Sun Rarely Shines on Soviet Arctic Port : Murmansk Children Sent South in Summer for ‘Solar Radiation’

This northernmost Soviet port, about 200 miles above the Arctic Circle, handles about 8 million tons of cargo a year. Its most unusual exports, however, are the city’s 50,000 children, who are sent south by plane and train each summer to absorb as much sunshine as they can.

This happens because Murmansk has nearly four months of total darkness a year, from November through February, and the sun breaks through the overcast only rarely in the other months.

“Our kids feel it the most,” the chairman of the City Council, Vladimir I. Goruatshkin, said in an interview. “So, in the summer, all the kids leave town. We are trying to compensate for insufficient solar radiation.”

During the winter, ultra-violet light treatments are provided for 35,000 youngsters at special kindergartens, and they also receive vitamin supplements. Because of its far-north location, Murmansk also is allocated additional fruits and vegetables, usually unavailable elsewhere in the Soviet Union.

Despite the climate, however, the world’s largest city north of the Arctic Circle is showing steady growth. Its population is now 430,000 and increases by 6,000 a year, according to Goruatshkin, with births accounting for three-fifths of the annual gain. New apartment buildings are sprouting on the outskirts of the city.

Incentives for Workers

Here, as in other areas in the Soviet northlands, special incentives are offered to get workers to come to Murmansk and live under such formidable conditions as these: Residents wore woolen coats and some had on winter boots in mid-July, with the temperature in the mid-40s and a chilly wind blowing in from the Barents Sea about 20 miles to the north.

Average pay, for example, is 330 rubles a month, compared to about 200 rubles for the Soviet Union as a whole. In addition, workers get longer vacations, from 36 to 56 working days a year compared to the usual maximum of 24 working days for the typical Soviet worker.

If a worker remains in Murmansk more than five years, he receives a bonus of 120 rubles a month on top of his regular pay. In addition, lower retirement ages have been decreed for the area’s workers. It is possible for men to retire at 55 and women to retire at 50, and if they work in the mining or steel industries, retirement ages are five years lower.

Another major lure is that, in Murmansk, apartments are available for young people who elsewhere might have to live indefinitely with parents or in-laws.

In addition, those who work 10 years or more in Murmansk are automatically entitled to buy a cooperative apartment in any city except Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, the country’s three major population centers.

“It’s a challenge for young people,” said Goruatshkin, the council chairman.

Few Fresh Vegetables

Fish stores in Murmansk are extremely well stocked with fresh and frozen cod, hake and shrimp in quantities that might create a minor shoppers’ riot in Moscow. But a visitor in mid-July found few fresh vegetables available, only radishes, horse radishes, cabbage and green onions.

Fruit, except for small green plums intended for canning, was not available in state stores. Tomatoes on sale were green, suitable only for pickling.

Murmansk, named a hero city in 1985 for its role as a key supply port in World War II, has lived through more difficult days. On a per-capita basis, it was the target of more Nazi bombs during the war than any other Soviet city except Stalingrad, and three quarters of its buildings were leveled.

“You must be Russian to live in a place like Murmansk,” an American writer once said after seeing the wartime devastation.

Murmansk, founded in 1916 to receive Western military aid during World War I, began life as a railhead. Later, under Communist rule, the city prospered as the site of the Soviet Union’s only year-round port in the far north.

Population Doubled

Even by 1959, however, the population had barely surpassed 200,000. Less than 30 years later, it has more than doubled.

Vasily S. Strizh, director of the port, said that more than 1,000 ships a year call at Murmansk. Of these, less than half--400 to 500--are foreign ships, he said.

Exports include fertilizer and concentrates as well as iron ore, he said, while imports range from wheat to industrial machinery.

Murmansk is headquarters for the Soviet nuclear powered ice-breaker fleet, the site of a fish research institute and the center of studies on animal life of the Kola Peninsula region.

Unlike most other Russian Federation cities, Murmansk has virtually no churches. Officials said that there are only two churches here, one each for Baptist and Russian Orthodox members.

But there is a hillside cemetery where three American Merchant Marine veterans who sailed on the “Murmansk run” and helped keep the Soviet Union supplied with tanks, planes and food during World War II are known to be buried. The graves of Russel Bennet, James O’Brien and Maurice Liebman are marked with white stones, without any other identifying data.

“Most of us only came here once,” said Arthur Maclaren, an American survivor of the dangerous Murmansk convoys who returned recently to honor the memory of those who went down with their ships. Eighty-five ships were lost in attacks by German U-boats on the Murmansk run.