With the three weeks I had left on my visa, I was free to explore the city, learning all that I should have before I went there. For example, I never knew that Russia is divided into eighty-three different parts: two dozen republics, krais, oblasts, and autonomous okrugs. Though I can’t tell you what the difference is between a krai and an oblast. I’m not quite sure anyone can. Krasnoyarsk Krai is the biggest of the krais and covers about 13% of Russia’s total territory. It’s hard to really take in its size, though as a rough guide it is about one hundred times bigger than Wales, and slightly smaller than the moon.
Krasnoyarsk Krai is divided again into forty-four different districts, many of which have long, unpronounceable names like Nizhneingashsky and Zaozyorny. Krasnoyarsk city is the administrative centre of Krasnoyarsk Krai and is itself divided into seven further districts: Kirovsky, Leninsky, Oktyabrsky, Sovetsky, Sverdlovsky, Tsentralny, and Zheleznodorozhny. We lived in Oktyabrsky. It’s a bit like one of those Russian matryoshka dolls that decrease in size when you pull their heads off, the seven city districts being at the centre. Oktyabrsky sits inside Krasnoyarsk city which sits in Krasnoyarsk Krai which sits in Siberia which sits in Russia. Russia is the really big doll, being over eight hundred times the size of Wales.
Krasnoyarsk city is the third largest city in Siberia, after Novosibirsk and Omsk. While Cardiff is about 140 km² with a population of around 350,000 people, Krasnoyarsk city is a little over twice the size but with three times the population. It’s such a big place that you would think that I would have heard of it before. That’s one of the things I find most annoying about my education and about the UK. I know at least a dozen people who can name all the states of America and know most of the cities. Britain has become so Americanised that it is taken as read that when someone says a place name in America you automatically know where they’re talking about. Nobody ever asked if I knew the great little café on the corner of Ulitsa Surikova and Prospekt Mira.
Krasnoyarsk is actually famous in some parts of the world for several different reasons:
1. It is built around a junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway;
2. It is one of Russia’s largest producers of aluminium;
3. It was a major centre of the Gulag system;
4. It houses the fifth largest hydroelectric station in the world;
5. In 1749, a 700 kg meteorite was found 145 miles south of the city and it was the first of its kind. Made from an unknown and as yet unclassified type of iron, it was registered as a pallasite, as the scientist examining it was named Peter Pallas, even though the actual discovery was made by a man named Medvedev.
6. In the late 1970s, Abalakovo, a city near Krasnoyarsk, housed a phased array radar station, which frightened Americans because it violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The treaty stated that the radars had to be on the periphery of national territory and had to face outwards; the radar near Krasnoyarsk was in the middle of the country and faced Siberia. After heavy negotiations in September 1989, the facility was eventually dismantled. It was all a waste of time, however, as in 2001 George W. Bush gave Russia notice of the United States’ intention of withdrawal from the treaty and withdrew six months later. It was the first time in recent history that America had withdrawn from a major international arms treaty and was a huge blow to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is now almost completely ignored.
There are several other features of Krasnoyarsk that make the city unique from any other in Russia. One of those is the Stolby nature reserve, a 17,000-hectare area of outstanding natural beauty south of the Yenisei River. It is filled with giant pillars of volcanic rock that were forged millions of years ago when the Sayan mountains, the range between north-western Mongolia and southern Siberia, were pushed up out of the ground by pulses of magma from the Earth’s core. Stolby which is otherwise known as ‘the land of forest giants’ takes its name from the Russian word ‘stolb’, which translates as ‘pillar’. It is hugely popular with rock climbers who flock from all over the world to test themselves against the pillars. It is also a hotspot for scientists who come to study the wildlife. Stolby is a reserve for thousands of rare species of plants as well as birds, wild cats and insects. It is a little too wild for my liking as when there is a lack of berries and nuts in the taiga hungry bears have been known to stroll into Stolby looking for people’s leftovers or unattended children.
There are an estimated 200,000 brown bears in the world, and it just so happens that half of them live in Russia. Worse than this, Siberian bears are said to be larger than your average grizzly and unfortunately human flesh is on their menu. During my first month in Krasnoyarsk there were seven reported bear attacks. These happened around populated areas on the outskirts of the city where people live in their dachas during the summer period. Bears, it seems, will spy someone lying with their eyes closed, then venture in for a munch. In one case, a local resident out gathering mushrooms came across a bear with cubs. The beast attacked the man and ripped off his scalp. Luckily, a local forester found him, and took him to hospital. Other than complete shock and a lack of scalp, the man came away relatively unhurt.
Besides bears, there is a long list of other ferocious man-eating beasties like wild cats and wolves. Although the chances of running into a tiger in the forests are remote, as they are nearly extinct in the wild, the possibility of running into a pack of wolves isn’t. In early 2011, a super pack of wolves, numbering four hundred was reported to have killed thirty horses in just four days in the Northern town of Verkhoyansk, due to a lack of wild rabbits. Besides tigers, the smaller more agile Siberian lynx also lives in the surrounding forests, and although smaller than the native tigers, the lynx of Siberia are the largest found anywhere, and can grow to twice the size of their North American relation. The worst creature however, and the most feared, is the Siberian grass tick. This little critter is no bigger than a head louse, but can be much more harmful. From a blade of grass, this tick can jump onto your skin. Once on your body it eats its way into your flesh where it secretes a poison which causes a disease known as the Siberian tick-borne encephalitis virus; this virus attacks the central nervous system. There are a long list of nasty symptoms, the worst being paralysis, and death. Nastya says that if you are bitten and poisoned, then you have to go to hospital for a month. If you don’t walk out of the hospital after this time, you’re coming out in a box. Though the grass ticks primarily live in the forests, it’s not uncommon for them to set up camp in areas of the city too. If ever I walked near grass Nastya would shout ‘Are you stupid?’ before rubbing my legs up and down, and checking behind my ears. Apparently if a tick is found pre-bite, it cannot simply be crushed onto your skin, it has to be burned. If however it has taken its first bite, the only way is to pour oil on the wound, which annoys the tick and makes it release itself from your flesh, and then you can pry it out with tweezers.