Bar With VCR a Big Attraction in Icy Russian Town : Sitting on Top of the World Is Sure Cool, but It Can Have Its Drawbacks

Igor Perlovsky is a big man in Dickson. He runs the only bar in town. He owns the only video recorder.

And for the 5,000 Soviets who inhabit the world’s northernmost city on the ice-bound Kara Sea, drinks and movies at Perlovsky’s Coupole Lounge are a cherished escape from the 10 months of winter when temperatures plunge to 75 degrees below zero and the wind freezes the moisture in the corners of people’s eyes.

Outdoor sports are out of the question on the desolate ice desert, which stretches more than 300 miles from here to the south. Even for those hardy enough to play outdoors, it’s hard to see a soccer ball during the 3-month polar night. Nor is there swimming during the 2-month summer, when the mercury climbs to 40 degrees.

There used to be an automobile in Dickson, which is reachable only by air and sea. But the novelty of driving on the city’s three or four roads wore off, and the 11-year-old Moskvich subcompact has been garaged with only 44 miles on the odometer.

Polar Bears in Streets

Every few weeks a resident sights a polar bear lumbering along the moguled ice paths that pass for streets. Telling tales of narrow escapes from the Arctic’s natural inhabitants is a popular sport.

Police sometimes are summoned to chase the bears away by firing rifles into the air, but they are forbidden to shoot the beasts except in life-threatening situations. Polar bears are protected by the Soviet Red Book, the endangered species list.

At first glance, Dickson appears uninhabited. The plume from a single smokestack atop the city’s steam-generating plant provides the first sign of life. On closer inspection, a few fur-hatted pedestrians can be seen bobbing between the snowbanks. The silence is broken by the thrashing of a tracked vezdekhod, the refitted armored personnel carriers that serve as Dickson’s police cars, ambulances and buses.

The city, which lies 500 miles inside the Arctic Circle and 1,100 miles below the North Pole, is named for Oskar Dickson, a Swedish brewer and financier who bankrolled the international expedition that discovered the port in 1875. Dickson’s retention of his name through a century of political tumult in the Soviet Union is evidence of its isolation from Moscow and the official penchant for renaming places for Soviet heroes.

Early Settlers

The first settlers arrived in Dickson in 1915 to operate a radio transmitter at the port. By World War II, a few hundred were living here to handle shipping on the Yenisei River, which flows into the Kara just to the south.

Today, Dickson’s port is the gateway to the Northern Sea Route, which provides Europe’s only direct sea link to the Pacific Ocean.

Gennady M. Svetkov, deputy chief of the city’s governing council, said the port, which is the only major enterprise in Dickson, generates revenues of 6 million rubles ($10 million) a year. That figure could skyrocket if the Soviet Union reopens the Northern Sea Route as Communist Party Chief Mikhail S. Gorbachev proposed last October. It has been closed to all but Soviet vessels since 1964.

In winter, supply ships, shepherded by icebreakers, make their way into the frozen port every month or so. But in July and August the waterfront bustles as Soviet cargo ships ply the Arctic Ocean with goods bound for Japan, China and points south.

Distant Prospect

Increased ship traffic and the arrival of foreign crews could change this Arctic outpost, but Dickson’s city fathers regard an international port as a distant prospect.

“Such decisions are in the hands of the mainlanders,” one resident said, referring to those who live beyond the tundra.

For now, Dickson’s residents appear content to bear with the hardships to keep the sea lanes open and gather data from eight weather research stations drifting in the Arctic Ocean.

“It’s not so cold here,” Marina Rovenska, 20, said. “It’s just boring.” Rovenska, a clerk at Dickson’s shopping center, came here with her parents from the Ukraine eight years ago.

Social Hub of Town

She and a friend, Yelena Cherevik, said young workers flock to Perlovsky’s bar several times a week for the best Dickson has in social life.

Perlovsky, a 36-year-old native who returned after a few years as a seaman in Odessa on the Black Sea, where it’s warm, is a respected businessman among Dickson’s youth, who are paid double salaries for working under hardship. Perlovsky bought a German-made video deck last year for a 10,000 rubles ($16,000)--two years of his salary as a state bartender--from a friend of a friend of a diplomat. His tapes, recorded from Finnish television or Soviet film libraries, have been collected through a far-flung network of friends and connections. His library of about 100 titles cost him about 100 rubles ($160) each.

Although Perlovsky is a state bartender, he is a private video operator at the Coupole, a wood-paneled anteroom of Cafeteria No. 1. He operates in part na levo, a Russian expression for doing things outside the law. But his video bar exemplifies the freer hand that Soviets have in remote communities to bend the rules to make their system work.

For 1.50 rubles, or three times the price of a movie ticket elsewhere in the Soviet Union, a Dickson resident can settle down at Perlovsky’s bar and watch a Soviet film classic or Western rock video--once everyone has agreed on the night’s selection. Liquor appears to be in greater supply here than in most areas of the Soviet Union, again illustrating a concession from Moscow, where Gorbachev’s tough anti-drinking crusade has made alcohol both expensive and hard to find.

Low Crime Rate

“Some guys come in here and drink themselves into such a state that they have to be helped home,” said Perlovsky, who as a former national rowing champion is equal to the task of bouncer. “But I wouldn’t say we have an acute problem with drunkenness, at least not like in central Russia where guys will drink up their last kopek. Most people just want a place where they can gather.”

Older residents cite its advantages over other areas of the country. Crime rates are low, they say, because thieves can’t flee the city and stolen goods are hard to hide in housing that is mostly communal.

“The north is like a stiffer,” observed Gennady Ilchenko, the director of the weather station who has lived in Dickson for 37 years. “Those who are weak or lazy or untalented fall out quickly.”

Schoolteacher Larissa Duvinets, a 28-year resident, says that children are taught in the city’s two schools to value the northern life style and plan for futures in their parents’ footsteps.

But city officials concede that at least 20% of Dickson’s population turns over each year.

“I don’t think I’ll stay here after school days,” said 13-year-old Sergei Lutsenko as he led visitors on a tour of the city’s three-room museum. “I feel it’s cut off from the outside world.”

He and his friends said they long for big-city life with subways and buses, and the simple pleasures of summer, like swimming and going barefoot.