By BERT WHYTE

, MOSCOW

Kola Peninsula, north of the

Circle, borders on Sweden and

fway. At the end of March every

' Polar Olympics are staged, with

ipants from Norway, Finland,

n and the Soviet Union compet-

traditional winter sports—ski-

hockey, skating. The program also
Hes racing.

visited the Kola Peninsula too
to enjoy the sports festival, but
i manage to wangle a ride on a low
‘drawn by four reindeer. The na-
| Saami driver put his charges into
gallop by touching their backs

gue. We flew along through pow-
y snow and it was an exhilarating

In the last century an American
tor, Horace Greeley, advised the
uth of his country: “Go West, Young
Today in the U.S.S.R. the cry
Go North!”
) fhe Soviet North includes the Eu-
pean North, of which the Kola Pen-"
la is an important part; the West
flan North where great economic
Dpments are taking place; the
Siberian North, largely untouch-
and finally the North East which
6s in Yakutia, Kolyma, Chukotka,
mMchatka and the northern part of
in. The population of this vast
Ory—almost half the area of the
.S.F only about six million.
t the land is capable of supporting
millions more, for it has unlimit-
ver resources, vast coal depo-
, valuable minerals and tremendous
ber regions.
‘Ola Peninsula, about 450 miles
m east to west and 300 miles north
south, has a population of 760,000:

_

h a long pole and clucking with his ©

As the result of an ancient glacier it
is rich in lakes and rivers: 107,146
lakes and 26,016 streams and rivers.

Timber is scarce and agricultural
possibilities very restricted. There are
15,000 cattle but as corn doesn’t
thrive in the North, feed has to be im-
ported. There are also 400,000 hens.
Onions, cabbages and other vegetables
are grown in greenhouses. The aim is
to become self-sufficient in eggs and
staple vegetubles: condensed milk will
continue to be shipped in from the
mainland.

The collective and state farms breed
polar fox and mink, both good profit-
producers. As for the reindeer, they
find their own food—lichens—and are
useful for meat and hides. The Saami
and other native peoples—Komi and
Nenets—live mainly in the central part
of the peninsula and herd reindeer.
There are about 75,000 deer on farms

and 20,000 roaming wild.: These latter

are called “Masters of the Tundra’” be-
cause their traditional enemy, the
wolf, has been exterminated. I asked
about wolves while viewing a stuffed
one in a Murmansk museum. “We used
planes to hunt them down and destroy
them,” said an attendant. “Now we

joke that there are only two wolves |

left in the whole peninsula—this stuffed
one, and one in the tundra.”

There are 1,800 Saami (called Lap-
landers in the West) in the Kola Pen-
insula, as compared with 25,000 in
Finland, 12,000 in Sweden and 12,000
in Norway. They have a spoken lan-
guage but no alphabet. Attempts were
made to construct one, but the Saami
themselves rejected the idea because
of their small numbers. Their children
are sent to free boarding schools,
where they learn the Russian language,
and special privileges are granted to
those who enter higher schools. They

Sess va re “ay . ey

are encouraged to preserve and deve-
lop their native culture, and recently a
Saami concert of songs was televised
by a central studio.

Our group of foreign journalists
visited the Tuloma Collective Farm,
south of Murmansk, and were first
shown a large herd of cows standing
in the snow. The photographers among
us began complaining: “We can see
cows anywhere. Why not show us
some reindeer?” But we soon realized
that in an area where fishing and min-
ing are the main industries, the deve-
lopment of farming is extremely im-
portant in order to cut down on the
need. to import food. The farm has
close to 7,000 acres of arable land and
a working force of 210, out of 500 peo-
ple in the village. Last year it made a
profit of 193,000 roubles. Average
wages run from 200 to 220 roubles a
month and 15,000 roubles were dis-
tributed in bonuses at the end of the
year. Part of the profit came from
breeding blue foxes, which bring in
around 65 roubles a pelt. The farm
had 400 female and 78 male foxes at
the time of our visit. Litters vary
greatly in size—from one to 25. The
foxes are born in March and killed in
November. Raising foxes is a sideline
on this farm, but there are two special
animal farms on the peninsula, one of
which keeps 12,000 female mink for
breeding purposes and sells 50,000
pelts annually.

“I come from Tula,” said Peter Kuz-
netsov, the farm director. “I’ve been
here 37 years and wouldn’t think of
leaving this area. A good life—hunting,
skiing, sport fishing through the ice in
winter.”

Later we met Nicolas Lyshif, the
director of a deer farm, actually an ex-
perimental farm, and he expounded on
the subject of reindeer. Of the 3,200,000
reindeer in the world, about 75 per-

‘ cent live in the Russian Federation,

mainly in Siberia and the Komi Auto-
nomous Republic. “Although we have
only 75,000, it’s a profitable business,”
said Lyshif. “The meat is mainly con-
sumed in the district; shoes and clothes
are made from the hides, as well as
chamois. At our station 30 people look
after 8,000 reindeer, but at the Tundra
Collective Farm, the’ biggest, there are
31,000 deer.”

Visiting Murmansk and district had
taught us something about the fishing
industry and the difficulties of farming
in the Far North. Now we boarded a
train for a trip to Apatite and Kirovsk,
farther south.

The Gulf Stream warms Murmansk
but it’s a different story in the mining
areas. Kirovsk, nestling between moun-
tains, endures a long, cold winter and

is often hit by raging snowstorms that

eeurt ners

last for days. The town was named
after Sergei Kirov, a prominent Com-
munist Party leader who was an en-
thusiastic advocate of industrializa-
tion of the Kola Peninsula.

Apatite, the town on the main Len-
ingrad-Murmansk line, from which a
branch track runs to Kirovsk, is named
after the apatite ore which is the raw
material for manufacturing chemical
fertilizer. The Kirovsk combinat (mines
and fertilizer plant) was flourishing be-
fore the Second Warld War, but had
to close down in the early years of the
conflict.

Actually apatite is a material which
comes from the insides of ancient, ex-
tinct volcanoes, and the deposits in the
Kirovsk area are practically inexhaust-
ible. The raw ore comes from two
mines (one open pit and one under-
ground) to the plant where it is dump-
ed from 100-ton railway cars into huge
hoppers, then goes through the crush-
ers, flotation plant, condensers and
dryers: This year the plant will pro-
duce six million tons of concentrate
from 14 million tons of ore. Average
wage in the industrial complex is 268
roubles a month. Workers in the plant
are very young, mostly in their early
20’s, and 40 percent of them are wo-
men. The miners earn the top wages,
of course, but young plant workers
draw down from 220 to 240 roubles a
month. They work a five-day week, get
annual holidays with pay. Last year
the Apatite Complex made 59 million
roubles profit.

After enjoying a good dinner in a
Kirovsk restaurant we drove through
the snow-covered mountains to the
only botanical gardens north of the
Arctic Circles.

The Botanical Gardens was founded
in 1931 and its primary task is the stu-
dy of local flora. In the short summer
there is light for 24 hours and some
central Russian plants grow even fast-
er than in their native habitat. Efforts
to cultivate some 4,500 flowers and
plants from many countries have been
crowned with success in 1,200 cases—
not in greenhouses, but outside.
Daisies in particular like the snow —
when it melts they thrive. You could
call it real “flower power.” We were
shown rare flowers from Africa, edel-
weiss from the Alps, bluebells, snap-
dragons, The Gardens staff maintain
direct contact with 49 foreign botan-
ical gardens, including some in Canada
and the United States.

Our trip convinced us that the treas-
ures of the Soviet Far North are un-
limited; and that Soviet policy in de-
veloping the Far North is correct. And ~
what about the riches of Canada’s Far
North, so largely untapped? Every
reader can draw his own conclusions.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—-MAY 9, 1969-Page 7