October 2008. It didn’t matter much to the Russians that autumn on the mid-Oregon coast can be a chilly affair. The handful of delegates from Eugene’s Siberian sister city, Irkutsk, needed little encouragement to break from their formal agenda. They kicked off shoes, hiked up skirts and pant legs, and flirted with the numbing Pacific surf washing onto Heceta Beach.

Irkutsk’s isolation on the southeastern Siberian plains means that Irkutskians have to take a weeklong rail trip to the Port of Vladivostok if they’re craving communion with Pacific waters. Another factor might well have been that most delegates were very familiar with the Siberian custom of locating openings in the frozen surface of their beloved Lake Baikal for use as swimming holes by the bravest of souls.

In either case, it remains that the recent scene near Florence was reminiscent of a similar escapade involving a dozen Russians dancing in Oregon surf exactly 20 years ago. And that earlier scene marked a time when the first chapters in the Eugene-Irkutsk story were just being written.
 
Cold War connections

For perspective, it might be helpful to reflect on international affairs in the mid-1980s, the years when Gorbachev and Reagan were the respective political leaders of the USSR and the U.S. It was an era frostbitten by Cold War fears and renewed nuclear arms flexing by both great nations. Idealistic notions of grassroots Soviet-American citizen diplomacy faced stiff winds during those chilly years.

Enter Kate Gessert and a cluster of Eugene peace advocates intent on forging a culture-sharing bond with a city located somewhere in the Soviet Union. The group approached Sister Cities International for formal recognition, then settled on Irkutsk as their sibling of choice. In August 1988, the first official Eugene-Irkutsk Sister City delegation—a handful of Eugeneans, including mayor Brian Obie and a local TV news crew—made the two-day flight to Siberia. They were greeted on the Irkutsk Airport tarmac by a group of distinguished Soviet citizens with genuinely hospitable intentions.

Galina Groza, a retired Russian language teacher and current chairwoman of the Eugene-Irkutsk Sister City Committee, remembers just how challenging the early exchanges were to organize. “Everything was by telegrams and scratchy phone service,” recalls Groza. “It sometimes took three hours to get a call through.”

Still, perseverance paid off. A few months later, a delegation led by the Irkutsk mayor and a cadre of Communist Party bureaucrats and businessmen made the reverse journey to Eugene. And in the spirit of early Soviet glasnost, the official Eugene-Irkutsk sister city relationship was affirmed.

Paris on the Angara

Visitors to Irkutsk are quick to note that the city feels surprisingly European despite its remoteness and relatively close proximity to China. Irkutskians point out that the city’s 600,000 residents reflect a mix of Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, and other eastern European nationalities, alongside Chinese, Mongolians, and indigenous Siberian descendants like the Buryats.

Irkutsk is also a city interwoven with rivers. The Irkut, the Ushakovka, and the expansive Angara crosscut the urban landscape, offering up riverside promenades, port activity, scenic bridges, parkways, and varied industrial and recreational pursuits.

At the turn of the last century, Irkutsk got tagged “The Paris of Siberia,” owing to the introduction of electricity, construction of a Trans-Siberian railway station, and fervent establishment of educational institutions, museums, and classic performing arts venues. Indeed, today the tradition of high culture and technology are even more evident. And so, too, are reminders of Irkutsk’s colorful history.

Remember December

Irkutsk was founded by Russian nobles as a site for trading gold and collecting fur taxes from the Buryats. But if you ask an Irkutskian which historical events have most influenced the character of the Siberian capital since its settlement 350 years ago, you’ll most likely hear stories about the Decembrists.

In the early 19th century, dozens of Russian artists, officers, and intellectuals were exiled to Siberia for their part in the Decembrist revolt against Tsar Nicholas I. Over several decades, the exiles molded a center of intellectual and social life for themselves. Much of the city’s heritage stems from those cultural influences. Many of the Decembrists’ log houses, adorned with hand-carved decorations, survive as landmarks in stark contrast to the massive government buildings and Soviet apartment blocks that surround them. The Decembrists imbued Irkutsk with a sensibility that remains integral to the sophisticated spirit of the city.
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Student ambassadors

Eugene and Irkutsk residents take great pride in their investment in quality education. Over the years, sister city connections have generated nearly a dozen student exchange programs. Most of the earliest exchanges involved students, because students offered advantages for the fledgling sister cities relationship. “Building a sister city program involves many small steps: When you have students,” advises Groza, “you have parents. When you have parents, you have relatives and friends.”

Several intriguing sister city student exchanges now dwell in the realm of “distance learning.” UO educational technology specialist Tom Layton has forged ties to the Irkutsk mayor’s office and Irkutsk State Linguistic University that meld computer-based instruction with language studies and Internet communications. The distance learning programs are opening exciting collaborative education platforms in both cities.

An amazing pearl

If Decembrist culture speaks to the intellectual spirit of Irkutsk, Lake Baikal, on the outskirts of the city, speaks to the Siberian soul. Baikal is often labeled “The Pearl of Siberia.”

It is the deepest—some also say, clearest—lake on earth, reaching down nearly 4,000 feet toward the earth’s core. It holds 23 percent of the world’s fresh water supply. The Baikal environment also boasts more than 3,500 species and subspecies of aquatic fauna and plants, of which 1,700 are unique to our planet. Scientists have suggested that Baikal may be the oldest lake on earth.

When Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey visited Irkutsk in 1999, he quickly discovered the Russian propensity for mixing diplomacy, hospitality, and frequent vodka toasts. Fearful of breaching decorum by refusing the national drink, Torrey convinced his hosts that he’d be better served by drinking the much-heralded water of Baikal. No fear! Impressed Irkutsk hosts responded by chopping an ice chunk from the center of the lake in order to gather sufficient buckets of the celebrated liquid to last Torrey the remainder of his stay.

Forest voices

Virgin taiga forests of cedar, pine, and spruce surround Irkutsk and Baikal. Since the fall of Soviet communism in 1991, taiga logging has become a vital interest to businesses and environmentalist groups alike. And much like in Oregon, the past decade has seen forestry practices and the future of native woodlands leapfrog high onto the public policy agenda.

Yuri Pantioukhin, a Russian businessman, moved to Eugene 14 years ago because he knew two particular facts: Eugene is surrounded by forestlands, and Eugene and Irkutsk are sister cities. The twin facts were important because Pantioukhin had been approached by a Russian entrepreneur seeking certain American-made logging machines for use in the Siberian taiga. Today, Pantioukhin is the owner of Forest Machines Wood Products, a local industrial forestry business doing considerable trade across Oregon and Siberia. In recent years, he has coordinated Siberian art shows in Oregon and an Irkutsk youth basketball team visit to Eugene.

Of course, where there are loggers, there are usually environmentalists.

For many Siberian environmentalists, Eugene has a reputation as a locus for scientific and strategic research vital to protecting Siberian natural resources. The issues are many: taiga management and preservation, species protection, industrial pollution, dam construction, pipeline ecology, and destructive mining practices. Since the early ’90s, the annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at UO has brought together leading environmentalists from Eugene, Irkutsk, and beyond to promote collaboration on Siberian eco-issues.

Rotarian business

Local businessman John Altucker has visited Irkutsk a dozen times in the last two decades. Back in 1989, Altucker was partnered up with a young civil engineer in the first Irkutsk delegation; he toured the engineer around Eugene and Springfield to study local building construction. That young engineer is now the mayor of Irkutsk.

Altucker’s fascination with citizen diplomacy quickly dovetailed with his membership in the Eugene Rotary Club. In short, local Rotarians successfully lobbied for the establishment of the second-ever Rotary Club in the Soviet Union. According to Altucker, the Irkutsk Rotary is still flourishing today, and its footprints led to 40 other service-oriented Rotary Clubs across Siberia.

Celebrating the arts

A variety of theater, dance, music, and fine arts programs have been generated under the canopy of sister cities exchanges. For example, the UO School of Music once brought a 30-member a cappella choir from Irkutsk to perform during the Bach Festival. Afterwards, Eugeneans proceeded to form the Oregon Slavonic Choir, giving voice to Russian music with recitals here and in Siberia.

Other arts exchanges have included performances by renowned Irkutsk stage actors, museum shows, photo and painting exhibitions, and folk and classical music concerts.

Embracing humanity

In 1997, a Russian transport plane with a full load of fuel crashed into a residential neighborhood in Irkutsk. The disaster wreaked havoc on the city. In response, a team of medical professionals from Eugene mobilized under the umbrella of Northwest Medical Teams to provide on-site disaster relief. Other medical collaborations have featured exchanges between local pediatricians and natal care experts from Sacred Heart Medical Group, and some of Russia’s preeminent maternal-infant care specialists.

Eugene’s main library has drawn the admiration of many Irkutsk delegation members. Plans are in motion for building an Irkustsk library that Irkutsk’s civic leaders hope to model after Eugene’s downtown facility.

An unofficial toast

Regardless of whether you tend to look back through the past or peer into the future, there are ample reasons to applaud the many connections linking Eugene and Irkutsk.

“Relationships have been built and kept and nurtured over time,” says Mayor Kitty Piercy, regarding the sister cities. “They play a very important function in the world in terms of human relationships and, frankly, peace and good international exchanges. I think the answers to some of the difficulties we face in the world are found in those one-by-one relationships we have with each other across the world.”

So fill your glass with vodka—or lake water—then raise it in a toast to citizen diplomacy and the success of Eugene-Irkutsk sister city relations.

As the traditional Russians toast goes: На здоровье! (Na zdorovie!)


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