Yuzhno, Russia's Far East
April 2005
Flying into Yuzhno is like flying into the 1950s. Between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the development of oil fields on the island there was a long period of stagnation. The runway is potholed and a wrecked plane has been pushed off to one side of the runway about halfway along. That plane is a real confidence builder in the local facilities. We were flying a Korean flight so weren’t too concerned about the aircraft’s maintenance record, just the airport’s record. Planes flew in and out of Yuzhno from Korea on Mondays and Thursdays. Flights from Moscow and other cities came on other days. It wasn’t a real busy airport.
This was my first visit to Russia and my travel plans had been changed so that I arrived a couple of days before originally planned. The 150 people got off the plane and walked across the tarmac to the terminal building. We all lined up in the small waiting room while the two immigration officers took their time checking our visas and stamping our passports.
I handed over my passport and customs declaration. The agent flipped through my passport to the Russian visa. Then I got the look. You know, the look that an immigration officer gives you when something isn’t quite right. I’ve gotten that look a lot in the last few years. She kept my papers and indicated that I was to return to the waiting room.
The room slowly emptied and I still waited. And waited. The plane that I had arrived on filled up and departed. Another plane landed and all of those people were processed through immigration and still I waited. Eventually, the head guy for the airport Immigration office and an airline representative came to see me. The airline rep explained that my visa was not valid until the next day and that I could not enter the country until then.
I was escorted to an empty departure lounge and was told to be prepared to spend the night there. I was assigned a guard and she didn’t look happy about the overtime. She didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Russian so she just sat in the corner and glared at me. Little did I know that the wheels of freedom were turning and that I would soon be out of there.
My driver made enquiries at the airport when I didn’t come out of the immigration office. He went back to the office and got our agent and lawyer to come down to the airport and spring me. The lawyer arrived and I was escorted to the Colonel’s office where my confession was to take place. My crime was breach of the regime of the border. I had to hand-write a confession and the lawyer translated it into Russian. There would be a court hearing later in the week and a small fine would be paid. The airline was also fined.
In one corner of the Colonel’s office, tucked behind the sofa, was a wooden plywood box, much like an umbrella stand with 8 holes drilled into the top. Five broom handles, each about four feet long, stuck up out of the holes. I remembered reading in the Gulag Archipelago that the KGB used to use broom handles in their quest for information. Not only were they convenient for beating people but they could be used to suspend a person between two chairs so that the interrogator didn’t have to bend over to far and strain themselves during a beating. I was going to ask the Colonel about the brooms but decided against it when he said I was free to go. It took six hours but I was finally out of the airport. 
Yuzhno is a city with around 200,000 people in the city and surrounding area. The city is near the south end of Sakhalin Island in the Okhotsk Sea, just north of Japan, and is part of the Russian Far East. The airport is just south of town and the train station is downtown, near the centerpiece of the town, Lenin Square. A large statue of the man dominates the square and the downtown area spreads out a few blocks in each direction from the statue. Most of the younger locals speak English.
I wasn’t impressed with Yuzhno on my first visit, mostly due to the cold wet weather, but grew to like the town over four visits throughout the year. It was April when I first arrived and winter was still hanging on. It snowed 10 inches the first few days and melted during the rest of our stay. As the winter’s snow melted it exposed month’s worth of trash that had been tossed in the snow banks. The potholes in the roads were full of brown melt water and the sidewalks were constantly splashed by cars driving through the puddles. The potholes were so bad in some roads that drivers were driving on the sidewalks. The temperatures were below freezing at night but would warm up during the days.
The hotel was better than expected. There were no chain hotels when I was there. A Marriott was under construction, fed by the oil boom, but mostly there were small hotels. We had driven past some pretty rough areas on the way into town from the airport and I was pleased to see that the hotel was fairly new. The dining room served a European-style breakfast that included such hot delicacies as runny eggs, hot dog wieners, beans, fried oysters, breaded eggplant, fake bacon and my favorite, something I liked to call “what in Hell is that?” There was always a fine selection of cold cuts, pickles, olives and cheeses.
We were warned by our local office staff that we, as westerners, stood out like sore thumbs and there was a certain amount of risk in venturing out alone. Many of the local men were unemployed and did not have the skills to do much in our industry except be security guards. There was also a significant gap between the salaries of a western engineer and that of his Russian counterpart. There were muggings and assaults against westerners, even a murder in mid-summer, and we were given lectures on personal safety. Still, I was up early and out walking in the morning cold. Usually the only people I saw were old people shoveling the snow off of their sidewalks. It was about a mile from the hotel to Lenin Square and I walked it each morning before breakfast.
One Sunday the local office manager arranged a sightseeing tour for us. The driver took us south out of town and we headed to the Island’s eastern shore. The terrain we drove through was remarkably similar to that of Northern Ontario where I had lived for several years. There were low hills with rocky outcroppings visible through the snow. Scrub pine and birch trees, none taller than 20 feet were scattered among the brush. We passed small, frozen lakes as we headed east along a two lane paved road that wound through the hills.
The goal of our trip was to see the swans. Migratory white swans would rest in Sakhalin as a yearly ritual. When we got to the shore we could see that the Othotsk Sea was a frozen jumble of fractured ice stretching out to the horizon. There were small areas of open water near where a river emptied out into the sea and that is where the swans were swimming. There were more locals on the shore line watching the swans than there were swans. Some of the swans were close enough to be fed but most of them were grazing on the weeds that grew in the river’s mouth.
We continued south to the major port city of Korsakov. The port had seen better days. When the Soviet Union collapsed there was no management of the port or maintenance done for at least 10 years. Ships had been abandoned in the harbor and were now rusted hulks laying on their sides in the shallow waters. The cranes in the port, previously used for unloading ships were rusted and several of them were leaning.
Korsakov didn't look as propsperous as Yuzhno, which was getting a good deal of income and business from the oil industry. As we left the city and headed north on the highway we saw a man sitting on the side of the road with a jar of home made pickled cucumbers that he was trying to sell. Just the one jar. In Yuzhno we frequently saw people selling small amounts of vegetables, handfuls of carrots or flowers, a fish fresh out of the river that morning or whatever else they could grow that they thought they could sell.
After ten days in Yuzhno I headed back to Seoul, glad to be leaving the slush and damp of the spring thaw. I would be back.
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