The other day I tried to book a lunch date with the Blogger in Chief but was informed that inclement weather was looming on the Old Dominion and he might be hibernating for a few days.
Imagine my surprise this morning when I awoke to find a few inches of snow and some light sleet pelting around. Sure enough, the state seems to have shut down. This begs another question. Why are Virginians such weather whoosies?
Millions of people around the world live and work in much harsher conditions. I spent six years reporting from Moscow in the 1980s and 1990s and had plenty of bone-chilling experiences. There was that ultra-cold day in Novosibirsk just before Thanksgiving when the temperature was about minus 30. But if you want to consider the granddaddy of them all, go to Norilsk in Siberia, the northern-most city of more than 100,000 in the world.
Another oligarch was Vladimir Potanin who was cornering the market on Russia’s vast reserves of precious metals. It was thanks to Potanin that I got to go to Norilsk. He was involved in a rough proxy battle to take over Norilsk’s rich array of smelters insofar as Russia was capable of having real proxy fights back in the 1990s.
Founded at the end of the 1920s, Norilsk became a center of Stalin’s GULAG system which in this case exploited rich reserves of nickel, cobalt, copper, platinum, palladium and coal. The only way in or out if by air or by rail and road to a specially built port on a river that flows into the Arctic Ocean.
Norilsk is covered with snow for up to 270 days a year and has snow storms lasting a total of about 120 days. In January and February, the average lows are about minus 23. Record lows are about minus 63.
Political prisoners built up a huge metals mining and metallurgical apparatus from the 1930s until the 1950s. More than 16,000 died and many fatalities occurred during World War II when food was short.
When we arrived at the airport, we were met by one of Potanin’s black limousines that hustled us across a snowy tundra road whose outlines only the driver could see. Our hotel was a shamble of brickwork and amenities were similar to what many reporters are finding today in Sochi albeit no stray dogs. They’d be dead. Tracked bulldozers worked 24/7 keeping snow from piling up.
Rogov and I had trouble finding food. The hotel kitchen was closed and we slogged down the streets until we pounded on the door of a closed restaurant and convinced them to give us something to eat.
Next day we toured a copper smelter. Rogov had to keep his cameras next to his skin under his parka because the lenses would freeze. We had no hard hats, no respirators. At one point we had just moved several yards when a huge pocket poured molten copper just where he had been standing. That night, we had severe headaches from the fumes.
We also had more trouble finding food. Luckily, we saw a light at the hotel restaurant from a room in the back. There a Brit with a moustache and dressed in a double-breasted Navy blue blazer was selling time-shares to young Norilsk residents in such places as Crete and Majorca. “These people NEED this,” he said.
We needed it, too, but we ended up getting stuck in Norilsk by an ice storm (a real one, not the Richmond version). What was worse was that we were running out of money.
Anyway, we finally made it back to Moscow. One of my stories is here.
I have lost track of Potanin who managed to build up a nest egg worth $14.3 billion. Just last week, he gave a lot of it away to charity in advance of a divorce settlement from his wife Natalya. Last October, when he was in New York, he made headlines by buying a white truffle at a restaurant for $93,000.
The moral? Stop whining and get to work. White truffles await.