A summary of Yuri Kazakov’s "Northern Diary" Automatic translate

This fictional, nonfiction novel was written in 1960 based on the author’s actual travels along the White Sea coast. The text details the hard work, living conditions, and unique personalities of the Pomors, sailors, and reindeer herders. The author pays close attention to economic reports, fishing technologies, and natural phenomena in remote areas of the Arkhangelsk region.

Across the White Sea

The story begins aboard the small fishing trawler Beluzh’e. The seiner departs the mouth of the Mezen River, heading for the village of Koida. The narrator recalls a recent arrival in Mezen from Arkhangelsk on the steamship Yushar. The northern heat was sweltering. While waiting for high tide, the steamship crew played a football match with residents of Kamenka during the white nights. The players ran across a peat field strewn with sawdust. Yuri Zhukov, captain of the Yushar, officiated the match himself, awarding a penalty kick to his own goal. The sailors won 4-3.

The Beluzha’s passengers are engaged in animated conversation. The local pilot, a member of the Malygin family, boasts of his ability to navigate ships blind, measuring distances with smoked cigarettes. Ship’s mechanic Igor Popov is delighted to be returning home after an eight-year absence. Captain Georgy Potashev describes his two-hundred-ton vessel and complains about the shortage of personnel. The crew consists of eight people; in the summer, they catch sharks using long ropes with hooks baited with seal blubber.

Looking at the water, the narrator recalls a devastating force twelve storm at the Veprevsky lighthouse. The wind tore down the wires, the sea was covered in yellow foam, and the torn lighter was dragged along the bottom by two anchors. The lighthouse’s deathly green beams glided over the capes, creating an oppressive atmosphere. Soon the seiner reached Koida. The passengers transferred to a motorboat and disembarked.

Pomor life and economy

Koida greets visitors with century-old huts with high cart ramps. The rooms smell of old wood, salt, dried seaweed, and leather. The narrator rents a room from a tall woman who used to work as a postwoman. He recalls another Pomor woman who walked thirty-five kilometers daily between Lopshenga and Letniy Navolok. At night, a light fog covers the village. A drunken youth breaks into the hut, looking for the owner, and the local women watch the quarrels with childish curiosity.

That night, the collective farm chairman, Voronukhin, takes his guest up the Koida River in a motorboat. Along the way, the boat often stalls, entangling grass in its propeller. The guest recalls a visit to Arkhangelsk. The city is remembered for its gigantic Lenin timber mill. Enormous logs were lifted out of the water on conveyors to the howling sawmills. Foreign timber ships from Norway and Denmark were moored at the piers.

At dawn, the boat arrives at the pasture. The silence is broken by the sound of an old radio, on which a shepherd listens to music. By evening, long boats are pulled ashore. Horses tow them through the water directly from the shore. Fishermen arrive with their fishing boats to participate in the haymaking. At the camp, a cow is slaughtered with a heavy cleaver. The local bull, Baikal, later comes to the bloody spot and bellows loudly.

The journey continues by motorboat at low tide. The exposed seabed reveals dense sand. A truck picks up the travelers and speeds along the smooth shore to the village of Maida. There are almost no land routes in the north, and autumn storms interrupt sea travel for weeks.

The board of the Osvobozhdenie collective farm is working on the exact figures. Two hundred farms produce 18,680 centners of fish. The collective farmers lease trawlers from the fish processing plant and are building local power plants. They catch herring, cod, navaga, and sea mammals.

Salmon fishery

Salmon fishing is described in detail in the Mayditsa ton. Zvenyevoy Ilya Titov and his partner, Pulkheria Kottsova, live in a tiny hut by the sea. The seine is constructed as a long enclosure of nets on high stakes. Salmon enter the net at high tide, trying to scrape marine parasites from their scales. When the tide recedes, the fishermen step onto the sand. Pink salmon thrash about inside the trap, and huge fish lie there. The Pomors stun the fish with wooden sticks.

Titov expertly classifies local winds and describes the stages of seal maturation. A newborn pup is called a zelenets (green seal), then molts and becomes a white seal. After its gray fur appears, it is called a khokhlyak (a husky). A mature seal with spots is called a serka (a serka), in its second year of life a serun (a serun), and in its third year, a lysun (a lysun). A female seal is called an utelga (a telga). Soon, a driver arrives on a horse and takes the catch to the fish-reception center.

In the village of Maida, the hero lives in the house of Yevlampy Kottsov. The seventy-year-old man moves exclusively on his knees, supported by leather shoe covers. Despite his disability, he makes his own tools. In his youth, Kottsov set out on his routine sea-hunting expedition. A strong wind blew the boat out to sea. For three days, the young man lay on the bow of the boat, breaking up ice floes with his feet. The Pomors rescued him, but his frostbitten feet had to be amputated.

Tundra and reindeer herders

Leaving the coast, the travelers trudge through the sweltering heat across the tundra. Smoke from burning forests obscures the sky. Passing dwarf birch groves, they cross nameless lakes by boat. On the far shore, they discover three tents lined with birch bark.

The Nenets live here — brothers Arkady and Pyotr Vylko, Alexey Nazarov, and Nikolay Gorbunov. A team of reindeer herders herds a thousand head of reindeer under contract with the collective farm, earning a steady salary. An iron stove is heated inside the chum, and the smoke keeps the mosquitoes away. The owners laughingly answer linguistic questions: "Reindeer is ’ty,’ and tundra is ’vy."

In the morning, thousands of reindeer surround the camp, fleeing horseflies. The animals are exhausted by the prolonged heat. At the guests’ request, the Nenets catch four white reindeer. Arkady Vylko harnesses them to a lightweight sled and races across the moss, guiding the team with a long pole. After bidding farewell to the masters of the tundra, the travelers return to the coast in pouring rain.

In the village of Ruchyi, the narrator descends into a vast underground glacier. There, hundreds of frozen fish, hard as wood, are stored in dark vats of brine. From a high cliff, the blue strip of the Kola Peninsula is visible through binoculars. A steamship arrives, the sailors load barrels with the catch, and the vessel carries the travelers to Arkhangelsk.

In the fall, the narrator returns to the central part of Russia, to the banks of the Oka River. Observing the buoys on the water and the tractors near Tarusa, he mentally reminisces about the journey he has taken. He recalls Captain Zhukov, the pilot Malygin, the fisherman Kottsov, and the Nenets, whose harsh labor remained on the cold shores of the White Sea.