By Sibyl Diver
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russian Far East, May 2006
A well-manicured woman and a smug young man, both dressed in black, called me into the room. “Please sign these papers, acknowledging that you have broken Russian law,” the woman ordered me. Thus began the Bering Sea Forum’s recent encounter with the Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB), formerly known as the KGB.
This May, Pacific Environment hosted the third annual International Bering Sea Forum working meeting in Kamchatka, Russia. The event gathered twenty-one Alaskan and Russian community leaders and experts to discuss current strategies for sustainable management of the Bering Sea Ecoregion.
The meeting began with productive discussions of community-based fisheries, shipping safety needs, and climate change impacts. During a break, our Russian secretariat Tatyana announced that we had unexpected visitors from Immigration Services. She needed passports for all non-Russian participants.
I was the first person called in for an interview, and the immigration officer’s accusation of breaking the law was a jarring contrast to our earlier conversations of international collaboration across the Bering Sea. I felt a tinge of worry. On the other hand, this interview provided me with a new opportunity, as I had never had a run in with the law before.
I first attempted a rational approach. “Perhaps you could explain the problem in more detail,” I suggested politely. The explanation unfolded that even though we had received FSB permission to visit the conference center during the day, we were not allowed to spend the night at the facility. I was familiar with the Russian laws, requiring foreigners to register their visa within three days of arriving in a new location, but this was puzzling.
Our delegation had arrived in the main city Petropavolovsk-Kamchatksky, properly registered our visas at a downtown hotel, and then traveled to our conference center the next day, an hour outside of town. We had spent only one evening at the center, I explained, and should be fine with our registration. “Yes, yes,” replied the young man with a jaunty smile, “If you had come directly to the conference center on Friday, stayed through the weekend, then registered your visas on Tuesday, there would be no problem. But since you already registered at the downtown hotel, you are required to stay there. Plus, this conference center is not authorized to register foreigners.”
I raised my eyebrows, and was interrupted by a knock at the door. “Am I needed?” asked our director, David Gordon. I nodded my head vigorously. David quickly sized up the situation and launched into a bout of impressive diplomacy. “We had no intention of violating any laws and would like to do anything in our power to correct the situation.” He further explained. “We were simply following the same procedure from two years ago, and didn’t experience any problems at that time.” The authorities expressed no sympathy for our situation.
David then pulled out all the stops: Could we be given a warning? Did they have a copy of the law we are violating? Could we speak with a lawyer? What if we didn’t sign? (That one really got to them.) Meanwhile, Tatyana contacted all the local government offices to grant us a reprieve. Still, nothing worked. In the end, we all signed the statements, adding in our own words an explanation that we did not intend to violate the law, nor believe we did so. We paid a cash fine of 1000 rubles ($40 USD) each. And our North American conference participants took the one-hour bus ride to the downtown hotel each evening.
What had prompted this harassment? Afterwards, locals told us that the fellow who introduced himself only as “Viktor Viktorovich” was actually FSB. So does that mean the incident was political, perhaps a return to Soviet times? Russia’s new law on NGOs certainly has us wondering and demonstrates that Russia’s anti-foreigner sentiments are alive and well.
The day after our interrrog…, I mean interviews, we heard a new rumor. Allegedly, jealous competitors from a nearby resort had called in a favor with the authorities, begrudging that we had passed over their (expensive) hosting package. Perhaps the Soviet system is not to blame, but instead, we had been trapped by the new Russian capitalism or “wild market”?
Despite this slight distraction, we became engrossed in our meetings before we knew it. We listened to species reports on the status of Bering Sea fisheries and marine mammals. We debated conservation priorities and how we could work together to achieve our goals. We talked through sensitive topics such as the divide between indigenous and environmental communities on issues including polar bear conservation. Somehow, hard-nosed scientists, traditional indigenous leaders, talented Moscow policy diplomats, radical environmental activists, and concerned commercial fishermen all managed to find common ground around the Bering Sea.
At the end of our time, one thing was clear—the Bering Sea Forum has something that the FSB does not: a sense of trust and dialogue among very different stakeholders. Our experience underlined the need for such platforms for international collaboration and further exchanges between Russia and the U.S. The Bering Sea Forum will continue to blaze this trail. Viktor Viktorovich and his colleagues from the immigration services would do well to take note.
Posted by Evan Sparling
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Another shining star of the Russian conservation movement who passed away in late November is Boris Konstantinovich Shibnev, at the amazing age of 89. Boris Konstantinovich led an incredible life, having been born just a year after the Russian Revolution. He had read the works of Arseniev (the Russian analogue of John Muir) who wrote about his travels through the amazing nature of the Russian Far East (for those interested in his work, I recommend the Akira Kurosawa film “Dersu Uzala”). After being demobilized from the Russian Navy in 1939, Boris Konstantinovich moved to the Bikin River watershed in northern Primorsky Region. 
