SPRING 2010  

•  SISTER CITY DELEGATION TO VISIT ARCHANGEL

A three person Sister City Education/Government/Environmental Delegation will travel to the Archangel Region during the period of June 17 to 30, 2010. The delegation will be led by Committee member Ed Suslovic (a former Mayor of Portland) who will be making his 3rd trip to our Sister City. Also on the trip will be the City of Portland Director of Environmental Services Troy Moon and Portland High School Global Studies Director Sarah Shmitt. This trip was originally scheduled for April 2010 but was postponed until June 2010 due to air traffic disruptions caused by the Iceland volcano's ash cloud over Europe.

This delegation will be on what is called a "reciprocal trip" directly resulting from the successful Open World Delegation that visited Maine in December 2009. That December delegation focused on local government, citizen involvement in public policy, education and environmental issues; that delegation included Archangel School Number 6 Principal Vladimir Utkin and Archangel City Legal Department Deputy Directors Andrei Markov and Kirill Vitkov. The members of the December 2009 delegation and the 3 three members of the planned June 2010 delegation met extensively in Portland and agreed to implement a sustainable education partnership between the two City Governments and the two City School Departments, focusing on environmental issue and citizen participation in public policy. The key event in December 2009 was a meeting the delegates attended that involved a local collaborative effort to reduce solid waste in Portland schools; the Open World facilitator, Victoria Podolyskaya, described the event:

The delegates attended an environmental public/private collaborative roundtable at Portland Public Services Department. Parents of schoolchildren had noticed that there is a lot of meal wastes in the school after lunch and they decided to unite and find possibilities how to manage these wastes. Parents involved into this process students and teachers and officials from Public Services Department of Portland city administration. In this meeting, the delegates found out how important active public involvement can be and later the delegates discussed if it were possible to do the same in Russia or not. This meeting changed their attitude to the role of common people in the local community and NGO's in the public life.

The goal in June 2010 will be to start a similar process with the citizens, the City of Archangel and with School Number 6. Future exchanges of leaders and students are hoped for. Other plans for June 2010 may include visits to the Archangel trash, energy, water and sanitation facilities plus environmental roundtables with professors and students at Pomor State University and Archangel State Technical University. In addition, the delegation will meet with members of the recently created Alumni Association of America Exchange Programs (Open World, USAID and private). Cultural activities will include a pleasant visit to the Malye Kareli Museum of Wooden Architecture and participation in the official City Day Program on June 27, 2010.

• MAINE DOT DELEGATION TO VISIT ARCHANGEL

This year marks the loth Anniversary of the signing of the official cooperation agreement between the Archangel and Maine Departments of Transportation. This productive program is sponsored by the Office of International Programs at the Federal Highway Administration in Washington DC. Heading to Archangel for the period of July 16 to 24, 2010 will be David Cole, the Commissioner of the Maine Department of Transportation, and David Bernhardt, the Maine Department of Transportation Director of Engineering and Operations.
 

• LEGAL DELEGATION PLANS SUMMER VISIT TO MAINE AND NEW HAMPSHIRE

Plans are being finalized to bring a USAID sponsored legal delegation from Archangel to Maine and New Hampshire this coming summer, possibly during July 17 to 25, 2010. The focus will be on commercial law, bench/bar relations, court administration and citizen access to court information.

• HAITI

Special thanks to those committee members who joined our Archangel Committee in donating money to earthquake relief operations in one of Portland's other Sister Cities: Cap-Haiten on the north coast of Haiti. Send a check payable to "Konbit Sante" to: Konbit Sante, P.O. Box 11281, Portland, Maine 04104. Please write "Earthquake Response Fund" on the check's memo line.

• ARCHANGEL ORPHANS

A non-profit organization in Ohio is providing significant help to orphans and orphanages in the Archangel Region. The address is Friends of Russian Orphans, 7557 Wind River Drive, Sylvania OH 4356o. Please join our Archangel Committee in making a donation. Check out their website: www.fororphans.org

• NEWS/NOTES FROM THE ARCHANGEL REGION

The City of Archangel has recently adopted an Official City Flag and an Official City Anthem ***Solovki has elected a new Mayor, Mikhail Lopatkin, to replace our friend Dmitri Lugovoy who has moved to Karelia*** The City annually celebrates the Day of its Patron Saint, the High Archangel Michael, on November 20th ***Archangel long-distance skater Alexander Rumyantsev recently competed in the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

• ARCHANGEL NAMED CITY OF MILITARY GLORY

On January 12, 2010 in Catherine Hall at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev presented Mayor Pavlenko with a Proclamation which declared Archangel an official "City of Military Glory". The Proclamation noted that during the Great Patriotic War, the City of Archangel gallantly supported the Russian White Sea Fleet and bravely received Allied convoys with valuable military cargoes for the front.

• UPCOMING EVENTS

• GREATER PORTLAND, MAINE AND RUSSIA'S VICTORY DAY

May 9th, was the 65th anniversary of Victory Day in Russia. Victory Day is the day on which we Russians remember May 9, 1945, the end of World War II or the Great Patriotic War as we Russians call it. Greater Portland, Maine played a role in making it possible for Russia to celebrate this day.

World War II was horrible for the Soviet Union. My country lost 27,000,000 people fighting Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union almost didn't survive the initial onslaught of the Nazi war machine. German armies quickly reached the gates of Moscow and they had my hometown of St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad) cut off and surrounded in what has been called the most lethal siege in world history. It caused the greatest loss of life ever known in a modern city. The population of Leningrad at the beginning of the siege was 2,500,000 and close to 1,000,000 people died during it -- far more than in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

The Soviet Union in 1941 was hanging on for dear life and could easily have been conquered. But at that critical moment America sent us desperately needed military equipment and supplies which enabled us to barely survive those early devastating punches from Hitler. By surviving we lived to later fight into and defeat Germany just as the United States and the Allies were doing from the West.

These vital supplies would never have reached Russia but for the incredible Liberty Ships built here in Maine and elsewhere. They sailed in what was called the Arctic Campaign, or the Murmansk Run. It was the lifeline that helped save Russia. They carried desperately needed aircraft, trucks, locomotives, explosives, machine guns, ammunition, and other indispensable supplies to the the Soviet ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk where they were distributed along the Eastern Front. They made a major difference in turning the Nazi tide. Two hundred thirty-six of those Liberty Ships were built right here in the shipyards of South Portland. Russia might very well not have made it without the sacrifice of countless American men and women who built these Liberty Ships, combined with the valor of American mariners who sailed them across the Atlantic and the Arctic seas in severe weather conditions and under relentless German submarine attacks.

Close to a hundred merchant and navy vessels were lost during this campaign. Thousands of merchant marine men died on those Arctic convoys. The "loss rate" of men in the Merchant Marine during World War II was higher than in any other branch of the U.S. Armed forces. But this courageous sacrifice by American, British, and Allied seamen in support of Russia's fierce resistance against Nazi Germany was absolutely essential for the eventual victory.

Portland is now my home and soon I will become an American citizen. And soon we Mainers will celebrate Memorial Day in Monument Square in Portland and all over the State. So I would like to say to the citizens of my new home of Portland and of the State of Maine, please know that each year on Victory Day Russians remember The Great Patriotic War and we also remember and honor the thousands of American shipbuilders along with the merchant marine and navy sailors who during Russia's darkest hour gave their lives delivering vital military supplies and equipment to Russia that enabled it to survive and help win World War II.

Natalya Fedorova MacWilliams Portland, Maine

 

About the Writer
Natalya was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, the daughter of two medical doctors. Half way through her studies at St. Petersburg State University she received a full scholarship from Marymount Manhattan College in New York City to continue her studies there. Upon graduation she joined the management consulting side of PricewaterhouseCoopers where she dealt directly with corporate clients. She later obtained her MBA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, after which she joined the investment banking division of JPMorgan on Wall Street. After seven years in business she was married in 2004. Three years ago Natalya and her husband moved to Portland from New York City as part of her plan to begin a writing career after a successful Wall Street career in investment banking. She currently writes short stories that draw on her memories and experiences growing up in Russia and then coming to America at the age of nineteen. Among other things about Russia, she is presently collecting information about her maternal grandmother who witnessed so much of the devastating history of the Soviet Union under the communist regime. Natalya is particularly interested in generational family histories and is seriously considering researching and writing in-depth family histories on commission.
 

Send e-mail to webmaster with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2001-2010 The Archangel Committee
Last modified: July 25, 2010