RUSSIAN DIARY—II Minus 11 deg in Siberia

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33514, 20 April 1974, Page 11

RUSSIAN DIARY—II Minus 11 deg in Siberia

(By MERVYN CULL)

The temperature is minus 11 deg. Celsius when we arrive at Novosibirsk, that city of 1.3 m people that is the unofficial capital of Western Siberia.

Away across the aerodrome, four snowploughs moving in line abreast are clearing a runway. It is their constant task in winter, and they are reinforced by old aircraft jet engines that are hauled up and down the landing strips with their jets playing on to the surface simultaneously to melt and blow away the snow. Eleven degrees below freezing sounds cold, but for me in a sheepskin coat and fur hat it is pleasant. A watery sun is shining, and the air is clear and still — and so dry that, as I discover later the lips and mouths of the unac-

climatised need regular moistening or they may turn to paper.

By Siberian standards, of course, minus lldeg. is comparatively mild. In January the temperatures in Novosibirsk fall to minus 45 or 50deg. and in other parts of _ that 10m square kilometres of Soviet territory stretching from the Urals to the Pacific, the mercury drops to minus 70.

It is Sunday, and on the drive from the airport to the city we pass children careering down heaps of snow in their small sledges, or waiting impatiently for rides in horse-drawn sleighs the way New Zealand children queue for pony rides.

The snow stretches as far as the eye can see, its whiteness broken here and there by buildings or by coppices of fir and > silver birch. Occasionally we pass old log houses with lacework of icicles suspended

from their eaves to complement the ornamentation of their shutters. Our hotel is in Akademgorodok, that city of' science hewn from the Siberian wilderness in 16 or 17 years. It lies about 25 kilometres from Novosibirsk, and the snow is thick on the ground when we arrive. But like all the other hotels at which I have stayed on this visit to the Soviet Union, this one is centrally heated to a pleasant warmth.

Once inside, with our heavy outer clothing removed, we can gaze in comfort through the double-glazed windows at the soft, silent outer world, and feel rather remote from it, as scientists in a We visit a kindergarten whose gateway has had to be excavated from 18in of snow and ice to enable it to function, and we watch a happy class of warmlywrapped youngsters romping among the playthings in the garden. When we return to our hotel, a porter is chipping the ice from the entrance landing, uncovering steps whose existence we had never suspected, like some archaeologist digging up the secrets of a forgotten civilisation.