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06
History
RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINES
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It Happened in
November
EVENTS THAT MADE
HISTORY
BY DMITRY BABICH
RUSSIA PROFILE.ORG
November 1, 1907
The Third State Duma Starts Its Work
Russia was not always a dictatorship
Contrary to a widely held belief, Russia has had
elected bodies of power for most of its history. In
the 16th and 17th centuries tsars were selected
by Zemsky Sobor, an elected body represent-
ing the gentry, the clergy and “people of the land”
(zemstvo). In 1905 Russia became a constitutional
monarchy, and the following year the State Duma,
the first elected parliament, was introduced, but
it became effective only after the third Duma of
1907 when one third of the delegates represented
Rightist parties, one third the Centrist Oktyabrists
and one third constitutional democrats and the Left.
November 7, 1917
October Revolution Begins in St Petersburg
ROBERT DIAMENT_PERSONAL ARCHIVES L.DIAMENT
A coup brings the radical Leftists to power in
the world’s largest country
Allies Although the top-secret Alaska – Siberia (ALSIB) project began 65 years ago,
The event that shaped 20th-century history for
Russia and much of the rest of the world started
wrecked U.S. aircraft can still be found all over the vast Siberian taiga
in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) on what was then
October 24, which corresponds on today’s cal-
endar to November 7. On that day Vladimir Lenin
led the Bolshevik coup against an ineffectual
Provisional Government in Petrograd. Five years
later the Soviet Union was established and five
years after that, on November 12, 1927, two of the
In Search of Missing
revolution’s main movers, Lev Trotsky and Grig-
ory Zinovyev, were expelled from the party by its
new leader, Joseph Stalin. Persecution of their
followers began, growing into the Great Purge of
the 1930s, during which hundreds of thousands
were put to death.
U.S. Warplanes
November 16, 1957
Doctor Zhivago Published in Italy
Pasternak’s life achievement sees light three In October 1942, people American soldiers servicing At Ladd Air Field, a Soviet mis- To be frank, it makes no differ-
years before the author’s death in Siberia were surprised the ALSIB route died when About the author sion accepted the American ence which; both Soviet and
Boris Pasternak’s epic novel, reflecting the to see unfamiliar-looking their transport plane crashed planes, and Soviet pilots from U.S. Armed Forces had the
tragic destiny of Russian intelligentsia in the aircraft appear seemingly into a mountain and was bur- the Aircraft Ferrying Division’s same insignia.
beginning of the 20th century, was published out of nowhere. That was ied by an avalanche. First Regiment climbed into the The engine was still working
by Italian publisher Feltrinelli, who had it the beginning of the Soviet Another aircraft tried to reach cockpits and flew over to Uel- when the plane hit the ground.
“smuggled” to him by a former Italian com- Aircraft Ferrying Division. Lake Watson in a snowstorm kal Air Field on the Chukchi The propellers ploughed
munist living in Moscow. The novel won Some of these aircraft crashed but also crashed, killing the Peninsula, via Nome and the through a snowdrift and the fro-
Pasternak the Nobel prize, which the poet had en route to the Soviet-German crew. Two badly injured survi- Bering Strait. From there, the zen ground underneath. The
to refuse under pressure from the authori- Front vors had to spend two weeks
FROM PERSONAL ARCHIVES
Second Regiment flew the cockpit disintegrated, and the
ties. Relatives of the then Soviet leader, Nikita sheltering alongside the dead planes to Seymchan, about rest of the fuselage was also
Khrushchev remember that he later regretted
MIKHAIL DENISKIN / RBTH
before they tied skis to their 217 miles north of Magadan in badly damaged. Over the de-
suppressing the novel, saying that it would MOSCOW broken legs, put fur boots on East Siberia. The Third Air cades, a foot-deep layer of pine
have done no harm. The novel was not pub- their hands and crawled away. Force Regiment then ferried needles covered everything.
lished in the Soviet Union until 1990. Although it was impossible to The men, who managed to the planes via Oimyakon, the Several hours later, I found a
search for missing aircraft and cover four miles at minus 58 Pole of Cold in the Northern Plexiglas fragment and a large-
pilots during the war, hunters degrees Fahrenheit, were res- Hemisphere where tempera- caliber red-rimmed armor-
sometimes came across cued four days later. tures drop below minus 94 de- piercing or tracer bullet. We
human skeletons and wreck- Another transport plane climbed grees Fahrenheit in winter. found several canned-food tins
Found in Translation:
age in the taiga (boreal) for- to 14,108 feet en route to Fair- Then the planes had to fly over and spent a lot of time trying to
ests, but kept silent because banks in order to escape ice the Verkhoyansk Range, with figure out how to open them.
To Understand
they were scared. Decades clouds. The pilots and passen- their crews wearing oxygen One tin contained nice-smell-
after the war ended, volunteer gers had to use blowtorches to Mikhail Deniskin, a writer from masks. ing processed cheese, which
the Russians Better
squads of young people found warm up their frozen legs. Novosibirsk, has been search- The headquarters of the Air- we fed to the dogs.
many of the missing planes. That terrible winter animals ing for missing pilots for many craft Ferrying Division and its We also found a spoon, a cof-
The first U.S. aircraft was locat- froze to death. Many people years. In 2006, a Siberian pub- Fourth Regiment were located fee bag, an adhesive plaster,
Nation of Jokers
ed in the Irkutsk Region in the suffered from frostbite. Tooth lishing house printed his mem- in Yakutsk. The Fourth Regi- interphones and a piece of the
summer of 1987. fillings fell out whenever one oirs about numerous expedi- ment flew all the planes to Ki- plane’s skin bearing the num-
Operation ALSIB was unique breathed too deeply. Airfield tions in the Siberian taiga and rensk where the Fifth Regi- ber 13587. Our expedition
MICHELE A. BERDY – no aircraft had been ferried crews worked 20-minute shifts Alaska. ment took over and ferried eventually found the remains
over such vast distances be- out in the open. Fingers froze them to Krasnoyarsk. of the pilots and placed them
JOURNALIST
fore. Under the Lend Lease stiff whenever mittens were In Krasnoyarsk, the fighters in a plastic bag.
Act, the United States sup- temperatures. The American had their wings removed and Later on, we learned that the
plied the USSR with Boeing B- had to eliminate production de- were placed aboard freight aircraft had been crewed by
25 Mitchell and Douglas A-20 Operation ALSIB was fects in no time at all. To help trains bound for the Soviet- first pilot Dmitry Lobarev, nav-
Boston bombers, P-39 Air
unique – no aircraft
them, the Soviet Foreign Trade German Front, and the huge igator Mikhail Yershov and ra-
Cobra and P-63 King Cobra
had been ferried
Department eventually provid- bombers flew directly on to dioman Vasily Nechipurenko.
One of the strangest stereotypes fighters, as well as Douglas C-
over such vast
ed the Americans with a frost- their combat units. The latter was only 18 when
about Russians in the West is that they are humor- 47 Dakota transports. All of resistant rubber formula. The Aircraft Ferrying Divi- he took off on his first and last
less. I can’t imagine where this comes from, since them began their epic journey distances before. Hydraulic fluid turned into jelly sion’s pilots boarded C-47 flight from Yakutsk to Kirensk.
a more joke-loving nation is hard to imagine. Rus- at Great Falls Air Force Base when the thermometer transports in Krasnoyarsk and We located the relatives of the
sians have a rich culture of humor, going way back in Montana, subsequently fly- dropped well below zero and returned to their respective pilots and buried their remains
to the skomorokhi (wandering bawdy minstrels) ing to Edmonton and White- taken off, and it took two hours could not be pumped to acti- bases. in a solemn setting.
and the lubok (a folk drawing with comic texts and horse, Canada, and on to to replace a spark plug while vate landing gear and air Russian archives, declassi- The plane crashed on March
verse), through satirical writing, plays and then Ladd Field near Fairbanks, wearing mittens. People lost brakes. Colonel Mikhail Ma- fied only in recent years, sug- 24, 1943 due to bad weather
films in the pre- and post-Revolutionary periods, to Alaska. fingers; one unfortunate cap- chin, head of the Soviet Pro- gest that 113 pilots of the Air- and crew fatigue. Long dis-
the underground culture of jokes — anekdoty — in According to war veterans, the tain had to have his frozen lip curement Commission, asked craft Ferrying Division were tances also contributed to the
the Soviet era. planes were flown by hastily- cut off. Brigadier General Dale V. killed in the line of duty. In disaster; in extreme condi-
There are many kinds of jokes in Russian. Shutka trained young pilots using wild- A fallen tree had to be heated Gaffney, “The Screaming 1987, our expedition traveled tions, flying non-familiar air-
is a joke in the sense of “I’m just kidding.” Baika is a ly inaccurate maps that some- by blowtorch before a nail was Eagle of the Yukon” and the 15 miles into the taiga, reached craft, Russian pilots often
tall tale, purportedly true (“My best friend’s brother times showed lakes 100 miles driven into it. Spilled gasoline wise and forceful commander a crash site and established found it hard to convert miles
told me this…). Prikol is a gag and also teen-talk from their actual positions. In froze on the hands like liquid of Ladd Air Field near Fair- the names of three pilots. into kilometers (speed), feet
for anything cool and funny. Zagadka is a riddle. some cases, mountains had a air. People vanished several banks, for help. Gaffney im- into meters (altitude) and gal-
Chastushka is a four-line comic rhyming ditty that height of 4,921 feet, rather than yards from the runway when mediately contacted the Uni- lons into liters (to calculate re-
is often quite bawdy. But the grandfather of all Rus- 3,937 feet as was indicated on snowstorms reduced visibility versity of Alaska, which found Frost turned engine maining fuel).
sian jokes is the anekdot: a story — either short or the map. Moreover, the Alas- to zero and special rescue a replacement for one of the
oil into stone, and
The Allies supplied over
long — with a punch line. kan climate is notorious for its teams with tractors had to be formula’s components in just 14,000 aircraft to the Soviet
Although just about everything was and is fodder for rapidly changing weather; called in. Frost turned engine two days. After that, it became
even high-octane
Union during World War II. In
anekdoty, the most biting jokes are about politics clouds over 600 feet high could oil into stone, and even high- possible to produce cold-re-
gasoline would not
fact, British and American
and politicians. In the Soviet era, these political jokes envelope Nome Air Base in octane gasoline would not ig- sistant hydraulic fluid. ignite. planes accounted for roughly
were whispered at work and savored around the just 20 minutes. Such clouds nite. I recently visited a small town a third of all aircraft flown by
dinner table, where a good joke teller (rasskazchik) were a major in-flight icing haz- Soviet technicians, who lived near Irkutsk and saw a steel Soviet Air Force pilots during
could keep his friends and family laughing for hours. ard. High-altitude tempera- in heated log barracks built by sheet bridge spanning a local The crash site is overgrown the war. In all, 8,000 planes
The jokes poked fun at leaders, from Lenin to Gor- tures are considerably higher GULAG inmates, would work creek. There are many other with flowers, resembling a buri- reached the Soviet-German
bachev, and the injustices and absurdities of Soviet in winter; thermometers can two-hour shifts, drink a cup of similar bridges in northern al mound. One can see pine- Front via Alaska and Siberia.
society. One old joke asked: What’s the shortest joke register minus 58 degrees pure alcohol and fall asleep for Russia – the United States de- trees with broken tops there; Almost 150 of them failed to
in the world? The answer: Communism. Fahrenheit at a ground level a short respite only to wake up livered thousands of tons of fragments of metal are strewn reach the frontline. Nonethe-
Today many people complain that without the but zero degrees at an altitude two hours later. this sturdy material, which can all over the place. Birch-trees less, these sacrifices were not
edge of dissent and forbidden pleasure of the of 1,968 feet. Rubber hoses and metal pipes withstand the weight of a sprout through holes in the in vain – they contributed to
Soviet era, political anekdoty just aren’t the same. The winter of 1942 was the broke like matches, and rubber heavy bomber, to the USSR wings. Faded red or white stars our common great victory over
Maybe so — but there are still some pretty good worst in 25 years. Eleven crumbled in subzero degree during the war. can be seen among the rivets. the enemy.
-
political jokes making the rounds (these days they
come by email). Here’s one on the disparity be-
tween rich and poor: “Putin’s Reform Plan: Make
people rich and happy. List of people attached.”
I’m always astonished that jokes appear so quickly
after an event. Who are the comic geniuses who
dream them up overnight? Here’s a joke that started
Tune daily to
02.00–04.00 03.00–06.00 (UTC)
(UTC)
making the rounds right after President Putin agreed
6155, 6240, 7350,
to head the United Russia party ticket. It’s based on
6240, 7250,
the old saying that the poet Alexander Pushkin is
The Voice
13735 kHz
12010, 12030 kHz
nashe vse (our everything) and the great number 04.00–06.00 (UTC)
of sculptures by Zurab Tsereteli in Moscow: “Now
it’s clear: Pushkin is our everything, Tsereteli is our
of Russia
02.00–06.00
(UTC)
7150, 9840,
everywhere, and Putin is our always.” 12040 kHz 9855 kHz
Well, I think it’s funny.
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