IT IS the size of Spain and England put together but its population of 54,000 could be crammed into Chelsea Football Club’s Stamford Bridge stadium. Chukotka is the most remote of Russia’s regions, and Roman Abramovich, the new owner of Chelsea FC, is its governor.
From the air, Chukotka looks like a primeval swamp. Only accessible by air and boat, it is so remote that in the 1700s it took five years for deliveries of flour to arrive from central Russia. Rivers wind through the deserted tundra, and strong, year-round winds mean no trees grow; in winter, temperatures drop to -60C (-76F). But over the past two years Mr Abramovich, Russia’s second richest man who is thought to be worth £3 billion, has poured at least £350 million into what was a post-Soviet pit of despair.
Uncle Abramovich, as the reindeer herders call him, is making the frozen wasteland of Chukotka self-sufficient. Thanks to him, reindeer herding is enjoying a renaissance. Although winter is the natural state of Chukotka, where the first snow falls at the end of August and does not melt until May, the indigenous tribes of Chukchi, Inuit and Even herd reindeer all year.
During the 1990s they were left to struggle with enormous herds of 5,000 without support from the state. Food supplies to the region stopped, leading to mass slaughters of reindeer. But now, the herders and their families are paid a proper wage on the condition that their herds keep growing.The smoke-stained poles that hold up Maya Nomchaivina’s yangara, a round tent with a roof of reindeer skins, are more than twice her age. Ms Nomchaivina, 53, has lived in the tundra all her life. Her yangara, one of three erected near a river, a 15-minute helicopter ride from Konchelan, the nearest village, smells strongly of wood smoke.
It is lined with reindeer skins and a heap of half-sewn reindeer coats and soft boots decorated with beads lies near the entrance. The family of ten sleeps in two beds under canopies of reindeer skins inside the yangara, but the only man in the camp is a hobbling grandfather.
All able men are with the herd, grazing miles away on the rolling tundra. Herders go where the reindeer lead them, returning to their families every few months. As Chukotka’s summer comes to a close, the reindeer are well fed and glossy, preparing for a long winter of nuzzling for moss and lichen under the snow.
Ms Nomchaivina, a diminutive Chukchi with thick black hair and high cheekbones, paraded her three grandchildren proudly. “They all help me here in the tundra until they are old enough to go to school,” she said. “And after school they will come back.”
Holding her baby daughter in her arms she said: “I miss my husband when he is away with the herd, but I cannot imagine another way of life.”
Reindeer intestines smoke above the fire in the yangara and rows of liquorice root are hung to dry on the tent wall. A primitive dynamo two-way radio is the family’s only means of communication.
According to Roman Kopin, head of Chukotka’s most northern region, Chaunsky, “to love this place you have to be a particular kind of person or to have been born here”.
Mr Kopin is looking forward to leaving. He is one of Mr Abramovich’s hand-picked graduates, too young to have been tainted by Soviet thinking, who are bringing about an administrative revolution in Chukotka.
Mr Kopin found himself in charge of 7,000 local people, managing everyday concerns such as attacks by polar bears and supplying Aion, the most northern town in Russia with food. Aion is on an island accessible by road for only two months when the sea freezes. The rest of the year, boats and helicopters supply the dwindling population of 600.
The crippling cost has caused Mr Abramovich to set up a resettlement scheme, urging locals to “become part of a new life”, elsewhere in Russia. The residents, however, believe that Mr Abramovich has brought a new lease of life to Chukotka and many are unwilling to be resettled.
Other schemes have had more success. Until now Chukotka has imported coal from Vladivostok, which makes the 2,800-mile journey by boat. Now a small wind farm has been built near Anadyr, the capital, and a gas reserve discovered near by. A gold mine, Cupola, one of the world’s biggest finds of the precious metal in the past ten years, will produce millions in tax.
Anadyr, is full of brightly coloured new buildings and the reindeer herds are filling out again, but the people are nervous that their enigmatic governor will disappear in his private jet as quickly as he arrived, leaving them wondering if it was all a dream. They know that when he goes, his dynamic team will leave with him, and the pockets of money will be buttoned up.
Mr Abramovich admits to getting tired of his Chukotka project. “It is very expensive, even for me and, I am getting less pleasure from it now than at the beginning,” he told The Times. He said he planned to complete his term and then stay another year.
He is convinced the changes he has made are irreversible: “There is already enough infrastructure for Chukotka to continue to flourish,” he said. In conversation, he was unanimated about Chukotka, as if the severity of the place had worn him down. Only when talking about Chelsea did he liven up. “There are no parallels between my work here, and owning Chelsea,” he said.
“The enthusiasm of the technocrats will only last as long as Abramovich stays,” said Niobe Thompson, an anthropologist who spent the whole of last year travelling in Chukotka. “That’s the big question. It’s time to stop talking about what he’s done and start asking what comes next when he leaves.”
