Katya Beznosova

Two nights ago I went renewed another set of old ties: with Katya Beznosova, the journalist who followed our sister City presence in Yakutsk from the first meeting with Pavel Borodin, and organized many televised events for our group.  You may remember her with her granddaughter Anya on the first cruise on the Lena River.  Her daughter, Tanya, took all of us (Katya, Anya, and me) to a lovely Uzbek restaurant near the Belorusskaya Metro. It reminded me of the time I spent in Tashkent with Juanita Helms and Mike Davis at a Sister Cities conference in 1989.  Katya, as energetic as ever, spends most of her time with her three grandchildren in Moscow: 9 year old Katya lives with her, and her daughter Masha lives nearby with two children of her own.  Tanya is working as chief accountant for Gala, a company which buys art film rights from mainly German companies, and Anya has just gotten a job as an accountant in a oil and gas development company.    I'll be posting more pictures of this family in the next few days, since we plan to go to dinner at Masha's home. 

Family Reunion!

Here you see my "Moscow family" in some ways, just as I remember them -- how many nights we sat together drinking tea in the kitchen!  Keeping contacts with families over the years is one of the many benefits of Sister Cities Relationships.  There on the left is Paulina, who was born while my family was visiting their small Yakutsk apartment on a hot August day fifteen years ago, next to her is Ilya, whom I used to take to nursery school in the predawn darkness, then Alesha, one of my best English students, and his wife, Olya, who was a dancer in the Yakutsk National Dance Ensemble, and in front of them, Rosa Kapitonovna, Kapitolina Alexeeva's sister and my wonderful host for the many months I spent in Yakutsk.

Into Moscow

What a change there is in 20 years in arriving at the Moscow Sheremetyevo airport!  It's brightly lit, full of tempting vending machines, people are pleasant and helpful.  I was able to call my friend rom my international phone to his cell phone to make sure he was really on his way to meet me.  Just outside the terminal there was a large brightly lit mall where one can buy any delicacy, knick-knack, jewlery or stylish clothing that one might wish.  We took a comfortable ride on a reasonably priced highspeed rail right into the center of Moscow that left us a Belorusskaya Station, near which he had parked his car, and in no time I was at the home of my Moscow friends, reminiscing about old times.

An interesting parallel with my first arrival with Juanita Helms and Mike Davis into Moscow in 1989: then, with glasnost and perestroika just beginning,  there were demonstrations about the closure of Red Square to the general public; when I arrived on Monday there had just been demonstrations about the recently conducted elections.  Of course, nobody knew then where the demonstrations would lead, just as nobody knows now whether the current demonstrations will influence the course of events over the next few months. 

Three years!

Three years have passed since I started this blog and so much has happened since then! Here's a brief overview to bring everyone up to date:
 2008: Juanita Helms, Don Lowell, Anastasia Bozhedonova, Bruce Shelt and I worked to set up the Alaskan Russian Center, a new non-profit organization to support exchanges.  I started work on my book about exchanges by conducting a series of interviews. 
2009: Summer: A trip planned to Yakutsk with Mayor Helms had to be postponed for issues of health and family.
October: I presented a paper about early exchanges, "Encounters across a Melting Ice Curtain" at the Alaska Historical Society in Dutch Harbor.
November: Juanita Helms, the Mayor of Fairbanks who started the Sister Cities project, passed away. Her celebration of life brought Anastasia Bozhedonova to Fairbanks with letters from Pavel Borodin an the Mayor of Yakutsk, Yuri Zabolev.  This coincided with the election of a new Fairbanks mayor, Luke Hopkins, who promised to continue to support the concept of sister cities.
2010. May The celebration of the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII was marked by honoring the Lend-Lease Project that joined Fairbanks and Yakutsk in common war efforts.  
June. Ed Clark visited Yakutsk and attended the first videoconference between Mayor Luke Hopkins and Yakutsk Mayor Yuri Zabolev.   
October. Historian and writer Ivan Negenblya visited Fairbanks with photos taken during the time of the Lend-Lease Program, attending the 2010 Aviation Experts' Conference.  He was accompanied by his wife Olga Siderova, interpreter Sergei Khatylykov, and Anastasia Bozhedonova of the Northern Forum.   The Fairbanks-Yakutsk Sister Cities Committee hosted visits and meetings, including a mayor's videoconference and a potluck dinner.   
November and December. Video conferences took place between university and elementary school students.
2011 October 22 The Alaskan Russian Center holds an event "Fairbanks-Yakutsk: Rekindling the Friendship" to educate about the Sister City Relationship and raise funds to support the concert presented by Bruce and Lena Shelt, Fairbanks' "Sister City couple" in Yakutsk in December.  An excellent article appears in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
November  Yakutsk begins preparations for the visit of Bruce and Lena Shelt and Terry and Mimi Chapin to Yakutsk in December. An article appears in the paper, Echo of Yakutia with an extensive interview with Claudia Fedorova, head of the North East Federal University's (formerly "YaGU") Office of International Relations, and one of our beloved interpreters and exchange coordinators.


So, this brings us up to this month, December 2011, when all sorts of things are happening!


Look for more posts soon!
Mimi

Sakha Republic's ex-President Nikolaev visits Fairbanks

In August, Russian Duma Vice-President, Mikhail Nikolaev, formerly known to us as Governor, and then President, of the Sakha Republic visited Fairbanks. He was attending the Eighth Conference of Arctic Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region, http://www.arcticparl.org/ that was held at the University of Alaska August 12-14, 2008. He had visited Fairbanks in 1990, during the first large official exchange of delegates between our two cities and had been supportive of our relationship over the years.

Former Fairbanks Mayor, Juanita Helms, and Anastasia Bozhedonova

of the Northern Forum organized a reception for Vice President Nikolaev

and we shared many memories of our friends and days in Yakutsk.
In this picture, taken by Carolyn Gray, Vice-President Nikolaev speaks to the group with former FNSB
Mayor Junita Helms at his side.

20 Years of Friendship

How many people we wondered, had been involved in the program over the last 20 years since the first exchange of delegations in 1989? We started thinking of all the people whose lives had changed as a result of the relationship with Yakutsk and the friendships formed. The group at the reception expressed interest in reaffirming the ties.

Picture courtesy of Carolyn Gray, from left to right, back row,standing: unidentified interpreter, Anastasia Bozhedonova, Eileen Cummings, Vice-President Mikhail Nikolaev, Bill Paton, "O.D." Odsather, Don Gray, Don Lowell, unidentified assistant, Ed Clarke: front row, seated, Sam Helms, Mimi Chapin, Juanita Helms, Shirley Odsather, Carolyn Gray.

Documenting the history

Despite our good will and best intentions, there are substantial obstacles to reviving the relationship as it once was. One of these is that as the times, interests, and population of Fairbanks have changed, the Fairbanks-Yakutsk Sister City relationship has for the most part been forgotten. For the years 1990-1994, delegations of 40-80 "citizen diplomats" traveled back and forth, some staying for months at a time. Later, there were many spin-off programs, funded by the United States government supporting projects ranging from English language instruction, small business development, to health programs.

With twenty years of hindsight, we are at a good place to look back and document the exchanges which were accompanied by a huge wave of mingled curiosity, enthusiasm and good will. As one of the original members of the Fairbanks North Star Borough's Sister City Commission who was very much involved in the choice of Yakutsk as a Sister city, and a participant in exchanges in programs taking me to Yakutsk about 20 times over the last 19 years, I have had the idea of chronicling the exchanges and their off-shoots for some time, and at this gathering in August I shyly presented the idea to Anastasia Bozhedonova. "You must do this," she immediately responded, "and you must tell everyone about it." Before I knew what was going on she was rapping on her glass. "Mimi wants to say something."

Since that meeting I have come up with a tentative outline, listing some of the people whom I might contact for information on the various aspects of this far-ranging program.

WORKING DRAFT OUTLINE

Suggested Title: Interior Twins: Fairbanks and Yakutsk (Working Title)

Forewords by Juanita Helms, Mike Davis

I. Finding Each Other (Mimi with Pat Walsh)
II. The First Meetings (Mimi with Juanita, Mike)
III. Handshake across the Water. Citizen Exchanges
IV. Success : Official exchanges in later years Juanita, Shirley Odsather, Marilyn Berglin, Marilyn Griffin, Eileen Cummings
V. University Programs (Steve McClean? John Lehman?)
VI. Athabascans Meet the Sakha People (Miranda Wright, Bernice Joseph, Howard Luke)
VII. Rotary International (Leslye Korvola)
VIII. Building Bridges to the People (Women in Business, Voting program, Juanita Helms, Karen Garrity)
IX. Education (Don Gray)
X.The Arts. (Jo Scott, Gloria Fisher, etc. Mimi on ice sculpture)
XI. Northern Engineering (Ed Clarke, Don Lowell, Odsather)
XII. Health programs -- Janet Thurston, Eileen Cummings, Dr. Taylor
XII. The Lend-Lease Monument