Evgenia Arbugaeva's best photograph: an Arctic childhood

‘Tanya put on her favourite dress, wandered to the sea, and a dog started following her. There are lots of strays in Tiksi – people left their pets during the mass exodus’

When the Soviet Union fell, thousands of people left small Russian Arctic towns such as Tiksi, where this photo was taken. It was my home town and I spent the first eight years of my life there, but it stopped receiving financial support and fell into neglect. In 1993, my family became part of the mass exodus.

Tiksi was built on the coast of the Arctic Ocean as an outpost on the northern sea route, a port town and a military base during the cold war. When I was growing up, there was a whole secret part of town that even had its own schools where nobody was allowed to go. Tiksi was also really important in the history of Russian Arctic exploration – it’s where the icebreakers set off from. But today it’s struggling.

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