Siberia A Cultural History

by Haywood, A.J.

• ISBN13: 9780199754182
• ISBN10: 0199754187
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-10-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Before Russians crossed the Urals Mountains in the sixteenth century to settle their "colony" in North Asia, they heard rumors 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 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. 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. MAGNIFICENT RIVERS AND LAKES: Lake Baikal, the Ob, Irtysh, Yenisey, Angara, Lena and Amur rivers. Writer Anton Chekhov described some, polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen and the eccentric British merchant captain Joseph Wiggins navigated others. THE CITIES AND THE RAILWAY: High fashion and low life, traffic-choked streets, and chimney stacks. Siberia's cities bring a madding crowd far into the remote taiga-linked by the Trans-Siberian Railway, the nineteenth-century "camel track." MYSTICS, MOUNTAINS AND ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS Nikolay Rerikh sought the mystical kingdom of Shambhala here, Russian writer Valentin Rasputin was confused by its beauty, while local Altaians themselves see their republic of mountains and steppe as a Central Asian heaven on earth.

Author Biography

Journalist and author whose published works includes guidebooks and articles on Russia, Austria, and Germany, as well as short stories and translations.

Table of Contents

Preface & Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction Heaven and Hell	p. xi
Landscape of Extremes	p. xii
The Humdrum and the Bizarre	p. xvi
Cradle of Civilizations	p. 1
Bronze-Age Cultures	p. 4
The Scyths	p. 5
Turkic and Mongol States	p. 6
The Khanate of Sibir	p. 8
Indigenes before Russian Colonization	p. 10
Yermak's Conquest	p. 14
A Frontier Beyond: The Urals and Yekaterinburg	p. 21
Travel on the Sibirsky Trakt	p. 24
Beyond the Watershed of Imagination	p. 27
Stroganovs, Demidovs and the Industrial Heritage of Nevyansk	p. 29
Yekaterinburg: Minerals and Mining	p. 32
A Walk through Yekaterinburg	p. 36
The Romanov Murders and Church-on-Blood	p. 42
From Voznesenskaya Gorka to the Opera	p. 47
Tyumen: Dallas in Siberia	p. 51
From Fortress to Metropolis	p. 54
Holy Trinity Monastery: Missionaries and Indigenous Colonization	p. 58
Towards Historical Square and Central Square	p. 63
Rasputin: The Mystic from Pokrovskoe	p. 69
Tobolsk: From ôSodom in the Taigaö to a Cultural Heartland	p. 73
The Kremlin Complex	p. 77
Banishing the Bell	p. 79
Siberian Administration	p. 82
Outside the Kremlin: Decembrists and Dostoevsky	p. 83
The Lower Town	p. 86
Abalak and the ôPious Workö	p. 90
To the Frozen Ocean and Stalin's Railway of Death	p. 93
Khanty-Mansiysk: Boom Town	p. 96
Berezovo and Salekhard	p. 97
The Railway of Death	p. 100
Omsk and the Baraba Steppe	p. 103
Revolution and Civil War	p. 107
Exploring Omsk	p. 111
The Baraba Steppe	p. 120
Over the Top: The Northern Sea Route	p. 125
Exploring Siberia's Seas	p. 127
The Second Kamchatka Expedition	p. 130
Nordenskjöld's Expeditions	p. 133
Joseph Wiggins and Helen Peel	p. 135
Nansen and the Drifters	p. 140
Novosibirsk and the Trans-Siberian Railway	p. 145
Building Russia's Railway	p. 149
Novosibirsk: Bridge over the Ob	p. 154
Around Novosibirsk	p. 157
The Mammoths of Akademgorodok	p. 163
The Altai Region and Republic: Mystics, Mountains and Nomads	p. 167
Barnaul and the Altai	p. 170
Industrial Heritage	p. 173
Prospekt Lenina: Urban Archaeology	p. 177
The Altai Republic: Spiritual Landscape	p. 179
Altai Nationalism	p. 180
The Katun River and Mount Belukha	p. 183
The Yenisey River: From Steppes to the Frozen Tundra	p. 189
Khoomei: Throat Singing and Cultural Identity	p. 191
The Tuvans and their Burial Complexes	p. 195
The Yenisey River North	p. 199
Khakassia and the Steppe Cultures	p. 202
Krasnoyarsk	p. 206
North to the Arctic	p. 215
Yeniseysk: Churches and Fairs	p. 218
Turukhansk: Saints and Exiles	p. 222
Irkutsk: The ôParis of Siberiaö	p. 227
Foreign Visitors	p. 231
Central Irkutsk: Monuments, Museums and Monasteries	p. 235
Remembering the Decembrists	p. 243
Lake Baikal: Siberia's Sacred Sea	p. 245
The World's Largest Freshwater Lake	p. 246
Irkutsk to Listvyanka	p. 250
The Circumbaikal Railway	p. 256
Olkhon Island: Where Spirits and Cultures Meet	p. 260
The Archipelago of Exile: Magadan	p. 265
House of the Dead	p. 268
The Gulags	p. 272
Company Town	p. 277
Further Reading	p. 281
Index of Historical & Literary, Names	p. 289
Index of Places & Landmarks	p. 293
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