Dmitry Kravchenko:

"The fortune gets the seserving"

by Евгений Ткач
He doesn’t treat tourists that much due to the fact that they do nothing but consume, creating nothing. His hard handclasp brings down to earth. He smokes a pipe and swears tough, sings the songs of the Spanish communists and treats himself as an adventurer, hates Novaya Zemlya though he has been there for 10 times. We can endlessly speak about this legendary personality, but it’s high time to introduce him: meet the well-known Russian traveler Dmitry Fedorovich Kravchenko. Despite his early seventies Dick, as friends call him, gives a head start to the young and an interview to Face Gallery readers, in which he shares his stories about his expeditions, buried treasures and many other things. Just follow us.

- Do you have any fears in your journeys, everything may happen, right?

— If I had never been afraid, I would have been eaten by a cod a long ago. Fear is an integral feeling of mine: I am afraid when I am sleeping, I am afraid when I am awake, as well as I am standing at the wheel or as I am in charge of the whole of the expedition. Bombard crossed the Atlantics in a rubber boat without having anything to eat. Still he survived and demonstrated to everybody the capacities of a human being. Let’s look, why people most often dye? The answer is neither hunger, nor thirst, the answer is fear. Once he could do that, other people also can. It’s all about a man’s itch for life. Once in one of the episodes of “Obvious- improbable” we were speculating on what it could be that attracted people to our expeditions that much. It’s not about money, neither it is about fame as it would be quite a tough thing to share fame among twelve people. Moreover we are being chased by a constant fear in the whole course of our journey. Then I was asked why we did that if we were that much afraid. Next day when I was ready to come up to “Ostankino” to proceed with the reels I noticed a book stall nearby. I came up and took some book just at random – it turned out to be “Proverbs and sayings”. Then I opened the book again at random and read the first line that crossed my eyes: “As the night owl starts to hoot you’d better gather yourself up and get afraid, as fear teaches experience”. If I were able to structuralize this thought as succinct as this I would become really happy, as this is the very truth.

- Could you tell us about your colleagues’ attitude towards what you do?

— I am often called an adventurer behind my back, I for one even more often talk about it into people’s face. I am a real adventurer, the thing is that the word in itself has been strongly degraded within the last century. Now it sounds synonymous to a swindler. An adventurer stands for a person that goes ahead, any such person takes a responsibility, always stakes something. Another question is if he has got the right to stake other people’s lives? And here it is all up to the person himself. I am for one is ready to take this responsibility.