Thursday, December 3, 1998

The ruble's collapse in August plunged the North into its barest winter of the post-Soviet era by disrupting the huge task of delivering supplies during the summer.
      Before the ruble could recover, the traditional delivery routes--the Arctic coast and Siberia's northward-flowing rivers--had turned to ice. Officials say hundreds of settlements are still waiting for sustenance to arrive overland--a far costlier undertaking that Russia can scarcely afford.
      Many workers doubt they'll ever see their money. A rumor is sweeping the village: The authorities will cut off fuel, declare a winter emergency and airlift everyone out with a one-suitcase limit.
      "It's like a prison camp without the barbed wire," said Alla Perevedentsev, a teacher.
      The village shut down its school, kindergarten, music institute, post office and library. Instead of planting a year's worth of greenhouse potatoes and vegetables, many settlers were busy packing and shipping out their belongings.
      In mid-November, the temperature in Nezhdaninskoye hit 40 degrees below zero. It takes enormous effort to haul firewood and well water in this climate, and there's little food in return.
      One of its three boiler houses is shut, so 112 of the 412 households have no communal heat or running water. The other homes have water, but there's barely enough coal to keep it moving through the pipes without freezing; their radiators offer no warmth.
      With little choice, the doomed village is fighting for its life. The school has reopened--six weeks late--thanks to the principal's pleas to regional authorities to rehire 15 teachers. The parents are working to install a wood-burning stove in each classroom.
      Children wearing overcoats cough through the school day in unheated classrooms. Two-thirds of them are ill or malnourished, the nurses say. The village doctor shut the hospital and moved away in November, leaving an expectant mother, a woman with acute gastritis and 57 disabled miners in need of care.