OKTYABRSKY, Russia — From the beach where Vladimir Belov stands, he can see a dozen ships trawling for salmon in the Sea of Okhotsk. An unemployed plumber, Belov can't afford a fishing license. In fact, he's never seen one. But that doesn't keep him from fishing for salmon too.
With a watchful eye for the police, the 39-year-old father of two sets out his homemade truba--a 20-foot pipe with a fishing net and floats attached--and waits for the only good luck his life is likely to offer.
In this desolate, Godforsaken town near the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East, the residents have little to live on but the fish they catch illegally. Local industry has collapsed. Crops refuse to grow in the sandy soil. Stores have closed, and commerce is nearly nonexistent.
"Life is all about poaching," Belov says. "What do you think life is like when you don't get paid at all? If someone gave us the money, we would be out of here in no time."
Perched on the Pacific Rim just 700 miles northeast of Japan, Kamchatka is a land of missed opportunity--a lush region of wilderness and lakes held back by seven decades of Communist dictatorship and seven years of capitalist greed.
Two-thirds the size of California, Kamchatka is connected to the mainland by an isthmus only 52 miles wide. Nine time zones from Moscow, the region is so far east that it is closer to Rodeo Drive than to Red Square. But its culture, traditions and ways of doing business are distinctly Russian.
Its natural assets make it one of the richest regions in the country, but Russia's poorly functioning economy provides little money to develop the resources. Towns such as Oktyabrsky, surrounded by a wealth of untapped resources, sit in poverty and squalor. The spectacular beauty of wild rivers and erupting volcanoes provides a backdrop for rampant lawlessness.
As in the rest of Russia, prices in Kamchatka have skyrocketed, salaries have plummeted and goods have become scarcer since last year's financial collapse and ruble devaluation. During the winter, residents in the capital, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, shivered in near-freezing apartments because there was not enough fuel to run the city's centralized heating plants. In recent weeks, each household has received electricity for only three hours every other day.
In Oktyabrsky, anyone who could manage it has moved away, leaving behind only the destitute and the desperate.
