A Different North

Chukotka is Russia’s most distant and most isolated territory. Separated from Moscow by nine time zones, it lies 4,000 kilometres north of the Pacific railhead at Vladivostok. This was the last fragment of eastern Asia to be added to the Russian empire, and only during the 1950s were the Soviets able to effectively colonize the territory and collectivize its hunters, trappers and herders. Until that time Chukotka was occupied primarily by Chukchi, a people who obtained their livelihood from immense herds of reindeer that they shepherded across the Arctic tundra. A scatter of coastal Eskimo villages provided access to the marine resources of the Bering Sea, and to trade connections with their Alaskan relatives across the narrow channel of the Bering Strait. Until separated by the Cold War, Chukotka was more closely linked to Alaska than to the rest of Russia. Half the size of Alaska, Chukotka is an environmental reflection of its eastern neighbour, a land of Arctic tundra...