Western Siberia

“ I do not wish, of course, to convey the idea that in this country it is always summer. Southern Siberia has a winter and a severe one, but not, as a rule, much severer than that of Minnesota, while its summer is warmer and more genial than that of many parts of central Europe. A glance at the map is sufficient to show that a considerable part of Western Siberia lies farther south than Nice, Venice, or Milan ”

“ When one considers that crossing Eastern Siberia thirty-two times on foot is about equivalent to walking twice the circumference of the globe at the equator, one can appreciate the indomitable resolution of these men, and the strength of the influence that draws them towards home and freedom. In the year 1884, 1360 such brodyágs were recaptured in Western Siberia and sent back to the mines of the Trans-Baikál, and hundreds more perished from cold and starvation in the forests. ”

“ The valleys opening in that direction are highly fertile, producing rice and cotton and silk, indigo, tobacco, and vines, and luxuriant woods. The northern slopes, exposed to the keen winds of the steppes, are characterized by bare pasture-lands and scattered firwoods.
All Western Siberia, nearest the Ural belt and European Russia, is a vast plain rising almost imperceptibly from the shores of the Arctic Ocean to the Kirghiz steppes and the base of the Altai mountains, which spring up from it like a [540] wall, forming the northern buttress of the great tableland of Central Asia. ”

“ The Russian Government is very anxious to settle agriculturists in these Eastern Siberian regions, for the land is as yet barely cultivated at all. Farmers are very scarce, and the famous mines are also short of labourers. It seems that possibilities here are even greater than in Western Siberia, the only drawback being the enormous distance. ”

“ Under their policy of toleration they never interfere with the religion of the conquered, and are careful not to awaken prejudices. The tribes in the subjugated territory are left pretty much to their own will. Every few years the chain of frontier posts is pushed to the southward, and embraces a newly acquired region. Western Siberia is dotted over with abandoned and crumbling forts that once guarded the boundary, but are now far in the interior. ”

“ Notwithstanding, 44however, the rapid development of industry in Russia, many years will pass before these regions will be capable of supporting a population equal to that of Central or Western Europe, where the natural conditions are more or less identical. It is not therefore very surprising that a fraction of the population of Russia should go in search of better climes, and direct itself towards Southern Siberia, a more attractive and fertile country than Northern Russia. ”

“ The acting governor of this province said to me very frankly yesterday that the condition of the Tomsk prison is azhásnoi [awful] , but that he cannot help it. . . . What I have previously written and said about the treatment of the political exiles seems to be substantially true and accurate,—at least so far as Western Siberia is concerned,—but my preconceived ideas as to their character have been rudely shaken. The Russian liberals and revolutionists whom I have met here are by no means half-educated enthusiasts, crazy fanatics, or men whose mental processes it is difficult to understand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was vigorous opposition by the tribes, but they were soon subdued. The only effective resistance they met was that of the Chinese, who obliged the Cossacks to quit the Amur, which river they claimed. In 1855 the advance here began again, and the whole course of the river was occupied, with much territory to its south. Siberia, thus conquered by arms, is being made secure for Russia by a trans-continental railroad and hosts of new settlers, and promises in the future to become a land of the greatest prosperity and wealth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Siberia is thought of as a terrible ice-desert, without life, without variety, without charm, as a frozen land under the curse of heaven and of miserable exiles. But it is entirely forgotten that Siberia includes a full third of Asia, and that a region which is almost twice as large as the whole of Europe, which extends from the Ural to the Pacific Ocean, from the Arctic sea to the latitude of Palermo, cannot possibly be excessively monotonous nor uniform in all its parts. But people usually picture only one district of Siberia, and even that in a false light. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Russian colonization of Siberia has been carried out without the aid of any other European nationality. There are only a few hundred other Europeans settled in the country, the greater number of whom are French people. I was much amused at the little station at Sokur, about nine leagues from the Obi, to find a buffet kept by a Frenchwoman, a peasant who had married a Bessarabian, and who had only been in Siberia a year, after having, however, spent several in Southern Russia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Between the post-stations of Krasnorechínskaya and Bieloyárskaya, about twenty miles west of Áchinsk, we crossed the boundary line between the provinces of Tomsk and Yeniséisk, and entered the vast region known as Eastern Siberia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All through the summer, at any rate, America and England will, by the Arctic passage and by these mighty rivers, communicate with the heart of Asia, the railway in the far interior completing the circle of commerce. Other results will follow. Siberia at present contains a population of four million—less by more than a million than London reckons within its borders. Millions of the Russian peasantry in Europe are in a condition of chronic semi-starvation. ”

“ Notwithstanding its terrible climate, Siberia is not entirely uninhabitable; indeed, even on the borders of the Arctic Ocean humanity is represented by a few aboriginal Polar tribes, who wander from place to place in sledges drawn by dogs, and usually followed by a numerous herd of reindeer. The white man, however, cannot endure the conditions prevailing in the extreme north, and it is therefore necessary with a view to colonizing that one must learn to distinguish between the different parts of Siberia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even those who are sent to the more fertile and favoured southern parts of Siberia are not better off than the others. Those who are not noblemen—and they are the great majority—receive in Southern Siberia only from 2r. ”

“ IN crossing the boundary line between the provinces of Perm and Tobólsk, we entered a part of the Russian empire whose magnitude and importance are almost everywhere underestimated. People generally seem to have the impression that Siberia is a sub-arctic colonial province about as large as Alaska; that it is everywhere cold, barren, and covered during the greater part of the year with snow ”

“ 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 ”

“ In winter they sometimes use an ice-breaker, which apparently works very slowly, for generally the railway provides, for passengers and goods, sledges on which to traverse the frozen waters.
Our boat is overcrowded. Passengers of all nations and of all grades. Besides Russian officials, there are foreign tradesmen, a few Germans, one American, and a Dane, a detachment of soldiers guarding convicts, and a few settlers. And so I have an opportunity of watching the four leading classes of this new country. These are, indeed, the four different elements by which Siberia is becoming populated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now Siberia, instead of being shut off from the rest of the world, will be traversed by one of the most frequented routes xviiin the universe, and its southern zone will become one of the richest possessions of the white race. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In 1898 the immigration, owing to the opening of the railway, was greatly increased, to the extent even of 200,000 souls. It is not therefore a lack of population which is ever likely to affect the future of Siberia. The natural resources of the country can be justly compared with Canada, which it exceeds in size, and also, to a slight extent, in population ”

“ According to information received direct from Siberia, about 63,000 emigrants arrived in 1894 over the Ural from European Russia. On the other hand, 3,495 entered Siberia by sea, landing in the great Littoral Province on the Pacific. Lately the emigration movement has become much more active, and we should not be far out of our reckoning if we estimated the number of emigrants into Siberia for the years 1897 and 1898 as about 200,000 for each year. The number of persons who seek permission to leave Russia for Siberia is becoming greater every year. ”