Fish in Russia helped people not only to be fed well but often rescued people from starvation. During hard post-revolutionary time and Civil war fish, to be exact vobla, rescued people and revolution. Herring, then cod, hake and so on helped people in the Great Patriotic War. It seems that today the power beats fishermen because they rescued revolution and people from extinction.
It is difficult to understand logic of the heads of the country beginning from the late period of the Soviet power till present time. It was Gorbachev together with Shevardnadze who gave the Americans huge areas of our shelf, having deprived fishermen of trade sites. It was possible to get 150–200 thousand tons of pollock there annually. For 22 years from the moment of that treachery minimum losses made about 3,3 million tons of fish worth over 2 billion dollars.
We will have to feel losses from recent division of the Barents Sea. The main thing is that it can seriously strike on fishers of Murmansk. Now market mechanism more or less works there. According to experts, level of poaching and concealment of a take is the lowest in the northern pool. The main problem – division of the Barents Sea with Norway. Someone convinced the former president, nowadays Prime Minister D. Medvedev that such "gift" to Norway is favorable to Russia or perhaps he got a point himself. History is silent on this matter.
Yes, it all looks good on papers of Ministry of the Interior. Under the contract with Norway Russia got 800 thousand sq.km of the Barents Sea, while Norwegians got only 500 thousand sq.km. At that Norway received all western trade areas of the sea where domestic fishermen received the main catch. We still had east part, so-called "ice bag" where there’s little fish or no fish at all. It is easy to understand what fishermen think about it.
Probably both in the government and in Ministry of the Interior knew about negative reaction of fishermen. Therefore no one was invited to participate in the ceremony of signing of the contract in Murmansk. Nevertheless reaction of fishermen followed. It was rather rigid and witty. For delivery of a half of the Barents Sea the former president deserved very long but loud and speaking title – Medvedev-Halfbarents.
They say that having agreed on signing of such agreement, Dmitry Anatolyevich wanted to make diplomatic break on "the northern front" and to leave own trace in the history. As a result he left tracked up worse than Gorbachev. The contract literally clones agreement of Shevardnadze-Baker under which Russia lost huge pieces of the Bering and Chukchee seas in 1990.
Signing of the contract was preceded by the promise of the Norwegian party to help Russia in development of the Stockman gas deposit. D. Medvedev got on that hook. While right after division of the sea Norway, as they say, shoved off. Proud Vikings declared that it is better to wait. Say, gas price falls, there are no necessary technologies. Gas prices were always fluctuating, there’s nothing new in it. Actually after division of the sea the project ceased to be interesting to Oslo. Norway solved its problem, while the Russians should kick off with Stockman themselves. Thus "the Kremlin dreamers" were left high and dry, while fishermen and the country lost fish. The main thing is that nobody was punished for such lawlessness, for treachery of the national interests. Let's hope that it’s for a while.
