Archangel, or Arkhangelsk as the Russians call it, is located at 64 degrees 51 minutes north latitude just south of the Arctic Circle. It is the capital of the Russian North and was founded in the second half of the sixteenth century by Ivan the Terrible. A century later, Peter the Great established a state owned shipbuilding industry here and Arkhangelsk became a center of trade with Western Europe. This lasted until 1703 when Peter founded St. Petersburg, a port ice-free year around. Trade soon shifted to the Baltic and Arkhangelsk became a provincial backwater. Trade revived some when icebreakers were available to keep the port open during the five-month winter.
Arkhangelsk became the starting point for numerous polar expeditions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During WW II, along with Murmansk, Arkhangelsk was a key resupply point, bringing desperately needed foreign equipment for the Russian army and food supplies for the besieged city of St. Petersburg. Currently the city is a major center of the timber and fishing industries and has some development in oil and mining.
Silver Cloud docked at Arkhangelsk at 7 am for a short four-hour visit. We arrived early on a quiet Sunday morning. Michael and I chose the City Overview tour, which had us on the tour bus at 7:30 am. We started at the English Cemetery where English Soldiers who perished in the region during World War II are honored. More interesting was the local city cemetery adjacent to the memorial plot. Individual families have gated enclosures. Some graves are beautifully maintained and others are overgrown. Our local tour guide, Elena, told us that it is up to the deceased's families to maintain the plots. Some families care about their relatives' graves more than others do, while some of the interred have no living relatives. An interesting application of personal responsibility in modern Russia!
We saw the local landmarks: a tall television and radio tower and a street of preserved historic wooden buildings. Before the twentieth century, all of Arkhangelsk' buildings were of wooden construction. Fire was a constant problem. Most have been replaced with structures that are more modern but this street has been designated for historical preservation.
People were just beginning to set up tents and displays for a festival to take place later in the day on the pedestrian-only street. We also noticed whimsical statuary along the same street. The atmosphere could not have been more different from Murmansk.
The Arkhangelsk streets have retained their Soviet names and the monuments to Lenin and other Soviet era sculpture remain. Our guide said that they never take anything down, as it is all a reminder of their history. She joked that nothing is as changeable as Russian history. She also mentioned that some of the "old" people still put flowers at the base of Lenin's statue. This was as close as our guide came to saying anything remotely political.
Driving around the city, we noticed many new buildings, both commercial and residential. The old soviet-style apartment blocks are being replaced with modern apartment buildings. There were also many more shops than we saw in Murmansk and even a department store. There is even a new cathedral under construction on the street next to the dock. The streets are pothole free and the people we saw were well dressed and cheerful.
We stopped at an Orthodox Church (St. Nicholas, a popular saint), the statue of Peter the Great at a park along the river and then drove to a wonderful historical museum located in what had once been a sixteenth century merchant's hall and warehouse. The museum inside was well laid out, modern and housed fascinating displays of local history. We spent over an hour touring the museum, mostly looking at the architectural features, very similar to the construction we saw at the Solovetsky Monastery the day before. It was slow going because the museum docent gave her talk in Russian and we had to wait for our guide to translate the gist of her remarks into English. I'm afraid Michael and I wandered off and looked at the other exhibits a lot.
We had been told that we would have time to look at the museum exhibits on our own after the formal tour but, instead, we were suddenly rushed back to the tour buses. We made the obligatory half-hour stop at the officially sanctioned gift shop and then drove back to the Silver Cloud. Why the tour was cut short is a mystery. But then, all of Russia is a mystery. I am sure we were shown only what the tourism officials wanted us to see. One wonders what they did not want us to see. Perhaps they were only being arbitrary because they could.
Michael and I waited on deck for the other tours to return to the Silver Cloud and watched the crowds, casually dressed in bright clothing, come to look at the ship. Entire families enjoying their Sunday holiday came to see the unusual sight of a cruise ship at their city.
Arkhangelsk is a number of miles up the Dvina River from the White Sea. Our departure took the Silver Cloud downriver through territory we had not seen during arrival, as Michael and I were not awake yet. As the ship made her way downriver, we became aware of the enormity of the lumber industry in the area. We passed at least three huge processing plants with many large rafts of floating logs tied up along the riverbank. The odor from the lumber mill smokestacks was impressive.
Farther down the river and along the immediate seacoast we came upon summerhouses or dachas belonging to wealthy Russians. We passed many spits of beach upon which we saw bathers and sunbathers enjoying the warm summer day. The number of recreational powerboats that passed us in either direction impressed us with the wealth on display. Forest products and fishing can't account for all of the prosperity we saw. There is more to the story but we don't know it.
