Siberia

“ Ten years ago the name Siberia called up a picture of wastes of snow and ice. To-day the same Siberia is a land filled with thriving villages, producing grain and various vegetables; that great compeller of civilisation, the railway, has broken down the bars between the world and Siberia. ”

“ But still, for nearly seven months of the year, that Siberia is the old Siberia still, fast bound in the grip of an appalling frost, waging, in its storms, a never-ceasing battle against human enterprise and effort; and the haunt of those insatiable and savage creatures which seem to stand out from all other creatures in being devoid, when in packs, of all fear or dread of man.
The steppes above Turkestan, which I visited last, are milder in climate than those of Akmolinsk. ”

“ If any lasting gain is totaled from the great Russian bedlam, emphasized in it prominently must be the opening of Siberia to the world. As boys and girls, and even as grown men and women, we thought of Siberia as an arctic waste of snow and ice, ravaged by man-hunting wolves, dotted with world-lost exile mines, peopled by a strange semi-barbaric race in fur and lambskin and dwelling in half-real dusk beneath the bondage of the knout. ”

“ IRKUTSK, June 5, 1890.
MY EUROPEAN BROTHER,
It is, of course, unpleasant to live in Siberia; but better to live in Siberia and feel oneself a man of moral worth, than to live in Petersburg with the reputation of a drunkard and a scoundrel. No reference to present company.
Siberia is a cold and long country. I drive on and on and see no end to it. I see little that is new or of interest, but I feel and experience a great deal. I have contended with flooded rivers, with cold, with impassable mud, hunger and sleepiness: such sensations as you could not get for a million in Moscow! ”

“ Siberia can grow wine! Henceforth every Russian must drink it. Siberian wine must supplant foreign wines for the tables of the great; it must compete with Burgundy, the Rhine, and the Hegyalji. To be exiled to Siberia will no longer count as a punishment; those in search of fruitful soil will settle there of their own free-will. Siberia can grow wine! ”

“ Perhaps it is not just or fair to take the capital of Siberia as a specimen of ordinary moral life in Russia, but one might well say at Irkutsk that all save the spirit of man is divine. We had been to a certain extent prepared by our previous tour to disbelieve in the horrors of the climate of Siberia, but what we saw and heard at Irkutsk has convinced me that Siberia should rank high among the places that are reckoned pleasant for human habitation. Siberia, or certainly the eastern part of Siberia, is not the dreary plain, wind-swept and miserable, that one read of in one's childhood. ”

“ Nature seems often to play strange games in distributing men as she does over this globe. To these miserable dwellers on the most remote shores of the Frozen Sea, Siberia appears as a land of promise—the Eldorado of their dreams of happiness; and thither they emigrate in bands, and in whole families, to look for more lucrative labour and in search of a more clement sky.
I do not know how many days I may have spent in thus climbing the woody but snow-clad heights of the Oural chain. ”

“ From the outside, little can be seen of Maimachin, as it is surrounded by a high wooden palisade; but once entered through the picturesque archway, Siberia is, as it were, left so completely that it takes a few minutes to get used to the wonderful transformation, for at one step, so to speak, one finds one’s self in the Far East, with all its brilliant colouring and strange costumes. ”

“ Siberia with all its wildness, with all its immensity, where aback the mammoth wallowed; the Caucasus tossing aloft primeval ecstasy the long slant of the steppes, and Russia, bold, defiant, revengeful; all rolled in one, are in that note. The clothes of the men are heavy, ungainly, ill-made, nothing serviceable but the boots, which are well adapted for running away. ”

“ Very soon after we began to travel at night in Western Siberia, our attention was attracted and our curiosity excited by the peculiar throbbing beat of an instrument that we took to be a watchman's rattle, and that we heard in every village through which we passed between sunset and dawn. ”

“ It is one of the world’s open spaces, undeveloped but capable of producing anything. I had always imagined Siberia as a country filled with sadness and I expected it to depress me, but it arouses no such feeling. ”

“ Siberia was another mine of contrasts and surprises, and the longer I was there the more I began to comprehend the vast possibilities of this formidable stretch of country. It is a continent in itself, with all the natural advantages to enable it to become rich and prosperous. Her future development has the same chance as that of Canada, and her wealth is even larger. To say nothing of Siberia's inexhaustible mines, the land is better watered, and the timber-forests even more extensive.
The population is still slumbering in its cradle. The life they lead is archaic in the extreme. ”

“ Siberia resembles Russia not only in the matter of its immensity, its loneliness, the duration of its winters, monotonous expanse of its plains and enormous forest lands, but also in the leading characteristics of its peasantry; but in Asia and Russia these seem accentuated, possibly by reason of the peculiarity of the surroundings among which they are compelled to live. Even more than in Russia is this class of the people essentially rural; the exploitation of the gold-mines is the only other industry of any importance, and it employs relatively few people in comparison with its yield. ”

“ We may, therefore, conclude that, from the ethnological point of view, as well as from the geographical, Siberia is merely a prolongation of Russian Europe, or of what is known as Greater Russia. It is true that a few heterogeneous elements exist of the same sort as those to be met with in Russia itself: Poles and Germans from the Baltic provinces, and the descendants of exiles, or even exiles themselves; and thus it comes to pass that in all the larger towns, at Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, Catholic and Lutheran churches abound. ”

“ South of Siberia lies another immense extent of territory, stretching across the continent, and comprising the great upland plain known as the steppes. On this broad expanse rain rarely falls, and its surface is half a desert, unfit for agriculture, but yielding pasturage to vast herds of cattle, horses, and sheep, the property of wandering tribes. Here is the great home of the nomad, and from these broad plains conquering hordes have poured again and again over the civilized world. From here came the Huns, who devastated Europe in Roman days; the Turks, who later overthrew the Eastern Empire ”

“ Her avaricious eyes are fixed on the kingdom of Corea, and the whole of Manchuria may yet become Russian soil.
Siberia is by no means the inhospitable land of ice which the name suggests to our minds. That designation applies well to its northern half, but not to the Siberia of the south. Here are vast fertile plains, prolific in grain, which need only the coming railroad facilities to make this region the granary of the Russian empire. The great rivers and the numerous lakes of the country abound in valuable fish; large forests of useful timber are everywhere found ”

“ What I felt was that in Siberia, that vast country with such immense natural resources, there must be much which would be novel and interesting to study in its social aspect, apart from the actual prison life and hardships with which the name of Siberia has always been associated ”

“ IRKOUTSK. There is probably no country in the world of which the generality of English people are so ignorant as Siberia. The very word conveys to the mind visions of frozen steppes and lonely pine forests, with nothing to break the monotony of the white and dreary landscape but an occasional gang of prisoners or pack of wolves. ”

“ Siberia is the land of Aladdins—Aladdins who can laugh at lamps so long as they possess money-printing machines. The German General Staff was the Magician who craftily suggested the use of the machines. And those first sponsors of Bolshevism, who were the creatures of the Magician, were the terrible jinns who gave their services to the financial wrecking of Great Russia, including Siberia. Said the Magician, “What you Russians want is land and money. There lies the land. ”

“ But few people today realize the immensity of Siberia. You could take a map of the whole United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, and add to it a map of Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Austria (before the war) , Holland, Denmark, the Turkish Empire, Greece, Roumania, and Bulgaria, and lay all these together down on Siberia alone and have territory left. Nearly five thousand miles of the main line of the great Trans-Siberian railway are in this one country. ”

“ In passing through Siberia, you would often see wagons full of women, children, and old men, followed by a troop of young men, and guarded by a band of soldiers on horseback. You might know them to be the banished Russians. What is to become of them? Some are to work in the mines, and some are to work in the factories. Some are to have a less heavy punishment; they are to be set free, in the midst of Siberia, to support themselves in any way they can. Gentlemen and ladies have a small sum of money allowed them by the emperor, and they live in the towns. ”

“ There is a good proportion, for a Siberian town, of elegant and luxuriant houses. The furniture and adornments were quite as extensive as at Irkutsk or Tomsk, and several houses that I visited would have been creditable in Moscow or St. Petersburg. It is no little wonder to find all the comforts and luxuries of Russian life in the southern part of Siberia, on the borders of the Kirghese steppes. ”

“ I had already been told in Russia that prosperity was generally prevailing in Siberia, and shone in strong contrast with Russian poverty, and I am again obliged to say here that even Russian poverty is not so repulsively conspicuous as the misery in the German factory and mining districts. I do not go too far in asserting that the Siberians lead a happy life; and the best evidence in confirmation of this opinion is found in the fact that the idea of an independent Siberia, not attached to Russia, has already begun to dawn in a few speculative minds. ”

“ The problem of Siberia is the peasant, and we ignore him—at least we do not consider how he will react to what we do. He fears that we will betray him. It is much more likely that, as we are conducting ourselves in Siberia, he will betray us. ”

“ Siberia is not the frozen land buried in snow and peopled with exiles only that it is imagined to be, even by many Russians. In its southern parts it is as rich in natural productions as are the southern parts of Canada, which it resembles very much in its physical aspects; and beside half a million of natives, it has a population of more than four millions of Russians. The southern parts of West Siberia are as thoroughly Russian as the provinces to the north of Moscow. ”

“ The Siberian can build a squat log house, and with strips of wood cut into the most delicate filigree work, make the ungainly structure dazzle your eyes in a manner only to be rivalled by a silicate Christmas card. ”

“ For all that, I have never seen in Siberia any of those miserable hovels to be found in Russia, but undoubtedly the manners and customs of the Siberian peasants are even more primitive than those of the Russians. They possess less knowledge of hygiene and cleanliness, and are absolutely ignorant of everything calculated to render life in the least degree agreeable or rational. ”

“ That is the traveller's thought. He finds that they thicken and broaden, and deepen as they sweep in their majestic gloom across the Urals, and make up for thousands of miles the grand Siberian arboreal belt. In this taiga the Tsar possesses wealth beyond all computation; and the railway will put it actually at his disposal. The third zone, the most valuable of all, is that which mainly constitutes Southern Siberia. It is the region of the Steppes, that endless natural garden which again makes Siberia an incomparable land. ”

“ Siberia is emphatically the "Land of the North." Its name has by some etymologists been identified with "Severia," a term formerly applied to various northern regions of European Russia. The city of Sibir, which has given its name to the whole of North Asia, was so called only by the Russians, its native name being Isker. The Cossacks, coming from the south and centre of Russia, may have naturally regarded as pre-eminently the "Northern Land" those cold regions of the Ob basin lying beyond the snowy mountains which form the "girdle of the world." ”

“ Asiatic Russia, or Siberia, covers a superficial area of 1,790,208 square miles, and contains nearly two millions of inhabitants. Extending from the Ural Mountains, which separate it from Russia in Europe, to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, it is bounded on the south by Turkestan and the Chinese Empire; on the north by the Arctic Ocean, from the Sea of Kara to Behring’s Straits. It is divided into several governments or provinces, those of Tobolsk, Yeniseisk, Irkutsk, Omsk, and Yakutsk ”

“ Siberia must certainly extend to the Chinese frontier: why should we shiver and freeze at Beryózov and Yakutsk, when there are such places as Krasnoyarsk and Minusinsk?
The Russian settlers in Siberia have traits of character which suggest development and progress. The population in general are healthy and well grown, intelligent and exceedingly practical. The children of the emigrants have never felt the pressure of landlordism. There are no great nobles in Siberia, and there is no aristocracy in the towns; authority is represented by the civil officials and military officers ”