In the streets of Norilsk, the city beyond the polar circle, a polar bear could more than once be seen walking among people - freely, wearing no collar. Her name was Aika. In 1974, she lived in an ordinary three-bedroom apartment of film director Yuri Ledin, ate semolina porridge, opened the door to the balcony with her paw and generally considered humans as her extended family.
Yuri Ledin learned about ‘Aika’ from a TV program: She was born in the zoo of the city of Nikolaev, but her mother refused to feed her, so the 380-gram bear cub began to be nursed by the staff. The director had long cherished an idea of making a movie about the life of polar bears and persuaded the zoo management to let him take ‘Aika’ with him.
Until she was five months of age, she lived exclusively in his apartment, along with his wife Lyudmila and six-year-old daughter Veronica. ‘Aika’ was fed liquid semolina porridge and could eat up to 12 bottles of it a day (that’s right, Norilsk residents measure porridge by bottles!); later, fish and meat were added to it. Ledin would even take her for walks around the northern city.
The entire Ledin family then went and filmed a movie about the life of polar bears on Chump Island on the Franz Josef Land archipelago. The director wanted ‘Aika’ to make friends with her wild relatives and stay in the wild. However, during the six months of the expedition, ‘Aika’ never found a common language with any of the bears. As a result, she became the main character of Ledin's 1975 movie.
The Ledins returned to Norilsk with a grown-up, but still domesticated bear. She already weighed 300 kilograms and could no longer fit in the apartment. The Berlin Zoo came to the rescure and agreed to take her in. However, the separation was torture to her: as the zoo staff later shared, ‘Aika’ howled continuously for the first two days. In Berlin, she lived for only a year and died after falling off a cliff in her enclosure. Ledin blamed himself for her death, feeling that he had given her away too soon.
A sports complex in Norilsk and the monument to Aika next to it.
Alesya Khimich / Visit NorilskA sports complex in Norilsk is named in the memory of ‘Aika’ the bear. In 2020, a monument to the pet bear was unveiled next to it.
Yury Ledin's movie is titled 'Polar Bear' (1975).
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