Siberian Mink: Luxury or Reform Staple?

BOLSHAYA RECHKA, Russia -- In the 25 years since the Soviet Union opened a mink farm in this remote Siberian village on the banks of the


Angara River, output has scarcely altered, up or down, from 100, 000 pelts per year.


But these days, that is about all that is unchanged. While hardly a model of reform with its reluctant director and bloated inefficient staff, the ways in which this state farm has been dragged into the market economy show bow the painful economic reform of 1992 has succeeded in reaching a village as isolated as tiny Bolshaya Rechka. It also shows how far the reforms have yet to go.


The farm, located 15 kilometers from southern Lake Baikal along the road from Irkutsk, looks like an army base with its row upon row of barracks-like mink cages.


As with most state enterprises nobody ever bothered to name it. Instead, it is called simply the Bolshaya Rechka sovkhoz, or state farm.


Last year, in a dispute over profits, the farm's director began refusing to sell any pelts to the state, taking responsibility for both the profits and losses of his operation. In effect, he commandeered the farm for his workers.


"The state was taking 50 percent of the profit, dictating to us, but sending us nothing in return", said Yury Guryev, head of technology for the farm, in an interview in his office overlooking the barns, which presently house some 20, 000 mink.


Today, the farm does not fit into any categories. Technically, it is a state enterprise, yet the state neither controls production, shares in the profits or covers expenses. Next month, by registering as a closed joint-stock society, the farm plans to make official what is already the de facto situation.


"The state never said anything", said Guryev. "Now we are free to do whatever we want".


When the farm stopped selling its pelts to the state it was forced to begin setting up private relationships with plants that turn the fur into coats and hats.


In this way, direct trade routes were set up that circumvent the Moscow bureaucracy.


For reformers who must answer charges that shock therapy has succeeded only in tearing down the old system without building up something to replace it, such examples are powerful.


But Guryev, who prefers the old command system, is far from happy about the changes he has been forced to expect. He estimates that 200 of the farm's 300 workers will have to be laid off before he can turn a profit. It is a step he is, as yet, unwilling to take.


"In the old days it was simple", said Guryev, who is planning to study English so that he can do business abroad. "We had our state plan and, if we made it, then we got our salaries".


Guryev is the first to admit that this is a relatively straightforward business: A baby mink presently traded for 3, 000 rubles is raised to adulthood and then sold for about 25, 000 rubles. Guryev said that expenses are impossible to estimate because of inflation.


Though such farms are under attack in the West for their inhumanity to the animal, residents of Bolshaya Rechka say the farm is simply practicing a trade as old as ancient Rus itself. More than 12 million animals were killed for skins in Russian state and collective farms in 1991, including 10. 5 million minks.


"Fur is not a luxury in Siberia", said Leonid Maruchuk, a farm employee who has lived in the village for 10 years. "It is a necessity. Fur will always be needed".


The farm is certainly an essential part of Bolshaya Rechka, employing every fifth person among the village's 1, 500 residents. It blends into the town, which could be practically any northern Russian village with its wood-latticed homes, picket fences and roof-high snow drifts.


The minks, naturally, do not live quite as welf. Each occupies a one-square-meter cage that he may never leave during his entire life.


"I know what the Greens say", said Guryev. "But people want fur. This is a business. That is all it is".