As a young man, Vasily arrived in Bratsk as a pioneer to develop the area's river transportation. Now he is retired. When I came here I didn't have the slightest idea I had come.
After a while you get used to the place. The temperature was minus 50, minus 60. At that time we were well paid. Many of us left again because of the cold, the mosquitoes.
God knows for what other reasons. Far from the capital in Moscow, the city of Brodsk did not even exist before World War II. Many older cities and settlements can be found in the southern Russian forests and steppes. Many are linked by the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
In this satellite mosaic of the earth at night, urban lights look like pearls strung on a long necklace along Russia's southern border. As remote as these cities are, Brodsk is not even on the main rail line, but 120 miles farther north. So how do 300,000 people suddenly come to reside in such an extreme climate, in the middle of, well, Siberia?
And what does the future hold? We will explore several ideas. Russia harnessed key natural resources provided by her physical geography. Centralized Cold War planners tried to boost Soviet power and prestige. Now, economic privatization offers a new challenge to Bratsk to survive without large government subsidies.
The reasons for Bratsk begin in Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world. Its mighty waters drain through the Ongara River to the north. Bratsk was built where the Oka River joins the Ongara. But this satellite mosaic was captured in the summer. Much of the year it looks like this.
Now covered by ice, Lake Bratskova is held back by this massive dam. Behind it, a human settlement peers through the snow. The city did not exist until the dam harnessed the tremendous power of the Ongara and the Oka at this location.
But geographers still debate the reason for the dam in the first place. Some say the motivation was regional, trying to develop the Siberian infrastructure to boost economic output here. But others say the motivation arose at a very different scale, in fact, from global tensions.
Khrushchev and the Soviets were engaged in a cold war with the West. Their goal was to show that communism could build the largest hydroelectric project in the world. At the Academy of Sciences, geographer Andrei Trevish counters that dam construction was crucial for the Russian economy. This happened after the Second World War, in the days of Khrushchev. so to some extent they used the cheap labor of prisoners.
But workers were mainly recruited in the center of the country, the Urals, regions with a labor surplus. Salaries were increased by 20-30% and people went, many of them with great enthusiasm, for these were the days of huge building projects. The dam was finished in 10 years. By then, Brods had a railway link to the Trans-Siberian Line.
Critics argue that the massive hydroelectric project was an end in itself and that only afterwards did central planners figure out what to do with all that power. One answer was manufacturing and aluminum refining. This refiner is still one of the largest in the world. Valentin Kravchenko is the operations manager.
Production started in 1978, about 800,000 tons of aluminum a year. We hardly had any recruitment problems. They were attracted by the new jobs, the technology. This type of factory was one of the greatest achievements at that time. And the wages were higher than in Kuznets, for example, or in the Urals or Volgograd.
When times were tough, the aluminum factory was a great help to the city. We kept the city. city going, city budgets, salaries of doctors, teachers.
That's why the factory is very important for the city. The city began as these wooden houses for new pioneers who built the dam. Now most factory workers live in apartment buildings like these. Many people work at another major employer here, the giant cellulose and paper factory.
According to Travish, it was not an afterthought, but planned as part of a territorial production complex, or TPK. The official definition of TPK is a complex of mutually related factories in a certain territory that together use the natural resources of that territory as well as the economic resources. infrastructure and the like. Looking back, it's hard to imagine that planners did not have everything figured out in Bratsk before they built the dam.
The territorial production complex in this province was the first TPK that became fully realized in Russia. Many others followed. The integrated TPK approach was really a reaction to the wasteful spread of planned over almost 100 different ministries.
Just like Western transnational companies, these ministries didn't take any territorial interests into consideration. One of the aims of TPK was a bundling of power. In the Soviet period, the big factories of Bratsk supplied basic products for the national economy. Now they need to find new markets. The mayor of Bratsk.
Of course, our proximity to the Russian Federation to China is important. We have railways, good roads, and trade with China is developing rapidly. The Japanese are also active in Bratsk.
But I should point out that we do not only have relations with Japan and China. We also cooperate with the United States. Apart from developing new trade relations, the factories of Bratsk also face another challenge.
how to cut back environmental pollution. Air pollution here is among the very worst in an already bad region. The regional problem is so bad, it astonished US astronaut Mike Fole as he looked down from space.
Even with hydroelectric power, Siberians primarily burn fossil fuels. The cities in Russia are coal-burning cities, and so the soot from the coal burning has spread out over the snow surrounding the city. And you see this big black smudge. It's almost like someone had rubbed their finger across a photograph, but you're looking at it out the window. Cosmonaut Vladimir Titov flew with Fole on a space shuttle mission.
He talks about a town in Siberia he knows well. If you look from the air, it's one of the dirtiest towns ever. Smoke is visible for hundreds of kilometers. I myself am from Siberia and I know that many people are very worried about pollution.
In Bratsk, pollution undermines the health of the urban population. The big factories have inadequate health and safety regulations putting their workers at risk. The firms and inhabitants of Bratsk pay special taxes for the improvement of environmental conditions.
But most of this money disappears in the direction of Moscow. Factory director Viktor Savinov. In my opinion, it is not up to the central government to collect and spend the anti-pollution tax. Instead, this should be done by the local government. Now, 40% of the tax revenues go to Moscow and 50% to Irkutsk, the capital of the region.
So how can you improve the environment if there is no money? In other parts of Siberia, many people are leaving for the West. But for now, this is not happening on a larger scale for Brodsk, or its province, Irkutsk.
Andrei Trevish. Irkutsk province is different. In a positive sense, the production level has not fallen too sharply.
Unemployment is not too high, and even the price increases relative to the salaries are not too dramatic as in other regions. But still, many people lose their jobs and choose to leave. Is there a future here for the children of Bratsk?
Ironically, in this hydroelectric city, the cost to heat homes is very high. Subsidies will be needed to make it economical for many people. It is not clear if Moscow has the money or the will.
The mega factories may survive if they specialize and decrease their scale of operations. If the quality of the environment could also be improved, many people would choose to stay. They have become Siberians, just like Vasily. Would he leave Bratsk if he had a choice?
No, no, no, even if I had the chance. You become attached. So Russia has harnessed key natural resources provided by her physical geography. And centralized planners briefly brought prestige to a failed Soviet state.
Now, under economic privatization, it is not clear if the remote city of Bratsk can survive without large subsidies from a distant national government.