In two northern outposts, 'ice curtain' thaws

All is not yet smooth in Bering Strait relations. A pair of British adventurers trying to drive an amphibious vehicle – their Snowbird 6 – across the frozen strait cut their journey short last week after Russian border authorities threatened to arrest them. They were striving to be the first people to drive from the United States to Russia across the Bering Strait – but made it only half way through their 56-mile trip.

Now, after an era of post-Soviet collapse during which about half of Chukotka's roughly 140,000 residents fled, a new kind of leader has taken root.

Elected governor of Chukotka in December of 1999, Roman Abramovich is a young billionaire from Moscow. He has adopted the often-overlooked region, setting up a humanitarian organization and pouring much of his personal fortune into improving life in Chukotka.

"He has said he wants to make Chukotka the next Alaska," Ms. Steinacher says. "I think he's got the wisdom and the money."

Now Chukotka stores are stocked; the heating system has been renovated for the first time in 15 years; and new homes, hotels, and sports facilities have been built, according to Governor Abramovich's press secretary.

Tandy Wallack, owner of an Anchorage company that organizes tours to Native villages in Chukotka, still compares Provideniya – Chukotka's biggest city – to a "bombed-out Bosnia."

But on her most recent trip there, Ms. Wallack saw progress. "I see new pipes," she says, "and the old pipes are lying in the streets." That means repairs are underway, she says.

The Abramovich administration is also more open to the idea of an international park straddling the Bering Strait – an arrangement that would provide coordinated management to existing national parks and preserves on the Alaska side and to future Chukotka preserves.

Though the presidents of both the United States and Soviet Union endorsed the park idea in 1991, plans languished.

Even without a jointly maintained park system, environmental ties have expanded. The National Park Service now spends about $500,000 a year on roughly a dozen Bering Strait scientific and cultural exchanges. Projects include fungi research and educational exchanges to compare ivory-carving and skin-sewing techniques on either side of the strait, says Peter Richter, the Park Service's chief of Bering Strait projects.

George Ahmaogak, mayor of Alaska's oil-rich, mostly Inupiat Eskimo North Slope Borough, suggests Chukotka could become prosperous in the way that Alaska has.

"They could be a major force here to provide nonrenewable resources," said Mr. Ahmaogak during a break in an Anchorage whaling meeting, where Abramovich received a standing ovation.

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