During his visit to Kamchatka, Vladimir Putin had an early rendezvous with bears and a late meeting with fishermen.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, where he met with fishermen and brown bears and offhandedly remarked that it is not he who should be afraid, but they. Both the fishermen and the bears, as Kommersant correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov reports, were satisfied with the meeting.
The Lenin fishing collective produces and processes approximately 90 tonnes of raw fish per day, including pink salmon, chum salmon, and silver salmon.
The manager of the farm that processes the fish caught by all 21 vessels is Sergei Bykov, who proudly wears the badge of the United Russia party. The fishing collective even houses a branch of United Russia with 23 active members. Strangely enough, the collective does not have a branch of its namesake's Communist Party.
Sergei Bykov explained that the collective farm operates on a scheme of collective ownership, whereby each member of the farm has a share that is either inherited by his descendants or is transferred to the farm. Selling one's share is prohibited.
This rare form of ownership, which the farm has preserved since the Soviet era, prevents its 1,500 members from leaving. The farm also employs 800 hired workers who often leave the farm frustrated that they will never get a share.
The unique experience of the Lenin fishing collective farm, unparalleled in current times, must be cited.
According to Margarita Tvorogova, the head of the facility's laboratory, the wages of the farm's employees are measured by fishtails – i.e., they are paid by the catch – and most are happy with the arrangement. Naturally, the farm's manager Sergei Bykov tells a different story. He claims that he works at the Lenin fishing collective farm for ideological reasons:
"My father fought in the Great Patriotic War," he said. "He went through the entire war and into battles with the name of Stalin on his lips. I was brought up in the same tradition of continuity."
Answering as to why he then joined the United Russia party, it took Sergei Bykov some time to find the proper response. He must have felt that it was this same tradition of continuity and commitment to the causes of Lenin and Stalin that led him to United Russia.
As was common in the later period of Soviet history, that of Brezhnev and Gorbachev, the collective farm's enormous trawler, the Mikhail Staritsyn, was painted white on only one side – the one that Vladimir Putin would see. The other is still waiting for another visit by a Russian leader.
The vessel's captain, Yevgeny Sadovnikov, told journalists that the vessel burnt 18 tonnes of fuel oil per day, that this fuel consumption was unacceptable and that the Russian-made equipment installed on this once-modern steamer had to be replaced with equipment made in Japan due to its obsolescence. However, the captain was not happy that he had to use GPS navigation.
"The Earth," he said deep in his thoughts, "is not a regular ball, and different nations picture it in different ways, although it is not evident. We, the Russians, picture it as the Krasovsky ellipsoid. US-made GPS devices currently position us somewhere deep on the shore because they picture the Earth as more round in shape. Moreover, our potential allies may decide to recode the entire system and we will face major problems. That's why we need GLONASS."
However, the captain could not say anything specific about a probable installation of GLONASS on his vessel. He would be happier to see his old steamer decommissioned and have GLONASS installed on a new vessel.
Thus, the captain voiced two incredible ideas within a single second.
Waiting for Vladimir Putin, the vessel's captain introduced the journalists to the fluffy white cat Vovan (colloquial for Vladimir), which was born on the day of Vladimir Putin's first inauguration. Vovan the cat is successfully completing his third four-year term and seems to be ready for a fourth one.
"For crabmeat," Yevgeny Sadovnikov said affectionately, "Vovan would sell his motherland, for some shrimp – his soul. But he doesn't like fat fish."
With the same affection, Yevgeny Sadovnikov explained how his sister had mercilessly neutered Vovan the cat halfway through his third term. "I could have never brought myself to do it," the captain sighed.
"I warned my sister," he added unexpectedly and with genuine remorse, "don't even think of getting mixed up with sailors. You simply take to it and there is no going back. That's happened to Vovan, too. He has grown very reluctant to go ashore."
Meanwhile, women at the fish processing facility had been waiting for the prime minister's visit since 8 am.
"It is already 8 pm and he hasn't turned up yet. Is that normal? I don't know whether to love him or hate him," one of the women complained to her fellow worker.
"Why did you put your necklace on?" the fellow asked the woman. "What is it? Pearl? And what am I supposed to put on? A necklace of pretzels? Putin is like the New Year. You wait for it to come since summer and it never does."
It must be said that unlike the New Year, which eventually does arrive, Vladimir Putin never turned up at the facility. The trip programme was shortened because upon arriving at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Putin flew to the South Kamchatka nature reserve and Kurile Lake, which boasts the world's largest population of brown bears.
The footage of this trip may well be used in United Russia's future election campaign videos. It has got some valuable material to offer.
The nature reserve's director Tikhon Shpilenov told the prime minister that the nature park also registers the largest population of poachers. The last one was discovered on August 14, 2010. He set a trap on the lake shore and a bear was caught in it, but survived (nothing was said about the poacher himself). Not long before, a container had been found with 400 bear paws. Bears in the reserve are easy targets and often almost completely tame.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin climbed atop a fence in the middle of the lake. The lake is divided in two parts with plastic screens. One side swarms with spawning fish.
At some point, one of the screens is removed, and the fish rush through the opening into the other side of the lake, Kamchatka Territory Fishery Minister Vladimir Galitsyn told the Kommersant correspondent. This is where food-crazy bears are waiting for the freedom-crazy fish. They stand in the water and catch the fish with their bare paws (it seems as if humans could catch the fish with their bare hands as well), and they eat until their bellies are full.
Vladimir Putin watched a bear catch its meal. It snagged a large fish, looked at it attentively, sniffed it with delight, tore open the belly and was immersed in it. Not a single bit was left to the birds that circled cautiously overhead.
Vladimir Putin surveyed this fascinating spectacle for quite some time. It was indeed difficult to tear oneself away. However, the bear disregarded the prime minister, in what by all appearances was an unusual experience for the latter.
From the lakeshore, several bears and bear cubs were also watching. Judging by their disinterested look, they had already been sated long before.
When asked if he is afraid of being so close to the bears, the prime minister replied:
"It's they who are to be afraid."
Apparently, that's the confidence with which he lives. What the bears must think can only be surmised.
The prime minister did not confine himself to watching the bears from the partition, however. He also took a ride on a motorboat – and naturally, was at the wheel. It seems he could not delegate the task to anyone else – the lake was swarming with fish and bears.
It was midnight in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky when Vladimir Putin arrived at the Lenin fishing collective farm. He canceled the tour of the fish processing facility and neither the necklace of pearl nor of pretzels helped. At a meeting with fishermen held onboard the Mikhail Staritsyn, the prime minister said that the fishermen were already working ahead of schedule. In the first six months of the year, they caught 2.5 million tonnes of fish, whereas the total for last year was 3.7 million tonnes.
At this meeting, almost everyone except for Putin mentioned how tremendously happy they were about Russian fishing companies receiving guaranteed quotas for the period until 2017. As a result, companies can now take out loans to build new vessels. To tell the truth, they are still reluctant to do so and usually do it only under pressure from the government.
The fishermen asked the prime minister to discuss installing additional check points with the border service, including on Kamchatka. It turns out that the prime minister had just discussed it with the head of the border service while attending a meeting. Could it have been any different?
Putin promised that he would himself see to the check points by the end of this year or early 2011 instead of 2013.
The captain of a barge suggested that a notification procedure should be introduced for Russian vessels crossing the Russian border after a long voyage in the open sea. Currently the vessels have to spend many days on the border waiting for permission to enter Russia, and sometimes they even get a refusal.
The prime minister replied that he was not against it unless this procedure is used to catch fish in the coastal zone. He referred to Japan, where almost all the fish in the coastal zone have been caught.
"We all know how this is done," the prime minister said. "You spread out the trawl and start catching the fish."
"It is not so easy to spread the trawl out and pick it back up so quickly," head of the Federal Agency for Fisheries Andrei Krainy contended.
"Well, if your supervisor believes it is impossible," Vladimir Putin nodded. "let it be as you like."
The fishermen also expressed their concern about five new Russian trawlers that had been built, but hadn't yet been used. Vnesheconombank could tackle the issue because the vessels had been pledged to the bank as collateral. The prime minister promised to settle the issue with the bank's management.
Asked if veterinaries of the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Protection and Welfare were not being over-meticulous when they board vessels and drive the fishermen to desperation with paperwork, the prime minister said that a decision had already been made. Oversight procedures from onboard the vessel to the coast are commissioned to the Federal Agency for Fisheries, while those from the coast to the consumer have been reallocated to the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Protection and Welfare.
Senior fisherman Boris Sukhinin from the Knyazevo fishing trawler suggested that import duties on foreign vessels should be abolished, because these vessels are "built faster and better." The prime minister referred to this suggestion as a universal one – aircraft builders, for example, had already voiced similar concerns.
"If we take this path, we will never have either aircraft or ship building industries of our own," Putin replied sharply. Andrei Krainy added that facilities were being established in Russia that use the best technology from Japan, Korea, Norway, and Spain and that this was the only development path for the Russian ship building sector.
At the end of the meeting, one of the fishermen brought up possibly the most burning issue:
"We all watch TV," he said bitterly. "And we see people of all trades being awarded medals, including actors, athletes... Has at least one fisherman been honoured over the past 10 or 15 years?"
"I can tell you who is to blame," the prime minister laughed, glancing at Krainy.
"Choose the right man, Mr Putin," the latter said unexpectedly. "Nominations are approved by the governor. And candidates are to be nominated by heads of enterprises. Those who nominate are rarely awarded themselves."
Indeed, the meeting mainly included heads of enterprises and ship captains.
However, they did not look disappointed: if following this meeting they have to nominate themselves, well, then there's nothing to be done, and, undoubtedly, they will.