Features of the formation of the Arctic tourism direction in Russia in the second half of the XIX – early XX centuries (on the example of the Kola North)

Bertosh Andrey Alexandrovich ORCID: 0009-0009-6307-3681 Postgraduate Student, Barents Centre of the Humanities, Federal Research Centre "Kola Science Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences" 184209, Russia, Murmansk region, Apatity, Fersman str., 14 bertosh.andrei@yandex.ru

Tourism in its modern sense, which implies travel outside the place of permanent residence, not pursuing the goals of education, research, performance of professional duties, receiving wages or other benefits, originated in the second half of the XIX century.^{[1; 2, p. 83]}. The emergence of this phenomenon was directly related to the processes of industrialization and modernization, accompanied by rapid technological progress of vehicles and the development of related infrastructure. The increase in transport accessibility has opened up the possibility of wider involvement of representatives of various strata of society, including people with low incomes, in tourist trips.

Another important factor that influenced the formation of mass tourism was the change in the principles of the organization of labor activity. The differentiation of work and rest time, the establishment of relatively long paid vacations and other similar trends that emerged in the last quarter of the XIX century. contributed to the active development of the tourism industry in different countries and regions of the world, which lasted until the outbreak of the First World War. During this period, the final semantic separation of tourist trips and other forms of travel takes place. The root features of tourism of the industrial era, which have persisted to the present time, have become comparative accessibility, mass character and commercialization ^[3]. These trends were also characteristic of the Arctic tourism direction, which originated in the same years. Tourist activity in the Arctic is significantly hampered by the remoteness and inaccessibility of territories, natural and climatic factors, seasonality and other features peculiar to this geographical area. Organized tourism in this region of the planet became possible only at a certain stage of technical development, which was achieved in the last decades of the XIX century.

The Kola North (a historically formed region covering the Kola Peninsula, parts of the mainland adjacent to it from the south and west, including the Sredny and Rybachy peninsulas, as well as islands located in the coastal zone of the Barents and White Seas; the territory of the Kola North corresponds to the modern Murmansk Region, the administrative status of the region and its borders have repeatedly changed), with more than high transport accessibility compared to most of the territories of the Russian Arctic, at the end of the XIX century. it became one of the main directions of Arctic tourism in the country. Its advantages were its relative proximity to the developed regions of Western and Central Russia, the convenience of transport links with the countries of Northern Europe, relatively mild climatic conditions for the Arctic, the presence of a permanent population in the coastal zone of the Barents and White Seas (historical settlements, Trifonov Pechengsky Monastery, an extensive network of fishing settlements on the coast).

When considering the history of the formation of Arctic tourism in the late XIX – early XX centuries, there is a problem of the limited source base, since during this period there was no clear semantic and organizational distinction between tourist trips and trips with other purposes. At the specified time, state and private structures did not keep official statistics on the number of tourists entering or leaving, there is also no specific information about the number of people traveling for tourist purposes in the total passenger traffic. In relation to a remote region with organic accessibility, such as the Kola North was at the turn of the century, the question of determining the main goals of its visit is relevant. Some information about the peculiarities of tourism organization in the Arctic territories is contained in travel notes, memoirs and other literary and journalistic works ^{[4, pp. 10-17]}. The authors of most of these works are people who have visited the region for official reasons, as well as for commercial or research purposes ^[5-12].

The visits of writers, journalists and representatives of other creative professions who came to the region not to solve specific tasks, but to form their own idea of it, had the greatest similarity with tourist trips ^[13-16]. The artists who created full-scale works here also had common features with some types of tourism in the Kola North ^[17]. It should be noted that such trips could have leisure activities among their goals, but it is impossible to fully attribute their participants to tourists. The description of the experience of such trips in diaries and publications makes it possible to analyze some of the features of visiting the Arctic during the period under review.

Publications specially prepared to assist travelers and tourists planning or carrying out Arctic trips are of considerable interest as sources. In 1896, the Ministry of Railways issued a guidebook "Our North", in which there were several chapters devoted to traveling to the Arctic Ocean ^[18]. The Partnership of the Arkhangelsk-Murmansk Express Shipping Company, which was engaged in the late XIX – early XX century in the direct provision of maritime communications in the Western Arctic, made efforts to popularize visits to this region, which resulted in the publication in 1898 of the "Guide to the North of Russia" ^[19]. A valuable source of this type is the yearbook "Satellite of Pomor", issued by the Society of Sailors of the Merchant Fleet of the Russian North (published in 1909-1914; since 1912 it was called "Satellite of Pomor on the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean").

The processes of formation of the Arctic tourism direction in Russia at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries had not previously become the object of special research. Some issues related to this topic were briefly touched upon in generalizing works, textbooks and articles on various aspects of the history of transport communications and the organization of tourist activities ^[20-21]; ^{[22, p. 55]}; ^{[23, p. 16, 71-72, 134-135]}; ^[24].

The level of transport accessibility of remote areas, which made it possible to form an Arctic tourism destination, was reached at the end of the XIX century. In the territories under consideration, tourist activity of that period was mainly provided by sea steamship transport, and railways, widely used for the needs of tourism in other regions, were much less involved. In Russia, by the beginning of the First World War, railway lines in the northern regions of the country reached only the coastal territories of the White Sea located on the southern border of the Arctic ^{[25, pp. 269-277]}.

The land routes connecting the Kola Region with other regions of Russia, at the specified time, were pedestrian and horse-drawn routes combined with the use of small vessels to move across reservoirs. The movement was simplified with the establishment of snow cover and the appearance of the possibility of using sledge tracks. These transport communications have existed for a long time, were well known and mastered. Arkhangelsk Governor A. P. Engelhardt, in his notes of 1897, reports that travelers "would always have guides and transportation facilities along rivers and lakes" ^{[11, p. 19]}, and in the "Guide to the North of Russia" it is noted that "this path has been traveled by many tourists, and even tourists" ^{[19, p. 87]}. However, it should be noted that such routes could not be involved in mass tourist activities due to the difficulty of ensuring their regular use, the extremely low level of infrastructure development, and also due to the lack of even basic elements of comfort. Trips to the Kola North for leisure purposes using land routes resembled some types of extreme tourism in their characteristics.

Descriptions of such a journey were left by the Russian writer and journalist V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, who visited the region in 1873: "Most of the way had to be done on foot, through the mountains and black forests, the rest by boat on rivers and lakes. Moreover, at every ten to fifteen versts of river navigation, it is necessary to get out of the shuttles and drag them by hand, skirting rapids and frequent waterfalls. During a pedestrian journey, it is often possible to cut into a dense thicket of spruce shoots only with an axe in hand. In the direct direction from Kola to Kandalaksha during it there was a good road lined with logs. Now its remains exist to give the tourist the right to the crown of martyrdom" ^{[13, p. 17-18]}. This situation persisted in the region until the First World War, and changed only after the construction of the Murmansk Railway ^{[26, pp. 570-590]}.

The main means of transport communication of the Kola North with Russian regions and foreign countries during this period were sea communications. The spread of steamship transport in the last decades of the XIX century became a condition for the beginning of the formation of a new direction of tourism – the Arctic. In 1870, the Partnership of the White Sea-Murmansk Express Shipping Company was founded – the first enterprise in the Northern Sea Basin of Russia, the purpose of which was to carry out cargo and passenger transportation on a regular basis ^{[27, pp. 29-30]}. The shipping company operated until 1875, but its activities could not give an impetus to the emergence of a full–fledged tourist industry, as it did not have the necessary features for this - regularity and accessibility to a wide consumer. V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko negatively characterized his experience of traveling on the steamship "Kachalov", owned by the Partnership. He names a number of shortcomings that he had to face during the trip – the difficulty in finding the office of the shipping company manager in Arkhangelsk, poor technical condition and low level of comfort of the vessel, as well as the postponement of departure dates without prior notice caused by a lack of personnel ^{[14, p. 4]}. He also noted other problems hindering the development of navigation on the northern outskirts of Russia – the lack of necessary maps ^{[14, p. 17-18]}, the lack of lighthouses and rescue stations ^{[14, p. 13]}.In 1875, the Partnership of the Arkhangelsk-Murmansk Express Shipping Company was established, which remained the main sea carrier in the region until 1917 ^{[26, pp. 317-320]}; ^{[28, pp. 8-9]}.

Thanks to its appearance, the formation of the Arctic tourism direction in Russia began. After overcoming organizational difficulties in the first years of its existence, the shipping company consolidated its position and began to systematically expand the scale of its activities. In the late XIX – early XX century . it carried out flights on several route lines in the Barents and White Seas ^{[25, pp. 261-266]}. Cargo and passenger steamers built in this period by order of the Partnership in Britain, having cabins of different classes, made it possible to provide an acceptable level of travel comfort for tourist activities ^{[27, pp. 55-59]}; ^{[28, pp. 10-11]}.

The company's priorities included the organization of transport links with coastal settlements, including those located in remote Arctic areas, and the delivery of goods to these settlements, as well as the transportation of goods for commercial purposes, transportation of government officials and people traveling to or from marine fisheries. Tourists and other passengers traveling on their own initiative provided the Partnership with additional income. The route lines of the shipping company in the Barents Sea were of great interest to those who wanted to visit the Arctic, since they most corresponded to the common ideas about traveling to the circumpolar regions of the planet. Such lines included the Pechora and Novozemelskaya, as well as the Murmansk, along which ships from Arkhangelsk went along the northern (Murmansk) coast of the Kola Peninsula to the Norwegian cities of Vadse and Varde ^{[19, pp. 108-110]}; ^{[25, pp. 264-265]}.The factors hindering the development of the tourism industry in the Arctic regions during this period were the lack of year-round functioning of sea communications, which had a seasonal character, a low level of port infrastructure along the routes of steamships, lagging behind the pace of development of the service and hospitality sectors from the available transport capabilities.

The directory "Our North" describes the situation in the city of Kola, which then had the status of a county center: "There are no cabs, no hotels, no restaurants in sight – there is no one to keep them. If by chance a tourist comes to Cola, then he will come in the summer and somehow take shelter in a private apartment, in winter no one will come here voluntarily" ^{[18, p. 290]}.

At the same time, the Russian Arctic has begun to become an attractive destination for tourism, in demand at the domestic and international levels. Contemporaries note visits to the Kola North by British, Austro-Hungarian, Swedish, Norwegian and other tourists ^{[10, p. 123-124]}; ^{[13, p. 60]}; ^{[14, p. 183, 327]}. Engelhardt A. P., in his notes about his trip in 1895, characterizes the situation of that era in the region as follows: "There was also a tourist on the steamer, some Austrian baron, who, being interested in the North, came to Arkhangelsk and, taking advantage of the opportunity, went to Murmansk ... Subsequently, this baron went to Novaya Zemlya, where he remained two months until the next steamer voyage. In general, foreigners have been diligently visiting our northern shores lately: in Kola we met a whole company of Englishmen, with an abyss of suitcases of various shapes and sizes; according to them, they came to Murmansk to hunt and fish; a Swedish lady, a Stockholm professor, also went to Novaya Zemlya, in addition to the baron and others" ^{[11, pp. 131-132]}.

Based on the publications of that time, it can be concluded that tourist interest in the Kola North began to form among foreigners, despite the nearby Norway, which was more developed in this regard. This situation has largely developed due to the relatively low cost of a visit to the region ^{[13, pp. 223-224]}. Some foreign tourists visited the territory of the region in transit, following further to the northeast to the Arctic, and many of those who went to the Kola land purposefully had nature-oriented leisure activities – hunting and fishing as their main goal. It can also be noted that this period was characterized not only by inbound, but also outbound tourism, for example, M. M. Prishvin in his travel notes notes that it was customary for the local population to spend their honeymoon in Norway ^{[15, p. 281]}.

The attention of the state and society towards the northern territories of Russia, which intensified in the last quarter of the XIX century, provoked the growth of tourist interest in them among the inhabitants of the country. Reference books and guidebooks designed to help in traveling in the North and the Arctic became a landmark phenomenon of this period. It seems that their publication was caused both by the real demand, and pursued the goal of popularizing this tourist destination and forming a steady interest in it. The compiler of the handbook "Our North" notes that under the impression of "grandiose enterprises promising broad economic development to our remote north, the public began to be interested in everything that relates to it – which prompted me to publish this guidebook" ^{[18, p. 1]}. The focus on popularizing tourist trips to these regions is more clearly seen in the "Guide to the North of Russia": "Our north ... is equally interesting for a scientist, traveler, naturalist, ethnographer, artist, simple tourist – lover of nature, hunter, worshipper and for an enterprising merchant ... a trip to Arkhangelsk and Arkhangelsk, as well as the Murmansk coast has become a quick, easy and comfortable walk" ^{[19, p. 1]}.

The publications issued with the aim of assisting in trips to the northern and Arctic regions of Russia contained recommendations regarding clothes and things necessary for such trips. They described possible ways of communication (pedestrian, horse-drawn, railway, river and sea), there was a timetable for trains and steamships with an indication of the cost of tickets, and also contained information about the existing infrastructure of the service, postal and telegraph institutions, hospitals and other significant facilities. This information made it possible to carry out practical preparations for visiting the Arctic.

When describing the Kola North, the compilers of reference books and travel guides focused on the attractiveness of landscapes and nature, often using colorful epithets and metaphors: "Beautiful Lapland, from the beginning to the end of the journey, [o] gives a nature lover moments of high delight and enjoyment" ^{[19, p. 88]}. Since a significant part of the routes were planned using sea communications, special attention was paid to the coastal zone of the White (Kandalaksha and Tersk coasts) and Barents (Murmansk coast) seas washing the Kola Peninsula. Such publications described in detail the flora and fauna of the region, the socio-economic situation, noted the details of the daily life of local residents, and also provided ethnographic data on the indigenous population (Sami) and Russian old-timers of the region (Pomors). In addition to describing natural and cultural features, potential tourists were informed about such phenomena characteristic of the Arctic zone as the aurora borealis, polar day and night ^{[18, p. 90]}.

Published from 1909 to 1914, the directory "Satellite of Pomor" was mainly focused on assistance in travel with applied purposes (household, commercial, commercial), but the information contained in it could also be used to organize tourist trips. Since 1911, the volume of information intended directly for tourists has been increasing in the directory, including a description of places and objects recommended for visiting ^[29].

Based on such publications, it is possible to get an idea of what could be of interest to travelers planning to visit the region. Churches and other historical monuments were often mentioned as noteworthy attractions. For example, the temples of the Nativity of John the Baptist and the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos in the village (now has the status of a city) of Kandalaksha ^{[19, p. 78]}, the wooden church of the beginning of the XVIII century in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in the village of Kovde ^{[18, p. 301]}, the stone church of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos, erected in the city of Kola in the early XIX century. ^{[18, p. 289]}; ^{[19, p. 88, 101]}, "Anikiev plate" on an island off the coast of the Kola Peninsula, on which for several centuries, starting from the XVI century, sailors from different countries left inscriptions ^{[19, p. 104-105]}, the place of death in 1554 of the expedition of the English navigator X. Willoughby in Varzin Bay ^{[19, p. 96]} and other objects.

Some places were highlighted as attractive to visit. The Pazretsky pogost (currently the Borisoglebsky settlement of the Pechengsky district), a historical Sami settlement on the border with Norway, which is the only territory belonging to Russia on the western bank of the Paz River, was attributed to such attractions ^{[18, pp. 321-324],[19, pp. 111-115]}. In this churchyard there was a shrine of the XVI century – a wooden church in the name of the holy Princes Boris and Gleb, according to legend, built by the Holy Monk Trifon Pechengsky. The Partnership of the Arkhangelsk-Murmansk Shipping Company even organized a hotel here, in which passengers of its ships could stay for several days for free ^{[19, p. 112]}; ^{[30, p. 224]}. The Holy Trinity Trifonov Pechenga Monastery was famous among pilgrims and tourists (its activity was resumed in 1886), at which a hotel also operated ^{[18, pp. 324-326],[19, pp. 105-108]}. At the beginning of the XX century, the Murmansk Biological Station ^{[31; 32, pp. 140-141]}, located in the city of Alexandrovsk (currently the city of Polyarny], was added to the number of sites recommended for visiting.

At the end of the XIX – beginning of the XX century. the formation and development of Arctic tourism in Russia took place. These processes had their own specifics related to the geographical location, climatic, historical and cultural characteristics of the territories. The development of the service and hospitality infrastructure, as well as land transport links, including railways, was slower than in other regions. However, the formation of sustainable maritime communications using steamships contributed to the emergence of the tourism industry in the Arctic.

Trips to the Kola North, along with trips to the Barents Sea and the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, have become the main directions of Arctic travel in Russia. On the territory of the region, the main trends characteristic of domestic tourism of the era under consideration were manifested. The situation in the region changed dramatically only with the outbreak of the First World War and the construction of the Murmansk Railway. The revolutionary events that followed led to the formation of the Soviet tourism industry based on completely different principles ^[33].