Job Discussion Forums

[Larry Paradine]

Well, I mean you have to be a masochist to want to work in the Far North-East, especially Magadan! However, I'm serious, so please contact me if you have any leads to jobs (but no potted histories of the good old days when Old Whiskers sent bad boys like Varlam Shalemov and naughty girls like Evgenia Aksyonova to holiday camps on the Kolyma, I know quite a bit about that already). Thanks.

[kazachka]

Try contacting the University of Alaska Anchorage. They have many exchange programs in Magadan.
http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/
Susan Kalina is the head of the Russian dept.

[Brooks]

Magadan was the place where crimals were put, as a kind of exile within the USSR.
It must be pretty cold there.
I am not sure which criminals, but some of them may have been political prisoners

[Larry Paradine]

Yes, yes, Mr (?) Brooks, I know all about that, as I said in my post. I'm interested in present day (post-gulag) Magadan.

[Brooks]

the weather sucks, and the black flies are annoying when they get in your face, so said a former student of mine.
It is located by the Sea of Okhotsk, and I think the land is kind of swampy.
But there is fresh fish.
Near Yakutsk, fog freezes. Maybe in Magadan too.

[Brooks]

see if you can find Magadan:

http://map.rin.ru/index_e.html

there is a picture of city. It looks OK. Very Soviet, though.

[kazachka]

It's very much like Anchorage but the weather is nastier on that side of the Bering. In 1990, the pop. was about a half-million. It's now about 140,000 because many people bailed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, the crime rate is relatively high. It's much like Bush Alaska in the sense that you need to fly in and it's isolated. Theoretically, you could drive for some distance(not sure if the road goes all the way to Yakutsk), but the roads are not well maintained. On the up side, there is awesome wildlife in the Magadanskaya Oblast (moose, bear,walrus,seal, AWESOME fish, red caviar...). There is also a variety of berries to pick in the summer. Magadan itself is not mountainous, but there are sopki (domes) in the area that look much like the ones in Interior Alaska. If the cold doesn't bother you and you like the outdoors, this would be the place for you. Magadan is parallel to Anchorage, so expect a sunrise after 10am in the winter and a sunset at about 3:30 pm. You get white nights in the summer. That is so cool! Oddly enough, the northern lights are seen less frequently in Magadan than in Anchorage but quite often in Chukotka and in Yakutsk. If you go, take gear that's rated to at LEAST -40 and that is for cold DAMP weather. Magadan is on the water, so it's a damp cold in the winter. If you go inland, you will experience colder temps and a dry cold. Let me tell you, if I could pick my poison, I'd take-40 and a dry cold any day over -20 damp and blowing off the ocean! Trust me, I've experienced both! Let us know if you go and do share your experience

[Larry Paradine]

Hallo Kazachka and many thanks for your informative posts. I haven't followed up your suggestion of contacting the University of Anchorage because I'm ineligible for inclusion in an exchange programme by virtue of, inter alia, British nationality, old age, absence of higher academic qualifications and a host of other disabling factors, but I'm going to ask the University if they could e-mail me any information about Chukotka that may be relevant to my search.

I take your point about the damp (though anyone from Britain could justifiably claim to be something of an expert on the subject). Here in Samarskaya Oblast (mid-Volga) winter so far has been comparatively mild and there are even rumours floating about that the Volga may not freeze this year, but there's been more wind than usual, what little snow we've had has been mainly "mokryi sneg" and, although the official outside temperature at the time of writing (17.05 local time) is only nudging double digits at -10, I've often felt warmer at much lower temperatures. I've noticed recently that our hardy (or foolhardy, depending on your point of view) "morzhi" (walrusses, i.e. winter bathers) who ostentatiously take long, leisurely baths in holes in the ice in normal winters seem to be restricting themselves to ten second token immersions, although the river is still open.

[Larry Paradine]

Hallo Kazachka and many thanks for your informative posts. I haven't followed up your suggestion of contacting the University of Anchorage because I'm ineligible for inclusion in an exchange programme by virtue of, inter alia, British nationality, old age, absence of higher academic qualifications and a host of other disabling factors, but I'm going to ask the University if they could e-mail me any information about Chukotka that may be relevant to my search.

I take your point about the damp (though anyone from Britain could justifiably claim to be something of an expert on the subject). Here in Samarskaya Oblast (mid-Volga) winter so far has been comparatively mild and there are even rumours floating about that the Volga may not freeze this year, but there's been more wind than usual, what little snow we've had has been mainly "mokryi sneg" and, although the official outside temperature at the time of writing (17.05 local time) is only nudging double digits at -10, I've often felt warmer at much lower temperatures. I've noticed recently that our hardy (or foolhardy, depending on your point of view) "morzhi" (walrusses, i.e. winter bathers) who ostentatiously take long, leisurely baths in holes in the ice in normal winters seem to be restricting themselves to ten second token immersions, although the river is still open.

[kazachka]

Good luck Larry!! It also wouldn't hurt to check out UA Fairbanks-they do research in Chukotka and send students into Yakutsk to study. Much of the things they did in Chukotka was in conjunction with the geology dept though. Anchorage and Magadan are sister cities as are Fairbanks and Yakutsk. www.uaf.edu I actually used to teach evening classes at UAF several yrs back.

[rogan]

Stay in Camapa -

no mozzies,
excellent swimming,
the annual folk festival just an hour away

a forest of strange "herbs" growing wild along the river bank just below the arboretum and the Governors house.

[Larry Paradine]

"Rogan": re your eulogistic view of Samara vis a vis Magadan: it's currently nearly 20 degrees colder down here than up in Magadan. If anyone's having fun here in this abnormal January, they're certainly not showing it.

[Brooks]

in fact I read it got down to -46 in Magadan one night recently.