Golden Issue

Золото не говорит, да много творит.

Gold doesn’t say much, but it does a lot.

There is a vein of gold running through this issue of Russian Life. I don’t mean that as a comment on the quality of this issue – after all, we seek to make every issue of this magazine as “good as gold.” What I mean, instead, is that the content of this issue is full of gold.

The mineral is closest to the surface in Alexei Dmitriev’s excellent piece on gold mining in Kolyma (page 50). It is a story about desperation and hope adrift in the Siberian sea, on an island manufactured 70 years ago by the Gulag. It is about lives and businesses entombed in a monomaniacal pursuit of a strange yellow metal.

Our forecast of Russia’s Summer Olympics prospects (page 29) is also about people wrapped up in an all-encompassing pursuit of gold. But in this case the mineral is a symbol of excellence and not an end unto itself. And, if our correspondent is correct, it looks as if Russia is set to bring home a healthy lode of gold this summer. One cannot help wondering if any of it will have been mined in Kolyma.

In our other stories, the presence of gold is more figurative. Of course, in the 240-year-old Hermitage (article, page 45), there is plenty of real gold. But Polina Fomina’s article is about something different, about how this amazing museum has become an institution central to Russian culture, a gilded ark afloat in the sea of Russian society.

Which brings us to our articles on the Chelyuskin and the Bear Whisperers. These seemingly very different pieces are actually both about the same “golden” character traits: heroism, bravery and dogged persistence in the saving of lives.

The amazing episode of the Chelyuskin  (page 42) is not easily found in history books. I had never come across this story before the author proposed it to us. And then (the way these things happen), a month before this issue was going to press, I visited a Moscow photo exhibit on photomontage in the 1930s. There, I was delighted to see several interesting works integrating the Chelyuskin heroes.

Hero stories like those about the bear-whispering Pazhetnovs (page 37) are even harder to find out about. So many people are working quietly and tirelessly to save a species or a habitat or a resource threatened by civilization’s excess. And so few of them get recognized. It is strange how we glorify billionaires, Olympic gold medalists or winners of the Paris Open, but we rarely give credit or acclaim (or gold medals) to those who are working single-mindedly to make sure there are bears around (outside of zoos) for our grandchildren to see.

But even if there are bears, not all of us will see them. Not everyone will be able to experience first-hand the impressive swooping dive of a goshawk, or the majestic prowl of a Siberian tiger. Which makes the art of Vadim Gorbatov (page 22) a treasure we should cherish as if it were gold.

But enough from me. As Russians say, “words are silver, but silence is golden.”

Enjoy the issue, and I hope to see many of you at our Taste of Russia Festival this September (see page 1 for more info).