Americans and Soviets Melt the Ice Curtain

As the Iron Curtain collapses in Eastern Europe, the Ice Curtain is rapidly melting in the Bering Strait separating Alaska and the Soviet Far East.

Slammed shut by Stalin in 1948, the back door to the Soviet Union--through Siberia and into the United States through Alaska--is opening in a dramatic fashion. Until recently the mysterious Soviet Far East, one of the most isolated and least-known places on Earth, had been off limits to all foreigners.

But now, for the first time, Alaskan and Siberian government officials, business people, scientists and others from many different walks of life are traveling between Alaska and the Soviet Far East with increasing regularity.

They no longer must journey all the way around the world to go next door--the few miles across the Bering Strait--as they did until a year ago.

Aeroflot has run charter flights to Alaska from Siberia; Alaska Airlines has offered service from Alaska to the Soviet Far East. Bering Air, based in Nome, last year flew 88 round-trips in nine-seater commuter planes between Nome and Provideniya, a distance of 220 miles.

Alaska Airlines has applied for a regularly scheduled route from Anchorage to Magadan and Khabarovsk, Soviet Far East cities with air links to Moscow.

“Our state has a unique geographic and historic connection to the U.S.S.R. It was part of Russia for 126 years, from its discovery by Vitus Bering in 1741 to its purchase by the U. S. for $7.2 million in 1867,” said Alaska Gov. Steve Cowper. “We know the Soviet Far East better than anyone else. We’re their next door neighbors.”

Cowper spent 12 days traveling 6,700 miles throughout the Soviet Far East last September on a trade-friendship mission. “We proposed several joint business ventures. Some, involving Soviet and U. S. fishermen, are already in place.”

Cowper has proposed establishing an American Consulate in the Soviet Far East and a Soviet Consulate in Anchorage “to expedite all our relationships.”

He said 80 Soviet officials are flying to Alaska and a like number of Alaskans to Soviet Eastern coastal cities in April, each group primed with business proposals.

Cowper told how the Russians permitted the U. S. Coast Guard to enter Soviet air space to search for seven walrus hunters missing for three weeks off the coast of St. Lawrence Island; the Soviets joined the search and eventually found the Eskimos.

He mentioned the Soviets’ help in freeing the famous ice-bound whales and in the aftermath of the Valdez oil spill.

“Nothing like that ever happened in the past,” he said. “We are witnessing the dawn of a whole new era of friendship, cooperation, trade and cultural relations between the people of Alaska and the Soviet Far East.”

This month, for the first time, Eskimos in villages on the Siberian coast and on Alaska’s St. Lawrence and Little Diomede Islands are free to travel back and forth without visas.

St. Lawrence Island is 50 miles off the Soviet coast; Little Diomede 2.7 miles from Russia’s Big Diomede Island. The International Date Line and International Border are midway between the two small islands.

Thousands of Eskimos in both nations, separated by only a few miles--much closer than Cuba is to Florida--were totally cut off from one another for 40 years. Many are related. They speak the same language, have the same family names.

Moses Milligrock, 66, a town councilman on America’s Little Diomede Island, pop. 184, talked of “exciting times” in a telephone interview.

There once was an Eskimo village on Big Diomede Island, but residents were all moved to the Soviet mainland. Now, only 50 KGB border guards live there in barracks, peering through binoculars from guard posts across the Bering Strait to monitor the activities of residents of Little Diomede.

“Several of us from Little Diomede made a 30-mile trip last July in walrus-skin boats to the Soviet mainland to visit relatives we hadn’t seen or heard from since 1948. We stayed over there a week,” said Milligrock. “Our Eskimo relatives sailed to Little Diomede in their skin boats. We’ve also had visits from some Soviet big shots, including a governor and a mayor. It’s unbelievable what’s happening up here.”

Ted Mala, a Harvard University graduate, became Alaska’s first male Eskimo physician in 1977. In 1982, he launched a Siberian medical research project at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where he is an associate professor.

Mala, 43, traveled to Moscow in 1985 and persuaded Soviet authorities to permit him to visit the Siberian Academy of Medical Sciences. He was the first foreigner given access to the Soviet institution. He since has exchanged information with the Siberian Academy on medical research about people living in the Far North.

He is a founder of the International Union for Circumpolar Health and has served as its secretary since its establishment in 1986. All nations at the top of the world are members. Its purpose is to research health problems common to those who live in extreme cold and where there is little sunlight half the year and little darkness the rest of the year.

In June, 1988, he became founder-director of the Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies at the University of Alaska, with an initial $500,000 funding from the Alaskan Legislature. Last October, he took on added responsibilities as founder-director of the Magadan (U.S.S.R.) Medical Research Program.

“Dr. Mala was the person who initially started breaking down barriers between Alaska and Siberia. He has been the key player in the unfolding relations between the Soviet Far East and Alaska,” Gov. Cowper said.

Mala has arranged most of the trips to the Soviet Far East for Alaskan officials and others as a liaison with Soviet authorities. He has traveled throughout Siberia on numerous trips, seeing what no Westerner had ever been permitted to see.

“My father was an Eskimo, my mother Russian,” explained Mala, who was born in Hollywood (where his father worked as an actor) and grew up in Santa Monica. “I speak fluent Russian. My heritage works magic for me with the Soviets.”

The Soviet Far East is like a Third World country in many ways, he said: “Hospitals re-use syringes and needles. I shipped 30,000 needles and syringes over there. Rubles are not good on the world market. Everything has to be bartered. I’ve arranged for medical equipment to be shipped there in exchange for coal and gold.”

“There have been more Russians in Sitka the last couple of years than have been here since Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867,” said Gary Candelaria, 38, chief ranger at Sitka National Historical Park, the only national park dedicated to Russian-American history.

“Soviets never came here. Now, it seems like you can’t walk down the street without stumbling over a Russian,” continued Candelaria, who grew up in Pico Rivera.

It all started when a research vessel from Sebastopol sailed into Sitka in July, 1988, and to the amazement of residents, Russians from the ship came ashore.

“Nothing like that ever happened here before. People invited the Russian sailors to their homes for dinner. The Russians invited us aboard their ship,” recalled Will Swagel, 36, a reporter for the Sitka Centennial.

A month later, two Soviet sailboats, retracing Vitus Bering’s 1741 voyage, sailed into Sitka from the Soviet Far East. There have been a steady stream of Russians coming to this historic capital ever since.

Last Oct. 15, Yuri Dubinin, Soviet ambassador to the U. S., came to Sitka for the dedication of a statue of Alexander Baranoff, founder of Sitka and czarist governor of Alaska from 1790 to 1818.

Sitka was capital of Russian America from 1808 to 1867. Many of its streets have Russian names. The 1848 Russian Bishop’s House, part of the historical park, is the best remaining piece of Russian colonial architecture in North America. It houses the most complete record of the Russian experience in Alaska.

When the house was erected, old letters, journals and ledgers were glued to the walls to seal seams and cracks. They detail fascinating accounts of daily life in Russian America in the 1840s. When seven layers of wallpaper, paint and canvas were recently removed, the perfectly preserved handwriting on the wall was discovered and photographed before being covered with reproduction wallpaper.

At the same time Russians from the Soviet Far East began discovering Alaska, Americans in kayaks, skin boats and even a cruise ship were sailing to Siberia and being welcomed to coastal towns and cities forbidden to foreign visits since the end of World War II.

The first to break the ice was marathon swimmer Lynne Cox in August, 1987, when she swam from Little Diomede across the Bering Strait to Big Diomede Island in the U.S.S.R.

Then came the Aeroflot, Alaska Airlines and Bering Air flights.

And from February to April, 1988, six Soviets and six Americans traveled with sled dogs, skis and skin boats 1,200 miles in a friendship trek from the Soviet Far East to Western Alaska in the Bering Bridge Expedition.

Newspaper and television news crews from Russia have come to Alaska and have gone to the Soviet Far East from Alaska to provide background stories on the two areas.

High schools are offering Russian language classes in Alaska for the first time. Russian and American students have become pen pals. Student exchange programs are in the works, and there are plans for basketball tournaments between Soviet and Alaskan Eskimo villages.

Paul Hartel, associate regional director of the National Park Service in Alaska, and three other U. S. Park Service officials, spent two weeks in the Soviet Far East, traveling through the Chukchi Peninsula, while Soviet park officials toured Alaska’s Seward Peninsula.

The two nations are planning an international peace park, fronting the Bering Strait. It would be half in the U.S.S.R., half in Alaska, a part of the world where, indeed, the Ice Curtain is melting.