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 has 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 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 700 miles from 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.

Nearly as big as California, Kamchatka has fewer than 390,000 people and only 150 miles of paved road. It is much like Alaska in climate and terrain, and has a wealth of gold, oil and gas, as well as other mineral deposits.

With 28 active volcanoes, there is potential for geothermal power as well as abundant hot springs for tourists. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has designated five parks as the "Volcanoes of Kamchatka" World Heritage site.

Nine time zones from Moscow, the region is so far east that it is closer to Hollywood than to Red Square. But its culture, traditions and ways of doing business are distinctly Russian.

Russia's poorly functioning economy, however, provides little money to develop Kamchatka's natural assets. Towns such as Oktyabrsky 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 receives 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.

"Life is so terrible here we're going to die like dogs," says a 20-year Oktyabrsky resident who gives her name only as Yulia. "But before we die like dogs, we're going to eat the dogs we have."

Kamchatka's economy has gone so haywire that much of its record 1998 salmon harvest went to waste. On the Bolshaya River near Oktyabrsky, dozens of Soviet-style work brigades conducted the same kind of industrial fishing operation they had for decades: Men in small motorboats placed their nets in the river and pulled them tight with tractors on the beach, trapping tons of fish at a time. Using cranes, they hauled the salmon out of the river and loaded them onto trucks.

Later, workers sliced open the female fish and extracted the rich, red caviar. But local canneries, run-down and poorly managed, could not process most of the salmon. Trucks dumped an estimated 50,000 tons of salmon in fields to rot.

Under Communist rule, Kamchatka's main economic function was to supply the Soviet Union with fish.

"Of course, this had a very negative effect on the development of the region and was one of the major reasons the economy was oriented to fishing and nothing else," says Vladimir A. Biryukov, a former Communist Party functionary who has been Kamchatka's governor since 1991.

With the Soviet Union's collapse and Russia's continuing depression, Kamchatka has developed stronger trade ties with some of its Pacific neighbors than it has maintained with Moscow.

Half the vehicles on the road are right-hand-drive cars bought used in Japan. Food and consumer goods imported from the United States and other Pacific nations are available, if expensive. Wealthy Americans visit by cruise ship or fly in to catch trophy fish and hunt Kamchatka's huge brown bears.

Fishing -- legal or otherwise -- still dominates the region's economy. Illegal fishing in Russia's Far East is estimated to bring in as much as $5 billion a year, an amount equal to nearly one-fifth of Russia's annual budget. Kamchatka -- jutting out from the Russian mainland into one of the world's richest fisheries -- figures prominently in the illegal trade.

The biggest threat to the fishery comes from commercial ships that haul in fish without regard to legal limits in the three bodies of water that surround the peninsula: the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea.

Officials say Russian vessels working out of Kamchatka, Vladivostok and Sakhalin Island are depleting the region of crab, salmon and herring, among other species.

To avoid fishing limits, steep taxes and stifling bureaucracy, Russian ships commonly take their catch directly to Japan, where they can sell it at premium prices.

"A business that tries to operate legally and pay its taxes cannot afford to stay in business," says Vladimir N. Burkanov, head of the regional agency in charge of protecting fishing resources.

Russia's rich fishing grounds also lure ships from other nations to fish illegally. Some pirate companies send several vessels at a time to fish nonstop and a shuttle ship to meet up with them, take their haul and deliver it to port.

Officials are wrestling with how to shape the region's future and tap into its wealth of resources.

But harsh weather and a shortage of hotels make Kamchatka a tourist destination only for the wealthiest -- or hardiest -- travelers. Even at the height of the short summer tourist season, it is not unusual for restaurants in Petropavlovsk to close at dinner time because the city water supply has been shut off. To keep away cockroaches, one prominent hotel in the capital is known to spray pesticides in guests' rooms while they are out for the day.

For now, officials are investing little in tourist facilities and are trying instead to attract cruise-ship passengers, who have no need for hotels, and big-game hunters, who expect to camp out.

Oktyabrsky, 100 miles west of Petropavlovsk, is as grim a town as any in Russia. The main street -- a treeless dirt road -- is strewn with garbage and lined by half-empty apartment blocks. The street is rutted, and undernourished children entertain themselves by jumping onto the backs of trucks as they go by.

Along the beach, dozens of men put their trubas into the sea and wait for salmon to swim close to shore. On the best of days, one truba can bring in a ton of fish. In a constant game of cat-and-mouse, the men are ready to run at the first sign of the police, who frequently come to issue fines and cut their nets.

"Whether or not you call it poaching, we don't have a choice," unemployed crane operator Alexander Belashov, 31, says as he watches over his homemade fishing rig. "We depend entirely on the sea. If we get some fish, we know we're going to survive. If we don't, God knows what will happen."

Pub Date: 7/31/99