Chukotka Fleet. Beginning
First part: Black Sea Fleet - Chukotka Fleet
Part two
Listen? Lift your cap and shut your mouth – you'll catch a cold. This is Chukotka...
Dedicated to the border guard sailors.
«History “She’s not a teacher, but a supervisor: she doesn’t teach anything, but only punishes for not knowing her lessons.”
V. O. Klyuchevsky
V. O. Klyuchevsky
- Hello! What's new?
"It's all the same. I'm just feeling sad, remembering Chukotka again..."
- Come on, stop it! How many years have passed, 35, I guess?
- Yes, it’s been 35 years already...
- What are you sad about? You probably wanted a jar of wine? No?
- What are you talking about? It's 100% poison!
- Well, what are you missing?
"You know, we were doing normal, manly work there, after all. After that, it wasn't the same; everything became simpler after Chukotka... People are 'poorer,' I suppose, and there's a lack of authenticity; everything seems somehow smoothed over, artificial, or something..."
"You're right about that... The SeverA showed people as they really are. And the relationships were just as genuine. "On the mainland," you're right, that's a rarity..."
– Yes, we were friends – that was forever, but when we hated you, we told you who you were to your face… There was a lack of sincerity in life…
- Shall we meet?
- Come on. Let's buzz...
Philosophy (?), or simply thinking out loud... This is for the less sensitive and less sensitive. Others can skip it without any harm to the story.
There won't be many pictures, my apologies to the reader...
Chipboard. No need to read... It's not relevant. Probably...
I recently thought that military personnel are like pencils in a pack. If you don't do anything with them, you'll be left with dull wooden cylinders with lead, useless and just taking up space. To use a pencil for good (and for evil, too), you need to sharpen it properly and regularly, not dab it on paper or anything else inappropriate. You need to keep an eye on which side is wearing the most, and sharpen it regularly, preventing it from becoming too sharp, but at the same time, preventing it from becoming completely dull.
So, if we don’t educate our people, don’t monitor them (and not in the sense of not monitoring, as you understand), don’t correct them in time, then they’ll just be a dumb log in a box taking up space…
A military pencil needs to be sharpened, ground, and shaped especially carefully at first—then it will last a long time in the box, won't leave behind any dirt, won't tear the paper, and will always leave a clear and crisp drawing without smudging. Even if it's considerably shortened during its service life, such a pencil will proudly stand in its box as an example to others: do your job well, and you'll be appreciated and repaired, ground, and shaped promptly, without unnecessary effort or mischief.
Remember, you always have your favorite pencil in a pencil cup on your desk, which you use especially carefully and know that it will give you the opportunity to create a better quality drawing or note, and you will be pleased to pick it up and draw or write with it.
And here, much (but not everything) comes down to the sharpener. Before the era of historical materialism, sharpeners were not necessary—a skilled, experienced craftsman with a razor-sharp knife could sharpen pencils to the point of masterpieces! But the industrial era arrived, and pencils began to be sharpened with a different, mass-produced tool: a sharpener. A crude, primitively made sharpener with jagged edges will never make a pencil a masterpiece, no matter how hard you try. Let's recall our youth—our studies at the Higher School of Engineering. What very specific subject did we have? Well, not specialized ones, like how to wipe England off the map or something like that—we won't discuss that. The professors taught us, and they've taught our successors, too, so there's no point in getting into that; everyone who needs to knows and can do everything they need to know. I'm talking about what makes a professional out of a sheep—that is, general engineering sciences. After all, both you and I received a general engineering education in Soviet times, and not some incomprehensible idiot who just presses buttons, as liberals (what impudence!) explained to us in the late 80s and early 90s...
Here's one of those subjects – descriptive geometry. Tell me, why the hell was it needed, as we thought back then, when we were studying? But go figure – it turned out to be useful, even in the simple life of an officer. Designing maps, making diagrams, drawing devices… By the way, notice – the automatic spelling and grammar correction program doesn't understand the term "device"… So what's the conclusion? Are we idiots? No way, the ones who wrote the spelling and grammar software are the idiots. Are they to blame? Probably not, because old scum like you and me don't get involved in compiling dictionaries… But there aren't any others anymore…
What am I getting at? Remember the "Nachalka" (drawing) lesson! How they taught us for a couple of months—and again, no one will guess! They simply taught us to sharpen a pencil! But to do it correctly, so that the mark it leaves is high-quality, without smudges or dirt. And we've retained this skill throughout our lives. And it seemed like—whatever, just whittle the pencil, and that's it...
This is exactly how political scientists treat their controlled test subjects. Why waste time, effort, and resources training people in the army and society? All those who are "not mature" will die off through the process of natural selection, and the rest will be put to work, no matter how little use they have; for them, the concept of "sufficiency" is more important. This is terrifying. weapon, which the new government received after the destruction of the Soviet nomenklatura.
Am I speaking of sedition or stupidity? Perhaps, but the result of negative selection is obvious. Let them refute me (I'll even be glad to hear it – I'm all for the positive!), but somehow, in today's reality, such catastrophically poor defense ministers, for example (remind me of the second-to-last one's predecessor?), were not seen in the Soviet period... Is this an isolated incident? Hardly; no isolated incident can cause such damage to the entire country on such a scale. Only if the government in this country is at least somewhat sane. Is this criticism of the government? Of course. Is this no longer allowed to be published? I doubt it... Well, we'll see...
But if the sharpener is carefully crafted, and if a strong, sharp blade is selected, and sharpened at the correct angle, then the pencil sharpening result will be precisely what you want. The pencil won't wear out excessively or become dull quickly, and the sharpening process itself will be neat, gentle, and effective.
So it is with a military man—after school, where a pencil is made from a wooden block and a lead is inserted into it, it undergoes a basic refining at the academy, like a first sharpening with a sharpener. Then it is honed, sharpened, and polished by commanders for a long time, until it becomes an important, authoritative pencil in its box. And then they begin to cherish it, using it for especially important or responsible tasks, notes, and drawings. And there it is, already considerably worn down, but still important and beloved by its owner, taking its honorable place in a pencil case or box, and new, not yet sharpened pencils look upon it with respect and reverence…
But it's also important that these pencils are guided by the hand of an artist, not some art swindler. Think about how a small child, 2,5 or 3 years old, begins to learn to draw. You have grandchildren, right? So what? He, a child, is just starting out, grabbing pencils in his fist, several at a time, and starting to smash them across paper and whatever else comes to hand. He's curious: what's happening? His hands aren't yet under the control of his head, but he wants to—and that's it! And what comes out, as loving moms and dads say, is scribbles. But by the age of three and a half, the child, under the watchful guidance of his mother (yes, dad, as usual – he's on the hunt for the family's financial means for all the artistic pursuits, and that's also right), begins to understand that with a pencil, something meaningful can be created on paper, and not just on paper, since along with drawing skills, the child also masters space, and begins to paint wallpaper and everything within reach in a Khokhloma style. And the joyful parents – well, of course, the child has learned to draw! – come home from work, and their beloved child greets them, dragging them by the hand to the near-Renaissance paintings he's created in the kitchen, in the rooms, and on all sorts of other horizontal and vertical surfaces.
A happy dad (can you imagine his joyful face?), inspired by his child's creativity, frantically reaches for the rewarding tool, and the reward would have found its hero if mom hadn't intervened... That's pretty much what happens when you give pencils to grown-ups who aren't even as mature as a three-year-old. Well, I don't think I need to cite examples from our recent past; you know them yourself from your own service and life in the commodity market...
But if you give pencils to an artist, a masterpiece will emerge from their pencil/brush. Hmm, or maybe not... there are plenty of examples, so let's not waste time and effort sorting them out in different parts of the painting.
So it turns out that for pencils to draw useful and meaningful images, we don't need little children or artists with their complex, incomprehensible worlds, who claim, "This is how they see it." No, these guys are unsuitable for using our pencils—the former will require repairs, and the latter might leave the pencils broken and discarded, the paper and canvases burned, or covered in elephant dung... Don't you remember that great artist who was famous in the 90s for precisely this kind of work? And how all those "great art experts" sighed, selling "this very thing" to their poorly educated but very wealthy clients... I don't remember either, and I don't want to remember that miracle...
We need ordinary, normal artists who have graduated from at least a secondary art school (SHS) and who can understand what happens when you stick a pencil into paper/canvas or mercilessly break the leads. That's right. Such pencils require a fairly average person, someone who can still (or better yet, already) be kept within the bounds of common sense and who doesn't strive for distant lands at any cost, even by breaking and throwing away pencils. Something like that...
Don't give me any bullshit about democracy. They'll sell you any crazy nonsense under that banner, and before you know it, you'll be in the far north, cutting down trees to make more pencils, and always using "democratic" methods... But without an idea, you definitely can't. This is where things get tricky... "People without ideas are martyrs, unless they're just scoundrels, of course"... These words are attributed to some celebrity, but the thesis itself is undeniably true. Otherwise, there won't be properly sharpened pencils, and they'll just draw "whatever God puts into their heads," meaning whatever comes to hand.
Well, let's not dwell on the sad stuff; let's return to our joyful tale of Chukotka. There were plenty of pencils there, you understand, and in all sorts of hands, but overall, the art they produced was quite acceptable. Until the hands holding the pencils were replaced by the childish ones (in terms of development) of those of our leaders, who suddenly decided that pencils were no longer necessary, we have no interests, after all, but we will joyfully embrace freedom.The dungeons will collapse - and freedom / Will welcome us joyfully at the entrance, / And our brothers will give us the sword)... And for the last 35 years, we've still been celebrating this feast of life, having only received the collapse of the prisons (and who saw them in the late 80s and early 90s?)... Yeah, everything else was promised to the new generations... They just forgot to say which ones. And the swords, as you can imagine, were sold off very profitably by clever heralds of freedom, and in their haste, they somehow inadvertently forgot to share the proceeds with the people... Oh well, we're patient, we can wait another five hundred years for what was promised... We just have to live to see it, especially since they've already told us about the 120 years, though they forgot to specify who it concerns...
Okay, enough grumbling, I need to get down to business. In my case, that means slamming away at the keyboard and rattling off text about things past... Incidentally, it's perfectly acceptable—no criticism of the ruling class, just keep up the good work, stomping on the past tense... Does this remind you of anything?
But when you don't do it that way, you get, to put it mildly, pelmeni in a box. Remember that wonderful product from Soviet-era grocery stores? When the ladies would shout, "They threw out the pelmeni," everyone would rush to the store, buy pelmeni in cardboard boxes, and then heroically carry this doughy, meaty joy home to feed and delight their families. Remember? There it is, the picture immediately dawns on you, doesn't it? And now remember what the main trick was to buy them like that? Right, get them home quickly and don't dangle the string bag, otherwise the pelmeni in the box would melt and stick together, and instead of the great joy of not having to cook dinner, you'd get the headache of restoring the pelmeni to their marketable condition, otherwise no one in the family would eat that mess of dough and meat... And pelmeni cost money! Of course, in the worst-case scenario, when pelmeni couldn't be restored, the wives would invent a new dish—pelmeni pie. All in all, quite a quest, by today's standards.
And don't tell me we were stupid and couldn't even fit pelmeni into a cooler bag or a thermal bag! This was before the era of historical materialism, and no one in our country had ever seen such miracles of progress (in the form of thermal bags/thermal bags). And in other countries... who knows! However, they didn't have such pelmeni, that's a fact!
It's the same with people – if they're not kept in the right conditions of upbringing, education, and propaganda, they'll eventually melt and stick together, and there'll be no decent use for them. Whoever forgot this, either obviously or stupidly, then tries to lead these people/dumplings to some kind of bright future, with virtually no results. But a mass of stuck-together dumplings is no longer dough or meat, but something inedible, and the only use for "it" is... well, you know... Although, you must admit, for some "elites," such a faceless, dull, inedible mass is a perfectly acceptable product; you can mold it however you want, but you can't eat it anyway, and they themselves don't intend to...
Such sad and not so sad thoughts come to mind today when you try to look not into the past, but into the present that was just 30-40 years ago...
You have to admit, only extreme conditions and a single idea allowed us to remain both sharply sharpened pencils and high-quality dumplings—that is, we were fit for any good, nationally needed use. And we held on like that until about 1992 or a little later… It's a shame that with the advent of that happy year, for some reason, the sharpener broke, the sheets of paper were stolen, and the owner of the entire pack of pencils either died or left and forgot to return.
Do you think I'm nostalgic about the lack of a firm hand and "Glory to the CPSU"? No, but I can't give a damn about those times either; my conscience won't allow it. This talk of totalitarianism and other nightmares of the late Soviet period, which are used to frighten the people, is nonsense. Orwell and Platonov spoke of true totalitarianism long before today, but there was no trace of it in our time. But today, people who call themselves free don't even understand the cage they're in.
But enough of this grumbling for the umpteenth time. Let's get back to work, sharpening pencils, and the proper maintenance of pelmeni, especially given the warm Chukchi climate...
So... It was July 1990.
At the very beginning of the Chukotka saga, in July 1990, our sailor was sent on a mission to familiarize himself with a possible theater of service in his area of expertise. He arrived on a regular Aeroflot flight with another district officer, who was also handling other tasks besides integrating him into the reality of the situation. They were unexpectedly accommodated not on the premises of the 110th Pogo, but in a hotel in the village of Provideniya.
And so, by chance, a resident of the outskirts of the country happened to meet a Moscow celebrity—and, frankly, a national celebrity. Vasily Mikhailovich Peskov—for many, a figure known as a journalist, co-host of the show "In the World of Animals" with Nikolai Drozdov. And what a stroke of luck—a star of Moscow and the entire USSR ended up staying at the same hotel in the village of Provideniya! Well, the hotel in Provideniya isn't the capital's Metropol; it only has a few rooms, and most sleep two to four guests. So, their paths crossed.
And Peskov wasn't alone, he was with two American explorers! For a Kamchatka native who had seen nothing but the sea, islands, and the enemy, this was an even more exciting encounter.
True, after half a day, it became clear that the pleasantness of our acquaintance consisted of a desire to advance something among the border authorities regarding Vasily Mikhailovich Peskov's mission to Chukotka, and nothing more. This was our comrade's first open display of the Moscow bohemian "face" in all its naked essence... But his American companions were much more welcoming and open. We took photos together, exchanged souvenirs; in short, everything was pleasant and friendly.
They were interested in everything—Soviet Chukotka itself against the backdrop of Alaska, the people, the natives, and they were even somewhat surprised by the increased attention the authorities paid them. In the States, they said, that's not the norm; they'd just smile at you, wave, and shout as they ran, "All the best, come and see me!" But there was nothing behind it—even if you showed up at the governor's office the next day, you'd be greeted as a stranger. We, on the other hand, showed all our goodwill and hospitality, and the "peace and bubblegum" atmosphere played a role, although many, including Molchanovsky, were well aware of the background to the Americans' intense interest (of course, there was a reason for that, but the main reason was the stimulation of this interest by their intelligence services).
Of course, my grumbling is the product (I hope) of a well-trained and disciplined officer in a specialized force, something many today don't understand... But suddenly, just 35 years later, it became clear that nothing has changed since those Soviet days—enemies remain enemies, no matter what disguise they wear. The only sad thing is that this happened "suddenly"... or was everyone trained differently in our system?
At first (for about half a day to a day), the journalist from the "In the Animal World" show was greeted with open arms. But the music didn't last long... Our Chukotka bosses hadn't seen the capital's bigwigs in a long time, and it never occurred to them that a bigwig would insistently, even brazenly, demand a helicopter or plane, like a Moscow taxi, regardless of the situation or weather, and even threaten to crush them into dust if things weren't done right and quickly...
The helicopter pilots grumbled at such impudence and assertiveness, something like "I'll drop it in the sea" (can you imagine the real expression? That's right, it was even shorter, just one word!), and the AN-26 pilots also raised an eyebrow and said they wouldn't fly (these were already intellectuals, and they managed to fit their objection into just two words)...
What happened there... A Moscow comrade, very emotionally, in good Russian, not included in the dictionaries of Dahl and Ozhegov, spent about 15 minutes explaining to the slow-witted and slow-witted soldiers (this is about the squadron commander and the detachment chief) the full gravity of what would be arriving for them right now from the hero city of Moscow and where they would continue their service, as soon as he could get to the phone, and that the city of Mukhosransk would simply be the world capital from where they ended up...
Having cursed everyone and everything, he didn't achieve the desired effect, however, and he failed to secure an air taxi. What do you expect? There were no signs of suicidal tendencies among our helicopter pilots—no one was foolish enough to fly to a place where the weather was absolutely terrible and orphan their children for the sake of Moscow celebrity, and the higher-ups (the district) generally supported their lower-ups (the Chukotkas), saying, "Well, hang in there, tell a lie." Anyway, Vasily Mikhailovich didn't fly anywhere that day, and his companions and I thoroughly enjoyed the local haul in the hotel room, while he himself, after two shots, disappeared off somewhere...
The next day, a quiet shout from every Moscow loudspeaker revealed where Vasily Mikhailovich had gone and why—the pressure on the Providence administration, the district committee, the border guards, and other authorities was so intense it was practically gushing. I won't lie, I don't know how it all ended that day, but the following day, this group of "naturalists" finally departed (the weather cleared up) for either Ratmanov Island, or Chaplino, or Lorino... We never saw each other again: the Kamchatka guest's assignment ended, and a plane carrying our beloved border troops took the travelers back to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. And a couple of months later, when he had already received his assignment and arrived in Providence, the dust settled, and only a few unkind words were spoken about the Moscow guests at a few meetings.
It's funny, but I'll quote from Wikipedia, which very clearly illustrates our Moscow hero:
Philologists O. I. Sokolova and S. A. Stanislavskaya, examining the speech portrait of V. M. Peskov, evaluate his work as an example of journalistic mastery, considering him a bearer of a high level of speech culture. They base their assessment on the journalist's classification as a bearer of a fully functional type of speech culture, grounded in life experience and moral values, and note:
"His speech is characterized by both a creative individuality, manifested in the skillful use of expressive means, thanks to which the author's 'handwriting' is recognized, and the originality of the newspaper-publicistic discourse of professional journalistic speech: adherence to the laws of the genre, the implementation of the main function of the journalistic style, and adherence to the norms of literary language."
Candidate of Philological Sciences M. A. Kuroedova calls the poeticization of living space, which includes nature and its living inhabitants, an integral speech characteristic of Peskov’s speeches.
"His speech is characterized by both a creative individuality, manifested in the skillful use of expressive means, thanks to which the author's 'handwriting' is recognized, and the originality of the newspaper-publicistic discourse of professional journalistic speech: adherence to the laws of the genre, the implementation of the main function of the journalistic style, and adherence to the norms of literary language."
Candidate of Philological Sciences M. A. Kuroedova calls the poeticization of living space, which includes nature and its living inhabitants, an integral speech characteristic of Peskov’s speeches.
We became fully acquainted with an outstanding specialist in Russian speech culture and the same rudeness...
So, where am I? I've completely strayed from the topic, sorry, old man. Back to Chukotka and my service.
It's always like this: we don't want to remember or talk about our past in a problematic way, with any negative connotations. This is how we try to protect ourselves from remembering unpleasant things, mistakes, stupidities, and shameful actions. And that's true. But this only works when conclusions have already been drawn, everything (or at least the main things) have been corrected, and there's no turning back. But this isn't always the case; in fact, it rarely happens even within a single family. And never when it comes to a country. And, sad as it is, and as much as one might want to remain silent, if there's no analysis of the past, then mistakes in the future won't be prevented. Klyuchevsky's words from the epigraph have lost their meaning today, and they never will.
History of the Black Sea Fleet (Chukchi fleet) is an example of this. You don't need to read any further (or even from the very beginning) – the particularly impressionable won't be able to accept it, and the polishers of the past won't understand it... those who weren't even involved in the project back then will think these are Grandfather Mazai's fairy tales, though only if they remember (and who told them?) who Mazai was... All hope lies with people who are capable of thinking and analyzing what they've seen, heard, read, learned, and not so much...
Black Sea Fleet. First winter
Whether it was a long time or a short time, three months had passed since the division, or whatever it boldly became known as in staff parlance, was created. Little had changed—the boats were still based near the border detachment, 200 meters from the fence. Winter had arrived, and the division had begun its main task in Chukotka—overwintering and survival. This meant insulating the boats for the winter, installing heaters everywhere possible and impossible, securing a secure berth to the dock (or rather, to the structure that, by mistake, was called by such a proud name), connecting to the detachment's power supply, and installing a telephone line to the boats.
Ice set in, and the boats gradually grew into the ice, which in turn gradually pushed them out. Within a month, the boats were sticking out about a meter from the ice, with some boats even listing. The waters adjacent to the pier quickly froze almost to the bottom, and wintering began. The boats remained there until April or May, when the ice began to melt and the boats returned to their natural waters. This was usually the case, with some minor deviations and damage.
That year, it seemed as if nature and man had conspired to create the most impossible conditions possible. However, wintering boats had rarely gone smoothly before, limited to damage and breakdowns that weren't classified as incidents. At least, that's what it looked like from the documents, or rather, the lack thereof. Boats were always foreign to the unit, incomprehensible and difficult to control due to the unique nature of the sea. Therefore, if a boat didn't sink, that's a good thing; the unit cheerfully reports that the wintering went without incident. And everything else is just details...
This winter, everything continued as before. But suddenly, out of nowhere, an entire division appeared (albeit only on paper, but there was someone to delegate responsibility to). In the second half of December 1990, the ice thickness near the boats' anchorage reached 60 cm, which ensured wintering until the following spring. The boats were frozen into the ice and already pulled into the anchorage. The water temperature during this period rarely rises to -1°C, usually hovering between -3°C and -2°C. The air temperature in December is typically -15°C to -20°C, not particularly cold by Chukotka standards. However, the snow depth can reach as high as one and a half or two meters.
What are you saying, I'm lying like a horse? Am I not? But it's still offensive! It's not a lie – seawater easily cools to minus 3-4 degrees Celsius and only then does it freeze, depending on the salinity of the area. So the water in your story isn't exactly warm – that's how it was before anyone learned how to heat the sea with a kettle...
During the first winter of 1990-1991, there were several occasions when a true Chukotka blizzard piled up so much snow that soldiers had to dig out houses and outbuildings from the outside, as it was impossible to open the doors—the snow was higher than the doorway, sometimes half a meter or a meter. So, while they dug it out, you had to sit and wait. But simply digging it out wasn't enough; trenches had to be dug in the snow for people to move through. And the trenches were so high that you walked through them like a tunnel. This was usually done by the duty platoon, but they always added some very enthusiastic fans of military discipline violations. If there were prisoners in the guardhouse, the competition was cancelled, and all tickets were given out free of charge to future recitalists of the Internal Service Regulations, either solo or chorally.
The kids were simply delighted – they dug into the snow and dug fox holes, then the angry dads, on the command of even more angry moms, would search for their offspring and spank them in the ass... On such days, the children were taken to school by public transportation, even though the school was only 500-600 meters away...
I mean, where did the school in Chukotka come from? From there! And it was a favorite among the kids. The teachers were all their own (or almost all), the classes were very small, the lessons were engaging and intense, they asked questions a dozen times a day, and even the least enthusiastic student, without realizing it, was gaining excellent knowledge and, later, on the mainland, often achieving excellent grades, while being a C student in Chukotka…
A Chukotka blizzard typically lasts several days, sometimes a week. All life comes to a standstill during this period, with only the boiler room, bakery, and communications center operating. As the saying goes, love comes and goes, but one always wants to eat. Naturally, duty continues nonstop as usual, except for patrols. On such days, no one would dare cross any line—moving more than 5-7 meters from the front door in a blizzard is certain death. Outposts, commandant's offices, and civilian buildings are usually lined with markers and strings of signal ropes so that those lost can use them to find their way back to the door. Stories of people dying just 2-3 meters from the door were plentiful in Chukotka; almost every year, one or two soldiers died at the unit's outposts, and if this terrible price for the far north was avoided, the command was willing to forgive lesser winter infractions. At an officers' meeting in 1990, the detachment's commander, Colonel Vladimir Nikolaevich Starikov, bluntly stated that the main task of outposts and commandant's offices during the winter was to survive and keep personnel safe. And this was the harsh truth of Chukotka...
Black Sea Fleet. Boats
I'll still dwell a little more on the main characters of this story. Of course, it's not about people, as is our tradition, but about boats. For some reason, they always remain in the shadows, and the most they get is this displacement, length, width, and draft, and then it's back to people, people, and more people.
"Everything in the name of humanity, everything for the good of humanity" sounds beautiful, and for that time, a great deal was accomplished—it's true. For the first time in many years, the country had the opportunity to make life for a huge number of people not painful, not full of deprivation, hunger, and cold, but quite well-fed, almost peaceful, and even interesting. And the fact that there were costs in the form of a backlog of Group B goods and some behavioral restrictions could be forgiven for a while. No country in the world suffered such terrible destruction and annihilation as ours during World War II, and we had to heal the wounds largely alone, relying on our own strength, resources, will, self-sacrifice, and the dedication of those same people.
But I'm tempted to cry out: "Brothers, these boats are alive too, and their souls are no coarser than those of humans! And they feel the same pain, they strain their muscles just as much when they need to leap at the last moment, between life and death... and they die slowly, painfully, crumbling in ship graveyards or being washed aground... A ship lives—its crew lives, that's why a good crew takes care of it, knowing that their beloved ship won't let them down in difficult times."
But surely there's also the concept of an "unlucky" ship/boat? There are countless examples. They've seen countless crews, countless generations pass through them—but the "unlucky" ship/boat inevitably sinks, runs aground, loses power, or has its propellers shatter. And their lives always end prematurely, rarely reaching the halfway point allotted by the designer...
There are also "heroic" ships/boats, where every crew accomplishes heroic deeds and brings glory mostly to themselves, while the ship gets only a shadow of the glory, at most a lick of paint. I've already talked about these in my stories before, and I'll definitely keep talking about them!
But the bulk of these iron creations of human hands are simple, humble workers, who bear the entire burden of service, life and war.
It is these almost unnoticed heroes that this story will be about. Of course, both the heroes themselves and the people with them were thrust by fate into the most extreme, extreme conditions of life and service. Chukotka is not the southern coast of Crimea, or even Vladivostok, of which they say, "It's as latitude as Crimea, but as long as Kolyma."
Regarding latitude... It's true – Vladivostok is on the same parallel as Sochi, approximately 43-43,5 degrees north. And even Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which is often referred to as a very remote northern city, is south of Leningrad/Saint Petersburg, at 53 degrees north latitude versus 60 degrees for Leningrad. And the village of Provideniya, so to speak, is a bit closer to the pole – 64,5 degrees (64 degrees 25 minutes) of the same north latitude. And after all, each degree of latitude is 60 minutes, or miles, which, on average, is 1852 meters; in total, a degree is 111 kilometers.
And the longitude, as one moves away from Leningrad, drifts further and further from civilization, reaching 173 degrees 13 minutes... no, not east, but west! That is, after the astronomical date line, if not for the Council of People's Commissars' Resolution establishing the UTC+12 time zone, which, through a misunderstanding (of course not, it was a reasonable and correct decision), combined Kamchatka (153 degrees east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky) and Chukotka (173 degrees west of Providence). As is well known, it is generally accepted that one time zone is considered to be 15 degrees of longitude, 7,5 degrees west and east of the midline, with Greenwich as the origin, the prime meridian. After all, it's all simple: 360 degrees of the Earth's circumference are divided by 24 hours, which gives 15 degrees per hour.
And the longitude, as one moves away from Leningrad, drifts further and further from civilization, reaching 173 degrees 13 minutes... no, not east, but west! That is, after the astronomical date line, if not for the Council of People's Commissars' Resolution establishing the UTC+12 time zone, which, through a misunderstanding (of course not, it was a reasonable and correct decision), combined Kamchatka (153 degrees east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky) and Chukotka (173 degrees west of Providence). As is well known, it is generally accepted that one time zone is considered to be 15 degrees of longitude, 7,5 degrees west and east of the midline, with Greenwich as the origin, the prime meridian. After all, it's all simple: 360 degrees of the Earth's circumference are divided by 24 hours, which gives 15 degrees per hour.
About work (!?)
Chukotka primarily provides employment for uniformed personnel. Some positions in the 110th Pogo, OTK, 7th OAE, and other units are filled by warrant officers or long-term service members, so officers' wives can easily find a job or service they enjoy, if they so desire. And they did. They get employment, gain seniority, contribute to the country, and even receive some extra income and rations for the family. Although officers' pay in Chukotka was already quite good, and so were civilians—they had a 2,0 coefficient, unlike in Kamchatka, for example, where the maximum was 1,6-1,8. But nothing is too much.
And one more note: officers' wives were often recruited as extended enlistees and warrant officers (mainly based on educational qualifications: those with a higher education were ensigns, those without were extended enlistees). They served on an equal footing with everyone else, running to alerts with an emergency kit, carrying gas masks, going to the shooting range to shoot, and even taking physical training... Everything was done fairly—in uniform, in the excellent white sheepskin coats they were issued in winter, which were the envy of the regular officer corps, who weren't entitled to a sheepskin coat according to the supply rationing. In short, service went on as usual, everyone was busy with their own work, otherwise boredom and idleness could drive you crazy, or turn you into an alcoholic... A lunar landscape, 10 months of winter, and the rest of it autumn. Well, TV was already capturing Alaska back then, so cartoons, news and we watched other delights without filters, or almost without them.
About life
But there was practically nowhere to spend the money, even though trade supplies came from Leningrad. Goods in short supply elsewhere were brought to Chukotka more frequently than elsewhere, and of a higher standard.
And the Commissary Commission was supposed to regulate "meeting the Soviet people's needs for essential goods," determining the order in which officers, warrant officers, and their families would purchase scarce items. Of course, this applied to military trade goods, which is why the head of the military trade was a very big shot.
I smile when I think about it now, but this shopping committee was the subject of several meetings and gatherings of officers and warrant officers of the Pogo and UAE. Not all members of this committee were able to stand up to the command, so the composition was periodically changed at the request of the meeting, in the interest of fairness. Oddly enough, I was elected to the shopping committee, believing that a sailor wouldn't surrender to the infantry. I had to live up to it... I remember how a young senior lieutenant bought his mother a very expensive silver fox fur coat—the coat cost, even by those times, an exorbitant amount—15.000 (fifteen thousand, I repeat) rubles, enough to buy a Volga... Many were upset—it was beautiful, what can you say—but they were hesitant to spend that kind of money, so the senior lieutenant was "admitted to happiness" out of turn. Women's boots, terry towels, fur coats, jewelry, children's and women's clothing (imported)—in short, all the items that were in short supply at the time. As it turned out later, the military store even brought imported furniture to Chukotka, but ordinary officers and warrant officers weren't even allowed to inquire about it—everything was immediately distributed to superiors and officials. In late 1992 and early 1993, command sent several containers of furniture and other equipment from the military store warehouses back to the mainland, but that's another story, a story of half-life... Generally speaking, people in Chukotka often had significant savings, and when Pavlov's reforms were suddenly announced, many lost everything, or almost everything, they had managed to accumulate during their service in the middle of nowhere, and even further.
Useless things. The Chukotka refrigerator.
And life went on as usual. For those who remember Soviet times, buying a refrigerator, for example, was not an ordinary fact of life. Brands like Saratov, Biryusa, and ZIL are familiar to everyone (?). Buying a two-chamber refrigerator, for example, the Biryusa 22, was practically a fantasy. But that's "on the mainland," meaning practically anywhere in the country, except in the Far North. Buying such a unit in Chukotka wasn't difficult, but... unnecessary.
Just think about it: why would anyone need a refrigerator in Chukotka? That's right – it's completely useless. A better refrigerator than an electric one is a small box attached to every window in the kitchen (and elsewhere), often lined with galvanized iron, sometimes just wooden. This miracle of human thought and life support easily holds almost an entire month's worth of food – butter, meat, and fish. Everything else doesn't require refrigeration. If you manage to get hold of some venison or pork "just in case," you can easily hang it in a net outside the kitchen window, into the fresh air. So what, you might say, throw a kilo or two of meat in a bag and hang it outside – what's the point?
The thing is, no one bothers with such nonsense. It's much simpler. The helicopter pilots call: "Listen, we're flying to Lorino/Chaplino, should I bring you some meat?" The first time I heard such an offer from Valery Shkrobot, the helicopter commander, I answered without hesitation: "Well, bring it, what can I do..." If I'd known what I'd gotten myself into, I would have thought twice, but... I still would have ordered the meat. The next day, another call: "Why aren't you coming over? We're about to fly to Ratmanova, take it, they even brought it home for you, just for the first time!" I go out and examine with interest the back of a GAZ-66 parked near my house. In the back are about ten pork halves and a dozen venison. They shout from the back: "What's wrong? Take it!" I'm dumbfounded: "What, is this all for me?" "No, you've only got one half of pork and one half of venison today, but if you want, take more, it's no big deal! In the meantime, give me this many rubles..." Then comes complete confusion: how? Where to? How to carry it? How to chop and saw it? How and where to store it? What to do with it anyway?
But I need to keep a straight face, telling the soldier with an indifferent expression which apartment to bring it to. Two minutes later, all this happiness is already at home, on the hallway floor... and life doesn't get any clearer... Thanks, people seemed to have advised me to chop it into several pieces and hang them outside the window in the kitchen or room. Half an hour later, having fumbled with chopping and slicing the magnificent frozen meat with a hatchet, a hacksaw, and a hunting knife, wrapping this treasure in newspapers, some rags, and other things, stuffing it into mesh bags (by the way, it's a shame they've disappeared from everyday life, they're a great thing) and carefully hanging the bags outside the kitchen and room windows, I nervously awaited my wife's arrival. So she comes back from combat duty (naturally, as befits an officer's wife), and I stun her with the news: they brought me some meat... 40-50 kilograms... do you know what to do with it? Her eyes widened, as did mine; we probably looked like Cheburashkas...
And so the soul soared to heaven, to meat heaven! We cooked everything! It wasn't too cold outside, never exceeding 20 degrees Celsius, so the meat froze peacefully outside the window, waiting to be cooked, and there was no need for a refrigerator.
Since we (officers and long-term servicemen) received food rations, there were never any issues with food, except for the occasional shortage of vegetables by spring—potatoes, carrots, and beets didn't store well; cabbage was replaced with sauerkraut in the spring; greens came from the detachment greenhouse. Incidentally, the officer's rations contained less condensed milk than those for privates, but otherwise, they were about the same.
What to feed the children was never a question, except perhaps for a lack of variety. But our wives solved this problem easily and naturally – they swapped recipes, striving to cook something new or truly special. Basically, there was plenty to eat. The scarce yeast was successfully replaced with excellent Providence beer, and the results were excellent! And the meat brought from the villages seemed, how should I put it, a little excessive, perhaps... But it turned out that there's no such thing as too much meat! Venison is the most dietary thing you can imagine for small children, and for adults too. And when your children get up in their cribs and say, "Give me some meat," you're happy that your child is growing by leaps and bounds, that you're feeding them a dietary product, that everything is perfect! Well, your wife feeds them, of course, but you just stand there, wisely tasting them, sweeping up the cracklings with your tongue...
I got distracted, lost in the mundane, but that's also necessary—who in 10 years will be able to tell us what it was like back then? And even our children are starting to tell us what life was like for us (!) back then, even though they were barely able to walk back then, and some hadn't even learned to walk yet…
Boats. Continued
So, let's take a closer look at boats, these hard workers of the sea. Let's face it, boats don't get the same kudos as ships. Well, a boat is a boat, and that's it, but especially a tugboat—where's the beauty, where's the swiftness of the lines, where's the grace of the naval architecture? Where's the speed, after all? And if that's not there, then there's nothing to talk about. And the fact that these very hard workers do all the work on their own shoulders—superstructures and decks, with rubber fenders and towing arches and hooks on the poop deck—so what's heroic about that?
Project 1496 was built as a seagoing tug, not a harbor tug, but a seagoing tug. While not intended for deep-sea operations, its operational range was clearly defined—up to 100 miles (!) from a potential shelter. This encompassed virtually the entire coastline of the country. It featured an optimally designed, robust hull, a powerful and reliable main engine, auxiliary diesel generators, its own boiler plant, adequate towing capacity, good crew conditions, reliable survivability systems, navigation, and communications. In short, it had everything necessary to enable the boat to operate autonomously for up to seven days in virtually any weather, except the most extreme. The diagrams and descriptions provided allow you to examine and read all of this in detail.
These pages provide a detailed explanation, so it will be easier to understand what, where, and how the boats were operating in Chukotka. The border patrol version was virtually identical, save for additional border lights on the mast, additional VHF and HF communication stations, and a KDU-6B dosimetry system.
Incidentally, that inconspicuous box on the aft bridge bulkhead, with a cylindrical sensor on a mast, known as the KDU-6B, will still do its job, unexpectedly for everyone. But for that to happen, it will be necessary to go through the division's deployment phase, establish combat planning, and organize border patrols. And this will happen in 1991-1992, when the patrol service in areas of potential border violations will be tested. These patrols had been established by that time as a result of the "chewing gum" friendship with the Americans, when everyone was flocking to the USSR on boats, cutters, and schooners, under the guise of supposedly innocent travel, tourism, research on birds, whales, killer whales, and walruses, suddenly ignited by a passion for our small peoples inhabiting these lands—the Chukchi, Evenks, and Eskimos.
To be continued ...
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