Paparazzi Ethnography

We arrived in Arkhangelsk some time during the summer of 2010 in the midst of a WWII victory celebration.  Our entire visit was focused on connecting with friends at the newly established Northern (Arctic) Federal University or NArFU. Our exploratory research included the goal of setting up networks of with Russian universities so that we could pursue long term research on Arctic energy development in the Barents Sea area.


Marina S. was our contact, and in fact, I bumped into her again not too long ago in Tromsø, at the Arctic Frontiers Conference this past January 2012, nearly 18 months after I first met her and initially discussed plans for a follow up project. It was then, in January, that she introduced me to Elana Kudryashova, Rector of NArFu. During fall 2011, when I began drafting the new request for research funds, Marina and I had several long conversations about what kind of support letter I could obtain from NArFU to include with the main grant proposal. In the end, she bifurcated the workshop and research aims from the capacity building and networking.

It is just incredible to me how much effort we put into reaching out to folks, then following up and asking them to write elaborate letters of support. Here is the letter that we received from NArFU, and we are grateful to them for putting this together.

Arkhangelsk is a one-hour, 40-minute flight from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. Traveling through Moscow on that particular day was tough. In addition to the hot weather, our driver was terribly late, and I practically had a melt down over the possibility of not arriving on time, since we had very specific arrangements to meet with representatives of the university.

That is Alex K., enjoying the ride out of the tarmac.

Upon arrival, we could not help mingling among the throng of revelers, as we made our way past the closed off streets to our hotel, Pur-Navolok, located on the embankment of the Northern Dvina river.

Upon reflection, there was not really that much for us to do. We had a few meetings with university representatives and a tour of the university grounds. In sum, the meetings took the better part of one-half day. But we arrived the afternoon prior and gave ourselves a half day after the meeting before returning to Moscow.

With the down time and worsening weather, we made our way through the city, noticing with what high admiration town dwellers revere the statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who stands at the middle square starring down the tallest building in the city.

From the center, we passed into the side streets and small fairs where local painters have developed a particular fascination for their skyscraper.



I am a big fan of ice in my soda pop, not a standard issue service provision in restaurants. After being discouraged by having only one or two cubes, I began to request as much ice as they could bring out, and it came in bowls.

The story behind the Arctic city of Arkhangelsk is well told. Its founding dates to the 1500s, established on order of Ivan the Terrible to be a commercial port. It is increasingly referred to as the Gateway to the Arctic, hence, one of the reasons why we wanted to check in. As Russian arctic oil and gas development begins in earnest, it will be from this Gateway.

One of the activities that I do during down time, and especially when it rains, is to dart into a movie theater. Hanging out in a restaurant, as in the case of the below photograph is another activity. Here, we visited the Argentinean Del Fuego located on the city’s promenade.

Nevertheless, on this particular occasion, we decided to travel to the nearby and well-preserved wooden architectured city, Maliye Karely, now a Museum about 25 minutes drive from the center of town. It is an open-air city of wooden mansions, churches, windmills and barns and built between 16th and 20th centuries.

As a footnote and of course, with due respect, while returning from our walk, Alex led us down the wrong path, thinking it was a short cut. We arrived at the doorstep of some unhappy shack. But we were able to retrace our steps.

From there, returning to Moscow was easy.