derrida himself, instead of any intelligible description of this "other cape", habitually delves into such a characteristic french theory verbal scholasticism. Where, according to the precise remark of one of the heroes Viktor Pelevin, "it is impossible to change the meaning of the sentence by any operations."
This is a natural historical dead end of Eurocentric thinking, painfully immersed in itself - no matter how it creates for itself the image of “globally open”. Although the discovery that the Earth is round, it never seems to have touched him. This thinking is still in a flat, two-dimensional coordinate system, until now "East" and "West" seem to him as some opposite vectors, diverging from Europe itself and measured by the distance from it - "near" or "far" - although they themselves the inhabitants do not designate themselves that way and have a completely different picture of the world. And for "enlightened" Europeans it is difficult to imagine a natural coincidence of "East" and "West" somewhere on the other side of the globe. It is no coincidence that it is in European mythology that the characteristic definition of "end of the world" arose, migrating into postmodern philosophy in the image of some exotic "Other".
In present-day Russia, this Eurocentric thinking is also quite widespread - giving rise to a humble recognition of its secondary nature and provinciality. Although it is Russia that is closely adjacent to this most mysterious region of the "end of the world", and even includes this "other cape" in its own territory, from which all this "East-West" confrontation of the modern era looks like an absurd fantasy.
Political scientist Vladimir Videman demonstrates how easy it is to grasp this obviousness:
The belief that Russia "with all its body" adjoins Europe is largely due to a purely optical illusion generated by the usual perspective of the Eurocentric map of the world, where the American continent is located on the left. If we move it to the right (as is done, for example, in Japanese geographical maps), then we will immediately make sure that Russia is "kissing" in the east with America, and the length of the Russian-American maritime border no less than the land border between Russia and the European bloc. Moreover, looking at the globe from above, we find that the Arctic Ocean is, in fact, a large inland Russian-American sea.
Cape Chukotka, from which you can see Alaska, has a very symbolic name - Providence... Figures of the modern era tried not to notice this "shocking" rapprochement between the Far East and the Far West - it completely destroyed their dualistic model of the world. Including even the border between day and night - in this region day and night are polar and do not obey the "normal" daily rhythm. Therefore, they simply took this region out of the brackets of history, declaring it a "world reserve" for the most distant future and referring to the complete unsuitability of these frozen lands for life.
However, according to the version of many historians who did not recognize this unspoken "taboo", it was this region that was globally leading about 30-40 thousand years ago, before the "great icing". Then, on the site of the present Bering Strait, there was a land isthmus, along which the "first Americans" came to their "promised land." Unique archaeological coincidences of ancient Siberian and ancient American cultures fully confirm this version. Close motives in mythology, clothes, forms of dwellings, etc. are striking. peoples of Siberia and North America.
Reverse migrations of peoples probably also took place. For example, Lev Gumilev expressed the opinion that in the III-II millennia BC the Indians crossed the Bering Strait and, getting to Siberia, reached the Urals. Even the etymology of such a “Eurasian” title as “khakan” (“kagan”, “khan”, “van”), which the princes of Ancient Rus also called themselves, he traces to the Dakot word waqan, who had the same meaning - a military leader and a high priest.
Paleontologists, however, "dig" even deeper - for example, A.V. Sher in his monograph "Mammals and Stratigraphy of the Pleistocene of the Far North-East of the USSR and North America" (1971) shows that during the last three and a half million years of our planet's life, a land "bridge" between the Eurasian and American continents arose five, six, and maybe more times! Some modern researchers even offer a name for this "virtual" land - Beringia... However, if we are to develop the mythological version in its entirety, then why not assume that this mysterious isthmus could be part of the original northern continent - Hyperborea?
Geographer Alexei Postnikov states:
In Beringia, contact between the old and the new world was constant, although, of course, the vast majority of the tribes and peoples inhabiting the western and eastern hemispheres did not suspect anything about it.
However, these "suspicions" themselves - in the existence of the "old" and "new" world, the "western and eastern hemisphere" - from the northern point of view, look like absolute conventions. This holistic thinking was most vividly manifested precisely among the aborigines of this land, who, in response to the question of the "civilized" newcomers, what kind of people they are, called themselves simply people... On the contrary, European cartographers, thinking in separate hemispheres, seemed strange to them ...
Every story is based on a myth. A rational scientific toolkit turns out to be completely inapplicable to the analysis, for example, of the relationship between heroes and gods, with which all ancient manuscripts are full. In addition, modern (modernist) historiography, as a rule, adheres to a flat, linear concept of history, completely ignoring the traditional, cyclical. Namely, according to cyclical logic, the most daring projects of the future turn out to be a direct reflection of the deepest antiquity.
* * *
For us, the most interesting is the region where “ Far East"And" Far West "merge together, erasing this conventional border. Alexander Herzen, immensely surprising his Eurocentric contemporaries, predicted in the 19th century the inevitable convergence of Russian and American civilizations in this region, from where, as he believed, the construction of the "future world" would begin. And today it really becomes quite real - when the last “great icing” is replaced by no less great “global warming”, which, according to the forecasts of climatologists, will bring the weather of these latitudes closer to the average European one. Moreover, this will happen earlier than many think - already in the coming century.
Recently, much has been said about a "warming" of a different kind - the establishment of friendly relations between Russia and America after decades of the Iron Curtain. However, from the point of view of a broad historical perspective, this friendship is hardly appropriate to call a "thaw" - the word itself gives the impression of a kind of accident in the middle of the "winter", which is considered the norm. Whereas an annoying historical misunderstanding ("summer frost") in Russian-American relations was, on the contrary, the very "curtain" of the second half of the twentieth century. Throughout the previous history of their relations, Russia and the United States not only never fought with each other, but were constant allies - even despite the deepest difference between their regimes. And in this it is impossible not to see, if you will, "the hand of Providence."
So, during American war For independence, Catherine II openly supported the American "separatists" in their struggle against the English metropolis - which caused unheard of surprise among the European monarchs. When these European monarchies waged the Crimean War of 1853-56 with Russia, many Americans, in turn, asked the Russian embassy in Washington to send them there as volunteers. And perhaps the outcome of this war, which was not too successful for Russia, would have been different ... But just a few years later, during the civil war in America, Russia itself sent two large squadrons to the American shores as a sign of support for the government of Abraham Lincoln. These squadrons, anchored off the western and eastern coasts of America, played a significant role in preventing the possible intervention of European powers sympathetic to the slave-owning South. And Russia, which had just abolished serfdom itself, sided with the free northerners.
Exploring the differences between Europe and America, Georgy Florovsky was surprised:
The face of the Far West - America is mysterious. In everyday life, this is a repetition and exaggeration of "Europe", a hypertrophy of the general European democracy of the bourgeoisie. And it is all the more unexpected to meet under this crust a definitely heterogeneous cultural tradition, leading from the first immigrants through Benjamin Franklin and Emerson to the self-made man of Jack London, the tradition of radical denial of philistinism and the way of life and the assertion of individual freedom.
He expressed this idea in his work "On non-historical peoples". Publishing it in the first Eurasian collection of 1921 "Exodus to the East", as we see, he thought "East" much further than many of his colleagues ... But modern "neo-Eurasians" do not follow this distance. In their Eurocentric, modernist-dualistic thinking, they practically do not differ from their favorite enemies - the “Atlantists”. Is that those with "individual freedom" are somewhat better ...
The direct rapprochement of East and West "on the other side of Europe" has long engendered an extremely interesting interaction between Russians and Americans. utopian projects... Many Russian revolutionaries left for America, including the hero of Chernyshevsky's novel "What is to be done?", "A special person" Rakhmetov. " New Russia", Which Vera Pavlovna sees in her famous dreams, judging by the detailed geographical description, was somewhere in the Kansas area - which is mentioned in the novel and "in reality".
According to historian Maya Novinskaya,
in the first half of the XX century. (mainly in 1900-1930) Russian utopian communal ideas, in particular Tolstoy and Kropotkin, were played on American soil; and this is not only about the marginal communities of emigrants from Russia, but also about a purely American utopian practice.
It is noteworthy that after 1917 this "interaction of utopias" not only did not stop, but acquired a new scale:
The first Bolsheviks had great respect for America: it served for them as a real beacon of advanced industrial and even partly social experience. They dreamed of introducing the Taylor system in Russia, introduced American educational concepts, admired American efficiency and sent many people to study in America. In Soviet Russia in the 1920s and early 1930s, an almost American cult of technology and industry was implanted, and when it came to industrialization, Soviet heavy industry was simply copied from the American one, and thousands of American engineers built it. In those years, it was a matter of honor for every major Soviet writer to travel to America and later publish his impressions of it: Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Boris Pilnyak, Ilf and Petrov created a relatively attractive image of America in their books. Criticizing American capitalism, as it should be, they did not hide their admiration for the technical genius of the American people, the might of American industry, and the breadth of American business scope. Nothing of the kind was written then about close Europe: on the contrary, Europe was perceived as an obvious enemy and a future aggressor - it was to prepare for war with it that American engineers built Soviet tractor, automobile and chemical plants. (1)
And even when the “Iron Curtain” arose between Russia and America after the Second World War, it sank over Europe. And the natives of Chukotka and Alaska continued to ride sledges to visit each other on the ice of the Bering Strait, surrounded by shamanic "invisibility" for the border guards of the two opposing empires ...
* * *
In the fog of a narrow strait between the Providence Cape in Chukotka and the Resurrection Cape in Alaska, space and time change. It is there that the illusory border between "East" and "West" disappears. It is there that the "date line" passes. This is not just a sequential change of time zones in latitude - the time on both sides of this imaginary line remains the same, but changes at once for a whole day. When there is a direct connection between these points, the utopia of the time machine is actually embodied.
On European maps since the 16th century, i.e. long before Bering, this strait bore the mysterious name "Anian". The Soviet geographer A. Aleiner put forward an interesting, but rather logical hypothesis of where this word comes from:
The Russian signature "more-akian", which goes back to the Latin "mare-oceanus", could be read by some foreigners as "more anian", since the stylized Russian letter "k" in this name can easily be mistaken for "n".
This borrowing is not surprising, since the Russian "drawings" of those places unknown to Europeans (for example, Dmitry Gerasimov) date back to 1525! Another confirmation that the Russian geographic outlook was then immeasurably superior to the European one is the fact that the legendary James Cook, who went to the Aleutian Islands in 1778 and believed that he had "discovered" them, unexpectedly found a Russian trading post there and was forced to correct its residents have their cards. As a token of gratitude, he presented the commander of the trading post Izmailov with his sword. Although, for sure, it would be more useful to him himself - the next year he died in Hawaii, trying to "civilize" the aborigines there. Although there was a Russian trading post for a long time, none of its inhabitants were eaten ...
In this mysterious, magnetic region, the entire conventionality of the Eurocentric picture of the world is revealed. It is here that the most passionate, active and free personalities aspired from different sides in search of their own utopia. In America, which itself was an inherently utopian country, the most advanced, in every sense of the word, utopians were the pioneers of the "Wild West" who no longer had enough freedom in the overly regulated Atlantic states. And at about the same time, a massive movement of Russian explorers and navigators to the East began, "meet the Sun". This movement was mainly composed of those forces that sought to escape from the excessive state tutelage - free Cossacks and Pomors, who never knew either yoke or serfdom. Such legendary personalities as Khabarov, Dezhnev, Poyarkov are representatives of this particular wave. The first ruler of Alaska, Alexander Baranov, was from the Pomor Kargopol. Later, the Old Believers who left the “fallen Third Rome” to look for the magical Belovodye and the saving city of Kitezh naturally joined this wave.
But the first to cross the "end of the world" were the Novgorodians - bearers of the great North Russian tradition, cruelly suppressed by the Tatar-Moscow yoke. The historian of the Russian emigration in America Ivan Okuntsov writes about it this way:
There are some hints that the first Russian emigrants were some enterprising residents of Veliky Novgorod, who arrived in America 70 years later than Columbus. Residents of Veliky Novgorod have been to Western Europe, the Scandinavian Peninsula and the Urals. Their resettlement to America took place after Tsar Ivan the Terrible defeated Novgorod in 1570. The energetic and enterprising part of the Novgorodians, instead of putting their heads under the axes of Moscow, moved on a distant and unknown path - to the East. They ended up in Siberia, stopped near some big river (Irtysh?), Built several ships there and went down this river to the ocean. Then the Novgorodians for four years moved east along the northern coast of Siberia and swam to some kind of "endless river" (Bering Strait). They decided that this river flows in Eastern Siberia, and, having swum across it, found themselves in Alaska ... The Novgorodians quickly mixed with the native Indian tribes, and their traces were lost in the centuries of history. Recently, these traces have been found in the Russian-church archives of Alaska, which ended up in the Library of Congress in Washington. From these archives it can be seen that some Russian parish reported to its bishop from America about the construction of a chapel and called its place not America, but “Eastern Russia”. Obviously, the Russian settlers thought that they had established themselves on the eastern coast of Siberia ... In those early years, the Russians began to live closely under the tsar's heel, and they rushed to seek happiness in the other hemisphere. Columbus discovered America from the east, and the Novgorodians approached her from the northwest.
This sensational version is confirmed not only by church archives, but also by academic research. So, the American historian Theodore Farrelli in 1944 published a work about the specifically Novgorod buildings he discovered more than 300 years ago on the banks of the Yukon! (2)
Known for many centuries, the excavation activity of Novgorod ushkuinikov(who were considered "robbers" in the Horde and Moscow (3)) makes this transcontinental transition quite probable. So, several centuries before the famous campaign of Yermak, who then "bowed" to Siberia to the Moscow Tsar, the Novgorod Chronicle of 1114 mentions the walking of the ushkuiniks "behind the Stone (4), to the land of Yugorskaya". That is, they already went to Northern Siberia! At the same time, the Novgorodians, although they separated themselves from the Muscovites, always used Russian toponymy (and the word "Russian" itself) in their discoveries. Hence the unheard-of surprise of the later "discoverers" from Moscow and St. Petersburg, when local residents of distant lands reported that their settlement was called Russian Ustye (on Indigirka) or Russian Mission (in Alaska) ...
Petersburg writer Dmitry Andreev, working in the genre of "alternative history", reconstructs the chronology of this great Novgorod campaign:
At the end of the 15th century, the Novgorod kochi reached Alaska by the Northern Sea Route and established several trading posts there. In the 70s of the XVI century, after the defeat of Novgorod by Ivan the Terrible, several thousand Novgorodians sail to the East and settle in the south of Alaska. Communication with the outside world is interrupted for a century and a half. The rediscovery of Alaska takes place in the early 18th century by Bering.
And it paints an equally great future for Independent Alaska. So, at the beginning of the 19th century, there should have been:
The population is 500-600 thousand people, religion is Orthodoxy (pre-Nikon), the Indians and Aleuts are mutually assimilated with the descendants of the Russians. The political structure is a developed parliamentary democracy with periods of military dictatorship (during the war years). Alaska took part in the Crimean War on the side of Russia, starting from the 70s of the XIX century - gold mining, industrial growth, rapid immigration. By the beginning of the 20th century, 5-6 million people. Borders: p. Mackenzie, then coast to 50 degrees north. latitude, Hawaii (admitted to the republic on a federal basis in 1892), Midway, an enclave in California ... Alaska, on the side of the Entente, took part in the First World War (patrolling the Pacific Ocean, sending an expeditionary force to the Eastern Front), then helped the whites armies during the Civil War. In 1921-1931. accepted more than 500 thousand Russian emigrants, bought out the Russian Fleet, interned in Bizerte ... The air group consisted of fighters purchased in Japan, part of torpedo bombers of the Sikorsky-Sitkha company. Friendship with Japan prevented Alaska's participation in the Second World War in the Pacific Ocean, but since June 1940 Alaska has been at war with Germany, Italy and Portugal (due to the deaths of many of its citizens in France and on sunken ships) ... The nuclear power has been launching satellites since 1982 cosmodrome in Hawaii since 1987. Population for 2000 - 25 million people. GNP - $ 300 billion
For some reason, Moscow historians are especially fond of "refuting" the "Novgorod version" of the development of Alaska, not to mention the projects of its possible future. This reflects both a lack of historical imagination and a long-standing centralist dislike for the "too free" discoverers of new lands. Although even if we assume that the Novgorodians were not the first to land in Alaska, but, as the official version says, only two centuries later, the participants of the Bering-Chirikov expedition, Moscow still has nothing to do with them, since this expedition was formed in St. personal decree of Peter I. Moscow has always remained (and remains) a typical city of the Old World, which is interested in geographical discoveries not by themselves, and even more so not in the perspective of new historical creativity, but only purely utilitarian - in terms of annexation "under the tsar's hand" of the next disenfranchised colonies. Unfortunately, the Petersburg Empire, in relation to Russian America, in many respects continued this Horde-Moscow tradition.
The very same Russian America of those years was a kind of analogue of the "Wild West", or - avoiding this geographical convention - you can call it "Wild Utopia". The Russian pioneers and settlers were certainly not angels, however, unlike the British and Spaniards, they never set themselves the goal of ousting and exterminating the aborigines. The Aleuts, Eskimos, Tlingits and other inhabitants of this "end of the world" appreciated this, although they did not at all imagine the concept of "citizenship". Running a little ahead, it is appropriate to recall the claim of one Indian leader, expressed by him during the sale of Alaska in 1867: "We gave the Russians the opportunity to live on our land, but not the right to sell it to anyone." This is truly a different world, one that goes beyond the European standards of "colonial property".
Russian America more and more resembled the original, multicultural Russia. Pomors and Cossacks willingly married Indians, Aleuts, Hawaiians, and as a result, a completely new people arose, with a special mentality. Unlike South America, where colonization was accompanied by the strict imposition of Spanish and Portuguese canons of religion, language and behavior, here in the North there was a real transculturalism. Also, in contrast to the Horde invasion of Russia, which turned it into a totalitarian Muscovy, a unique synthesis of Novgorod and Indian love of freedom was established in Alaska. The locals learned the basics of Orthodoxy from the Russians and adopted many words, but in turn taught the Russians how to handle sledges and kayaks, and sometimes initiated them into their own mysteries. And it is no coincidence that many Russian settlers, even after the sale of Alaska, refused to leave it. This was not some kind of "national betrayal" - they just became so deeply involved in the rhythm of this new world that they already felt their heterogeneity with the metropolis. In many ways, this was similar to the behavior of those immigrants from England who realized themselves as citizens of the New World and declared their independence. The only difference was that there was simply not enough historical time for a large-scale formation of a new ethnos on the basis of Russian-Indian synthesis ...
There were also not enough people. Due to the harshness of the laws of the Russian Empire, which limited the right of movement for many estates, it was much more difficult for a Russian to get to Alaskan Novo-Arkhangelsk than to an Englishman in New York. The rulers of Russian America have repeatedly appealed to the capital's officials, the Senate and even the royal court with a request to allow at least a few peasant communities, vital for the economic independence of Russian settlements, to resettle to Alaska and to California's Fort Ross. But - they invariably met a categorical refusal. Officials feared (and not in vain - judging by the precedents that still existed) that these several hundred peasants, having mastered the farming type of economy characteristic of America, would have a revolutionary impact on the then economic system of the Russian Empire. Perhaps that is why Alaska was quickly sold and sold almost immediately after the abolition of serfdom - in order to prevent the mass resettlement of the freed peasants there.
Another version of such a hasty sale of Alaska is that the Russian government was concerned about protecting "national identity" from the overseas "confusion" that frightened it. However, the paradox here is that the true Russian originality in this case was embodied precisely by those who mixed with Indians and White Americans and thereby gave rise to a new people. The Russians themselves at one time arose precisely as an ethnic synthesis of the Varangians and the Slavs. The “patriots” of the Horde-imperial wing, however, demonstrate by this only their provincial ignorance of the Russian tradition, which initially has a global character. Petersburg philosopher Alexei Ivanenko clearly explained this in his work "Russian Chaos":
Our antiquity is not original. Surprisingly, according to etymological analysis, such ancient words as bread, hut, well and prince are of Germanic origin. The old borrowings are being replaced by new ones. Where is the real face of Russia? The secret is that he is not there. Byzantine icons, gilded minaret bulbs, Tatar balalaikas, Chinese dumplings are all imported.
* * *
Russian pioneers did not know the word "Alaska" at all and called it simply "Big Earth". Alaska could indeed become an "incarnate utopia" - like America, mastered by Europeans from the Atlantic. In 1799, the Russian-American Company was founded and the Pacific development of America had its famous "founding fathers" - Grigory Shelikhov, Alexander Baranov, Nikolai Rezanov ... But unfortunately, they did not have time to proclaim their Declaration of Independence, and therefore the America was eventually suppressed by the Eurocentric metropolis.
The California base of Russian America - Fort Ross - was founded in 1812. If we take history creatively, from the point of view of new opportunities, and not endless redistributions of the Old World, then this event looks much more important than the war with Napoleon. Even if Napoleon had stayed in Moscow, this would hardly have significantly changed anything in Russia, where the nobility spoke French better than Russian. Whereas the shift of public attention to the development of the New World could set a completely different scale for Russian self-awareness, at the same time saving Russia from the shameful label of “the gendarme of Europe”.
Even while performing these "gendarme" functions of saving European monarchies from revolution, the Russians hoped in vain for some kind of gratitude from these thrones. Moreover, for example, the Spaniards, who then constituted the majority in California, repeatedly tried to liquidate Fort Ross - either by a demonstration of force, or by bombarding official Petersburg with angry diplomatic notes for "invading their territory", although their legal rights to it were very conditional and rather shaky. On the contrary, the local Indians supported Fort Ross, hoping that the Russians, with their authority and extraterritorial status of a "third force", would save them from complete civilizational destruction in the millstones between the Yankees and the Spaniards. And repeatedly, with weapons in their hands, they defended the Russian fortress from both!
The Russian government, meanwhile, was behaving more than strange. In response to the Spanish notes, it did not defend the Russian settlement, but ... assigned the role of the defendant to the Russian-American Company itself. However, the Company had almost no real international rights - and according to a long-standing Russian tradition, it was obliged to coordinate all its decisions with the capital's officials. The representatives of the Company just got tired of explaining to them the obvious - what colossal historical advantages the existence and development of the Russian settlement in California promises. But they ran into a blank wall, or even stabs in the back - like the statement of Foreign Minister Nesselrode that he himself advocated the closure of Fort Ross, as this settlement causes "fear and envy of the Gishpan people." This apotheosis of "old-world" narrow-mindedness and real national betrayal, perhaps, cannot even be compared with anything! The opposite, "mirror" situation - for the Spanish conquistadors to convince Madrid of the productivity of their American developments, and they would be blamed for this and demanded to curtail their activities under the pretext of "fear and envy" of other nations - it is simply impossible to imagine ...
However, this is not the limit of the stupidity of Russian centralism - in the 20s of the 19th century, the government tried to prohibit the settlers of Russian America (which included the Indians) from conducting direct trade with the Americans. This actually meant an economic blockade and indeed, a real "pernicious influence of the West" - given that in relation to the Old World, Alaska is the "Far East".
The Board of the Russian-American Company in Alaska, to the best of its strength and diplomatic skill, as best it could, reduced these contradictions between the free development of Russian America and the delusional demands of a distant metropolis. The most prominent role in this conciliatory process undoubtedly belonged to the first "ruler of Alaska" (official title), Alexander Baranov. Over the years of his reign, this great, but alas, almost unknown figure in Russia actually turned the entire northern part of the Pacific Ocean into “ Russian lake”, Having built on the American coast a new civilization equal to half of European Russia and developed much higher than the then Siberia. Alaska Novo-Arkhangelsk (the city is clearly named by the Pomors) as the center of the most important fur trade at that time, when it was the first port (!) In the north of the Pacific Ocean, leaving the Spanish San Francisco far behind. Moreover, it was not only an economic and military, but also a cultural center: its library contained several thousand books - a very impressive number at that time and in comparison with the more southern colonies of the "Wild West".
However, bureaucratic envy and its sure weapon - slander, brought down this giant. Bringing millions annually to the Russian treasury, but himself content with a penny salary, Baranov was removed without explanation and recalled to Russia. Where he never sailed, he fell seriously ill and died on the road. A strange repetition of this route turned out to be the fate of another commander of Russian America, Nikolai Rezanov, who also ended his days on his way back to Russia, never seeing his New World again with the daughter of the Californian governor in love with him. This is not just a sad romance - the utopian Cape of Providence really does not let its discoverers go to "ordinary land".
Indeed, over all the Russian pioneers of this "end of the world", from the point of view of its "middle", some evil fate prevails. Starting with the disappeared Novgorodians and Bering, who died in his expedition, up to the wave of inexplicable deaths in Russia itself of practically all the descendants and followers of Baranov ... However, if this situation is perceived less mystically, it is possible to discern quite “earthly” motives behind it - the harsh anti-utopianism of the Russian government, which is extremely jealous and negative about the "dreamers" who dream of creating a new civilization. After all, this creation inevitably means the collapse of the old.
Fort Ross was the clearest evidence that Russian life could be different. Once its ruler was the energetic 22-year-old "Russian Swede" Karl Schmidt. And on the scale of a small garrison, a real "youth revolution" began in the Petrine style - with a new design of the fortress itself, the construction of its own fleet, the opening of new schools and even a theater! "Trouser" was soon dismissed ...
The Decembrists, many of whom worked with the Russian-American Company, suffered much more severely. Konstantin Ryleev, who was developing the project for the independence of Russian America, was hanged. Another Decembrist, Dmitry Zavalishin, was not a separatist. On the contrary, he developed the idea of a massive and intensive Russian penetration into California and encouraged the local Spaniards to accept Russian citizenship. He called his mission the "Order of the Restoration" and tried to convince the tsar of the grandiose prospects of the "Russification of America." but Russian government rightly thought that these would be "not the same Russians" who can be easily controlled. And Zavalishin, with his petitions, was still a "one" and was sent to Siberian penal servitude.
Thus, the project of Russian America actually turned out to be destroyed not by some external enemies or circumstances, but from within - by the authorities of the Russian Empire itself, which considered it “excessively expensive”. But Providence is ironic - shortly after Fort Ross in 1841 was sold literally for a penny, it was from the mill of its new owner, John Sutter, that the famous American "gold rush" began. So the Russian government, without waiting for the golden egg, stabbed its chicken-pock. And in this river, which was originally called the Slavyanka, and then the Russian river, patient Americans are still washing gold ...
* * *
After the sale of Fort Ross, all of Russian America shrank to the borders of Alaska - although still grandiose, but already pushed far north - and already without a regular and practically free food supply from California. In fact, it was the last bastion before the final retreat to the Old World.
However, history has also preserved significant examples of a much more southern than even California, the development by the Russians of this mysterious line of changing dates, "the end of the world." Preserved in different meanings - as a memory of the "lost paradise" and the mediocrity of the "old-world" government. And also, perhaps, and as a hint for the future - the utopia of historical boundaries does not know ...
Ivan Okuntsov cites facts no less striking than the landing of Novgorodians in Alaska. Jules Verne and Stevenson are resting:
During long voyages in the Pacific Ocean, the current and winds of Russian seafarers were driven even to the equator. Once they got into New Zealand, east of Australia. At that time, there was one monk on the Russian ship who had lost hope of a successful voyage. The monk escaped from the ship to the island at night, where he took power into his own hands and declared himself king of New Zealand. The Russian flag was raised on the island. Then the monk-king turned to Peter the Great with a request for help and for the acceptance of all Maori people - residents of New Zealand - into Russian citizenship. But help from St. Petersburg for some reason was not provided, and the monk died and "like a king" was burned at the "sacred fire".
And here is an extensive testimony from the Kamchatka magazine "North Pacific" (5), little known in the flat world of "Eurasian-Atlantic" showdowns:
Once the fishing ship "Bering" was blown far south by a storm. Having lost their numbers, the sailors did not notice how the thorns of island corals grew through the bubbling foam. The ship was smashed to pieces, and people were carried to the fertile shores. After eating dry and eating bananas, they soon found themselves on an uninhabited island. For about a month, Russian sailors wandered through the tropical forests, eating exotic fruits. They were pretty worn out, but did not lose heart and prayed for salvation. One of the sailors from Alaska, passing by the island on a ship, noticed six tanned men who were rushing along the shore and expressed "strong Russian". Of course, the Robinsons were picked up. Soon they were taken to the capital of Russian America - Novo-Arkhangelsk, where they told Baranov in detail about the island with "rivers of milk and jelly banks."
Thus began the great epic of the discovery of the Hawaiian Islands by the Russians. In 1806, with the light hand of Baranov, the sailor Sysoi Slobodchikov reached Hawaii. He brought expensive furs, from which the local leaders, despite the wild heat, did not crawl out. King Tamehamea the Great of Hawaii heard about the generosity of the "new whites". He himself dressed in furs and expressed a great desire to trade with Baranov's people. Gradually, the flame of sincere friendship began to flare up.
The whole winter Slobodchikov "and his comrades" spent under the shade of palm trees. They saw that the islanders live in white semicircular huts, love to sing and wear bright clothes. They value friendship and are ready to give up even their girlfriends to please the white guest. To the words of Hawaiian songs and inexhaustible reserves of Russian vodka, three months of winter flew by like one day. Our sailors liked the land of eternal summer so much that they signed the first trade agreement with the Kanaks for the supply of breadfruit, sandalwood and pearls from Hawaii to Alaska. Tameamea sent Baranov royal robes - a cloak made of peacock feathers and a rare breed of parrots. In addition, the king himself wanted to come to Alaska for negotiations, but was afraid to leave the islands in the face of the growing maritime activity of "other whites".
This turn of things made Baranov very happy. He sent his friend Timofey Tarakanov to the islands, who stayed there for three whole years, studying the life of the islanders. Together with the Russians lived the closest servant of King Tamehamea, who taught white travelers to hunt for sharks and told local legends. One of them says: when the ocean covered the land, a huge bird sank into the waves and laid an egg. Was heavy storm, the egg broke and turned into islands. Soon a boat from Tahiti moored to one of them. On the boat were a husband, wife, pig, dog, hens and rooster. They settled in Hawaii - this is how life on the islands began.
The king of Hawaii liked the Russians so much that after a year of their stay he presented the king with one of the islands. The local leader Tamari received Baranov's messengers favorably. To the sound of the surf on the island of Kanai, the Russian fortress-fort of St. Elizabeth was being built. Domestic ships arriving at the fortress were no longer met by half-naked savages, but by people dressed in a hat and a loincloth, some in a sailor's jacket, some in shoes. Tamari himself, like King Tamehamea, began to sport sable furs.
Life on the island went on as usual. Soon the first Russian-Hawaiian dictionary was compiled. Ships loaded with Hawaiian salt, sandalwood, tropical fruits, coffee and sugar went to Alaska. The Russians mined salt near Honolulu, from a dry lake in the crater of an old volcano. The children of local leaders studied in St. Petersburg, studied not only the Russian language, but also studied the exact sciences. King Tamehamea was also rich. Baranov presented him with a fur coat made of selected fur of Siberian foxes, a mirror, a pishchal made by Tula armourers. The Russian flag has been fluttering under the green palm trees of the coral islands for many years. And ukuleles got along quite well with Russian harmonicas.
* * *
Alas, the Russian tsars were too different from the Hawaiian kings ... They, as usual, were preoccupied with strengthening their "vertical of power", into which this utopia in the Pacific expanses did not fit in any way. In the board of the Russian-American Company, free explorers, seafarers and merchants were gradually replaced by gray officials who understood little, and did not want to understand anything particularly about the specifics of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean. For their centralist thinking, this space was nothing more than the “farthest province” of the Russian Empire, moreover dangerously “cut off” from the metropolis. Therefore, from the middle of the 19th century, ideas about the sale of Alaska began to wander in Russian near-government circles.
Note - there has never been any talk of granting independence to Alaska. Although an example was still fresh of how England nevertheless ceded to its American settlers the right to independently own the territory of the New World that they had developed. What prevented Russia from doing the same with the part of America that had been mastered by the Russians? Having established with them a strategic transpacifist partnership like transatlantic relations between England and the United States.
The realization of this opportunity was prevented by the fact that Russia to a much greater extent belonged to the civilization of the Old World than England. And in continental Europe of those years, it was not yet accepted at all to abandon their overseas colonies. This was considered a "sign of weakness", although historical experience testifies to the opposite - England has not lost a single European war since then, and the Commonwealth it created turned out to be much more durable than many Eurocentric projects. But it was Eurocentrism that won out in Russia.
Of course, the sale of Alaska has its own share of the blame and its direct residents of that time. Unfortunately, they learned little from the other, eastern, part of America the experience of civil self-organization, and, for the most part, silently obeyed the sale of their land, for many already native. The heavy totalitarian legacy of the centralized Russian state manifested itself even among the descendants of those who once fled from it ...
However, even after the "Russian surrender" in Alaska in 1867, this land did not lose its special, free character. Only now he was already resisting American centralism. And to this day the most winning campaign slogan in Alaska: "We are first Alaskans, and then Americans." Modern Alaska has its own unique flag, invented by her children and became official - the golden constellation Ursa Major against the dark blue background of the winter northern sky. And the official motto: "To the North, to the future!" Finally, the Alaska Independence Party is acting there quite legally and nominating its political leaders.
As for the sale by Russia of its New World, there was also a symbolic sign of Providence. The money for Alaska never got to the noble "sellers". The agreed amount of $ 7.2 million was paid in gold, which was transported from New York to St. Petersburg. However, the ship sank in the Baltic Sea ...
Russian America was sung in the musical "Juno and Avos":
Bring the cards of discovery
In the haze of gold, like pollen.
And doused with moonshine, burn
At the arrogant doors of the palace!
* * *
The landing of the Americans in the Russian North during the Russian Civil War became a mirror reflection of the development of Alaska. Formally, they arrived there to support their Russian allies in the First World War in the face of a possible German offensive. But suddenly a closer union arose. General Wilds Richardson in his memoirs "America's War in the North of Russia" wrote:
On August 1, 1918, the inhabitants of Arkhangelsk, having heard about our expedition, themselves rebelled against the local Bolshevik government, overthrew it and established the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region.
This department was headed by Nikolai Tchaikovsky, a very interesting historical figure, known for the implementation of his utopian projects in America itself. For a brief historical moment, the Alaskan Novo-Arkhangelsk seemed to be embodied in Arkhangelsk - at a time when the Chekist terror was raging in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Russian North was an extraterritorial island of the world, where a free economy, culture, and press were preserved. But alas, the Americans, in a strange way, soon discovered the same logic as the Russians of the period of the development of Alaska - "far and expensive." Although if they had remained, there would have been no "cold war", and indeed the Soviet Union in general!
Moreover, for this they did not have to undertake any aggression at all - the Bolsheviks at that time were themselves ready to give up all the territories they did not control in order to preserve their power over the Russian capitals. In 1919, Lenin invited William Bullitt, who came to Moscow on a semi-official mission from President Wilson, to recognize Bolshevik Russia, and in exchange for diplomatic recognition agreed to record the results of the Civil War as they were at that time. That is, the power of the Bolsheviks would be limited to a few central provinces. But Woodrow Wilson, who believed that the Bolsheviks would soon fall, and therefore refused this deal, turned out to be a bad visionary ...
* * *
The XXI century again gives a chance to embody the historical subjectivity of the Cape of Providence. According to forecasts by Kenichi Omae, Chukotka and Alaska may indeed turn into a special sovereign region, much more closely connected internally than with their metropolises. There are all economic and cultural prerequisites for this. Moreover, such a formation, at least at first, will not in any way contradict the political centralism of the Russian Federation and the United States. Chukotka and Alaska may well remain associated subjects of these states, but the very logic of the glocalization process will lead to a civilizational rapprochement of these regions and a weakening of centralized control over them. It is this utopian the earth will become the most real the criterion that the declared "strategic partnership" of Russia and America is not only declarative.
Vladimir Videman in his keynote article "Orientation - North or Window to America" (6) draws grandiose prospects for the future Russian-American rapprochement. He predicts the creation of a "strategic transpolar alliance" that will inevitably dominate world politics and economics. However, this is a view from the standpoint of some kind of global monopoly, strange for this author, who publishes many "anti-globalization" manifestos on his website.
In general, in the very title of this article, an allusion to Heydar Dzhemal's metaphysical poem "Orientation - North" is obvious. But if Dzhemal is talking about the "transformation of the fundamental disharmony of reality into a fantastic transobjective being", then Wiedemann's "transpolar alliance" looks too mundane against this background. All its goals are reduced, in essence, to some kind of mechanical connection of the real states of the Russian Federation and the United States - without the emergence of any new, special civilization.
The problem here is that this author still thinks in modernist categories of centralized national states and, apparently, does not notice that the world has passed into a completely different era, when the regions themselves, especially those located on the borders of these states, are becoming the main subjects of politics. Their direct cooperation turns out to be more and more significant and effective than the diplomatic protocols of the central authorities. And the more “distant” from each other the political centers of these national states consider themselves, the more interesting and promising - in terms of creating a new civilization - is the interaction of their border regions. In general, this is an ontological law of "combining opposites" - the more radical they are, the more unique the result of their synthesis is.
After the Eurocentric era of modernity, Europe itself today seems to be experiencing a "second youth" - the flourishing of regionalism in the Old World is already such that it casts doubt on whether there still exist nation states, recalling the times when they were not at all. However, today's Russia, with its hypercentralism and Eurocentrism, is still in a state of modernity. Only a way out can overcome it northern regions to the level of direct transnational and transcontinental cooperation with northerners of other countries. But so far it is being hindered by the central authorities, who are reasonably afraid that the independent North will simply cease to support them.
The North and Siberia, which occupy 2/3 of the territory of the Russian Federation, give this state more than 70% of export profits, however, due to its total economic centralism, they have a reputation of “subsidized” ones. And the "donor" is Moscow, which controls oil and gas pipes. Less contrasting, but a similar situation is observed in North America. In these conditions, no "strategic transpolar alliance" between the officials of the two countries will change anything for the northerners.
This "fundamental disharmony of reality" can be corrected only with the transition to "fantastic transobjective being" - when the power in the North will pass from isolated and centralized state machines to networked, transnational civil self-government. It was then that “unipolar” America and hypercentralized Russia would go down in history and give way to the global North.
Russian, Siberian North in its mentality is closer to Alaska than Muscovy. Likewise, Alaska is much more similar to the Russian North than to "down states", as the Alaskans call the main territory of the United States. Oleg Moiseenko, a Russian American who came to Alaska as a tourist, shares interesting observations on this matter on the Internet:
Alaska is a country of real men and real male work: builders, lumberjacks, oil workers, hunters, drivers, fishermen, captains and pilots (surprising, but true - women do this kind of work here too!). Alaska is a world outside the media, secular news and other products of civilization. This is the ability to belong to yourself. Be free from police surveillance (outside Anchorage). And finally (please just look at this as a fact) - this is still a white man's corner.
It is understandable why the white man from the "lower states" is especially impressed by the latter. In contrast, Alaska does not really have that morbid political correctness that is increasingly turning into racism inside out. There is simply a healthy, natural, northern multiculturalism, where no one bothers anyone to be themselves and makes them feel ashamed of not belonging to one or another aggressive minority. It is this "ability to belong to oneself" that is the most surprising feature of the Alaskans in the eyes of the carriers of obsessive media standards.
However, it would be inaccurate to portray Alaska as an archaic industrial appendage of the post-industrial world. There are proportionally no less representatives of creative, "post-economic" professions than in the "lower states" - but their worldview is significantly different. The majestic, beautiful, and still carefully preserved nature of Alaska, as well as the reputation of the “end of the earth”, fosters the mentality of discoverers, not passive consumers of global pop music. And this will become more and more noticeable against the background of ideological, demographic and regional collisions in the "lower states", fighting for a place under the dying sun of the outgoing world ...
It is noteworthy that one of the Siberian Old Believer communities, which fate in the twentieth century brought both to China and then to South America, eventually found its place in Alaska. Their town Nikolaevsk quite organically blended into the Alaskan nature and toponymy, where many Russian names have survived. Although their psychology, of course, has changed significantly - there is no longer a fearful suspicion of strangers and technology. But there is, however, no overly calculating "Americanism" ... Exploring the phenomenon of this special culture emerging on the Russian-American border in general, Mikhail Epstein foresees their coming unique synthesis:
In its potency, this is a great culture that does not fit entirely into either the American or Russian tradition, but belongs to some fantastic cultures of the future, like the Amerossia depicted in the novel by Vl. Nabokov's "Hell". Russian-American culture is not reducible to its separate components, but outgrows them, like a crown, in which the far-apart branches of the once single Indo-European tree will again intertwine, recognize their kinship, just as the kinship of Indo-European roots is dimly recognized in Russian "itself" and English "same". Common in their deepest roots, these cultures can turn out to be common in their distant shoots and branches, and Russian-American culture can be one of the forerunners, prototypes of such a future unity.
When I think of a Russian American, I see an image of intellectual and emotional breadth that could combine analytical subtlety and practicality of the American mind and synthetic inclinations, the mystical endowment of the Russian soul... Combine the Russian culture of brooding melancholy, heartfelt melancholy, light sadness - and the American culture of courageous optimism, active participation and compassion, faith in oneself and in others ...
It is on this "Bering Bridge" that the symbolic handshake of Semyon Dezhnev and Jack London will take place. Those who often recall Kipling's lines “West is West, East is East, and they cannot come together”, for some reason forget the prophetic ending of this poem:
But there is no East and no West,
What does tribe, homeland, clan mean,
When strong with a strong shoulder to shoulder
Does it rise at the end of the earth?
(1) Journal "Profile", No. 19, 2002.
(2) Farrelli, Theodor. Lost colony of Novgorod in Alaska // Slavonic and East European Review, V. 22, 1944.
(3) An interesting parallel with the "northern barbarians" in Roman history!
(4) Ie. Ural ridge
(5) № 7, 1999.
(6) Network log
In the southeast of Chukotka, in the water area of the Anadyr Bay, there is a beautiful corner of the peninsula, bounded by the rocky capes named after Lesovsky and the Lysaya Gora seaport bay Provideniya. The harsh, but infinitely beautiful Bay of Providence has its own unique northern beauty. A magnificent corner under the bright northern sky and the wonderful Providensky Museum of Local Lore is a worthy occasion to visit these fabulous places, to touch the ancient riddles and secrets that attract like a magnet.
The toponym of the Bay "Providence", which appeared in 1848 with the light hand of the English captain Thomas Moore, in memory of "God's happy providence", which allowed his ship to spend the winter in a secluded natural bay, excites the imagination of connoisseurs of history. It was here that sea merchant and whaling vessels more than once got up for the winter, fearing raging storms.
The ships received reliable protection in the calm harbor, thanks to the successful geographic location Bay of Providence. At the very beginning, the width of the bay is up to 8 km, with a bay length of 34 km, the further inland, the narrower it becomes. Down from Emma's harbor, the width of the bay is 4 km, and above it is 2.5 km. On any map, the bay looks like a giant plant curving to the north and northeast with separate bays-branches.
Steep rocky shores, high hills up to 800 meters close it from cold stormy winds. In summer, the bay is free of ice cover, at the same time there are daily tides. Depths range from 35 meters at the entrance to the bay to 150 meters. Along the shores of the bay there are shallow bays and quiet harbors: Komsomolskaya Bay, Slavyanka, Head, Emma Harbor, Horseman, Vladimir, Cash Bay.
On the eastern shore of the Komsomolskaya Bay there are large settlements of the urban settlement of Provideniya and the ethnic village "Ureliki", the airport of the same name "Provideniya Bay", which receives international flights and charters. In Slavyanka Bay, behind the natural breakwater of the Plover spit and Cape Gaidamak, there is an anchorage known to sailors.
For the first time on the shores of the bay in 1660, sailors from a ship under the command of Kurbat Ivanov appeared, but they did not name it or put it on a map, and for another two hundred years it remained unnamed for geographers and researchers until the wintering of Thomas Moore's ship. In the summer of 1876, the clipper "Horseman" arrived here under the command of Captain Novoselsky, who made a hydrographic survey for the first time in Provideniya Bay.
After the Chelyuskin events in 1937, O. Yu. Schmidt, the head of the Northern Sea Route, approved the construction of the Provedensky port in the Bering Sea, its appearance gave a powerful impetus to the development of the territory. For many centuries, there was an Eskimo village on the Plover spit; like many small villages of the Chukchi and Evenks, it was evacuated to accommodate coastal defense batteries in 1941.
Today, tourists, travelers and lovers of rare and exotic northern sports come to the shores of Provideniya Bay. Every year, winter snowmobile and dog sled races are held here; in summer, water tourists come here with pleasure to make an exciting boat trip on kayaks and other watercraft along the routes of seafarers.
Providence Bay in the photo
Address: Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Bering Sea, Anadyr Bay
GPS coordinates: 64.404094, -173.319303
Providence Bay on the map
Providence Bay on video
The Chukchi Peninsula is replete with bays and bays, but one of them stands alone - Providence Bay. The name fully corresponds to the bay because of the constant fogs that cover it almost all year round and the local waters of the bay are covered with a dense veil through which it is difficult to see anything. Local residents have long been accustomed to this, but a visiting guest will find it a great wonder. However, it was named not because of the fogs, but more on that later.
Such an amazing phenomenon is formed due to the elongated shape of the bay. It is 34 kilometers long and only 4 kilometers wide, while the Providence Bay is surrounded by steep and steep shores reaching a height of 800 meters. The result is a kind of natural pipe, due to which constant fogs are formed here. But despite this, this place is very important on the northern sea route due to the fact that here the sea is free of ice for longer than in other places, from May to October.
Discovery history
The first who visited these places was Kurbat Ivanov, who was considered the successors of Semyon Dezhnev in the development of these places. Ivanov's expedition reached these places in 1660, however, like many of Dezhnev's discoveries, this event was not given due importance, although the bay was an ideal place for the construction of a northern port and a reference point on the northern trade route. The bay got its name only two centuries later in 1848. In that year, a ship cruised in this area in search of the Franklin expedition, and in October it was decided to winter in these places, the deep bay was an ideal place for wintering and later the British called it the bay of Holy Providence. For the next hundred years, a hidden trade war was waged in the region. Russia fought for its monopolies in the trade of local goods and, as best it could, protected it from visiting American guest performers who exchanged furs and walrus bones for whiskey. Light clippers periodically entered the bay and arrested American traders, but this stopped few people, because the trade expeditions were super-profitable.
The bay really began to be explored only at the end of the 30s. In 1933, a commission came here and developed a project for the construction of a port. Construction proceeded at an accelerated pace and after the Second World War it was already standing here small town in two thousand population, and the population of all villages of the bay reached 5 thousand people. Currently, these places are empty and only the local population remained here for the most part.
Providence village
The Chukchi have long chosen these places, however, they thought about a full-fledged city on the shores of the Bay of Providence only in the 30s. A very small stronghold appeared in 1928, and it was only a warehouse with coal for passing ships. Starting in 1933, houses and a port were gradually built, and four years later, in 1937, massive construction began here. The settlement began to function fully after the war, and its population reached 2 thousand people.
The village experienced another leap in the 50s and 60s, when the confrontation with America gained maximum turnover. Military units were relocated to these places, which led to a sharp jump in the population and there was even a plan to build a city for 12 thousand people, but it never came true. But even despite this, the population exceeded 5 thousand people, and the village of Providing became one of the largest in Chukotka.
With the collapse of the union, the collapse of the village also occurred. The military left, most of them were local. From 1994 to 2002, no construction was carried out at all, and the local population gradually left for the "mainland" and it seemed that the village would soon disappear from the map of Russia, but this was not destined to happen and for the last ten years the village has been gradually recovering, complete overhaul was carried out everywhere. , new buildings are being erected. But the village of Ghosts is unlikely to ever become as big as before, but will only remain an important supporting port on the northern sea route and a place of fishing.
Tourism
As a military point on the map of Russia, the village is unlikely to recover, but as an exotic tourist point it may well be. In recent years, tourists are increasingly attracted by the most unusual places on the planet, for example, an excursion to the North Pole costs a lot of money, while you need to stand in a long queue to get the coveted flight ticket. Providence Bay is also the end of the earth with untouched northern nature, a real natural museum, almost like another planet. The village itself is not yet suitable for tourism, it has a small museum of the history of the region and that's it, but it can be developed as an unusual tourist destination in the world.
Source: rus-globus.ru
Across the mountains to the sea with a light backpack. Route 30 passes through the famous Fisht - this is one of the most grandiose and significant natural monuments in Russia, the closest to Moscow high mountains... Tourists pass all landscape and climatic zones countries from foothills to subtropics, overnight stays in shelters.
The name of the Bay of Providence was given by the English navigator Thomas Moore in 1848, when his ship, caught in a severe storm in the Bering Sea, accidentally discovered a calm harbor, where he spent the winter in 1848-1849. Providence Bay is a fjord with several bays: Plover, Emma (Komsomolskaya), Flower, Head, Markovo, Horseman. The village of Providence itself is located in Emma Bay, named after the daughter of Captain Moore. There is a legend according to which Emma could not stand the long winter and died of scurvy. She was buried on one of the hills. A wooden cross was installed on the grave, which was seen back in the 70s of the 20th century. Whether this was the grave of Captain Moore's daughter is not known for certain, but it is known that the bay was visited by sailors long before Thomas Moore. The right to European discovery of the bay most likely belongs to the boyar's son Kurbat Ivanov in 1660. In the first third of the 18th century, the bay was visited by the ships of the Great Northern Expedition of Vitus Bering. James Cook also visited the calm waters of Providence Bay during his Northern Expedition. American whalers also came here in the 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century, the Russian government, concerned about the penetration of American industrialists into the territorial waters of the Russian Empire, issues a circular on border patrolling by Russians northern waters... Every year, military clippers and schooners were sent to the shores of Chukotka, which, along with border functions, were engaged research work... This page of Russian military history is reflected on the map of the North-East of Russia: the Horseman Bay, named after the "Horseman" clipper, the Senyavinsky Strait - in honor of Admiral Senyavin, Cape Chaplin - in honor of Warrant Officer Pyotr Chaplin, a member of the expedition V. Bering, Cape Puzino - in honor of Rear Admiral O.P. Puzino, etc. Arriving in Providence, I did not have a clear plan of action where I would like to go. For sure, I knew one thing that in the village itself I would like to spend as little time as possible. And a day later I had the opportunity to go fishing in Head Bay. The bay got its name from the English word "Head" - the head that looked like the top of one of the hills. Now this peak is no longer there. The Eskimos called this bay Nanylkuk - the final bay.
It was the usual providential weather - low fog, the air saturated with the smallest particles of moisture, almost complete calm. There is a little more than 15 km from Provideniya to Head Bay, 10 of them along the road. Leaving the Ural motorcycle near the road and loading bags with a rubber boat, nets and food, we went along the coast of the bay. The absence of a road is explained by the presence of rocks in several places that run right into the bay.In Soviet times, the military periodically blew up the rocks and at low tide, in trucks, it was possible to drive here. At present, nature has taken its toll and the talus from the nearest hill completely cut off the path of vehicles.
Having reached the bay, we decided that it was not rational to drag a boat on ourselves if it was possible to sail on it. One of us must cross the bay (a little less than a kilometer wide) by boat, and the other will bend around it along the shore. I turned out to be different. As a child, I walked in these places without the slightest fear, leaving with a friend for a few days in the tundra without a gun. Now, before leaving, my father told a couple of parting stories about how many bears they had recently bred. When I asked for a gun, my father asked, somewhat surprised, "Why do you need it?" And in fact, why, after such stories? In general, I walked around the bay, peering intently at the bushes and barrels, which, my imagination cleverly turned into bears. “Well, Vadik, there is nothing to be afraid of on the boat,” I thought, accelerating my step. We came to the gully on the opposite bank almost at the same time. I was also surprised how dashingly Vadik wielded the oars, the Olympic reserve is direct. Vadik jumped out of the boat in silence for a minute smoked 2 cigarettes to the filter and only then said: "I'll go back along the shore." It turns out that while I was walking along the shore and was “afraid” of bears, he was quietly sailing on a boat, when suddenly: “On the left, something began to snort. I turn my head and see a herd of walruses 20 meters away from me. Mustache in! And they look at me. And they snort. And after all, what is on their minds is not clear. " The third cigarette was used.
After having a snack, we put on the grid and went to look around. Rather, I wanted to reach the right entrance cape into the bay. I was not on this side. There was one more reason. In the 50s and 70s, this bay was a base pass for nuclear submarines. They say that the question of building a submarine base here was even considered. However, we did not find traces of a naval presence, with the exception of a metal cable. The end of it was littered with stones, and he himself went into the water. This rope was 10-12 centimeters thick.
Having reached the right entrance cape, I decided to climb to the top of the hill to take panoramic shots.
The Eskimos have a belief that people sometimes turn into stones. Climbing the hill, these legends are very easy to believe. Outlier rocks, in profile, really resemble people and pelikens - Chukchi gods.
Fishing in Kheda was not crowned with success - 1 char in two days.
Taught by bitter experience, we returned on dry land, that is, around the bay. However, having rounded the bay, they decided not to force their backs and pumped up the boat again. “Let's swim along the coast. In order to have time to jump ashore if anything ”. We decided to row one by one. Vadik is again on the oars, I am walking along the shore. The weather is completely calm. And suddenly, like in that cartoon: oh, what did that boom? About 15 meters from the boat, something hit the water with great force. You should have seen Vadik's face. It seemed to me that from such intense work with the oars, his oarlocks would break faster than he would get to the shore. To which it was still a good 50 meters. We didn’t see what boomed, we saw only splashes. Vadik is rowing to swear, I am dying with laughter. Dogreb. Again 2 cigarettes one after the other. We cannot understand what was there: maybe a walrus, maybe a killer whale. It's my turn to row. I am walking 5 meters from the shore. Everything is quiet. We soon realized what it was. A bearded seal (sea hare), a most curious creature, swam along the wake 15-20 meters away from us. We frightened him off and he plunged into the water, making a pirouette. And now he swam behind us and watched.
There were no more adventures, and in an hour we were already entering the village of Provideniya.