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Anatoly Dmitrievich Shakshin is typical. At 43, he is boss of Drilling Crew No. 50 at the Samotlor oilfield. With overtime and bonuses, he earns about $1,000 a month. He drives to the fields in a jeep he bought at a special price of $1,600. He pays $24 a month for his apartment, which has only three small rooms; but he does not need much space. His wife works as a bookkeeper, his 20-year-old son is in military school, and his five-year-old son is in kindergarten. The Shakshins take six weeks off in the summer, and he goes duck shooting in the fall. What does he do with his money? He says that he is saving for retirement (55 for men, 50 for women), when he hopes to buy an apartment on the Black Sea.
In the meantime, a Siberian passes his time as best he can. Moscow television comes in by satellite. Novosibirsk, the "Chicago of Siberia," with a population of 1,200,000, has a superb opera house, a ballet troupe and a new heated swimming pool. In Bratsk, now a bustling metropolis of 200,000, the gastronom sells Algerian red wine, and visiting dance bands play a mixture of rousing Soviet songs and early Elvis at the new six-story Hotel Taiga.
There are less heartening sides to Siberia. Fresh fruits and vegetables disappear with the first frost. Rents are low, but food and clothes are expensive. In Irkutsk a chicken can cost $5, an ordinary woman's coat $100. The interminable winters, when the sun shines only four hours a day, produce deep depression in some people—"Arctic hysteria," they used to call it. As a result, Siberians are among the most fanatical flower lovers; they think little of paying $2 for a single lily or carnation.
All over Siberia, there is an urgent need for new housing, and the quality of plans varies widely. Akademgorodok, the "science city" built in 1964 among the pines and birch groves south of Novosibirsk, is one of the finest examples of urban planning anywhere. It boasts lovely frame houses and pastel apartment buildings, interspersed with markets and shops, theaters and cafes, all carefully laid out and integrated with the natural environment. At Bratsk, by contrast, concrete-block housing was built like a series of barracks over 40 miles of forests. "We have the world's biggest green belt," one resident wryly observes.
Beyond the problems of city planning, the rapid exploitation of Siberia's resources poses other questions. What will happen to the native peoples who for centuries have lived in peace with the wilderness? So far the Evenks, Nentsy, Yakuts and a dozen or so other nomadic tribes who are cousins of America's Indians and Eskimos have been led into literacy and allowed to follow traditional occupations like reindeer herding and fur trapping. The Buddhist Buryats, primarily shepherds and cattle raisers of Mongol origin, are allowed to practice their religion. But as with all Siberians, their life is changing, and industrialization may jeopardize their cultural identity.