Syktyvkar is a dusty outpost of a city in the frozen northern taiga, and the capital of the Komi Republic. It has all the features of a northern Russian city, complete with the grayest of tower flats and log cabins sinking into the earth within city limits. It was the first city which I took notice of on the map in my school's break room, the first far-flung place to which I had decided to go during a vacation. Yet, it didn't happen, because our school receptionist recommended that my girlfriend and I go to Ulan-Ude instead, which was rightfully the better decision- to go to Siberia in -35 degree weather for our first trip outside of Moscow. The trip to Syktyvkar was to be postponed for two years and two months.
The magnificence of Altai hasn't worn off even until now, and after that trip in the beginning of January, my lust for extreme travel had been thoroughly satisfied. Those weeks would instead be spent dirtbiking and horseback riding in the snow. But as the weeks went by and the Russian winter showed no sign of releasing is frigid grip, the desire fomented within me to go somewhere yet again.
I wanted this blog to live up to its name, as it is called Extreme Northern James after all. The nomenclature 'Northern' was originally inspired by being from Maine, which is in the north, but isn't truly north to the point that it is extreme to live there. The 'Extreme' part is supposed to promote the idea that what I am doing, traveling to far away places which few would choose for vacation, is extreme. But when 'Extreme Northern' are together, images are conjured up of places close to the North Pole- Alaska, Svalbard, Kamchatka.
I felt that I had neglected the northern part of Russia for a long time, having become obsessed with Kavkasia and Siberia. The man who had hired me at the school, a Brit, had written a guide on living in Russia for all foreign teachers. In it, he summed up the majority of Russia- especially the northern cities- as not being worth the trip, the questionable flight of the airlines which service them yet another reason not to go. He described them as depressing and industrial. But I am not wont to run off to sandy beaches; depressing and industrial can be quite interesting, and cold is an added plus. I knew I had to go there, to the north.
A 2 am flight took me to Syktyvkar. The brightly lit Moscow region quickly gives way to a darkness interspersed with the light of a few cities and settlements, and then it all goes black. Arriving at 4 in the morning I took a taxi to a cheap but comfortable hotel, and the driver was confused by my question: "What is there to do here?". He recommended going to a town with a very unique name by Russian standards, the town of Yb, which has an 'ethnopark'.
The hotel was cozy, located near the city center and surrounded by a mishmash of tower flats and traditional wooden homes with peeling green paint. I woke later in the day and chatted with the very friendly housekeepers, and went to the city center.
This was no massive excursion, but an archetypical weekend trip in my usual fashion- unplanned and accented heavily by aimless wandering. It reminded me of my winter trip to Surgut, the oil capital of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, which borders the Komi Republic to the east. During that trip I did a lot of aimless wandering in sub-zero temperatures, and tried my best to figure out what to do, but was amused by that modern tower-flat-city and enjoyed myself nonetheless. Syktyvkar had more character though- it is an older city, and features more pastel-colored buildings of the neoclassical style. I saw the city center with Lenin and the ice sculptures, a park by the River Sysola, and the ethnographic museum of the Komi Republic.
At the museum, I received a tour from a smartly dressed man with the look of a historian. I learned about the Komi people, a Finno-Ugric people whose language is closely related to Finnish, Karelian and Estonian. The Komi Republic is on the far northeastern edge of Europe and its culture; any farther north or east and you will run into Nenets or Khanty people, who have Asiatic features, whereas the Komi are indisdinguishable from most Europeans. However, the aforementioned groups all belong to the same language family, a loosely affiliated group with very little mutual intelligibility, spread out from the Urals to the far northern Taymyr Peninsula to Finland, covering a vast but lowly populated region. The Komi are forest people, traditionally hunters and reindeer herders. Today, jobs in oil and timber have replaced their traditional occupations.
My meanderings brought me by the Cathedral of Saint Stephen of Perm, named after the missionary who converted the Komi people to Russian Orthodoxy and linked the region with Moscow. It is tucked amid a maze of flats both old and new. As the sun began to set, the city grew colder, and I made my way back to the hotel, to my cozy, excessively heated room- a warm welcome.
The driver was Komi, but didn't speak it. He took on the usual reaction of meeting a foreigner in such an uncommon tourist destination- amusement with a mix of confusion. We had a good chat for much of the ride, as I am always eager to learn what I can from the locals, and taxi drivers know a lot that others don't. The city limits gave way to small patches of wooden huts, hay fields, and lumber mills, and those eventually disappeared. Tall pines laden with snow flanked the road. The scene was indiscernible from a wintery backroad in Maine.
Arriving at the 'Finno-Ugric Ethnopark' as it is officially called, I quickly learned that I was the only guest there. Yb was a cold village, around -30 in the afternoon. Only a handful of people were to be found on the territory- an administrator, a bartender, a cook, a security guard, a hotel receptionist, and three excursion guides. After checking into my hotel and selecting meals for lunch and dinner, the excursions began. First, there was an excursion to see what a traditional Komi 'chum' or tepee looks like, followed by a few rounds of shooting bows. The guide, a young Komi man with a positive, carefree disposition, recited interesting facts about the Komi Republic and his people.
A second guide took me into the forest to observe some traditional Komi traps for trapping all kinds of forest animals, even bears. We trudged through fresh snow which obsured the path into the taiga, into that beautiful green-white wilderness. Due to the fresh, powdery snow he sometimes had difficulty locating those traps which lay close to the ground. Everything was made of wood, and demonstrated a strong connection to the forest that the Komi people have to this day.
Lastly I was brought to a typical Komi log house where I baked cookies with the help of an elderly Komi woman. The cookies were salty and meant for sustenance, not enjoyment. I was caught off guard when I heard the women rattling off some phrases in the Komi language to someone nearby, expecting to understand her but then suddenly confused and incapable of understanding a single word.
That evening, I had a mission which I am reluctant to write about, a mission to buy some vodka. Leaving my hotel just as the sun was about to set, the security guard asked me where I was going. Telling him of my intentions, he directed me towards the nearest shop- some 3 kilometers down the road. Keep in mind that this village is in the middle of nowhere.
Down the road I walked, passing the occasional snow-covered wooden hut. Not a sound was to be heard, as I imagine what few inhabitants were in the small town of Yb where holed up in their homes by a wooden stove. The quintessential Russian village, landscape, and weather made their presence felt.
As I walked further on, the homes became fewer, and then there were only trees lining the snowpacked road. I began to freeze; I hadn't brought my sweatshirt, foolishly thinking that after surviving Altai in -50 degree weather that a longsleeve shirt and winter coat would suffice for -30, and dropping. The farther I walked, the colder I got, and the farther I was from my hotel. I flagged down a passing car, and the driver told me that there was a shop further down, that I couldn't miss it. So I continued to walk, all for the sake of vodka. Eventually the trees gave way to a few sparse wooden houses, and then a church, and at long last at the bottom of a slight hill, a small market at the center of town, if one could even call it such.
I was relieved to enter the market, where I found my prize awaiting me. Yet, I did not dash back out, but chose to warm myself. The cashier, a kind lady, offered me a hot cup of tea. Handing it to me, she told me "We northern folk, we know how to stay warm". She seemed to acknowledge that I was a foreigner without mentioning it, simply smiling.
While I waited to warm up and drank my tea, a few locals came to the shop to make their daily purchases- an older man came for a bottle of beer, a woman with worn-out fur boots for some basic ingredients. The cashier addressed them all by their name, saying, for example, "Hello Igor, will it be the usual today?" The scene could have been the same in a tight-knit community somwhere in my state.
The cashier was kind to let me linger in her shop until the time was right, and thanking her, I began the walk back to my hotel. The tea kept me warm, and I was reinvigorated by it. Darkness fell, and with it the epic colors of the sunset over Yb disappeared.
The next morning I awoke to see the never-ending expanse of frosty taiga stretching out beyond the town of Yb. I had a hearty Russian breakfast, and was shown a little more around the territory, including an enclosure where a large moose was being kept. In a large wood and glass building for events and large parties, I saw some artwork, including oil paintings- not the kind you may be thinking of, but paintings painted with actually oil from the region, and they smelled like it.
Not long afterwards, I had the receptionist call a local taxi for me. The driver, a positive man with a funny, carefree demeanor picked me up and told me all about the house he was busy building, and he dropped me off in the center of Syktyvkar. It was free museum day, as I would soon learn, and I went to the Regional Museum of the Komi Republic.
The museum was rather typical and unremarkable, and featured what every other museum in Russia had to offer- the ancient history room, the Tsarist era room, the Communism room. Its double-paned windows were frosty, the paint peeling from them. The steps inside were worn by years of use. In fact, this is typical for much of Russia's northeast; old infrastructure consisting of poorly kept wooden buildings, which nobody seems to be bothered by. At times it can be frustrating- who would put up with this, and why hasn't anything been done? On the the other hand, this makes Russian cities interesting. Many find them to be unappealing, as many cities outside of Western Russia lack the architectural grandeur which is largely attributed to historical buildings. But, if you are observant, you can see the changing of the eras in the buildings themselves. 
Afterwards I returned for a long stay by the frozen river Sysola, where flocks of crows flew overhead. I was put at ease by the sprawling forest of the Komi Republic, a massive wooded land which reminded me of home. I let myself feel the cold, enjoying it in the company of a stray dog which had started to follow me. My camera's battery died and after a long while I sought out a warm place to eat. I then went to the airport to fly home.
Komi Republic is an often overlooked region of Russia, and few have been there. While boasting wealth due to oil and timber, many people here feel disconnected to Moscow, and while I was here, a few with whom I spoke made their anger with the establishment evident. "They are stealing everything from us, and we get nothing from it" one driver told me. Some also pointed out that the resources of the Komi Republic were finite. Another told me that "Komi looks like it has so many trees, but if you fly up north, you will see that it is like a chessboard". He implied that the forests were being cut down too quickly.
The people of this region also often feel that their culture and language are under assault. A Komi activist arrested during a Navalny protest reportedly refused to speak Russian during his trial, delaying it. It was a small victory for the minority languages, which are often heavily overshadowed by Russian. The judge, frustrated and angry when he began to speak Komi, ridiculed him even though his right to use his native language is guaranteed in the constitution. This is a dark side of Russia, that laws in the books are overlooked, ignored. This is applicable not only in the Komi Republic, but everywhere. These were not the first complaints I heard, nor would they be the last. The complaints were not always from the republics, either.
On the other side of this cultural confrontation is a situation quite unique to Russia, where Russians are the minority in a republic, and their children are sent to school to learn languages which are not their own, to learn Tatar or Chechen or Yakut. What reason do Russian children have to learn these languages, if they are not part of that republic's ethnicity? What makes Russia the most interesting country in the world also makes it fraught with inter-ethnic tension which at times has boiled over into violence. Much of this can be attributed to the country's history, especially during the Soviet era, when Russian people permeated throughout the country and came into contact with many different ethnic groups with whom there was previously little contact.
On a more positive note, the Russians and Komi people seem to get along just fine. Unlike in Chechnya or Buryatia where one can easily distinguish between Russians and the non-Russian ethnic people of the region, differentiating between Komi people and Russians by looking at faces seems to be impossible. I asked many people who I met if they were Komi; their responses were frequently half Komi, or a quarter, or full. Just like the rest of Russia, many people here are very mixed. Perhaps it is due to the need to focus on surviving the winter that the people of the north seem to have little time to quarrel over ethnic differences.
Yet when discussing race relations in Russia and the role the government plays, it is a different ballgame in Russia than the one being played in the USA. The vast majority of American families have been in their country only for a few hundred years, if that. Almost all citizens of the Russian Federation have extremely deep roots, traceable with the foundation of Kievan Rus or the Alanic Kingdom or the Mongol Empire or a plethora of other ancient or medieval political entities, or simply from small tribes. They have been in conflict with one another since the very beginning, and only now in the 21st century live in relative peace.
But it really does make things in Russia incredibly fascinating; the biggest country in the world is bound to cause intrigue and then keep you entertained, if you know where to look- in places like the Komi Republic.
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