Siberia : a Cultural History

Before Russians crossed the Urals Mountains in the sixteenth century to settle their 'colony' in North Asia, they heard rumours about bountiful fur, of bizarre people without eyes who ate by shrugging their shoulders and of a land where trees exploded from cold. This region of frozen tundra, endless forest and humming steppe between the Urals and the Pacific Ocean was a vast, strange and frightening paradise. It was Siberia. Siberia is a cradle of civilizations, the birthplace of ancient Turkic empires and home to the cultures of indigenes, including peoples whose ancestors migrated to the Americas. It was a promised land to which bonded peasants could flee their cruel masters, yet also a 'white hell' across which exiles shuffled in felt shoes and chains. If in Stalin's era Siberia became synonymous with the gulag, today it is a vast region of bustling metropolises and magnificent landscapes, a place where the humdrum, the beautiful and the bizarre ignite the imagination. Tracing the historical contours of Siberia, A.J. Haywood offers a detailed account of the architectural and cultural landmarks of cities such as Irkutsk, Tobolsk, Barnaul and Novosibirsk.;Heaven and hell -- Cradle of civilizations -- A frontier beyond : the Urals and Yekaterinburg -- Tyumen : Dallas in Siberia -- Tobolsk : from "Sodom in the taiga" to a cultural heartland -- To the frozen ocean and Stalin's railway of death -- Omsk and the Baraba steppe -- Over the top : the northern sea route -- Novosibirsk and the Trans-Siberian Railway -- The Altai region and republic : mystics, mountains, and nomads -- The Yenisey River : from steppes to the frozen tundra -- Irkutsk : the "Paris of Siberia" -- Lake Baikal : Siberia's sacred sea -- The archipelago of exile : Magadan. Before Russians crossed the Urals Mountains in the sixteenth century to settle their ‘colony’ in North Asia, they heard rumours about bountiful fur, of bizarre people without eyes who ate by shrugging their shoulders and of a land where trees exploded from cold. This region of frozen tundra, endless forest and humming steppe between the Urals and the Pacific Ocean was a vast, strange and frightening paradise. It was Siberia. Siberia is a cradle of civilizations, the birthplace of ancient Turkic empires and home to the cultures of indigenes, including peoples whose ancestors migrated to the Americas. It was a promised land to which bonded peasants could flee their cruel masters, yet also a ‘white hell’ across which exiles shuffled in felt shoes and chains. If in Stalin’s era Siberia became synonymous with the gulag, today it is a vast region of bustling metropolises and magnificent landscapes, a place where the humdrum, the beautiful and the bizarre ignite the imagination. Tracing the historical contours of Siberia, A. J. Haywood offers a detailed account of the architectural and cultural landmarks of cities such as Irkutsk, Tobolsk, Barnaul and Novosibirsk. Before Russians crossed the Urals Mountains in the sixteenth century to settle their ‘colony’ in North Asia,they heard rumours about bountiful fur,of bizarre people without eyes who ate by shrugging their shoulders and of a land where trees exploded from cold. This region of frozen tundra,endless forest and humming steppe between the Urals and the Pacific Ocean was a vast,strange and frightening paradise. It was Siberia. Russia,Urals,Siberia,Former USSR,Anthrology,Moscow Cover 1 Contents 2 Front Matter 5 Title Page 5 Publisher Information 6 Preface & Acknowledgements 8 Introduction 11 Landscape Of Extremes 13 The Humdrum And The Bizarre 17 Siberia 22 Chapter One 22 Bronze-Age Cultures 25 The Scyths 27 Turkic And Mongol States 28 The Khanate Of Sibir 31 Indigenes Before Russian Colonization 33 Yermak’s Conquest 38 Chapter Two 45 Travel On The Sibirsky Trakt 49 Beyond The Watershed Of Imagination 52 Stroganovs, Demidovs And The Industrial Heritage Of Nevyansk 55 Yekaterinburg: Minerals And Mining 58 A Walk Through Yekaterinburg 63 The Romanov Murders And Church-On-Blood 71 From Voznesenskaya Gorka To The Opera 76 Chapter Three 80 From Fortress To Metropolis 84 Holy Trinity Monastery: Missionaries And Indigenous Colonization 88 Towards Historical Square And Central Square 94 Rasputin: The Mystic From Pokrovskoe 100 Chapter Four 105 The Kremlin Complex 110 Banishing The Bell 112 Siberian Administration 115 Outside The Kremlin: Decembrists And Dostoevsky 117 The Lower Town 120 Abalak And The “Pious Work” 124 Chapter Five 128 Khanty-Mansiysk: Boom Town 131 Berezovo And Salekhard 133 The Railway Of Death 136 Chapter Six 139 Revolution And Civil War 143 Exploring Omsk 148 The Baraba Steppe 158 Chapter Seven 163 Exploring Siberia’s Seas 166 The Second Kamchatka Expedition 170 Nordenskjöld’s Expeditions 173 Joseph Wiggins And Helen Peel 175 Nansen And The Drifters 181 Chapter Eight 186 Building Russia’s Railway 191 Novosibirsk: Bridge Over The Ob 196 Around Novosibirsk 200 The Mammoths Of Akademgorodok 207 Chapter Nine 210 Barnaul And The Altai 213 Industrial Heritage 217 Prospekt Lenina: Urban Archaeology 222 The Altai Republic: Spiritual Landscape 223 Altai Nationalism 225 The Katun River And Mount Belukha 229 Chapter Ten 234 KHOOMEI: Throat Singing And Cultural Identity 236 The Tuvans And Their Burial Complexes 240 The Yenisey River North 246 Khakassia And The Steppe Cultures 248 Krasnoyarsk 253 Yeniseysk: Churches And Fairs 267 Turukhansk: Saints And Exiles 271 Chapter Eleven 276 Foreign Visitors 281 Central Irkutsk: Monuments, Museums And Monasteries 286 Remembering The Decembrists 295 Chapter Twelve 298 The World’s Largest Freshwater Lake 300 Irkutsk To Listvyanka 304 The Circumbaikal Railway 312 Olkhon Island: Where Spirits And Cultures Meet 316 Chapter Thirteen 320 House Of The Dead 323 The Gulags 328 Company Town 334 Further Reading 339 Selected Bibliography 340 Online Resources 341 Also Available 343 Before setting foot in Siberia, like most people, I imagined it mostly as a distant but somehow exotic place of extreme cold, and a region of vast forests and steppe filled with exiles. It seemed like Australia - my place of birth - in an ice-box. When I happened to come across someone who had travelled through Soviet-era Siberia with a guitarand collected Russian folk songs, my fascination grew. Several years would pass, however, before I crossed the Urals myself. In January 1992, at a time when the Soviet Union had ceased to exist but Russia was caught in colliding worlds of the past and present, I travelled to Moscow and stayed with a family to round off a Russian language course I was doing at Melbourne University. The Moscow I found in early 1992 was a chaos of systems - some things worked by theold rules, others by the new, and the whole economy had moved out of the shops and onto Moscow’s bustling streets. Visits to St. Petersburg followed, and in 1998 I finally had the opportunity to travel to Siberia for a couple of months spent working on chapters of a guidebook for an international publisher. Siberia is a cradle of civilizations, the birthplace of ancient Turkic empires and home to the cultures of indigenes, including peoples whose ancestors migrated to the Americas. It was a promised land to which bonded peasants could flee their cruel masters, yet also a snow-covered "white hell" across which exiles shuffled in felt shoes and chains. In Stalin's era, Siberia became synonymous with the gulag; today, it is a vast region of bustling metropolises and magnificent landscapes: a place where the humdrum, the beautiful, and the bizarre ignite the imagination