How did Ian communicate with the locals of Yakutia and other regions? Was Russian used as the lingua franca?

Could he see Palins house from there?

What vehicle did Ian use?

In 2005, I was chosen to work with a science researcher for three weeks through a program called Polar TREC that matches teachers and researchers in the Arctic and Antarctic up, and I was chosen to go to Siberia with a scientist who was taking “footprints” of the major rivers that dump into the Arctic Ocean. I spent three weeks in Zhigansk, a small village on the Lena River. It was an amazing three weeks, that I have brought into my classroom ( I teach fifth grade) in myriad of ways. My students Skyped with students in the elementary school in Zhigansk, and those students sang some songs at our spring concert via Skype. The scientist I worked with develop a program called the PARTNERS project also have shared scientific data, we sampled our local river and students in Zhigansk shared their data and we all compared our data to see how our rivers are different and why. More recently we’ve cored trees in Salisbury, VT, where I teach and are waiting for data from Zhigansk and their tree cores, to see if the advanced warming there can be read in the trees. The partnerships have been an amazing way to bring science research into the classroom, create cultural connections, and personalize global climate change. So in a weird way, Siberia has been a great way to open scientific doors for fifth graders in Vermont.

I spent three weeks in western Siberia in August, and it didn’t take long for me to affirm that the myth that Siberia is always cold is woefully inaccurate. I floated the Yenisei River in 80F temps (meaning many mosquitos), and it was probably 90F when I left the Angara River in late August. The biggest surprise to me was the virtual absence of wildlife. I ate canned corned beef (Tushonka), buckwheat, and stale cookies every day for three weeks and lost 15 pounds!

Maybe Russians throw garbage everywhere because there IS NO designated place where to put the garbage! There is no garbage removing services along the roads and garbage removing services in the cities are run by – the government and like all government run organizations there, including post offices and hospitals – they are poorly run, inefficient and overran with bureaucracy.

There are no rest stops along the roads.
You have to take enough fuel with you to make it to the next place where there is gas.

My question is, has Ian seen the infrastructure in the cities, like hospitals and other public places. What is his experience with it?
I am sure he would have gotten better service than Russians.

And btw, there is always authorities tracking foreigner’s steps in Russia. If you came for scientific or government business. Not if you’re a mere visitor.

The guide was nervous probably because ALL Russian’s are superstitious and places that contained a lot of pain and misery and hurt – where people suffered – and are now abandoned, should be left that way. They shouldn’t be disturbed.

Enjoying your Siberian program. I’ve never travelled there, but I have done numerous Arctic art projects–in Alaska, Iqaluit, Iceland, Svalbard and Arctic Norway and Finland. I couldn’t help wanting to respond about what has been said about trash on the landscape and a lack of environmental awareness in Siberia. From what I’ve seen, this is quite similar in northern Alaska and in northern Canada–sofas, appliances and cars dumped everywhere, even on front lawns, on Baffin Island and Kotzebue Alaska. This is not the case in Scandinavia. Just didn’t want to leave it that only Russians missed the environmental boat!

Are there any signs of Chinese trying to settle in the Siberian land?

I just wanted to share my fond memories of taking a seven-day journey on the Trans-Siberian train from Beijing to Moscow as an eight-year-old in July 1977. They include the beautiful compartment I shared with my younger sister, having tea with the staff on the train, hearing the soldiers footsteps on top of the train in the middle of the night, the ice along Lake Bakal and the beautiful trees along the way.

Thanks for bringing those memories back to me!

My grandfather was shipped to the Gulag from Latvia. He was sentenced to hard labor and died there. In the 1980′s I heard he was “pardoned”.
I do not hold hard feelings towards Russian people, however, since my grandfather’s wife, my mother’s mother, was Russian. It was a creation of Totalitarianism not Russians.
Ilze Choi

The majority of the people in the gulag were Russians themselves.
What Americans don’t realize is that more people were killed in gulag camps than in all of WWII.
All, by Stalin and his regime.

My daughter’s best friend and her brother were adopted from Siberia through an American church. The church actually chooses the child/children for the adoptive parents. My daughters friend’s parents adopted her and her brother at 6 monts and 3 years respectively. They flew to Siberia once and came home with a daughter and son and started a family. Many years have passed and I have enjoyed watching the children grow, my daughter’s friend an amazing athlete and student with ice blue eyes and her blue-eyed brother, autistic, but growing into a competent, curious, loving young man. I still remember the description, seared in my memory, of the poverty and the overcrowded orphanage they came from with ratios of 30 to 1 and children who lacked a daily hug and I marvel at my luck in having a connection to kindness that reached so far and brought so much good into out lives.

Tom.
Vitus Bering crossed Siberia from St. Petersburg to the Sea of Okhosst (The Pacific Ocean) from 1725-30, 1733-43.
His entourage included hios wife, servants, formal dress-ware , silverware and porcelain table service!
(BERING by Orcutt Frost, Yale University Press. 2003)
Great Show!

John Borneman

To Carrie:

It is a catchy phrase “the West oppresses other people but Russians oppress themselves” but it is utterly wrong.
Russia was also oppressed by the Germanic cohorts who were running Russia since Peter the Great.
In a way it was not an oppression but the concerted effort to modernize (read “Germanize” Rus).

To Ian Frazier:

Rus did become a vassal of Tataro-Mongols who formed not only a very advanced Muslim state of the Golden Horde on most of the Volga River but also organized a flourishing Crimean Muslim state. Russian ruling monarchs and villagers married Tatars and became a cross between the Turkish and Mongol nomads and the Indo-European Scythians mixed a bit with the Byzantine Greeks and their culture and religion.
It is difficult to Germanize Russians.

Many years ago there was another broadcast about Siberia:

Religion sustained a Siberian family hiding from mankind.
This review is from: In Siberia (Paperback)
Haibun for WBUR–90.9 FM, Boston. With Colin Thubron. His book about Siberia.

My breakfast of dull porridge is accompanied by the radio program CONNECTION with
Christopher Lydon and invited British author
Colin Thubron who has written a new book “In Siberia”.
In Russia we call Siberia [See`beer'].
As a child I lived in Novosibirsk:

howling wind
turning the corner
I walk backwards

After half an hour dialog between Chris and Colin callers are allowed live on air.
A Russian one !
Andrei talks almost without accent, much better than me and he is much younger too.
Oops! He makes a blunder. “Semipalatinsk is not in Siberia, Andryusha. It is in Kazakhstan.
And do not throw the name Dostoyevsky in vain!”
I am lucky to get through in five minutes.
Chris Lydon’s screener deals with me and declines to let my truth and accuracy-driven statement to be broadcast. I try to ram it through but he is probably guided by no negativity rules and I change my spiel.
I suggested to talk about a Siberian family who
were so successful in hiding from authorities in taiga that they lived there without knowledge that the Great October Socialist Revolution
or the Second World War took place.
But when I get on air I talk about a strategic importance of the Jewish Autonomous Region tucked in between Siberian permafrost and Chinese loess. This region is much larger than Israel but almost completely Judenrein.
Locals are not hostile to Jews.
Population does not exceed 200,000.
Agrreable Mr. Thubron approves my ramblings as he did with Andrei.
I return to my cold breakfast and recall that there was time when the Jewish settlement
in the region was supposed to be a buffer
between the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Japanese Army stationed in Manchuria across the great river Amur.
Seebeer’, Seebeer’…

straw mattress…
in my corner of the ceiling
shiny hoarfrost

@Denny
“The Great Gate of Kiev” by Modest Mussorgsky, the finale of his ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ set.

While listening to Ian Frazier, he stated that he was unaware of any museums or statues dedicated to gulags in Russia.
Our son married a Russian woman from the seaport city of Magadan on the Sea of Okhotsk in eastern Siberia. During the days preceeding the wedding, my wife and I had the opportunity of meeting many Russian people who helped us explore the region. They took us to a gulag museum and concentration camp where the political and criminal prisoners were interned. Also, there is a large(approx. three to four story high) statue of a Russian head(representing mother Russia) with tears of people streaming down her cheeks. This was an extremely moving portrait of the difficult times these people endured.

“The majority of the people in the gulag were Russians themselves.
What Americans don’t realize is that more people were killed in gulag camps than in all of WWII.
All, by Stalin and his regime.*
Posted by g, on October 22nd, 2010 at 11:52 AM

Are you ready for your dose of historical irony for the day? (a day gone by) The Gulag consisted of work camps, until Stalins’s deputy in charge of them, Frankel, came up with the brilliant idea that Stalin could stop the firing squads and he could just turn the work camps into death camps, assuring Stalin that he could kill men and women in a few weeks of exposure, beatings, lack of nutrition and brutal physical tasks. Thus Frankel was the first bright-boy to institute concentration camps who’s purpose was the wholesale murder of human beings. The irony? Frankel was a Jew.

As much as I don’t like her Sarah Palin never said she could she Russia from her house.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2009/11/18/abc-brings-i-can-see-russia-my-backyard-palin-interview