The first fieldwork for this project has been conducted in the summer and autumn of 2008.The Magadan region (oblast’) is located in the Russian Northeast, eight times zones from Moscow. It is borders with the Khabarovsk region in the south, Chukotka in the North and Sakha in its western border. Magadan oblast’ is made up of eight regions, covering 462,4 thousand square kilometres.

Starting in the late 1920s, this region began to be developed due to its rich mineral resources, mainly gold, tin, and uranium. These minerals were needed during the intensive industrialisation period of the 1930s. Magadan received the status of a town in 1939, so in 2009 it will be celebrating its 70th anniversary; and Magadan region is celebrating its 55 birthday as it was founded in 1953. Before that and starting in 1931 this region was developed by the unique organisation called Dal’stroi.

The population of the Magadan region peaked in 1988 at 393,7 thousand people; since then there has been a steady decline. In 1991 the regional population stood at 384,5 with 153,9 living in the city of Magadan , in 2007 the numbers were 168,5 and 100,2, respectively.

The 1990s are treated as ‘cursed’ years, years of destruction. This period is marked by the massive retreat of the state from the economics of the region. The absence of the state from the retail business sector (except in the way of taxation) is conspicuous; now most, if not all stores are owned and supplied privately. Many former state enterprises have been privatised and are often owned by shareholders. Some gold-mining companies are run by multi-national corporations; gold is also mined individually by gold-miners and prospectors. I am still to find out whether there are any state-owned gold mining operations left.

Many connect the perceived ‘ruining’ of the North with the infamous visit in the 1990s by Egor Gaidar, then Head of the Council of Ministers, who said that the North (referring to Kolyma) is not economically effective and is over-populated. Of course he was no more than a representative of the first government of that time, which was called and seen as democratic and liberal, probably thinking (according to one Moscow official) that the market economy will sort everything out. Although the process of ‘out-migration’ started in late 1980s, people started leaving en masse in the 1990s, the most devastating year was 1992 when net migration reached - 42,4; to compare, in 2007 it was – 2,3.

In the 2000s, however, there is a discourse of ‘restoration’, of ‘building’, facilitated no doubt by the similar discourse coming from above, the country-wide firm stand on re-building Russia after the 1990s era of various, simultaneous and multiple changes affecting economic, political, and social spheres of the Russian life. Financial ruins gave way to financial plenty derived from exploitation of natural resources, particularly oil and gas. Although Magadan oblast’ is still a dotatsionnaya (meaning that IT IS NOT A DONOR), there is more money coming in as compared to the 1990s.

There seems to be a change in the way Magadan refers to itself in the public sphere of media and public spaces; this change affects its distance from the materik (literally, the mainland if seen from an island). This is the general name Magadan people have for the part of the Former Soviet Union that was neither Siberia nor the Russian Far East, and now the Russian Federation that stretches before the Ural mountains. If before Magadan positioned itself (and produced public identity) as a part of the whole, a frontier of the country: “we mine and produce gold for the country”, now it seems to have localised its identity. It is now “our Kolyma”, “my family- my Kolyma”, “our northern territory”, where ‘our’ does not mean ‘country’, but the Northeast, a part of the Russian Far East.

The city administration makes a considerable effort at developing (constructing) social cohesion based on the ‘Kolyma’ identity, on the discourse of ‘home’ and on purposeful place-making initiatives such as decorating the city with street lights and cast-iron flower pots, developing small courts with benches and fountains, painting buildings in bright colours, financing a city-wide agricultural farmer’s market, etc. There is also a new initiative called ‘celebrating districts’, when members of the city administration would meet with residents of a city district, talk to them, finding out what people think about their district, what they would like to see changed, etc.

At present there seems to be a gradual migration process taking place, where people from Magadan are moving to materik (out-migration), and people from the regional communities, that have been closed as being non-effective/non-economic, move to Magadan (intra-regional migration), a cheap alternative to the materik. Yet ‘closing’ a community does not necessarily mean that it is abandoned. A visit to one of these ‘closed’ communities showed that many residents continue living there without any infrastructure: this village has no shops, schools, kindergartens, or medical service, although there are live electricity and also telephone lines.

Re-settlement programmes are conducted by the Housing Management Department of the city administration. They issue certificates of re-settlement, but how this programme works I am still to figure out. One of my informants, although receiving such a certificate, could not find an apartment for the sum indicated in this certificate. He tried various half-legal schemes (on the materik) but to no avail.

A two-month study of former Magadan residents living in Moscow and the Moscow region showed that many of them still have relatives (children or parents) living in Magadan. In fact this is something of a pattern here: life in Magadan, however comfortable, is marked by constant separation and longing. Those who came to Magadan years ago have left their parents and relatives on the materik. Some pensioners who have left the city (or oblast’) to retire on the materik, leave their adult children and grandchildren in Magadan. Sometimes dedicated Magadan residents who spent most of their adult life there do not want their children to grow roots in this place, so they try to convince them to settle in the materik early enough in their life course. There are however extended families that still live in Magadan: working grandparents, their adult working children and grandchildren. Having a job seems to be one of the key factors in keeping people in Magadan. But human connection between two places (Magadan and a city or town on the materik, Moscow in my case) is not the only one. There is also a considerable work of the imagination in making the concept of a ‘homeland’. Two organisations in Moscow, the Council of Veterans of the North, and a public organisation, zemlyachestvo, allow people to re-create Magadan in a new place, and Phantom Magadan at that.

These are just some preliminary observations from the first fieldwork. I am planning to conduct the second fieldwork in the summer and autumn of 2009.

Useful links: www.kolyma.ru