History of Siberia Totally Explained

Everything about History Of Siberia totally explained

The history of Siberia may be traced to the sophisticated nomadic civilizations of the Scythians (Pazyryk) and the Xiongnu (Noin-Ula), both flourishing before the Christian era. The steppes of South Siberia saw a succession of nomadic empires, including the Turkic Empire and the Mongol Empire. In the late Middle Ages, the Lamaist Buddhism spread into the areas south of Lake Baikal. A milestone in the history of the region was the arrival of Russians in the 16th and 17th centuries, contemporaneous and in many regards analogous to the European settlement in the Americas. During the imperial period of Russian history, Siberia was an agricultural province and served as a place of exile for Avvakum, Dostoevsky, and the Decembrists, among others. The 19th century witnessed the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the industrialization and the discovery of vast reserves of Siberian mineral resources.

Pre-history

According to the field of genetic genealogy, people first resided in Siberia by 45 000BP and spread out east and west to populate the Americas and Europe.
   The shores of all Siberian lakes which filled the depressions during the Lacustrine period abound in remains dating from the Neolithic age. Countless kurgans (tumuli), furnaces, and other artifacts bear witness to a dense population. In fact some of the earliest artifacts found in Central Asia derive from Siberia and western Turkistan During the great migrations in Asia from east to west, many populations were probably driven to the northern borders of the great Central Siberian Plateau and thence compelled to descend into Siberia. Succeeding waves of immigration forced them still farther towards the barren grounds of the north. As early as first millennium BC silk goods began turning up in Siberia having traveled over the North China Silk Road including the Hexi Trail segment.
   According to Vasily Radlov, the earliest inhabitants of Siberia were the Yeniseians, who spoke a language different from Ural-Altaic; some traces of them (Yenets or Yeniseians, Sayan-Ostiaks, and Kottes) exist in the areas of Sayan Mountains.
   The Yeniseians were followed by the Ugro-Samoyedes, who also came originally from the high plateau and were compelled, probably during the great migration of the Huns in the 3rd century BCE, to cross the Altay and Sayan ranges and to enter Siberia. They are credited with leaving behind the very numerous remains dating from the Bronze Age which are scattered all over southern Siberia. Iron was unknown to them, but they excelled in bronze, silver, and gold work. Their bronze ornaments and implements, often polished, evince considerable artistic taste, and their irrigated fields covered wide areas in the fertile tracts. Eight centuries later, Turkic peoples such as Khakases and Uyghurs, also compelled to migrate north-westwards from their former seats, subdued the Ugro-Samoyedes. These new invaders likewise left numerous traces of their stay, and two different periods may be easily distinguished in their remains. They were acquainted with iron, and learned from their subjects the art of bronze-casting, which they used for decorative purposes only, and to which they gave a still higher artistic stamp. Their pottery is more artistic and of a higher quality than that of the Bronze period, and their ornaments are accounted included in the collections at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
   This Turkic empire of the Khagases must have lasted until the 13th century, when the Mongols, under Genghis Khan, subdued them and destroyed their civilisation. A decided decline is shown by the graves which have been discovered, until the country reached the low level of population at which it was found by the Russians on their arrival towards the close of the 16th century.

Khanate

In the beginning of the 16th century Tatar fugitives from Turkestan subdued the loosely associated tribes inhabiting the lowlands to the east of the Urals. Agriculturists, tanners, merchants, and mullahs (priests) were called from Turkestan, and small principalities sprang up on the Irtysh and the Ob. These were united by Khan Yadegar, and conflicts with the Russians, who were then colonising the Urals, brought him into collision with Muscovy. Khan Ediger's envoys came to Moscow in 1555 and consented to a yearly tribute of a thousand sables.

Novgorod and Muscovy

As early as the 11th century the Novgorodians had occasionally penetrated into Siberia. In the 14th century the Novgorodians explored the Kara Sea and the West-Siberian river Ob (1364). After the fall of Novgorod Republic its communications between Northern Russia and Siberia have been inherited by Moscow. On May, 9, 1483 the Moscow troops of princes Feodor Kurbski-Cherny and Ivan Saltyk-Travin moved to West Siberia. The troops moved on the rivers Tavda, Tura, Irtysh up to the river Ob. 1499 Muscovites and Novgorodians skied to West Siberia up to river Ob and subdued some local tribes. In 1570s the entrepreneur Stroganov in Perm enlisted many cossacks for protection of the Urals settlements against attacks of the Siberian Tatars. Stroganov suggested to their chief Yermak to conquer the Siberia Khanate, promising to help him with supplies of food and arms.

Yermak and the Cossacks

Yermak entered Siberia in 1580 with a band of 1,636 men, following the Tagil and Tura Rivers. The following year they were on the Tobol, and 500 men successfully laid siege to Isker, the residence of Khan Kuchum, in the neighbourhood of what is now Tobolsk. Kuchum fled to the steppes, abandoning his domains to Yermak, who, according to tradition, purchased by the present of Siberia to tsar Ivan IV his own restoration to favour.
Yermak drowned in the Irtysh in 1584 and his Cossacks abandoned Siberia. But new bands of hunters and adventurers, supported by Moscow, poured every year into the country. To avoid conflicts with the denser populations of the south, they preferred to advance eastwards along higher latitudes; meanwhile, Moscow erected forts and settled labourers around them to supply the garrisons with food. Within eighty years the Russians had reached the Amur and the Pacific Ocean. This rapid conquest is accounted for by the circumstance that neither Tatars nor Turks were able to offer any serious resistance.

Imperial Russian expansion

The main treasure to attract Cossacks to Siberia was fur of sables, foxes, and ermines. Explorers brought back many furs from their expeditions. Local people, submitting to Russia, received defense by Cossacs from the southern nomads. In exchange they were obliged to pay yasak (tax) in form of furs. There was a set of yasachnaya roads, used to transport yasak to Moscow.
   A number of peoples showed open resistance to Russians. Others submitted and even requested to be subordinated, though sometimes they later refused to pay yasak, or not admitted the Russian authority. There is evidence of collaboration and assimilation of Russians with the local peoples in Siberia though the more they advanced to the East, the less local people were developed and the more resistance they offered. The most resistant groups were Koryak and Chukchi (in Chukchi Peninsula), the latter still being at the Stone Age level of development. In 1607–1610, the Tungus fought strenuously for their independence, but were subdued around 1623. In 1628, the Russians reached the Lena, founded the fort of Yakutsk in 1637, and two years later reached the Sea of Okhotsk at the mouth of the Ulya River. The Buryats offered some opposition, but between 1631 and 1641 the Cossacks erected several palisaded forts in their territory, and in 1648 the fort on the upper Uda River beyond Lake Baikal. In 1643, Vassili Poyarkov's boats descended the Amur, returning to Yakutsk by the Sea of Okhotsk and the Aldan River, and in 1649–1650 Yerofey Khabarov established the fort of Albazin on the bank of the Amur. The Manchu resistance, however, obliged the Cossacks to quit Albazin, and by the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) Russia abandoned her advance into the basin of the river, instead concentrating on the colonisation of the vast expanses of Siberia and trading with China via the Siberian trakt. In 1852 a Russian military expedition under Nikolay Muravyov explored the Amur, and by 1857 a chain of Russian Cossacks and peasants were settled along the whole course of the river. The accomplished fact was recognised by China in 1860 by the Treaty of Aigun.
   In the same year in which Khabarov explored the Amur (1648), the Cossack Semyon Dezhnev sailed from the Kolyma River around the north-eastern extremity of Asia through the strait which was rediscovered and described eighty years later by Bering. James Cook in 1778, and La Pérouse after him, settled definitively the broad features of the northern Pacific coast.
   Although the Arctic Ocean had been reached as early as the first half of the 17th century, the exploration of its coasts by a series of expeditions under Dmitry Ovtsyn, Fyodor Minin, Vasili Pronchishchev, Lasinius, and Laptev—whose labours constitute a brilliant page in the annals of geographical discovery—was begun only in the 18th century (1735–1739).

Scientists in Siberia

The scientific exploration of Siberia, commenced in the period of 1733 to 1742 by Messerschmidt, Gmelin, and De L'isle de la Croyere, was followed up by Müller, Fischer, and Georgi. Pallas, with several Russian students, laid the first foundation of a thorough exploration of the topography, fauna, flora, and inhabitants of the country. The journeys of Christopher Hansteen and Georg Adolf Erman were the most important step in the exploration of the territory. Humboldt, Ehrenberg, and Gustav Rose also paid short visits to Siberia, which gave a new impulse to the accumulation of scientific knowledge; while Ritter elaborated in his Asien (1832–1859) the foundations of a sound knowledge of the structure of Siberia. T von Middendorff's journey (1843–1845) to north-eastern Siberia—contemporaneous with Castrén's journeys for the special study of the Ural-Altaic languages—directed attention to the far north and awakened interest in the Amur, the basin of which soon became the scene of the expeditions of Akhte and Schwarz (1852), and later on of the Siberian expedition, advanced knowledge of East Siberia.
The Siberian branch of the Russian Geographical Society was founded at the same time in Irkutsk, and afterwards became a permanent centre for the exploration of Siberia; while the opening of the Amur and Sakhalin attracted Maack, Schmidt, Glehn, Radde, and Schrenck, whose created works on the flora, fauna, and inhabitants of Siberia.

Early settlement

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Russians that migrated into Siberia were hunters, and those who had escaped from the Central Russia: fugitive peasants in search for life free of serfdom, fugitive convicts, and Old Believers. The new settlements of Russians and the existing local peoples required defence from nomads, for which forts were found. This way were found forts of Tomsk and Berdsk.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century the nomads' threat weakened; thus the region became more and more populated; normal civic life was established in the cities.

Established life

In the eighteenth century in Siberia, a new administrative guberniya was formed with Irkutsk, then in the nineteenth century the territory was several times re-divided with creation of new guberniyas: Tomsk (with center in Tomsk) and Yenisei (Yeniseysk, later Krasnoyarsk).
   In the 1730, the first large industrial project—the metallurgical production found by Demidov family—gave birth to the city of Barnaul. Later, the enterprise organized social institutions like library, club, theatre. Pyotr Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, who stayed in Barnaul in 1856–1857 wrote: "The richness of mining engineers of Barnaul expressed not merely in their households and clothes, but more in their educational level, knowledge of science and literature. Barnaul was undoubtedly the most cultured place in Siberia, and I've called it Siberian Athenes, leaving Sparta for Omsk".
   The same events took place in other cities; public libraries, museums of local lore, colleges, theatres were being built, although the first university in Siberia was opened as late as 1880 in Tomsk.
   Siberian peasants more than those in European Russia relied on their own force and abilities. They had to fight against the harder climate without outside help. Lack of serfdom and landlords also contributed to their independent character. Unlike peasants in European Russia, Siberians had no problems with land availability; the low population density gave them the ability to intensively cultivate a plot for several years in a row, then to leave it fallow for a long time and cultivate other plots. Siberian peasants had an abundance of food, while Central Russian peasantry had to moderate their families' appetites. Leonid Blummer noted that the culture of alcohol consumption differed significantly; Siberian peasants drank frequently but moderately: For a Siberian vodka isn't a wonder, unlike for a Russian peasant, which, having reached it after all this time, is ready to drink a sea. The houses, according to the travellers' notes, were unlike the typical Russian izbas: the houses were big, often two-floored, the ceilings were high, the walls were covered with boards and painted with oil-paint.

Decembrists and other exiles

Siberia was deemed a good place to exile for political reasons, as it was far from any foreign country. A St. Petersburg citizen wouldn't wish to escape in vast Siberian countryside as the peasants and criminals did. Even the larger cities such as Irkutsk, Omsk, and Krasnoyarsk, lacked that intensive social life and luxurious high life of the capital.
   About eighty people involved in the Decembrist revolt were sentenced to obligatory work in Siberia and perpetual settlement here. Eleven wives followed them and settled near the labour camps. In their memoirs, they noted the benevolence and the prosperity of rural Siberians and severe treatment by the soldiers and officers. Travelling through Siberia, I was wondered and fascinated at every step by the cordiality and hospitality I met everywhere. I was fascinated by the richness and the abundance, with which the people live until today (1861), but that time there was even more expanse in evertything. Khe hospitality was especially developed in Siberia. Everywhere we were received like being in friendly countries, everywhere we were fed well, and when I asked how much I owed them, they didn't want to take anything, saying "Put a candle to the God". ...Siberia is extremely rich country, the land is ususually fruitful, and a few work is needed to get a plentiful harvest. Polina Annenkova, Notes of a Decembrist's Wife
   A number of Decembrists died of diseases, some suffered psychological shock and even went out of their mind.
   After completing the term of obligatory work, they were sentenced to settle in specific small towns and villages. There, some started doing business, which was well permitted. Only several years later, in the 1840s, they were allowed to move to big cities or to settle anywhere in Siberia. Only in 1856, 31 years after the revolt, Alexander II pardoned and restituted the Decembrists in honour of his coronation.
   Living in the cities of Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Irkutsk, the Decembrists contributed extensively to the social life and culture. In Irkutsk, their houses are now the museums. In many places, memorial plaques with their names have been installed. Yet, there were exceptions: Vladimir Raevskiy was arrested for participation in Decembrists' circles in 1822, and in 1828 was exiled to Olonki village near Irkutsk. There he married and had nine children, traded with bread, and founded a school for children and adults to teach arythmetics and grammar. Being pardoned by Alexander II, he visited his native town, but returned back to Olonki.
   Despite the wishes of the central authorities, the exiled revolutioners unlikely felt outcast in Siberia. Quite the contrary, Siberians having lived all the time on their own, "didn't feel tenderness" to the authorities. In many cases, the exiled were cordially received and got paid positions.

Stolypin's resettlement programme

One early significant settlement campaign was carried out under Nicholas II by Prime Minister Stolypin in 1906–1911.
The rural areas of Central Russia were overcrowded, while the East was still lightly populated despite having fertile lands. On May 10, 1906, by the decree of the Tsar, agriculturalists were granted the right to transfer, without any restrictions, to the Asian territories of Russia, and to obtain cheap or free land. A large advertising campaign was conducted: six million copies of brochures and banners entitled What the resettlement gives to peasants, and How the peasants in Siberia live were printed and distributed in rural areas. Special propaganda trains were sent throughout the countryside, and transport trains were provided for the migrants. The State gave loans to the settlers for farm construction.
Not all the settlers decided to stay; 17.8% migrated back. All in all, more than three million people officially resettled in Siberia, and 750,000 came as foot-messengers. From 1897 to 1914 Siberian population increased 73%, and the area of land under cultivation doubled.

The Civil War

By the time of the revolution Siberia was an agricultural region of Russia, with weak entrepreneur and industrial class. The intelligentsia had vague political ideas. Only 13% of the region's population lived in the cities and possessed some political knowledge. The lack of strong social difference, scarcity of urban population and intellectuals led to uniting of formally different political parties under ideas of regionalism.
The anti-Bolsheviks forces failed to offer a united resistance. While Kolchak fought against the Bolsheviks intending to eliminate them in the capital of the Empire, the local Socialists-Revolutioners and Mensheviks tried to sign a peaceful treaty with Bolsheviks, on terms of independence. The foreign allies, though being able to make a decisive effort, preferred to stay neutral, although Kolchak himself rejected the offer of help from Japan. � For more detailed chronology of the civil war in Siberia, see articles on Aleksandr Kolchak and Siberian Intervention

After a series of defeats in the Central Russia, Kolchak's forces had to retreat to Siberia. The resistance of SR-s and waning support from the allies, the Whites had to evacuate from Omsk to Irkutsk, and finally Kolchak resigned under pressure of SR-s, who soon submitted to Bolsheviks.

1920s and 1930s

By the 1920s the agriculture in Siberia was in decline. With the large number of immigrants, land was used very intensively, which led to exhaustion of the land and frequent bad harvests. Agriculture wasn't destroyed by the civil war, but the disorganization of the exports destroyed the food industry and reduced the peasants' incomes. Furthermore, prodrazvyorstka and then the natural food tax contributed to growing discontent. In 1920-1924 there was a number of anti-communistic riots in rural areas, with up to 40,000 people involved. Both old Whites (Cossacks) and old "Reds" partisans, who earlier fought against Kolchak, the marginals, who were the major force of the Communists, took part in the riots. According to a survey of 1927 in Irkutsk Oblast, the peasants openly said they'd participate in anti-Soviet rebel and hoped for the foreign help. It should be noticed also that the Soviet authorities declared by a special order the KVZhD builders and workers enemies of the people.
The youth, that had socialized in the age of war, was highly militarized, and the Soviet government pushed the further military propaganda by Komsomol. There are many documented evidences of "red banditism", especially in the countryside, such as desecration of churches and Christian graves, and even murders of priests and believers. Also in many cases a Komsomol activist or an authority representative, speaking with a person opposed to the Soviets, got angry and killed him/her and anybody else. The Party faintly counteracted this. In the cities, during the NEP and later, the new authorities, driven by the romantic socialistic ideas made attempts to build new socialistic cities, according to the fashionable constructivism movement, but after all have left only numbers of square houses. For example, the Novosibirsk theatre was initially designed in pure constructivistic style. It was an ambitious project of exiled architects. In the mid-1930s with introduction of new classicism, it was significantly redesigned.
After the Trans-Siberian was built, Omsk soon became the largest Siberian city, but in 1930s Soviets favoured Novosibirsk. In the 1930s the first heavy industrialization took place in the Kuznetsk Basin (coal mining and ferrous metallurgy) and at Norilsk (nickel and other rare-earth metals). The Northern Sea Route saw industrial application. The same time, with growing number of prisoners, Gulag established a large network of labour camps in Siberia.

World War II

   In 1941, many enterprises and people were evacuated into Siberian cities by the railroads. In urgent need of ammunition and military equipment, they started working right after being unloaded near the stations. The workshops' buildings were built simultaneously with work.
   Most of the evacuated enterprises remained at their new sites after the war. They increased industrial production in Siberia to a great extent, and became constitutive for many cities, like Rubtsovsk. The most Eastern city to receive them was Ulan-Ude, since Chita was considered dangerously close to China and Japan.
   On August 28, 1941 the Supreme Soviet stated an order "About the Resettlement of the Germans of Volga region", by which many of them were deported into different rural areas of Kazakhstan and Siberia.
   By the end of war, thousands of captive soldiers and officers of German and Japanese armies were sentenced to several years of work in labour camps in all the regions of Siberia. These camps were directed by a different administration than Gulag. Though, Soviet camps hadn't the purpose to lead prisoners to death, the death rate was significant, especially in winters. The range of works differed from vegetable farming to construction of the Baikal Amur Mainline.

Industrial expansion

In the second half of the twentieth century, the exploration of mineral and hydroenergetic resources continued. Many of these projects were planned, but were delayed due to wars and the ever changing opinions of Soviet policans. The most famous project is Baikal Amur Mainline. It was planned simultaneously with Trans-Siberian, but the construction began just before the WWII, was put on hold during the war and restarted after. After Stalin's death, it was again suspended for years to be continued under Brezhnev.
   The cascade of hydroelecric powerplants was built in 1960s–1970s on the Angara River, a project similar to Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States. The powerplants allowed the creation and support of large production facilities, such as the alluminium plant in Bratsk, Ust-Ilimsk, rare-earth mining in Angara basin, and those associated with the timber industry. The price of electricity in Angara basin is the lowest in Russia. But the Angara cascade isn't fully finished yet: the Boguchany powerplant waits to be finished, and a series of enterprises will be set up.
   The downside of this development is the ecological damage due to the low standards of production and excessive sizes of dams (the bigger projects were favoured by the industrial authorities and received more funding), the increased humidity sharpened the already hard climate. Another powerplant project on Katun River in Altai mountains in the 1980s, which was widely protested publicly, was cancelled.
   There are a number of military-oriented centers like the NPO Vektor and closed cities like Seversk. By the end of 1980s a large portion of the industrial production of Omsk and Novosibirsk (up to 40%) was composed of military and aviation output. The collapse of state-funded military orders began an economic crisis. The Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences unites a lot of research institutes in the biggest cities, the biggest being the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Akademgorodok (a scientific town) near Novosibirsk. Other scientific towns or just districts composed by research institutes, also named Akademgorodok, are in the cities of Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk. These sites are the centers of the newly developed IT industry, especially in that of Novosibirsk, nicknamed Silicon Taiga, and in Tomsk.
   A number of Siberian-based companies extended their businesses of various consumer products to meta-regional and an All-Russian level. Various Siberian artists and industries, have created communities that are not centralized in Moscow anymore, like the Idea

(annual low-budged ads festival), Golden Capital

(annual prize in architecture).

Future prospects

Until the completion of the Chita-Khabarovsk highway, the Transbaikalia was a dead end for automobile transport. While this recently constructed through road will at first benefit mostly the transit travel to and form the Pacific provinces, it'll also boost settlement and industrial expansion in the scarsely populated regions of Chita and Blagoveshchensk.
Expansion of transportation networks will continue to define the directions of Siberian regional development. The next project to be carried out is the completion of the railroad branch to Yakutsk. Another large project, proposed already in the 19th century as a northern option for the Transsiberian railroad, is the Northern-Siberian Railroad between Nizhnevartovsk, Belyi Yar, Lesosibirsk and Ust-Ilimsk. The Russian Railroads instead suggest an ambitious project of a railway to Magadan, Chukchi Penunsula and then the supposed Bering Strait Tunnel to Alaska.
While the Russians continue to migrate from the Siberian and Far Eastern Federal Districts to Western Russia, the Siberian cities attract labour (legal or illegal) from the Central Asian republics and from China. While the natives are aware of the situation, in Western Russia myths about thousands and millions of Chinese living in the Transbaikalia and the Far East are widespread. Thus it isn't uncommon in the Russian society, especially to the West of Urals, to be anxious about a supposed Chinese annexation of the South-East Siberia.

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