‘Sometimes People Eat the Bears and Sometimes the Bears Eat People,’ North Russia Journalist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 8 – A spate of stories about bears wandering into the villages of northern Russia and attacking people, events virtually unheard of in Soviet times, reflects the rapid depopulation of the region, the inadequate disposal of trash, and climate change, local journalist Elena Solovyeva says.

            When she was young, “bears never entered” her native village in the North. There were large number of people about and the authorities took care that trash would be disposed in ways that would not attract bears and other predators. Now, however, as a result of the departure of so many people and inadequate handling of dumps, the bears are becoming more aggressive.

            Indeed, she says, Russians living there now use the old expression “sometimes people eat the bears, and sometimes the bears eat people” in an entirely new and more direct way (severreal.org/a/30146125.html).

                As soon as the population fell below a certain point, “bears began to come into the settlement, something they had never done before.” They were in search of food in the garbage and they were no longer frightened off by the noise and activities of residents.  In short, “civilization was going away, and nature was filling up the emptying space.”

            The villages of the Russian North have been emptying out since 1990. The special subsidies Moscow had used to keep people there stopped, and the companies that came in had their headquarters in the Russian capital rather than locally -- and they needed far fewer people to do the work than had been the case earlier, Solovyeva says.   

            Because the corporations were headquartered in Moscow so too were the taxes. There thus has not been any money to maintain infrastructure even as the natural wealth is exported.  There is a term for this, she adds. It is “internal colonization” in which Moscow collects all the wealth from the territories it controls and then gives only a part of that back.” 

            The Shiyes protests against Moscow’s plans to dump its trash in the North are a reflection of this situation, Solovyeva says, but they also show something else: The people of the North are both more attached to their land despite all that has happened and more concerned about its common future than are most Russians elsewhere.

            They recognize that if poisons are put in the environment one place, they will spread to others, and that the problems of one village can become the problems of an enormous territory.  The Shiyes protesters are now insisting that “the question isn’t how many we are but in what we are prepared to stand up for.”   

            Unlike may other Russians, they recognize that the bear is at the door and the larger Russian question “who will get whom” may not be answered in their favor.