Russia’s Economic Upheavals Leave a Corner of Siberia Out in the Cold

The winter dawn comes swiftly in Siberia. By the time a vague yellow glow appears behind the clouds, Leonid Ivanov is already knee-deep in the river.

He stands near shore in a black sheepskin coat and green waders, casting slowly for arctic trout. He is the only point of color against the vast whiteness of the shore, the sky and the steam that rises in sheets from the swift-running water.

Gently, he dips his 30-foot fishing rod toward where the current runs faster, his lure seeking the prey that provides his margin of survival.

“I come here every day,” he says. “There’s no work, so I come here.”

His day passes quietly at the bend in the Angara River, just north of the center of Irkutsk, one of Siberia’s largest cities.

The fishing spot bears little resemblance to the electrical equipment factory where Ivanov worked for more than 20 years. It closed, as did nearly every one of the defense plants that once were Irkutsk’s main source of pride as well as income.

Irkutsk’s defense workers were once privileged, earning hefty bonuses and hardship pay for living and working in Siberia’s harsh climate. Now they must make their own way in Russia’s harsh new economy.

On a good day, Ivanov, 56, will catch six or seven fish, about four pounds. He and his family will eat them for supper, unless he sells a few to get money for cigarettes.

Although the temperature is 13 below zero on this morning, Ivanov says matter-of-factly that it’s warm. At the water’s edge, he keeps a small fire burning to heat his hands, and a small bottle of vodka to warm the rest of him.

Ivanov says he’d rather get a real job, but no one will hire a worker over 50.

“We have to take care of ourselves now,” he says. “I understand that.”

*

Despite more than 600,000 residents, Irkutsk has little of the bustle of a big city, and has not caught the feverish capitalism that has swept Moscow and a few other Russian metropolises.

Here, people walk deliberately, with few billboards or flashy ads to draw their attention from the icy sidewalks. They are 2,500 miles from Moscow and its upscale supermarkets, nightclubs and banks.

In Soviet times, Irkutsk was a major link in Russia’s military-industrial complex. Surrounded by deep forests and vast resources, it was a safe place to build tanks, fighters and other war equipment.

Most of the factories are now idle. And some, to the dismay of many of their former workers, have been turned into gaudy flea markets for everything from fruit to fur coats.

Alexander Oskin operates two of them. A lanky 28-year-old with a penchant for computer games, he sits in his untidy office in a former machine-tool factory just off the city’s main square. A poster of a lipstick-red Ferrari hangs above his desk.

As Oskin describes it, the new markets are a marriage of convenience: The factories that weren’t already bankrupt had lost so many government orders that they couldn’t pay their workers. And at least for now, small-scale trading is about the only growth area in the city’s economy.

He acknowledges that much of the trade is in cheap consumer goods, many imported from nearby China. Little new industry has grown up in Irkutsk to replace the jobs that were lost.

Nevertheless, Oskin has little sympathy for those still out of work. He watches an old woman pass his doorway, bent double as she sweeps the floor of the former factory.

“I’m absolutely convinced that those without work are those who don’t want to work,” he says.

*

In Irkutsk’s main unemployment office, a single radiator spits dirty steam futilely up a blue stairway. The halls are packed with men and women who don’t remove their coats and stare warily at each newcomer.

A small group clusters on a stair landing, reading small slips of paper with the week’s job offerings. A retail collective looking for a driver offers the best salary: 2,500 rubles a month, about $400. The lowest-paid offer is from a military trading company: 360 rubles ($60) a month for a salesperson.

Most read for a few minutes, then turn away silently.

Officially, only 1.1% of Irkutsk’s working-age population is out of a job, says the unemployment office’s director, Vera Tatarnikova. She concedes that statistic is contradicted by the mood of despair in her corridors and out on the streets.

“People aren’t used to these difficulties of life, and so it seems to them that the world is coming to an end,” she says. Fear of crime and distrust of the government in Moscow compound the sense of helplessness, she says.

Tatarnikova has 3,650 people on her rolls this month. They can collect the equivalent of $70 a month in government support for a year as long as they demonstrate they are actively looking for a job.

Yes, she admits, those who have stopped looking don’t come to her office and don’t get counted as unemployed. Neither do those still nominally employed by their factories but idled because of low orders.

But things were worse a year ago, she says, when she had 30% more people on her books. New jobs are appearing, although still mostly in trade, not manufacturing. A few of the unemployed are taking advantage of government subsidies and starting small businesses.

She divides the people who come to her office into two groups: those who can work in the new system and those who can’t. She says the division is about 50-50.

“When we started all this six years ago, people didn’t believe it,” she says. “Now, more and more understand that they can’t wait around for the government to find them a job.”

Are things getting better?

Tatarnikova sighs. “We’ve survived the crash,” she says.

*

Irkutsk retires early in the winter, retreating indoors soon after the sun sets and the temperature begins to slide toward 20 below. Only a handful of people are out--a few dog-walkers, the occasional police patrol. Streetcars rattle by, brightly lit but empty.

Boris Sminilsov paces in front of a nearly empty restaurant. His main job is as an immigration officer at the airport, but he moonlights here as a security guard.

Inside, a couple slow dances to a raspy cassette player, wearing their fur hats against the chill that seeps through the windows.

“I think we’ve hit bottom,” Sminilsov says with a smile. “It’s not going to get any worse.”

In Siberia, in winter, that passes for optimism.

Down along the riverbank, the Angara laps quietly against its stone embankment. Three teens frolic at the water’s edge, tossing chunks of ice out toward where the dark current flows faster.

An eerie blue light appears upstream in the darkness, drifting slowly down the center of the river. When it passes into a beam of lamplight, a figure is silhouetted in a boat, bending toward the river’s dark surface.

It’s nearly midnight. Out on the rushing water, someone is fishing.