Alitet goes to the Hills [antikvár]

FOREWORD i first visited the Chukoisk Peninsula in 1924 as a metnber of a government expedition for tlae liquidation of a foreign concession, which later figured in my novel Alilet Goes to the Hills under the name of "North Company." My knovvledge of this remote and rugged country, gleaned irom ethnographical literature by Russian explorers at a time v-hen I was. still a student of the Moscow University, was very scanty and fragmentary. Here, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, a vast new land with extraordinary natural features was revealed to me, a native of the temperate zone of Central Russia. The striking peculiarities of this northern country, its vast sweeping expanses captivated me from the very start, and my life has been linked up with the Soviet Arctic districts ever since. The chief interests of this country lay in its people. The cold shores of the Arctic Ocean were sparsely populated by trappers and hunters of sea beasts who led a primitive mode of life. They dressed in the skins of ani.mals and lived in dwellings that only remotely resem.bled the habitations of human beings. They led a miserable existence. Yet, for all that, these people preserved excellent moral qualities. The longer I lived among them the better I got to know their amazing honesty, kindness and hospitality. Here, too, lived so-called representatives of civilization—avaricious wolfish hucksters of diverse nationalities, for the most part Americans. All these white men, in whose veins ran black blood, cruelly exploited the honest and trustful hunters. The Chukchi, reduced to a state of dire poverty, were dying out, like the numerous Indian tribes in America, subjugated by the enterprising civilizers. The country had no schools, no medical services. We did not meet a single man along the coast who could read or write. The people were steeped in superstitions and ignorance. 9