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ABSTRACT ƭ This paper examines three phases in the history of Siberia within the larger context of Russian history. It points out that following its conquest and annexation by Russia during the reign of Ivan IV (the Terrible), Siberia became a penal colony for criminal elements, book radicals, revolutionaries and other sundry offenders. The sustained attempt by Russian Tsars to keep ‘unwanted elements’ out of circulation in European Russia did not only result in a heavy human traffic to Siberia; it led to the planting of ‘seeds of cities’ there and inadvertently became ‘a rite of passage’ for the men and women who turned it into a ‘gigantic laboratory of revolution’ and kindled the revolutionary flame that so fatally consumed tsarism and autocracy in Russia. The paper contends that Siberia became an open graveyard under Stalin and examines some striking opposites and trajectories in the history of the region. The study concludes that despite its harsh and inclement weather, Siberia has transited from a penal colony to a modern region.

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LJP Copyright ID: 232546 Print ISSN: 2515-5784 Online ISSN: 2515-5792

London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences 379U Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0

© 2018. Emmanuel Oladipo Ojo. This is a research/review paper, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 4.0 Unported License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), permitting all noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Siberia: From a Penal Colony to a Modern Region

Emmanuel Oladipo Ojo ______

I. ABSTRACT whole of northern part of the Asian continent; the This paper examines three phases in the history latter exists in the realm of mental consciousness of Siberia within the larger context of Russian and is known virtually all over the world. The use history. It points out that following its conquest to which the former was put – a penal colony – as and annexation by Russia during the reign of well as its inclement climate informed the latter. Ivan IV (the Terrible), Siberia became a penal Thus, the mention of Siberia often evokes fear and colony for criminal elements, book radicals, horror even in the sub consciousness of people revolutionaries and other sundry offenders. The who probably never visited geographic Siberia and sustained attempt by Russian Tsars to keep are probably in continents far away from it. Indeed, just as the Battle of Waterloo of 18 June ‘unwanted elements’ out of circulation in ​ European Russia did not only result in a heavy 1815 has since popularised Waterloo and carved at human traffic to Siberia; it led to the planting of universal and imperishable phrase out of it; ‘seeds of cities’ there and inadvertently became ‘a metaphoric Siberia is known world-wide thereby making Siberia one of the three ‘phrase-places’ rite of passage’ for the men and women who 1 turned it into a ‘gigantic laboratory of revolution’ that attract world-wide recognition. The fame of and kindled the revolutionary flame that so metaphoric Siberia may have informed Nikolay fatally consumed tsarism and autocracy in Rerikh’s submission that “it would be odd to talk about the meaning of Siberia for the world. It is Russia. The paper contends that Siberia became 2 an open graveyard under Stalin and examines known to every schoolgirl”. Till date, the some striking opposites and trajectories in the metaphor, ‘send him to Siberia’ is almost a death history of the region. The study concludes that sentence, or at best, a sentence to a horrendous, despite its harsh and inclement weather, Siberia insufferable life. This is because many of the has transited from a penal colony to a modern individuals despatched to Siberia never returned region. while those who did had their lives severely uttered for ill. Indeed, an individual who Keywords: Siberia, Soviet Union, Russia, penal demonstrates unusual physical strength and colony, revolution, resources, development. ruggedness must have come from Siberia because London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences “Siberians are capable of enduring almost any 3 Author: Emmanuel Oladipo Ojo (PhD), is an Associate imaginary hardship”. As Britts has pointed out, ​ Professor in the Department of History & International ‘Siberia’ has become ‘embedded in our language Studies, Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti, Nigeria. He is that it’s become a by-word for other things: a currently (2018) a visiting scholar in the Department of General History, Siberian Federal University, 1 Since the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte there, all over ​ Krasnoyarsk, Russia. the world, ‘Waterloo’ has figuratively come to imply decisive, final defeat or setback. In the same vein, since Julius Caesar crossed the river Rubicon in 49 BC; the phrase ‘crossing the II. INTRODUCTION – SIBERIA: DELINEATION Rubicon’ has figuratively meant ‘passing the point of no AND CONQUEST BY IMPERIAL RUSSIA return’. 2 Quoted from A.J. Haywood, Siberia: A Cultural History, ​ ​ ​ There are two Siberias – geographic and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. xi. metaphoric. While the former is an enormous 3 Victor L. Mote, Siberia: Worlds Apart, New York: Boulder, ​ ​ swathe of contemporary Russia covering the 1998, p. 1.

© 2018 London Journals Press Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 11 terrible seat in a restaurant might be referred to consensus among Russian historians and by waiters as “Siberia”. “Siberia” can be a social ethnographers on the origins of the name 4 condition, too, when someone is ostracized’. In ‘Siberia’. The first mention of the name may the same vein, Frazier opined that to most people however probably have been in the Chinese Siberia is not the place itself but a figure of chronicle Yuan–Chao–Mi–Shi in about 1206. In ​ speech. According to him; “in fashionable effect, the word ‘Sibif’’ which probably meant ​ ​ restaurants in New York and Los Angeles, Siberia ‘Western Borderland’ may have had a Chinese 8 is the section of less desirable tables given to origin. Arab travellers and traders of the 13th to ​ customers when [sic] the maître d’ does not the 15th centuries called the region now known as 5 ​ especially like” De Windt, one of the earliest Siberia different names: while Rashid–ad–Din writer–visitors to Siberia, wrote: called it ‘Ibis–Shibir’; Mesalek–al–Absor called it ‘Sibir–i–Abir’ and Ibn–Arab–Shakh referred to it 9 The name “Siberia” has a far more terrible significance as ‘Abir–i–Sabir’. The seemingly contradictory in England than in Russia. The word is suggestive, to the majority of Englishmen, of misery, cruelty, and names notwithstanding, all these early travellers death. It conjures up vogue visions of dark dungeons and traders were unanimous in their location of and deadly mines; men dying under the knout; and Ibis–Shibir, Sibir–i–Abir or Abir–i–Sabir in the ravishing of young and innocent women by guards and 6 north-east of the Kirghiz country, upper valley of prison officials the River Irtysh. This indicates very clearly that The focus of this study is the transformation of these names refer to the region now known as Siberia from a penal colony to a modern industrial Siberia, because, among other proofs, of the seven region; thus, other than locating the region, this railway bridges that span the Irtysh River, all are study does not have the intention of veering into in Siberia and Kazakhstan. The earliest references ​ any detailed ethnographical and geographical to ‘Siberia’ in European accounts occurred in 7 10 description of Siberia. There seems to be no about 1375. For example, the Catalan Atlas of the world gave the name ‘Sebur’ to the country east of the River Volga, a famous river in present-day 4 Ransom Riggs, “Siberia: What’s in a Name? Mental Floss, ​ ​ ​ ​ Russia because eleven of the twenty largest cities 18 May 2011, p. 10. in the country, including the capital, Moscow, are 5 Ian Frazier, Travels in Siberia, New York, Farrar, Strans & ​ ​ ​ Girous, 2010, p. 3. located in the Volga’s watershed. Also, in his Map, 6 Harry De Windt, Siberia as it is, London: Chapman & Hall, ​ ​ ​ 1892, p. 258. 7 For detailed examination of the ethnographical and ​ geographical (including climate, vegetation, fauma and fuma, 8 Anatole V. Balkaloff, ‘Notes on the Origin of the Name etc) of Siberia, see, among others, David Anderson & Dmitry ​ V. Arzyutov, ‘The Construction of Soviet Ethnography and “Siberia”’ The Slavic and Eastern Review, Vol. 29, No. 72, ​ ​ “The Peoples of Siberia”’ Journal of History and December 1950, p. 287. ​ Anthropology, Vol. 27, Issue 2, 2016, pp. 183 – 209; Helen 9 Ibid ​ ​ Hundley, Siberia: A History of the People, New York: John 10 The Atlas, commissioned by King Charles V of France, was London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences ​ ​ Wiley & Sons, 2015; David Greene, Midnight in Siberia, New drawn by Abraham Cresques. It contained ‘the latest ​ ​ York & London: Norton & Company, 2014; Olga information on Asia and China’ and was often referred to as Ulturgasheva, Narrating the Future in Siberia, New York: ‘the most complete picture of geographical knowledge as it ​ ​ Burghahn Books, 2012; George Kennan, Tent Life in Siberia, stood in the later Middle Ages’. The Atlas was titled ​ ​ New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007; Igor V. Naumov, The Mappamundi, that is to say, image of the world and the ​ History of Siberia , New York: Routledge, 2006, particularly, regions which are in the earth and the various kinds of ​ pp. 1–10; Michael Khodarlovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier. peoples which inhabit it See Raymond C. Beazley, The ​ ​ The Making of a Colonial Empire 1500–1800, Bloomington Dawn of Modern Geography, Vol. 3, London: J. Murray, ​ ​ & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004; Colin 1897, pp. 525–26; G.R. Crone, Maps and Their Makers, ​ ​ Thubron, In Siberia, New York: Perennial Publishers, 1999 London & New York, Hutchinson University Library, 1953, ​ ​ and Karlo Stajner, Seventy Thousand Days in Siberia pp. 39–50 and Ronald V. Tooley & Charles Bricker, ​ (translated by Joel Agee), Farrar: Straus & Giroux Inc, 1988. Landmarks of Mapmaking, Phaidon Press, 1977, p. 48. ​

Siberia: From a Penal Colony to a Modern Region

12 Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 © 2018 London Journals Press Fra Mauro delineated a considerable tract of land – the whole of northern Asia which came to be 11 16 lying north-east of the Volga as ‘Provincia Sibir’. called Siberia. However, as Forsyth has pointed out, the only basic difference between the manner Available evidence seems to suggest that ‘Siberia’ and method of Russia’s conquest of Siberia and is a name of Tartar origin and possibly came from 12 those of Western European states was that unlike 13th century Mongol usage. The term has been ​ the latter, the former’s acquisition was “not known since when the Mongols conquered the dependent upon fleets of sailing–ships plying long area. Also, following its ‘discovery’ and conquest distances across the ocean, but on as advance by Russia, the name was retained as Sibirskaia 13 overland (or rather, by river) into ‘unexplored’ zemlista. Although, Beer opines that Siberia has 14 regions of the same Eurasia continent. Otherwise, “no binding ethnic identity”; ethnically, Siberia the Russian explorer-conquerors shared with belongs to the Mongoloid race but linguistically, it their West European contemporaries the is divided onto six language groups: Tuckic, developments in state and military organisation Mongolian, Tangus–Manchu, Samodi, Yugrian 15 and technology – above all firearms – which gave and Palaeoasiatic. Siberia has natural borders – them a powerful advantage over the less in the west, the Ural Mountains; in the north, the ‘advanced’ native inhabitants of the lands they 17 Arctic Ocean; in the east, the Pacific Ocean and seized”. the south, Kazakh and Mongolia. There seems to be no doubt that the region now known as Siberia Up till 1552, the Tartar Khans considered the has a fairly long and rich history but it was after grand princes of Moscow as their vassals and its ‘discovery’, conquest and annexation by the indeed subjected them to frequent raids. Also, the Russian Empire that the region became famous Kazan Tartars controlled the middle Volga and reached a watershed. By the middle of the 16th thereby frustrating Russia’s sustained trading and ​ century, the colonial expansion of European states economic ambitions in the east. Consequently, in was steadily on course. Tempted and attracted by a determined attempt to liquidate the security lofty dreams of unlimited opportunities of trade threat the Tartars posed to Russia while at the and commerce, the merchant-adventurers of same time lifting the economic and trading Western Europe had set out to explore ‘unknown’ ‘embargo’ placed on her interests in the east, Ivan parts of the world. Imperial Russia, using similar IV (the Terrible) sent a large army against the means of expansion, conquest and colonisation Kazan Tartars and supported Stroganov who ​ participated in the European expansionist policy spearheaded Russia’s eastward expansion. In the and scramble for colonies by conquering the late 1570s, the Stroganovs recruited Cossack largest continuous territory of any known empire 16 Russia’s conquest of Siberia enabled the former to build ​ London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences the modern world’s largest empire. On the eve of the First 11 The Map, drawn by Fra Mauro, an Italian Monk and his ​ World War, the single Siberian province of Iakutsk assistant sailor–cartographer, Andrea Bianco, was encompassed more land than the combined territories of all commissioned by King Alfonso V of Portugal. It was the European combatants in the War except Russia. Indeed, produced between 1457 and 1459. See Schulz Juergen, “Maps on the eve of the War, Siberia was so large that almost two as Metaphors: Mural Maps, Cycles of the Italian million square miles of space would be left over if the entire Renaissance” in David Woodward (ed.), Art and ​ contiguous continent of the United States were placed into its Cartography. Six Historical Essays, Chicago & London: centre. See Bruce Lincoln, The Conquest of a Continent. ​ ​ Chicago University Press, 1987, p. 101, Figure 3.13 Siberia and the Russians, New York: Cornell University ​ 12 A.J. Haywood, Siberia: A Cultural History, p. 1. For details Press, 1993, p. xxi. ​ ​ ​ of the origin, culture and early civilisation of Siberia, see pp. 17 James Forsyth, A History of the Peoples of Siberia: ​ ​ 1–6. Russia’s North Asian Colony, 1581–1990, Cambridge: ​ ​ ​ ​ 13 Igor V. Naumov, The History of Siberia, p. 3. Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 1. See also Robert ​ ​ ​ 14 David Beer, The House of the Dead. Siberian Exile Under Kermer, The Urge to the Sea: The Course of Russian History ​ ​ ​ the Tsars, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016, p. 5. – The Role of Rivers, Portages, Ostrogs, Monasteries, and ​ 15 Ibid, p. 4. Furs, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1942. ​ ​ ​

Siberia: From a Penal Colony to a Modern Region

© 2018 London Journals Press Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 13 21 fighters who eventually succeeded in defeating the Office in Moscow and St. Petersburg after 1703. Khanate of Sibir. By October 1582, Yermak and Be that as it may, the conquest and eventual ​ his soldiers engaged the Tatars at Qashliq in a annexation of Siberia, like similar endeavours ​ ​ battle that turned the tides against the Tartars and elsewhere, was costly and long-drawn. However, marked the beginning of effective penetration and that singular penetration and conquest enabled

conquest of Siberia by Russia. Y​ ermak remained Russia to rise among the great powers of the ​ in Siberia and continued his struggle against the world and has, till date, helped Russia to sustain Tatars until 1584, when a raid organized by that position – Siberia, which, for all intents and Kuchum Khan ambushed and killed him and his purposes, is the pride of Russia, makes up about 18 party. This foothold was subsequently reinforced 77 percent of the territory of the Russian by the military successes of Ermak Timofeevich Federation and encompasses eight of its eleven over the Sibir Tartars near present-day Tobolsk. time zones; it provides Russia with a sixth of Russia's conquest of the Tartar khanate was world’s gold and silver; a fifth of its platinum and completed in 1598 and in the 17th century, the a third of its iron. A quarter of the world’s timber ​ whole of Western Siberia was annexed by Russia grows within Siberia with abundant supply of 22 such that one of the titles of Aleksey Mikhailovich, coal, oil and gas. Bobrick has clearly underlined ​ second Russian Romanov tsar (1645-1676), was the importance of Siberia to Russia (particularly ‘Tsar of Siberia’. Between 1803 and 1821, the post Soviet). Writing on the eve of the entire Siberia was under the authority of a single disintegration of the Soviet Union, he opined that governor-general based in Irkutsk but 1822, “the future of the country, with its collapsing Siberia was sub-divided into two principal aggregate of states, was unclear. But her hopes – administrative territories – western and eastern – in a material sense, at least – seemed to lie to the with the governors-general based at Omsk and east, in Siberia, with its vast repertories of oil, gas, 19 Irkutsk respectively. coal, timber, diamonds, and precious metals of all 23 kinds”. Undoubtedly, a resource base of this size ​ It must be stressed however that, as in most cases, and richness confers immense power on its owner commerce preceded conquest in Siberia. As early as the 13th century, traders from Novgorod had ​ III. SIBERIA: A PENAL COLONY crossed the Urals to trade extensively in furs with 20 the native tribes. As a colony of the Russian Before it became the treasure and resource base of Russia, Siberia was a penal colony: snow-covered Empire, Siberia was administered by the Colonial ​ ‘white hell’ across which exiles shuffled in felt

18 shoes and chains. In 1582, Ivan IV issued a Scholars have examined all the twists and turns in Russia’s ​ conquest of Siberia. See, among others, Benson Bobrick, East supplement to his 1550 Law Code (Sudebnik) ​ ​ ​ of the Sun. The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia, identifying exile (ssylka) as part of the state’s ​ ​ ​ New York: Poseidon Press, 2014 and his Fearful Majesty: ​ ​ punitive arsenal. For lodging false complaints in The Life and Reign of Ivan the Terrible, New York: G.P. ​ court and sowing sedition among minor-boyars Putman, 1987; James Forsyth, A History of the Peoples of

London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences ​ (deti-boiary), the tsar replaced execution with Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony, 1581–1990 and Janet ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ M. Hartley, Siberia: A History of the People Yale: Yale exile to such ‘border cities’ (ukrainnye goroda) as ​ ​ ​ University Press, 2014. 21 19 David Beer, The House of the Dead. Siberian Exile Under For a detailed account of Russia’s administration in ​ ​ ​ the Tsar, p. xxii. See “Administration of Siberia” in ibid for a Siberia, see, George V. Lantzeff, Siberia in the Seventeenth ​ ​ ​ ​ Century: A Study of the Colonial Administration, Berkeley & detailed examination of Siberia’s administrative structure up ​ till 1917. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1943. 20 22 Janet M. Hartley, Siberia: A History of the People, p. xiii For a detailed examination of the nature, organisation, ​ ​ ​ ​ and Bruce Lincoln, The Conquest of a Continent. Siberia and course and outcome of the fur trade, see Oleg V. Bychkov, ​ ​ the Russians, p. xxi. “Russian Hunters in Eastern Siberia in the 17th Century- ​ Lifestyle and Economy” (translated by Mina A Jacobs), Fort 23 Benson Bobrick, East of the Sun. The Epic Conquest and ​ ​ Ross Conservancy Library, n.d. pp. 2–10. Tragic History of Siberia, ‘Foreword’, p. vi. ​

Siberia: From a Penal Colony to a Modern Region

14 Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 © 2018 London Journals Press 28 Sevsk and Kursk. This supplement marks the first century” is far more plausible. Boris Godunov legal recognition of exile’s existence in Russia.24 (the de facto regent of Tsardom of Russia between As Kennan, who was granted almost unrestricted 1585 and 1598), the first non–Rurikid Tsar of access to officials and documents of Tsarist Russia, reigned between 1598 and 1605, some Russia’s exile system pointed out in his four decades before the accession of Alexis two-volume book; rather than outright Michailovitch to the throne. It would be recalled imprisonment, exile in Siberia was initially that following the death of Ivan the Terrible, considered a cheaper means of putting Tsarevich Dmitri, his last son and his mother, 25 ‘undesirable elements’ out of circulation. Maria Nagaya, were sent to exile in Uglich in However, the system later became rather 1584. On 15 May 1591, nine-year-old Dmitri was unwieldy and so many extraneous people got found dead in Uglich with his throat slit. While caught up in its web. In the course of the 19th some accounts claim that he was murdered by the ​ century, the scale and intensity of Siberian exile agents of Boris Godunov so as to prevent him increased so much that it surpassed the exile from claiming the throne; others opine that systems of the British and French Empires. For Dmitri might have slit his throat while holding a example, while the former transferred about knife during an epileptic seizure. Be that as it 160,000 convicts to Australia between 1787 and may, convinced that Dmitri was murdered by the 1868 and the latter had a penal population of agents of Godunov, the Uglicians formed a mob, about 5,500 in its overseas colonies between 1860 went on rampage and murdered the perceived 29 and 1900; more than one million tsarist subjects assassins and an official from Moscow. B​ eer were transported to Siberia between 1801 and recounts the brutal retribution that followed thus: 26 1917. It is therefore absolutely and practically impossible to give a blow-by-blow account of Godunov ordered forces to Uglich to quash the rebellion, and the following spring, he dispensed despatches of exiles to Siberia; therefore what is justice. He had some 200 townspeople executed attempted in this section is a brief analysis of the and others imprisoned; about 100 were flogged circumstances that led to the despatches of some and had their nostrils torn out; the more eloquent lost their tongues as well. Scourged and mutilated, famous exiles to Siberia. 30 the rebels were banished to Siberia

Windt opines that banishment to Siberia dates Furthermore, the town bell that announced the from about the middle of the 17th century, when, ​ incident and summoned the mob was not only during the reign of Alexis Michailovitch, father of publicly whipped and had its tongue removed; it Peter the Great, the first convoy of prisoners 27 was banished to Tobolsk (Siberia) where it was 31 crossed the Urals into Asia. However, the Uglich registered as the first inanimate exile. However, incidence of 1591 suggests that banishment to in 1891, Tsar Alexander III granted the request of London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences Siberia predated the reign of Alexis Michailovitch; a group of Russian merchants who pleaded for the thus, Kriukelytė’s view that “the push into return of the bell to its native town. Thus, the Siberia...began at the end of the sixteenth 300-year exile of the 300-kilogramme copper bell ended and it returned to a “ceremonial 32 homecoming” in Uglich.

24Andrew A. Gentes, Exile to Siberia, 1590–1822, New York: 28 Erika Kriukelytė, “The Creation of Modern Prisons in the Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 35 ​ 25 George Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, London: Russian Empire”, International Institute of Social History, ​ ​ James R. Osgood, Mcilvaine & Co. 1891, particularly pp. IISH-Research Paper 48, 2012, p. 4. 29 David Beer, p. 3. 168ff. ​ 26 David Beer, The House of the Dead. Siberian Exile Under 30 Ibid. ​ ​ the Tsars, p. 6. 31Ibid ​ 27 Harry De Windt, Siberia as it is, p. 260. 32 Ibid. ​ ​ ​ ​

Siberia: From a Penal Colony to a Modern Region

© 2018 London Journals Press Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 15 Many of the Decembrists – a group of Russian thinkers and philosophes like Jean Jacque revolutionaries who staged an unsuccessful revolt Rousseau, François-Marie Voltaire and Charles- against Tsar Nicola I in December 1825 – were Louis Montesquieu had greatly promoted the also exiled to Siberia. Following the death of concepts of freedom, equality, representation, Alexander I, Nicholas I ascended to the throne constitutionalism and egalitarianism all of which and in line with the established traditional and contradicted the most visible features of the military practice, members of the military class Russian sate – autocracy and serfdom. Be that as were expected to take the oath of allegiance, not it may, two key leaders of the rebels, Prince only to show their acceptance of Nicolas as the Trubetskoy and his second-in-command, Colonel new Tsar but also to pledge their unalloyed loyalty Bulatov, developed last minute cold feet and and unflinching support to him. However, rather backed out of the mutiny. Thus plagued by lack of than show their acceptance of Nicolas; the organised leadership and overwhelmed by 9,000 Decembrist, numbering about 3,000, mutinied loyal troops, the Movement was doomed. and revolted. A number of factors were responsible for the rebellion. One, the Following the failure of his peace moves and Decemberists felt that Constantine Pavlovich, initial hesitation, Nicolas I firmly and fatally rather than Nicolas, was next in line to the throne. crushed the insurrection – about seventy of the The former was probably preferred by a section of Decembrists were killed in the course of confrontation with troops loyal to the Tsar; five the Russian society because of his perceived 35 were hanged while the rest were exiled to liberal views and general openness towards 36 enlightenment ideas and the prospect of a freer Siberia, Kazakhstan and the Far East. Only a few Russian state under him. However, after the death of these men lived long enough to be pardoned by of Alexander I, it was discovered that Constantine Nicolas’ successor, Alexander II, thirty years later. had been removed from the order of succession It would be recalled that in August 1856, Tsar three years earlier because of his 1822 marriage to Alexander II granted general amnesty to nine Joanna Grudzinska, a Polish lady who had no thousand people including political prisoners such 33 as “surviving Decemberists, Petrashevtsy, and royalties or blood. Constantine was said to have 37 relinquished the right of succession to the throne participants in the Polish insurrection of 1831”. to Nicolas his younger brother but the However, not all surviving Decembrists returned Decemberists doubted this claim. The situation to European Russia either on account of financial was complicated by the fact that the heir apparent inhibitions, not having families to return to or old nominated by their father, Alexander I, was not age. Consequently, Siberia became permanent home for these categories of people and their made public until after his death. Thus, there were 38 descendants. Although, the December 1825 doubts regarding the legality and authenticity of ​ the claim that Nicolas was next in the line of insurrection was fatally crushed, it had two 34 succession. Moreover, many of the rebels had profound immediate effects on the Russian been very active in the revolutionary movements society – it strengthened autocracy particularly London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences that swept across Western Europe. For example, many of them participated in the Russian 35 These were Kondraty Ryleyev, Sergei Muravyon-Apostol, ​ occupation of France after the Napoleonic Wars Peter Kakhvsky, Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin and Pavel Pestel. and had served elsewhere in Western Europe. The 36 Norman Stone, Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Russian and ​ ​ Napoleonic Wars, the American War of the Soviet Union, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ​ Independence as well as the the writings of 1982, p. 99. 37 Kate V. Lipman, “Alexander II and Gorbachev: The ​ 33 Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Doomed Reformers of Russia”, UVM Honors College Senior ​ ​ Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855, Berkeley: University of Theses. 158, The University of Vermont, 2017, p. 21. ​ California Press, p. 31. 38 See Anatole G. Mazour, The First Russian Revolution ​ ​ 34 Ibid, p. 32. 1825, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1937, p. 259 ​ ​ ​

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16 Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 © 2018 London Journals Press secret police terror and promoted the spread of part of the motley human traffic to Siberia. Some revolutionary activities and ideas among members of the formal charges brought against Dostoevsky ​ of the educated class. It must be pointed out were that he listened to a story that criticized the however, without any fear of contradiction that army; had in his possession an illegal printing the insurrection, among other factors, convinced press; read an open letter to the Circle from Alexander II of the need for reforms. Ironically, Belinsky to Gogol “which was full of insolent ​ he, like Mikhail Gorbachev, to varying degrees, expressions against the Orthodox Church and the got consumed by liberalisation and reform. Tsar Supreme Power” and participating in a regicide Alexander II was killed in the streets of St. plot although Fyodor Mikhailovich vehemently 42 Petersburg on 13 March 1881 by a bomb thrown denied the last charge. Since the Petrashevsky ​ by a member of the radical People’s Will on the Circle, which was infiltrated by a member of the very day he signed a proclamation (the so-called secret police, was illegal in the climate of mid-19th ​ Loris-Melikov constitution) that would have century Tsarist Russia; on 23 April 1849, ​ created two legislative commissions made up of members of the Circle were arrested and charged indirectly elected representatives. On the other with subversion. While 123 people were ​ hand, Gorbachev’s ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’ investigated, 22 faced a military tribunal and all consumed his presidency and the Soviet Union. but one were sentenced to death by firing squad. The tragic fate of these two reformers is the thesis In a carefully stage-managed mock-execution on of Kate Lipman’s study. As will be shown as this 22 December 1849, Dostoyevsky and the rest of article progresses, the exile of some of the the group were taken to a regimental parade ​ Decembrists to Siberia marked a watershed in the ground, where scaffolds had been erected and history of the region as it led to a permanent decorated with black crepe. Their crimes and implantation of an intelligentsia there. For the sentence were read out and an Orthodox priest first time, a socio-cultural, intellectual and asked them to repent. Three of the members of political elite settled in Siberia as permanent the group were tied to stakes in readiness for residents; these alongside the natives, made execution. At the last moment however, the Tsar ​ enormous contribution to its development and decided to spare their lives – there was a roll of 39 43 transformation. drums and the firing squad lowered its rifles. The mock-execution ceremony was apparently Russia’s famous author, Fyodor Mikhaylovich 40 part of the punishment as one of the convicts went Dostoyevsky and his young intellectual 41 insane on the spot and remained permanently colleagues in the Petrashevsky Circle were also insane. On the other hand, in a rare demonstration of fortitude akin to that of Obafemi 39 Ibid, pp. 256–260 44 ​ ​ Awolowo some twelve decades later, London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences 40 Zanon described Dostoyevsky as “a titan of the world ​ ​ literature, a schizophrenic, a gambler, a true believer, a Journal of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. sufferer, a humanitarian, an epileptic, a Russian, a ​ philosopher, a St. Petersburger”, Ksenia Zanon, “Fyodor 6, No. 3, March 1946, pp. 363-380 ​ ​ 42 Dostoyevsky”, retrieved from http://www.executedtoday. “Nabokov on Dostoyevsky”, The New York Times, 23 ​ ​ ​ ​ com/tag/petrashevshy-circle on 15 November 2017. August 1981. 43 41 The Petrashevsky Circle, which opened in early 1840s, was “Biography: Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, 1821-1881” ​ ​ a Russian literary discussion group, attended by officials, retrieved from http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/ dostoevskybio.html. See also See also “Fyodor Dostoevsky, officers, and progressive-minded intelligentsia in St. ​ 1821-1881“, theguardian (London), 22 July 2008. Petersburg. It was organized by Mikhail Petrashevsky, a ​ ​ 44 Chief Obafemi Awolowo, arguably Nigeria’s greatest student of Charles Fourier, the anti-capitalist, French ​ utopian philosopher who proposed a romantic solution to philosopher-leader, was the National President and Leader of social problems. Although, members did not hold absolutely the Action Group, first Premier of the Western Region and uniform views on socio-political issues, they were all strongly Opposition Leader in the Federal Parliament. Following a opposed the absolute monarchy and serfdom. See N. Troyan fatal internal schism in his party in 1962, he was arrested, “The Philosophical Opinions of the Petrashevsky Circle”, tried and found guilty of subversion and felony. On 11 ​

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© 2018 London Journals Press Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 17 Dostoyevsky gave his now famous ‘I am not However, the Tsar commuted the death sentences dejected speech’ aimed at encouraging his to exile in Siberia - Dostoyevsky earned a stern colleagues during what seemed their last eight-year sentence (later commuted to four by moments on earth which also succoured them on the Tsar) of hard labour in Siberia. Seen as a their way to dark Siberia. He said, inter-alia ‘dangerous criminal’ he was shackled at the hands ​ and feet for the entire period in the camps.46 Brother, I am not dejected or crestfallen. Life, Dostoyevsky described life in a typical Siberian life is everywhere, life is in us ourselves, not ​ outside. Near me will be people, and to be a exile camp as ‘inexpressible, unending suffering’. person among persons and stay him forever, to Indeed his first novel, The House of the Dead ​ not be cast down or despondent no matter what (1862), a semi-autobiographical work was the misfortunes are – therein lies life, therein inspired by the brutal realities of Siberia’s lies its purpose. I realized that. This idea entered ​ my flesh and blood. Yes! It’s true! The head that inhuman exile system and the tragic fates of those created and got accustomed to the higher who endured it. The journey to Siberia, demands of the spirit, that head is cut off from comparable to the extremely cruel ‘Middle my shoulders. What’s left are the memories and 47 Passage’ millions of Africans endured during the images created and not reified by me. They will Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, was as horrendous ulcerate me, indeed! What I have left is my heart ​ and the same flesh and blood, which can love, and horrifying as life in the penal colony itself. suffer, pity, and remember, and this is life, after The insufferable life in a typical Siberian prison all...45

46 Gentes has categorised Siberian exiles into three ​ September 1963, before the final pronouncement by the trial (according to the general nature of their offences): political, judge, Awolowo gave what has since been referred to as the religious and criminal. According to him, ‘political exiles’ ‘Allocutus’ in Nigeria’s political history. In a fairly lengthy included notables perceived by the sovereign as threatening; speech (unprepared), he said, inter alia, “It isn’t life that prisoners-of-war (i.e. Litva); and participants in popular ​ ​ matters but the courage you bring to it...Blessed be your uprisings. ‘Religious exiles’ included clerics deemed to have verdict; and I say in advance, blessed be the sentence which violated church or state law, as well as non-clerics charged your Lordship may pass on me”. He subsequently earned a with violating church law. The final category of ‘criminal 10-year jail sentence. For the ‘Allocutus’, see Obafemi exiles’ included those who broke state laws as well as all those Awolowo, Adventures in Power Book One: My March who did not conveniently fit into the first two categories. ​ through Prison, Ibadan: Macmillan Nigeria Publishers, 1985, Gentes A. Andrew, Exile to Siberia, 1590–1822, New York: ​ pp. 198-200. However, following the collapse of the Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 38. democratic experiment in Nigeria in 1966, the Federal 47 Estevan Hernańdez estimates that approximately 1.2 – 2.4 ​ Military Government, via, Government Notice (Edict) No. million Africans died in the ‘Middle Passage’. See his “The 1207/1966 of 2 August 1966 ordered Awolowo’s release from Colonial Underdevelopment of Africa by Europe and the prison. The Edict read in part “By His Excellency Lieutenant United States”, Liberation, 30 November 2014 retrieved ​ ​ Colonel Yakubu Gowon, Head of the National Military from http://www.liberationnews.org on 12 January 2015. Government, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of British sailors coined this innocuous phrase the ‘Middle the Republic of Nigeria. WHEREAS Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Passage’ to describe the ‘middle leg’ of a triangular journey having been duly convicted of the offences of treasonable

London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences first from England to Africa, then from Africa to Americas, felony, conspiracy to commit felony and conspiracy to effect and finally from the Americas back to England. On the first an unlawful purpose, and sentenced to imprisonment for ten, leg of their trip, slave traders delivered goods from European five and two years respectively on all three counts: ...NOW ports to Africa. On the ‘middle’ leg, ship captains such as THEREFORE, in exercise of the powers conferred by section John Newton, loaded their then-empty holds with slaves and 101 (1) of the Constitution of the Republic and of all other transported them to the Americas and the Caribbean. A power enabling it in that behalf, the Supreme Military Council typical Atlantic crossing took 60-90 days but some lasted up do hereby remit unexpired portion of the sentence imposed to four months. Upon arrival, captains sold the slaves and on the aforesaid Chief Obafemi Awolowo and grant him a full purchased raw materials which they took back to Europe on pardon. GIVEN UNDER my hand and the Public Seal of the the last leg of the trip. See Darlene Clark Hine et. al., The ​ Republic of Nigeria at Lagos this 2nd day of August, one African-American Odyssey, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, ​ thousand nine hundred and sixty-six”. 2003, particularly chapter two entitled ‘Middle Passage’, pp. 45 Quoted from Ksenia Zanon ​ 24-45

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18 Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 © 2018 London Journals Press 49 can hardly be described in few words; death. Following his visits to the penal island of notwithstanding the following fairly lengthy Sakhalin and the political prison and mines of the quotation provides some glimpses into the Trans-Baikal District, Eastern Siberia in 1895, De journey by ordeal to Siberia as well as some of the Windt described some of the prisons as “veritable permanent features of penal life infernos” and the sufferings of the inmates of Siberian penal system as “equalled, if they did not The convoys continued walking all year round and surpass, the tortures of those immured in the with never more than a day’s rest, forced ever 50 onwards by the soldiers who guarded them... they famous ‘Oubliettes’ of the Bastille”. Indeed, had both their hands and feet manacled, and were when Russia hosted the Fourth International chained in pairs to a pole... In the intense heat of Penal and Prison Congress in 1890, delegates summer, they were choked by dust clouds raised from the United States expressed serious by hundreds of tramping feet. In autumn the rains transformed the roads into quagmires through reservations about “alleged cases of cruel which they squelched knee-deep, before treatment of criminals and politicals [sic]” and September brought the first searing frosts. At condemned, in very strong terms, Russia’s minus 20c, the breath froze onto the men’s beards, inhuman method of transporting convicts to forming chunks of ice; at minus 30c, the freezing 51 air burned the lungs... Receiving only a meagre Siberia, which they described as “inexcusable”. daily allowance to buy food, they were frequently starving... In all, the passage through Siberia was Russian prisons and more especially, the Siberian one of unrelenting misery for the prisoners, made exile system, once again stood condemned during worse by fears about the suffering in their final the Eighth International Penal and Penitentiary place of exile... All the floors were rotting through and we slept on bare planks and shivered all night. Congress held in Washington on 2 and 8 October ‘There were fleas, lice and cockroaches by the 1910. This criticism was championed by the bushel and we were not allowed to leave the American press which dismissed the Siberian barracks to relieve ourselves from dusk till dawn exile system as thoroughly inhuman. Although because they were locked... starving convicts resorted to cannibalism when their bread rations Etiennede Khrouleff, head of the Russian prison were cut off as punishment for failing to meet system, thought that the criticisms were unfair; A. crippling workloads... Other common punishments S. Goldenweiser, Russia’s unofficial delegate at in Siberia included chaining convicts to the wall of the Congress, dismissed the Siberian exile system a cell or even to a wheelbarrow for up to ten years at a time. One man recalled his revulsion at being as evil and justified the criticisms against it. yoked to what he called his ‘wheelbarrow wife’ for Indeed, copies of a scratching critique of the five years... stripping to the waist and passing Siberian exile system which he had written were 52 between two lines of soldiers, who delivered him distributed to delegates at the Congress. Isabelle stinging blows with birch rods. Sometimes there were as many as 500 men on each side and Barrows (US delegate) made the following offenders were made to stagger past them up to six submission in relation to the Siberian exile system 48 London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences times, suffering a pulverising 6,000 blows in all and the need for reform: It must be admitted that, generally, the Tsarist 49 Spartacus Educational, “Prison Camps in Siberia”, Russian criminal code was incredibly cruel and ​ savage. Men were impaled on sharp stakes, retrieved from http://www.spartacus-educational.com/ RUSsiberia.htm on 21 October 2017. hanged and beheaded while lesser offenders were 50 Harry De Windt, The New Siberia, London: Chapman and ​ ​ ​ flogged with the knut and bastinado, branded Hall, 1896, pp. 15 & 102. with hot iron, mutilated by amputation of one or 51 Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Laslie P. Moch, Broad is My ​ ​ more limbs, deprived of their tongues, and Native Land: Repertories and Regimes of Migration in suspended in the air by hooks passed under two of Russia’s Twentieth Century, Ithaca & London: Cornell ​ their ribs until they died a lingering and miserable University Press, 2014, p. 278. 52 Negley K. Teeters, “The International Penal and ​ 48 Quoted from David Leafe, “Horrific punishments dreamt up Penitentiary Congress (1910) and the Indeterminable ​ by the Tsars who sent millions to Siberia and treated them as Sentence”, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, ​ ​ savagely as Stalin”, The Daily Mail, 13 August 2016. Volume 39, Issue 5, 1949, p. 620. ​ ​

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Mr. de Khrouleff is not ignorant of Russian Bruce Lincoln has described Siberia as a land of 56 conditions. He has served in many parts of that “endless array of contradictions and opposites”. vast empire, and made visits to the penal settlements to Siberia. He has seen European and This is exactly what Siberia is. As shall be pointed American institutions and p. 681 marked their out later, out of the excruciating labour pains results, and if in his great field he does not adopt borne by millions penal colonists emerged the best means of treating criminals he will sin modern Siberia. Thus, like the erstwhile British against the light. He has it also in his power to lessen the sufferings of political offenders, and will Empire upon which the sun supposedly ‘never "command the gratitude of civilized countries if he set’; hands never stopped toiling in penal Siberia. takes advantage of his power and undoubted Part of the contradictions and opposites is the fact ability to lighten the hardships of prisoners of 53 that many of the personalities who would in every kind. Such work is needed in Russia future set Tsarism and autocracy ablaze through Ironically, the brain behind the idea of the revolutionary fervour were, at one point or International Penal Congress was a Russian, another, exiled there. Indeed, as John-Thor Count Wladimir Sollohub, Director of the Moscow rightly put it “for many of the founding fathers of prison, who had suggested that an international communism, exile under the Romanovs was a 57 forum be put in place to discuss penal and badge of honor”. One or two examples will penitentiary matters. This resulted in the holding suffice. Following the execution of his brother on of eleven Penal Congresses beginning with 8 May 1887 for plotting to assassinate Czar 58 London Congress (1872); Stockholm (1878); Alexander II, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) Rome (1885); St. Petersburg (1890); Paris (1895); Brussels (1900); Budapest (1905); Washington (1910); London (1925); Prague (1930) and Berlin 56 Bruce Lincoln, The Conquest of a Continent. Siberia and ​ ​ the Russians, p. xxii. (1935). It must be conceded however that the ​ 57 John-Thor Dahlburg, “Off to Siberia? No Longer in New imperial Russian carried out a number of penal ​ Russia”, Los Angeles Times, 19 February 1993. reforms during the half century before the ​ ​ 58 Aleksandr Ulyanov was Lenin’s elder brother. Although, he Revolution of 1917. Indeed, Bruce Adams Adams ​ was not one of those designated to throw the bomb at the opines that Russia’s penal system has been Tsar, he manufactured the nitroglycerine used in making it. unfairly denigrated, and that conditions of both Ulyanov refused to ask for imperial clemency, refused to be prison inmates and exiles actually improved and represented by counsel and carried out his own defence. In were comparatively good in the late Imperial company of Vasily Generalov, Pokhomiy Andreyushkin, 54 period. In the same vein, Schrader’s has Vasily Osipanov and Petr Shevyrov; Ulyanov was sentenced to death by hanging. In his final address to the court Ulyanov attempted a detailed examination of the several ​ said “terror.... is the only form of defence by which a minority attempts made, beginning from Catherine the strong only in its spiritual strength and the consciousness of Great, at reforming Russia’s penal laws and its righteousness can combat the of the majority... Among the policies which culminated in the 1863 law that Russian people there will always be found many people who abolished corporal punishment for all subjects are so devoted to their ideas and who feel so bitterly the

London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences except male peasants and criminals (both sexes) unhappiness of their country that it will not be a sacrifice for them to offer their lives...my purpose was to aid in the who were convicted of another crime after having 55 liberation of the unhappy Russian people. Under a system been sent to exile in Siberia. which permits no freedom of expression and crushes every attempt to work for their welfare and enlightenment by legal means, the only instrument that remains is terror. We cannot 53 Quoted from ibid, pp. 620-621. ​ ​ ​ fight this regime in open battle, because it is too firmly 54 Bruce F. Adams, The Politics of Punishment: Prison ​ ​ entrenched and commands enormous powers of repression. Reforms in Russia, 1863-1917, Dekalh: Northern Illinois ​ Therefore, any individual sensitive to injustice must resort to University Press, 1996, pp. 9–11. terror. Terror is our answer to the violence of the state. It is 55 Abby M. Schrader, Languages of the Lash: Corporal ​ ​ the only way to force a despotic regime to grant political Punishment and Identity in Imperial Russia, DeKalb: ​ freedom to the people” and concluded that “there is no death Northern Illinois University Press, 2002. more honourable than death for the common good”. Helen

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20 Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 © 2018 London Journals Press took increasingly active part in the revolutionary the annals of Russia history, was exiled to ​ cause. In 1893, he joined a Marxist organization, Siberia numerous times, although he often ​ moved to St. Petersburg and became an active escaped. In 1903, as a result of his increasing revolutionary. In 1895, he took active part in the revolutionary inclinations, Russia’s Justice ​ organisation of the “Union for the Struggle for the Minister recommended Stalin for banishment to 61 Liberation of the Working Class” which attempted Siberia for three years. In 1913 he was again ​ to enlist workers to the Marxist cause. arrested (the sixth time) and exiled to the grim Consequently, in December of that year, he and Turukhansk region of Siberia, above the Arctic the other leaders of the Union were arrested. Circle and, for the first time, failed to escape. In Lenin spent 14 months at the House of March 1917, however, the revolution led by Preliminary Detention in Shpalernaya Street, Alexander Kerensky freed all political prisoners, refused bail and, in February 1897, sentenced to and Stalin returned to St. Petersburg. Thus, three year exile in Siberia without trial. Although, Siberia became “a rite of passage for the men and 62 as Payne has pointed out, while in Siberia, Lenin women who would one day rule Russia”. In its lived “comfortably, quietly in the seclusion determined and sustained effort to rid European necessary for his work; he was never physically Russia of politically dangerous and explosive 59 assaulted, and was permitted to carry a gun”. elements who clearly had the wherewithal to While in exile, he married his wife Nadezhda spread radical and revolutionary ideas; the tsars Krupskaya in a brief church service on 10 July inadvertently helped to form a congregation of 1898. rebels, dissidents and revolutionaries in Siberia. 60 Stalin, who was to later promote exile, torture For instance, upon Stalin’s arrival in Navaya Uda and execution far beyond the limits ever known in in 1903, “he met many other exiled leftist intellectuals in the town...drinking alcohol with 63 Rappaport, Conspirator: Lenin in Exile. The Making of a ​ the petty criminals that had been exiled there”. Revolutionary, London: Windmill Books, 2010, pp. xxiv-xxv ​ These revolutionaries-in-exile kindled the fire that 59 Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Lenin, New York: ​ ​ later so fatally consumed tsarism. Thus, rather ​ 64 Endeavour Press Ltd., 2015, p. 1. See also, Helen Rappaport, than being a house of reformation; Siberia p. xxiv-xxv; Louis Fischer, The Life of Lenin, New York: 65 ​ ​ became “a gigantic laboratory of revolution”. Harper & Row, 1964, p. 31; Rice Christopher, Lenin: Portrait ​ of a Professional Revolutionary, London: Cassell, 1990, pp. ​ When revolution eventually erupted in Russia, 52-55; Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography, London: ​ ​ Macmillan, 2000, pp. 109-111 and James White, Lenin: The these radical exiles transformed Siberian towns ​ Practice and Theory of Revolution, Basingstoke: Palgrave, and villages into crucibles of violent struggle ​ 2001, pp. 37-47. against autocracy, erected scaffolds in the 60 Montefiore describes Stalin as “super-intelligent and gifted courtyards of Siberian prisons and freely ​ London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences politician...a nervy intellectual who manically read history assassinated warders in the streets. In effect, and literature, and a fidgety hypochondriac suffering from Siberia ceased being “quarantine against the chronic tonsillitis, psoriasis, rheumatic aches from his contagious of revolution” and became “a source of deformed arm and the iciness of his Siberian exile. Garrulous, sociable and fine singer, this lonely and unhappy man ruined every love relationship and friendship in his life 61 Robert Conquest, Stalin Breaker of Nations, New York: by sacrificing happiness for political necessity and ​ ​ Viking-Penguin, 1991, p. 29. cannibalistic paranoia. Damaged by his childhood and 62 David Beer, The House of the Dead. Siberian Exile Under abnormally cold in temperament...he was obsessed with ​ ​ the Tsars, p. 6. executions...He was a self-creation. A man who invent[ed] his ​ 63 name, birthday, nationality, education and his entire past”. S.S. Montefiore, p. 113. Simon S. Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, New 64 Rather than being reformed, most inmates of Siberian ​ ​ ​ York: Vintage Books, 2003, p. 6. On the other hand, Kaul penal system ended up “morally and physically ruined by the described Stalin as “a man who respected no rules or ethics”. terrible experiences” they were made to undergo. Harry De T.N. Kaul, Stalin to Gorbachev and Beyond, New Delhi: Windt, The New Siberia, p. 26. ​ ​ ​ ​ Lancer International, 1991, p. xvi. 65 Beer, p. 6. ​

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© 2018 London Journals Press Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 21 66 the infection”. The 1917 Revolution had kindled In his account of the categories of people that a new hope of a more humane and liberal system were banished to Siberia, Cottrell argued that “the of government and society. However the far greater part consists of persons living in a state of vagabondage belonging to no one, without a humanistic aspect of the Revolution was not ​ ​ substantially realised during the short period of home, or the means of gaining a honest 72 Lenin’s administration. This hope was totally livelihood”. Of course, like any other society, the shattered during the much longer Stalin’s rule. fact and reality of criminal elements and social Indeed, when Stalin ascended the stage as Soviet deviants in the Russian society was indubitable Leader, Siberia did not only become owing in part to what a scholar calls “enormous unprecedentedly red with the blood of fellow homeless population virtually ignored by the 73 soviet citizens; the Siberian furnace – the Gulag, – government”. For example, rapists constituted 2 became a slaughter’s slab and a bottomless pit percent of those sentenced to penal labour in through which millions of soviet citizens were Siberia between 1835 and 1846 with the following despatched to gruesome and gory deaths. age groups distribution: 11-15 (1.6%); 16-20 Marshak, one of the radical authors who survived (11.7%); 21-30 (44%); 31-41 (18.2%); 41-50 74 Stalin’s terror told Kaul that “we were living in (15.1%); 51-60 (7.8%) and over 60 (1.6%). In the daily terror of a knock at our door at night, same vein, 250 men were sentenced to penal summoning us to exile in Siberia without rhythm labour in Siberia between 1835 and 1846 for or reason. But we took it stoically and used to wife-killing while 416 women were sentenced for 75 keep our small bundle of clothes ready to take husband-killing during the same period. This 67 with us into exile at any time”. Thus, as should however not be taken to imply that more Kriukelytė has pointed out “anyone could be women were sent to Siberia than men – of the banished to Siberia at any moment, regardless of 6,837 people in Irkutsk prisons in 1913, just over 68 76 their privileges”. Stalin, who dismissed Ivan the 2% (152) were women. Before 1905, penalists 69 Terrible as “too liberal” , brought into being the sent to eastern Siberia largely consisted harshest methods of torture ever invented by man individuals convicted of serious, usually violent through which millions of soviet citizens were crime. This changed significantly after the 1905 70 turned into “physical and mental wrecks”. Thus, revolution, when the proportion of those sent for far beyond the limits of the bestiality of Tsarist political activities increased substantially. Russia’s penal system; Stalin presided over a Between 1882 and 1898, 148,032 people were penal “system that saw the innocent and guilty sent to exile in Siberian and of these, only 4,794 77 lumped together and transported into a (6%) were sent for political offences. After 1905, 71 frightening other world” which was probably seven-fold the land of the living dead than it was under the tsars. The callousness, cruelty and 72 Charles Herbert Cottrell, Recollections of Siberia in the ​ ​ savagery of that era will probably remain Years 1840 and 1841, London: John W. Parker, 1842, p. 2. ​ unmatched in the annals of Russian and soviet 73 Andrew Gentes, “Katorga: Penal Labor and Tsarist Siberia”

London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences ​ in Eva-Maria Stolberg (ed.), The Siberian Saga: A History of history. ​ Russia’s Wild East, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2005, p. 75. ​ 74 Stephen P. Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict and Justice in ​ ​ Rural Russia, 1856-1914, Berkeley: University of California ​ 66 Ibid Press, 1999, p. 164. ​ 75 67 Marianna G. Muravyewa, Between Law and Morality: T.N. Kaul, Stalin to Gorbachev and Beyond, p. xvi. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Violence against Women in Nineteenth- Century Russia, 68 Erika Kriukelytė, “The Creation of Modern Prisons in the ​ ​ Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2013, p. 45. Russian Empire”, p. 4. 76 Sarah Badcock, “From Villains to Victims: Experiencing 69 Ibid. ​ ​ ​ Illness in Siberian Exile”, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 65, No. 70 Ibid, p. 3. ​ ​ ​ ​ 9, 2013, p. 1720. 71 A.J. Haywood, Siberia: A Cultural History, p. xvii. 77 Ibid, p. 1719. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

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22 Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 © 2018 London Journals Press 83 however, the proportion of Siberian exiles sent for “faces of death”. Barnes summarised the Gulag political offences increased dramatically to well thus: 78 over a third of the annual Siberian exile intake. In 1910, more than 60% of the Siberian penalists The Gulag was a massive phenomenon. Understood here in its broadest sense as the entire were convicted and exiled for serious violent Soviet forced labour detention system, the Gulag crimes including murder, rape and aggravated destroyed the lives of a large percentage of the robbery and a third for political crimes of various Soviet population. The overall detained population 79 in the camps, colonies, prisons and internal exile kinds. No human society is completely free of reached a maximum in the early 1950s well in criminals and social deviants. Even the Soviet excess of 5 million people. Throughout the Stalin society, with its command structure, was, “in the era, some 18 million people passed through the 1960s and 1970s...riddled with crime— people prisons and camps of the Gulag, and another 6 pr 7 million were subject to internal exile. From 1921 to committed murders and assaults, they stole from 1953...some 800,000 people were sentenced to one another, they drove while intoxicated, they death by the Soviet secret police organs alone. brewed moonshine, they embezzled money or Furthermore, no fewer than 1.6 million died in the 84 property from their workplace, and they violated appalling conditions of the Gulag camps. 80 the law in a variety of other ways”. While it is However, as Hardy has shown in his study, true that murderers, serial robbers, rapists, Soviet’s penal system was re-focused and arsonists and other criminal elements social reformed following Stalin's death. The penal deviants constituted a large part of those sent to reform in the 1950s made marked effort at Siberia; Cottrell’s assertion that the majority of re-inventing and transforming the Gulag from“a them were living in a state of vagabondage may ​ ​ source of labor power” into a humane institution not be entirely correct for all periods and phases. for the purposes of re-educating criminals and 85 For instance, from about 1906, large numbers of transforming them into honest Soviet citizens. urban workers, soldiers and sailors were sent to 81 Siberia. In an address to the Twentieth Congress IV. THE EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT of the Communist Party on 6 February 1953, OF MODERN SIBERIA Nikita Khrushchev accused his predecessor Siberia is a region of endless opposites. Thus, a (Stalin) of brutal violence, mass execution, study of the emergence of modern Siberia is oppression, annihilation, barbaric tortures and necessarily a study of trajectories and opposites: the banishment of both the innocent and the modern Siberia emerged from the brutalities that guilty to Siberia and other places where Stalin’s 82 characterised the penal systems of Tsarist Russia torture machine ran non-stop. and the Soviet Union; however, the land was as rich as its leaders were as brutal. This section With particular reference to the Streplag labour examines some of the factors that aided the London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences camp in the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan, development of Siberia. As pointed out above, Alexander Dolgum described Gulag inmates as Russian tsars were firm and resolute in their decision and desire to perpetually put political prisoners, book radicals, revolutionaries and criminal elements out of circulation putting them as far away as possible from the centers of power 78 Ibid ​ 79 Ibid, p. 1720. 83 Cited in Steve A. Barnes, Death and Redemption: The ​ ​ ​ ​ 80 Jeffrey S. Hardy, The Gulag after Stalin: Redefining Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society, Princeton & ​ ​ Punishment in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union, 1953-1964, New London: Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 2 ​ York: Cornell University Press, 2016, p. 201. 84 Quoted in ibid. ​ ​ ​ 81 Sarah Badcock, p. 1720. 85 Jeffrey S. Hardy, The Gulag after Stalin: Redefining ​ ​ 82 Jackson J. Spielvogel, Western Civilization, Vol. C: Since Punishment in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union, 1953-1964, pp. ​ ​ ​ th 1789, 10 ​ edn, Boston: Cengage Learning, 2015, p. 878. 126 & 201. ​

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© 2018 London Journals Press Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 23 and population. The endless banishments resulted The 1822 Prison Reforms marked a watershed in in unprecedented and sustained massive human Russia’s exile system and deployment of more traffic into Siberia. This and the penal system that hands to toil for the development of Siberia. subsequently evolved played a major role in the Following the appointment of Mikhail Speransky demographic changes that occurred in several as governor-general of Siberia on 31 March 1819, parts of the region. Beer estimates that between there was a marked attempt at improving the the beginning of the nineteenth century and the economy of the region so as to develop and Russian Revolution, the tsars exiled more than modernise it. This led to the creation of two one million prisoners and their families to general-governorships: western and eastern 86 Siberia. The penal system played a central role Siberia, each with subordinate provinces – in the ​ in the development of Siberia as towns grew West, Tobolsk and Tomsk provinces and Omsk around penal forts to house officials and security region; in the East, Yenisei and Irkutsk provinces personnel. Indeed, there was rarely any Siberian and the Yakut region with the maritime 91 village that was left untouched by the exiles who administrations of Okhotsk and Kamchatka. In either officially settled every district in every 1822, administrative exile as a way of swelling the Siberian province or unofficially roamed through population of Siberia ceased and was replaced by 87 them as itinerant labourers, thieves and beggars. forced-labour exile. The Bureau of Exiles which The ubiquitousness of officials, convicts or was subsequently created assigned convicts to one ex-convicts with particular reference to the penal of the following five categories depending on Island of Sakhalin, Eastern Siberia, was offence, requisite punishment and physical underscored by De Windt who expressed the view ability: forced labor in the mines; work in the that one may take it as a general rule that if a man chain gangs on the highways; agricultural 88 was not an official, he was or had been a convict. settlement; workhouses and those who were 92 The above may have influenced the view that the incapable of productive work. The 1822 penal 89 tsars “planted the seeds of cities in Siberia”. law imposed maximum of twenty years of Indeed, permanent exile to Siberia almost servitude on exiles who were thereafter free to completely replaced several forms of capital settle near the factory or mine where they had punishment. As Alan Wood has pointed out, exile served their penal sentence to engage in in fact became established as the tsarist agriculture under police surveillance. Between government’s most common form of punishment 1823 and 1887, a total of 772,979 exiles and penal 93 for a wide variety of criminal offences and acts of colonists were sent to Siberia while 16,198 were 90 political, civil and religious disobedience.

91 H. Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire 1801-1917, Oxford: ​ ​ ​ Oxford University Press, 1967, p. 159. 86 David Beer, The House of the Dead. Siberian Exile Under 92 ​ ​ The Bureau of Exile Administration was established in the Tsars, p. 4 ​ ​ Tobolsk but later moved to Tyumen. All persons condemned 87 Ibid. ​ ​ to banishment, colonisation or penal servitude in Siberia London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences 88 De Windt, The New Siberia, p. 55. passed through this city. The Bureau had two main duties: it ​ ​ ​ 89 Clifford G. Gaddy and Fiona Hill, “The Siberian Curse: sorted and classified all exiles upon their arrival in Tyumen ​ Does Russia’s Geography Doom its Chances for Market and kept a full and accurate record of them; and it monitored Reform?” Brookings Institution, 1 September 2003, p. 1. and controlled, through six subordinate bureaus (in Kazan, Russian expeditions led to the building of forts in Siberia, Perm, Tobolsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Irkutsk), their which later evolved into large cities: Tyumen (1586); Tomsk transportation and settlement throughout Siberia. See (1604); Novokuznetsk (1618); Krasnoyarsk (1628); Barnaul Kriukelytė, p. 16, fn. 35. (1730) and Kemerovo (1918) among others 93 Ibid, p. 16. Lewis and Laslie estimate that between 1882 ​ ​ 90 Alan Wood, “Russia’s ‘Wild East’: Exile, Vagrancy and ​ and 1885, nearly 73,000 exiles were counted, about 30 per Crime in Nineteenth century Siberia” in A. Wood (ed.), The cent of them women and children who accompanied their ​ History of Siberia: From Russian Conquest to Revolution, husbands/fathers to Siberia: Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Laslie ​ London, Routledge, 1991, p. 119 P. Moch, Broad is My Native Land: Repertories and ​

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24 Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 © 2018 London Journals Press 94 98 exiled in 1894. Thus, the 1822 reform which territories. In the early years of Siberia’s institutionalised exile labour provided manpower conquest, this vast empty land and its enormous for the economic development of Siberia. In other natural riches had to be secured and settled to words, the sustained demographical push to deter others from seizing or laying claim to it. This Siberia ensured fairly steady growth in its is the principle of ‘effective occupation’. Although, ​ population: the population grew from some the principle of effective occupation became 270,000 indigenous settlers at the end of the 17th ‘formalised’ only in the last decades of the 19th ​ ​ century to over a million by 1795 and over 2 century with respect to European countries’ million by 1830.95 Between the 19th and early 20th overseas possessions particularly in Africa; Russia ​ ​ centuries, well over 3 million peasants and others was not oblivious of the fact that other crossed the Urals; thus by 1914, the population of neighbouring states would not only cast their eyes Siberia had reached over 10 million and had more on Siberia but would almost certainly desire to than doubled the last figure by 1960 ostensibly annex its vast territories. The ownership and because of the Gulag which was “essentially a control of several important Siberian territories 96 slave labour system”. Today, the population of has always been a dominant issue in Russia’s 97 Siberia is more than 30 million. relations with her Asian neighbours, particularly China and Japan. For example, in 1689 China’s Siberia has another striking opposite that is armies drove several Russian settlers out of parts closely related to the above: the region is “people of Siberia. Indeed, the southeast corner of Siberia poor” but “peoples rich” – the former because it south of the Stanovoy Range was twice an issue of constitutes about 77 percent of Russia’s territory intense contention and confrontation between the and the latter for being home to a paltry 22 two countries. The same is true of Japan. Indeed, percent of Russia’s population with several scholars have linked several Russo-Japanese nations struggling to stake claims to its various tensions and the 1904-05 war between the duo as fallouts of Russia’s attempt to securely occupy Siberia, particularly the construction of the Trans 99 Regimes of Migration in Russia’s Twentieth Century, p. 278. Siberian Railway. The above consideration must ​ ​ Badcock estimates that between 1892 and 1898, 81,043 have informed Dragoș’ description of the Siberian people followed exiles to Siberia and of these, 24,584 were end of Sino-Russian border as a “potential hotbed 100 women while 56,459 were children: Sarah Badcock, p. 1720. of tensions”. 94 Of this figure, 935 were hard labour convicts; 2,300 penal ​ colonists; 1,111 vagrants; 2674 were exiled by village commune; 427 were exiled by judicial sentence or administrative order; 1,979 were refused recentry to their commune and 6,772 ‘voluntaries’: James Simpson, 98 Victor L. Mote, Siberia: Worlds Apart, p. 1. See also, “7 London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences Side-Lights on Siberia: Some Accounts of the Great Siberian ​ ​ ​ ​ parts of Russia that other countries could call theirs”, Global Railroad, the Prisons and Exile System, Edinburgh & ​ ​ Post, 27 March 2014. London: W. Blackwood, 1898, pp. 198-199. ​ 99 For this view, see, Christian Wolmar, To the Edge of the 95 Gentes’ estimates that there were 230,000 indigenes ​ ​ ​ World. The Story of the Trans-Siberian Express, the World speaking 120 distinct languages in Siberia when the Russians Greatest Railroad, New York: Public Affairs, 2013, pp. xvi & arrived there in the late sixteenth century. Andrew A. Gentes, ​ xviii; Zack Beauchamp, “The Trans-Siberian Railway Exile to Siberia, 1590 – 1822, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, ​ Reshaped World History” retrieved from https://www.vox. 2008, p. 17. com/world/2016/10/5/13167966/100th-anniversary-trans-si 96 David J. Dallin & Boris I. Nicolaevsky, Forced Labour in ​ ​ berian-railway-google-doodle on 10 December 2017 and Soviet Russia, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1947, ​ Daniel Zylberkan, “The Causes of the Russo-Japanese War, p. ix. 1904-05. Geopolitics, Orientalism and Russian Far Eastern 97 Janet M. Hartley, Siberia: A History of the People Yale: Policy”, retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/4070238 ​ ​ Yale University Press, 2014, p. xiii. Siberia’s nine largest on 12 December 2017 cities are: Novosibirsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Tyumen, 100 Drago Tîrnoveanu, “Russia, China and the Far East ​ ș Barnaul, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Novokuznetsk and Kemerovo. Question”, The Diplomat, 20 January, 2016. ​ ​

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© 2018 London Journals Press Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 25 On the part of Russia therefore, the most potent from uprooting political opponents, book radicals and viable singular proof of ownership and claim and criminal elements, enabled Russia to settle over Siberia was to effectively occupy or and secure her vast Empire and its almost 104 ‘Russianise’ it. This sort of effective occupation limitless borderlands. This was particularly so was what Article 35 of the Berlin Conference Act since most prisoners and exiles were not ​ later advocated and articulated in the final years permitted to return to European Russia after of the 19th century in an attempt to prevent serving out their terms but were rather compelled ​ European countries from going to war with to stay and settle in Siberia often with their themselves over conflicting claims to colonial ‘volunteers’. This meant availability of more territories in Africa. Thus, Russia took several hands to till the land, build railways and roads, steps to populate and effectively occupy Siberia. construct canals, work in mines, develop and According to Morrison “in 1914, the expand infrastructures, etc. Apparently, the ​ Pereselencheskoe Upravlenie published a three- Trans-Siberian Railway, described by Wolmar as volume work called Aziantskaya Rossiya which “one of the great engineering wonders of the ​ was intended both to celebrate past achievements world” which was stimulated in part by “imperial and to lay out a bright future for Russian Asian. ambition” also contributed to the population This would include independent peasant farming, growth in Siberia with its attendant upsurge in 105 technological innovation (railways and canals) socio-economic activities. and, above all, relentless obrusenie (russification) 101 ​ of the land”. Russia’s attempt to effectively Beginning in 1930, the development of Siberia occupy Siberia and its Far East resulted into what trekked firmer grounds and experienced a Mostashari and Morris respectively referred to as watershed due to the provision of manpower ‘contiguous colonialism’ and ‘explosive through what has since then been referred to as colonialism’. While the former helped Russian to ‘Stalin’s Gulag’ (a network of labour camps and extend her “homogenizing legal and penal colonies run by the Soviet security administrative codes to these peripheral organizations within which millions laboured and 102 regions” ; the latter led to a “near-extermination perished). Since there are several excellent studies 103 on the political economy of the Gulag, there is no of its [Siberia’s] indigenous peoples”. Called any 106 name and labelled anyhow, the exile system, apart need interrogating it here. Suffice it to state that

101 Alexander Morrison, “Russian Settler Colonialism” in 104 Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Laslie P. Moch, Broad is My ​ ​ Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini (eds.), The ​ ​ Native Land: Repertories and Regimes of Migration in Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, Russia’s Twentieth Century, Ithaca & London: Cornell ​ ​ London & New York, 2017, p. 318. The Pereselencheskoe ​ University Press, 2014, p. 277. Upravlenie (Resettlement Administration) created in 1896 as 105 Christian Wolmar, To the Edge of the World. The Story of ​ ​ part of the Ministry of Interior to supervise the migration of the Trans-Siberian Express, the World Greatest Railroad, p. ​ peasants beyond the Urals For a detailed examination of the xv. background to the formation of the Pereselencheskoe ​ 106

London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences Founded in 1930 under the administration of the OGPU Upravlenie and its activities, see Alberto Masoero, ​ (Unified State Political Administration) and later NKVD “Territorial Colonization in Late Imperial Russia: Stages in (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs), “GULag” was the the Development of a Concept”, Kritika: Explorations in ​ bureaucracy in charge of running what became a vast Russian and Eurasian History, Vol. 14, No. 1, Winter, 2013, ​ network of prison camps and colonies and, for a time, the pp. 59-91. extensive network of special settlements, places of peasant 102 Firouzeh Mostashari, On the Religious Frontier. Tsarist ​ ​ exile. Some studies on the Gulag are: Golfo Alexopoulos, Russia and Islam in the Caucasus, London & New York: I.B. Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag, Yale: Yale ​ ​ Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2006, p. 2. University Press, 2017; Tomasz Kinzny, GULAG: Life and ​ 103 Alexander Morrison, “Peasant Settlers and the ‘Civilizing Death Inside the Soviet Concentration Camps, Firefly Books ​ ​ Mission’ in Russian Turkestan, 1865-1917”, Journal of Ltd., 2004; Anne Applebaum, GULAG:A History of the ​ ​ Imperial & Commonwealth History, Vol. 43, No. 3, 2015, p. Soviet Camps, New York & London: Doubleday, 2003; Paul ​ ​ 398. R. Gregory and Valery Lazarev (eds.), The Economics of ​

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26 Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 © 2018 London Journals Press through the instrumentality of the unprecedented Siberia had become the treasure base of the Soviet forced labour provided by Gulag inmates, Siberia Union. Indeed, by the 1970s and early 1980s, experienced marked development. For example, Soviet development programmes focused on between 1948 and 1952, well over 200,000 Gulag Siberia, the Russian Far East and the Russian convicts and penalists laboured to build the North. Given its almost inexhaustible deposits of Volga-Canal, one of the grandiose projects meant oil and natural gas, West Siberia became the to expand and enhance water transportation in largest energy-producing region in the Soviet 107 the post war years. Within a span of slightly Union. Consequently, Soviet leaders planned and more than two decades, some 18 to 20 million launched grandiose long-term industrial and Gulag inmates built towns and cities; developed construction projects for the whole of Siberia factories and farms; facilitated the exploitation of amongst these were the world’s largest aluminum timber and mineral resources; developed plant, huge dams, power plants and the world’s coalfields and built oil reservoirs and provided the longest freight railway line. This publicised and means of producing heat and generating made Siberia attractive to several workers and electricity on a large scale in some of the harshest other categories of people who streamed into and most forbidding places on earth. All of these, region so as derive some personal economic particularly the generation of heat and electricity, benefits from the boom. However, the pervasive made mass settlement of Siberia possible. economic slowdown experienced by the Soviet However, the above was at incalculable physical Union in the late 1970s which led to the indefinite and psychological costs as the Gulags were places postponement of several construction projects of “unimaginable suffering, where millions and economic ventures compelled a break in perished and many more became invalids at a Siberia’s massive development. Most of these period of their lives when they should have been projects were never revamped; indeed because of 108 strong and healthy”. its impossible weather and harsh climate, by the late 1980s, in spite of the Soviet’s continued Following the death of Stalin on 5 March 1953 and dependence on Siberia’s natural resources and the appointment of Lavrenty Beria as Minister of especially its energy supplies, the government of Internal Affairs and State Security (MVD); several the Soviet Union had begun to see the enormous inmates of the Gulag were granted amnesty and 110 109 financial investments in Siberia as a mistake. released. This was the beginning of the end of the Gulag system. However, this did not Closely related to the above – in terms of definite significantly stall or reverse the development of contribution to the development of Siberia and Siberia owing to the fact that by the late 1950s, abrupt termination – was the Euro-Siberian Gas Pipeline Project. The project, officially known as London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences ‘Rossiya No. 6’ in the Soviet Union and ‘Russia Forced Labour: The Soviet Gulag, Stanford: Hoover ​ No. 6’ in the West, was intended to supply some Institution Press, 2003; Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag ​ Achipelago, 1918-1956 (Translated by Thomas P. Whitney), Western European countries with about 40 billion ​ ​ 3 111 m n​ atural gas per year. The 5,500 km-long Colorado: Westview Press, 1998 and Wilson T. Bell, “The ​ Gulag and Society in Western Siberia, 1929-1953”, PhD pipeline project, estimated to cost $15 billion, was Thesis, Graduate Department of History, University of a large-capacity, long-distance network from the Toronto, 2011. natural gas fields of the Taz Peninsula, Western 107 Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Laslie P. Moch, Broad is My ​ ​ Native Land: Repertories and Regimes of Migration in 110 Russia’s Twentieth Century, p. 256. Fiona Hill, “Siberia: Russia’s Economic Heartland and ​ ​ 108 Wilson T. Bell, “The Gulag and Society in Western Siberia, Daunting Dilemma”, Brooking Institution, 1 October 2004, p. ​ 1929-1953”, p. 4. 325. 109 Aleksei Tikhonov, “The End of the Gulag” in Paul R. 111 B. Fritz, “Natural Gas: A Political Weapon for the Soviet ​ ​ Gregory and Valery Lazarev (eds.), The Economics of Forced Union”, International Defense Review, Vol. 15, No. 1. 1982, ​ ​ ​ Labour: The Soviet Gulag, p. 67. p. 30. ​

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© 2018 London Journals Press Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 27 112 Siberian. Its Enabling Agreement and Soviet Union to catch up with developments in the 116 Operational Schedule provided for supply of global economy during the command era. Siberian oil and natural gas to seven member countries of the European Economic On 18 December 1940, Adolf Hitler signed the 113 Community while Western Europe was to now (in)famous Directive 21 – code-named provide technology and equipment to the Soviet Operation Barbarossa – which approved German invasion of the Soviet Union (commenced in June Union on very generous credit terms. For about a ​ 1941). Much of Soviet industry was endangered by decade, the Soviet Union became a major exporter ​ of oil and gas while it earned several billion the German advance, and so the Soviet Union had dollars below market credit facilities to purchase to dismantle and relocate several factories to safer 114 Western technology and equipment. The project sectors in Siberia and the Caucasus which were more strategically redoubt, defensibly deep in the attracted more development to Siberia both in ​ terms of industries, expansion of physical interior and far away from European territories historically vulnerable to invasions from the West. infrastructure and population growth. However, ​ the American government opposed the project on Fassbender estimates that some 1,300 factories three grounds: one, because “it would make were packed up from the northern industrial Europe dangerously dependent on Soviet energy sectors and carried east by train into the Urals supplies”; two. “it would provide the Kremlin with and Siberia. According to him, this number only much needed hard currency that could be spent reflects large facilities and that when all factories, on extra weaponry”; and three, it was illogical to even small ones no larger than simple workshops 115 are considered, as many as 50,000 may have been give “aid to the enemy”. Consequently, the 117 Reagan government sabotaged the project which, transported east. Consequently, large pockets of according to The New York Times of 30 May 1982 industries sprang up in Siberia particularly along ​ ​ several European countries had counted on to the path of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Thus, the German invasion of the USSR which led to the help them bolster their dwindling economic ​ fortunes and reverse staggering job losses. The relocation of several important heavy industries to American opposition sounded the death knell of Siberia aided the growth and transformation of the project; notwithstanding, Western Siberia the region and made Siberia to experience what a scholar calls its “second industrial revolution in continued to be Russia‘s major energy producing 118 region, accounting for 71 percent of oil output and ten years”. Even in the post war period, the 92 percent of gas output. Indeed, West Siberia‘s political imperative to control its vast Siberian resource wealth funded much of the fatally hinterland and develop its energy and resource unsuccessful projects embarked upon by the wealth provided a strong incentive to continue the expansion of the military-industrial complex in 112 For a detailed examination of the cost of the project as Siberia. By the 1980s, Siberia was home to a ​ well as the causes and consequences of America’s opposition significant portion of Soviet ground forces, the air to it, see B. Fritz, “Natural Gas: A Political Weapon for the force, the navy and the requisite infrastructure to

London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences Soviet Union”; Patrizio Merciai, “The Euro-Siberian Gas Pipeline Dispute - A Compelling Case for the Adoption of 116 Judith A. Thornton, “Institutional Change and Economic Jurisdictional Codes of Conduct”, Maryland Journal of ​ ​ Development in Siberia and the Russian Far East”, p. 10. International Law, Volume 8, Issue 1, 1984, pp. 1-52. ​ 117 Michael Fassbender “The Transfer of Soviet Factories 113 West Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, ​ ​ During World War II”, retrieved from http:// Austria and Switzerland. michaeltfassbender.com/nonfiction/the-world-wars/big-pict 114 Anthony J. Blinken, Ally Versus Ally: America, Europe ​ ​ ure/the-transfer-of-soviet-factories-during-world-war-ii/ on and the Siberian Pipeline Crisis, New York: Praeger, 1987, ​ 13 December 2017. pp. 3-7. 118 Mark Harrison “The Soviet Defense Industry Complex in 115 ​ Patrizio Merciai, “The Euro-Siberian Gas Pipeline Dispute World War II” in Jun Sakudo and Takao Shiba (eds.), World ​ ​ - A Compelling Case for the Adoption of Jurisdictional Codes War II and the Transformation of Business Systems, Tokyo: ​ of Conduct”, p. 7. University of Tokyo Press, 1994, p. 240.

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28 Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 © 2018 London Journals Press 123 support them. Indeed, on the eve of the demise of categorization criticised by another scholar. the Soviet Union, about 20 percent of Russia‘s Evidently, in spite of its enormous resources, military forces were in Siberia and the Russian Siberia’s impossible climate has significantly 119 Far East. hindered its development. This validates the description of Siberia as “rich and impoverished” V. CONCLUSION and a region in which “nature and history have juxtaposed an endless array of contradictions and This article attempted to show the phases and 124 opposites”. H​ owever, viewed from any angle roles of Siberia within the larger context of and catalogued anyhow, one fact seems Russian history - its conquest by imperial Russia indubitable: Siberia has transited from a penal and its status as a penal colony; as a mass ​ colony and gulag labour camps to a modern graveyard during Stalin’s era as well as the region. treasure base of Russia. The paper pointed out REFERENCES that rather than being a house of reformation the tsars intended it to be, Siberia became home to 1. Alexopoulos, Golfo, Illness and Inhumanity ​ revolutionaries and radicals and ultimately a in Stalin’s Gulag, Yale: Yale University Press, ​ hotbed of revolution. While metaphoric Siberia 2017 still convokes some ‘dreadness’ particularly 2. Anderson, David & Arzyutov, Dmitry V, ‘The because of its harsh, inclement weather; Construction of Soviet Ethnography and “The geographic Siberia is no longer a penal colony – it Peoples of Siberia”’ Journal of History and ​ is now a modern region and ‘sustainer’ of Russia’s Anthropology, Vol. 27, Issue 2, 2016 ​ economy. Being what the niger delta region is to 3. Applebaum, Anne, GULAG:A History of the ​ Nigeria’s economy, Siberia has played Soviet Camps, New York & London: ​ ​ irreplaceable role in underpinning the Russian Doubleday, 2003 economy. Furs from the forestlands across the 4. Awolowo, Obafemi, Adventures in Power ​ Ural Mountains, along with salt and minerals, Book One: My March through Prison, ​ bolstered the economy of Muscovy and the early Ibadan: Macmillan Nigeria Publishers, 1985 Russian empire from the fifteenth to the 5. Badcock, Sarah, “From Villains to Victims: eighteenth centuries. Siberia’s mineral resources Experiencing Illness in Siberian Exile”, fueled the industrialization of the Russian empire Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 65, No. 9, 2013 ​ in the nineteenth century and the Soviet Union. 6. Balkaloff V. Anatole, ‘Notes on the Origin of From the 1960s, West Siberian oil became the the Name “Siberia”’ The Slavic and Eastern ​ mainstay of the Soviet Union’s economy and Review, Vol. 29, No. 72, December 1950 ​ remains so till date. However, being a region of 7. Barnes A. Steve, Death and Redemption: The

​ London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences striking opposites, Siberia’s status as Russia’s Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society, ​ prime source of wealth; “massive store house of Princeton & London: Princeton University 120 land and raw materials”; “a resource frontier” Press, 2011 121 and “Russia’s treasure chest” sharply 8. Beazley, C. Raymond The Dawn of Modern ​ contradicts its level of development apparently Geography, Vol. 3, London: J. Murray, 1897 ​ because of natural impediments. This is what Hill 9. Beer, David, The House of the Dead. Siberian 122 ​ and Gaddy call the “Siberian Curse” a Exile Under the Tsars, New York: Alfred A. ​ Knopf, 2016

119 Judith A. Thornton, p. 8. 123 Nicolai Rozov, “Not a Curse but a Challenge – An ​ ​ 120 Victor L. Mote, Siberia: Worlds Apart, p. 10. Alternative Strategy for the Development of Siberia”, ​ ​ ​ 121 Fiona Hill, “Siberia: Russia’s Economic Heartland and Problems of Economic Transition, Vol. 49, No. 9, 2007, pp. ​ ​ Daunting Dilemma”, p. 324. 75-82. 122 Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, The Siberian Curse, 124 Bruce Lincoln, The Conquest of a Continent. Siberia and ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 2003. the Russians, p. xxii. ​

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© 2018 London Journals Press Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 29 10. Bell, T. Wilson “The Gulag and Society in 25. Fritz, B. “Natural Gas: A Political Weapon for Western Siberia, 1929-1953”, PhD Thesis, the Soviet Union”, International Defense ​ Graduate Department of History, University Review, Vol. 15, No. 1. 1982 ​ of Toronto, 2011 26. Gaddy G. Clifford and Hill, Fiona, “The 11. Blinken, T. Anthony, Ally Versus Ally: Siberian Curse: Does Russia’s Geography ​ America, Europe and the Siberian Pipeline Doom its Chances for Market Reform?” Crisis, New York: Praeger, 1987 Brookings Institution, 1 September 2003 ​ 12. Bobrick, Benson, East of the Sun. The Epic 27. Gentes, A. Andrew, “Katorga: Penal Labor ​ Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia, New and Tsarist Siberia” in Stolberg Eva-Maria ​ York: Poseidon Press, 2014 (ed.), The Siberian Saga: A History of ​ 13. ------, Fearful Majesty: The Life and Russia’s Wild East, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, ​ ​ ​ Reign of Ivan the Terrible, New York: G.P. 2005 ​ 28. Gentes A. Andrew, Exile to Siberia, Putman, 1987 ​ 1590–1822, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 14. Bychkov, V. Oleg, “Russian Hunters in ​ Eastern Siberia in the 17th Century- Lifestyle 2008 29. Greene, David, Midnight in Siberia, New and Economy” (translated by Jacobs, A. ​ ​ Mina), Fort Ross Conservancy Library, n.d. York & London: Norton & Company, 2014 15. Christopher, Rice, Lenin: Portrait of a 30. Gregory R. Paul and Lazarev Valery (eds.), ​ Professional Revolutionary, London: Cassell, The Economics of Forced Labour: The Soviet ​ Gulag, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1990 ​ 16. Clark H. Darlene et. al., The 2003 ​ African-American Odyssey, New Jersey: 31. Hardy S. Jeffrey, The Gulag after Stalin: ​ ​ Prentice Hall, 2003 Redefining Punishment in Khrushchev’s 17. Cottrell, C. Herbert, Recollections of Siberia Soviet Union, 1953-1964, New York: Cornell ​ ​ in the Years 1840 and 1841, London: John University Press, 2016 ​ 32. Hartley M. Janet, Siberia: A History of the W. Parker, 1842 ​ People Yale: Yale University Press, 2014 18. Crone, G.R., Maps and Their Makers, ​ ​ ​ 33. Harrison Mark, “The Soviet Defense Industry London & New York, Hutchinson University Complex in World War II” in Sakudo Jun and Library, 1953 34. Shiba Takao (eds.), World War II and the 19. Dahlburg, John-Thor, “Off to Siberia? No ​ Transformation of Business Systems, Tokyo: Longer in New Russia”, Los Angeles Times, ​ ​ ​ University of Tokyo Press, 1994 19 February 1993 35. Haywood, A.J. Siberia: A Cultural History, 20. Dallin J. David & Nicolaevsky I. Boris, Forced ​ ​ ​ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010 Labour in Soviet Russia, New Haven, CT: ​ 36. Hill, Fiona, “Siberia: Russia’s Economic Yale University Press, 1947 Heartland and Daunting Dilemma”, Brooking 21. Fischer, Louis, The Life of Lenin, New York: ​ ​ Institution, 1 October 2004 London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences Harper & Row, 1964 37. Hill, Fiona, and Gaddy, Clifford, The Siberian 22. Forsyth, James, A History of the Peoples of ​ ​ Curse, Washington DC: The Brookings Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony, ​ ​ ​ Institution, 2003 1581–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge 38. Hundley, Helen, Siberia: A History of the ​ ​ ​ University Press, 1992 People, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2015 ​ 23. Frank P. Stephen, Crime, Cultural Conflict ​ 39. Juergen, Schulz, “Maps as Metaphors: Mural and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914, ​ Maps, Cycles of the Italian Renaissance” in Berkeley: University of California Press Woodward David (ed.), Art and ​ 24. Frazier, Ian, Travels in Siberia, New York, Cartography. Six Historical Essays, Chicago ​ ​ ​ Farrar, Strans & Girous, 2010 & London: Chicago University Press, 1987

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30 Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 © 2018 London Journals Press 40. Kennan, George, Siberia and the Exile 51. Montefiore, S. Simon, Stalin: The Court of ​ ​ System, London: James R. Osgood, the Red Tsar, New York: Vintage Books, ​ ​ Mcilvaine & Co., 1891 2003 41. ------, Tent Life in Siberia, New York: 52. Morrison, Alexander, “Russian Settler ​ ​ Skyhorse Publishing, 2007 Kermer, Robert, Colonialism” in Cavanagh, Edward and ​ Veracini, Lorenzo (eds.), The Routledge The Urge to the Sea: The Course of Russian ​ History – The Role of Rivers, Portages, Handbook of the History of Settler Ostrogs, Monasteries, and Furs, Berkeley: Colonialism, London & New York, 2017 ​ ​ University of California Press, 1942 53. ------, “Peasant Settlers and the ‘Civilizing 42. Khodarlovsky, Michael, Russia’s Steppe Mission’ in Russian Turkestan, 1865-1917”, ​ Frontier. The Making of a Colonial Empire Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History, Vol. 43, No. 3, 2015 1500–1800, Bloomington & Indianapolis: ​ ​ 54. Mostashari, Firouzeh, On the Religious Indiana University Press, 2004 ​ Frontier. Tsarist Russia and Islam in the 43. Kriukelytė, Erika, “The Creation of Modern Caucasus, London & New York: I.B. Tauris & Prisons in the Russian Empire”, International ​ Co. Ltd., 2006 Institute of Social History, IISH-Research 55. Mote, L. Victor, Siberia: Worlds Apart, New Paper 48, 2012 ​ ​ York: Boulder, 1998 44. Lantzeff, George. George, Siberia in the ​ 56. Muravyewa G. Marianna, Between Law and Seventeenth Century: A Study of the Colonial ​ Morality: Violence against Women in Administration, Berkeley & Los Angeles: ​ Nineteenth-Century Russia, Cambridge: University of California Press, 1943 ​ Open Book Publishers 45. Leafe, David “Horrific punishments dreamt 57. Naumov, V. Igor, The History of Siberia , up by the Tsars who sent millions to Siberia ​ ​ New York: Rutledge, 2006 and treated them as savagely as Stalin”, The ​ 58. Payne, Robert, The Life and Death of Lenin, Daily Mail, 13 August 2016 ​ ​ ​ New York: Endeavour Press Ltd., 2015 46. Lincoln, Bruce, The Conquest of a Continent. 59. Rappaport, Helen, Conspirator: Lenin in ​ ​ Siberia and the Russians, New York: Cornell Exile. The Making of a Revolutionary, ​ ​ University Press, 1993 London: Windmill Books, 2010 47. Lipman, V. Kate, “Alexander II and 60. Riasanovsky, V. Nicolas, Nicolas I and ​ Gorbachev: The Doomed Reformers of Official Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855, ​ Russia”, UVM Honors College Senior Theses. Berkeley: University of California Press 158, The University of Vermont, 2017 61. Riggs, Ransom, “Siberia: What’s in a Name?

48. Masoero, Alberto, “Territorial Colonization in Mental Floss, 18 May 2011 London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences ​ Late Imperial Russia: Stages in the 62. Rozov, Nicolai, “Not a Curse but a Challenge Development of a Concept”, Kritika: – An Alternative Strategy for the ​ Development of Siberia”, Problems of Explorations in Russian and Eurasian ​ Economic Transition, Vol. 49, No. 9, 2007 History, Vol. 14, No. 1, Winter, 2013 ​ ​ 63. Schrader M. Abby, Languages of the Lash: 49. Mazour, G. Anatole, The First Russian ​ ​ Corporal Punishment and Identity in Revolution 1825, Stanford: Stanford ​ ​ Imperial Russia, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1937 ​ University Press, 2002 50. Merciai, Patrizio, “The Euro-Siberian Gas 64. Service, Robert, Lenin: A Biography, ​ ​ Pipeline Dispute - A Compelling Case for the London: Macmillan, 2000 Adoption of Jurisdictional Codes of 65. Siegelbaum H. Lewis and Moch, P. Laslie, ​ ​ Conduct”, Maryland Journal of ​ Broad is My Native Land: Repertories and International Law, Volume 8, Issue 1, 1984 ​ Regimes of Migration in Russia’s Twentieth

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© 2018 London Journals Press Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 31 Century, Ithaca & London: Cornell University 78. Ulturgasheva, Olga, Narrating the Future in ​ ​ Press, 2014 Siberia, New York: Burghahn Books, 2012 ​ 66. Simpson, James, Side-Lights on Siberia: 79. Watson-Seton H. The Russian Empire ​ ​ Some Accounts of the Great Siberian 1801-1917, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ​ Railroad, the Prisons and Exile System, 1967 ​ Edinburgh & London: W. Blackwood, 1898 80. White, James, Lenin: The Practice and ​ 67. Solzhenitsyn, I. Aleksandr, The Gulag Theory of Revolution, Basingstoke: Palgrave, ​ ​ Achipelago, 1918-1956 (Translated by 2001 ​ Whitney P. Thomas), Colorado: Westview 81. Windt, Harry, Siberia as it is, London: ​ ​ ​ Press, 1998 Chapman & Hall, 1892 68. Spielvogel, J. Jackson, Western Civilization, 82. ------, The New Siberia, London: ​ ​ ​ ​ Vol. C: Since 1789, 10th edn, Boston: Cengage Chapman and Hall, 1896 ​ Learning, 2015 83. Wolmar, Christian, To the Edge of the World. ​ 69. Stajner, Karlo, Seventy Thousand Days in The Story of the Trans-Siberian Express, the ​ Siberia (translated by Agee, Joel), Farrar: World Greatest Railroad, New York: Public ​ Straus & Giroux Inc, 1988 Affairs, 2013 70. Stone, Norman, Cambridge Encyclopaedia 84. Wood, Alan, “Russia’s ‘Wild East’: Exile, ​ of Russian and the Soviet Union, Cambridge: Vagrancy and Crime in Nineteenth ​ Cambridge University Press, 1982 centurySiberia” in Wood, Alan. (ed.), The ​ 71. Teeters, K. Negley, “The International Penal History of Siberia: From Russian Conquest and Penitentiary Congress (1910) and the to Revolution, London, Routledge, 1991 ​ Indeterminable Sentence”, Journal of ​ Criminal Law and Criminology, Volume 39, Online Sources ​ Issue 5, 1949 1. Beauchamp, Zack, “The Trans-Siberian ​ 72. Thornton, A. Judith, “Institutional Change Railway Reshaped World History”: https:// ​ and Economic Development in Siberia and www.vox.com/world/2016/10/5/13167966/10 the Russian Far East”, Research Paper, 0th-anniversary-trans-siberian-railway-google Department of Economics University of -doodle Washington, 2011 2. “Biography: Fyodor Mikhaylovich 73. Thubron, Colin, In Siberia, New York: ​ ​ Dostoyevsky, 1821-1881”: http://people. Perennial Publishers, 1999 brandeis.edu/~teuber/dostoevskybio.html 74. Tikhonov, Aleksei, “The End of the Gulag” in 3. Fassbender, Michael, “The Transfer of Soviet Gregory R. Paul and Valery, Lazarev (eds.), Factories During World War II”: http:// ​ The Economics of Forced Labour: The Soviet michaeltfassbender.com/nonfiction/the-world Gulag, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, ​ -wars/big-picture/the-transfer-of-soviet-factor 2003 ies-during-world-war-ii/ 75. Tîrnoveanu, Dragoș, “Russia, China and the

London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences 4. Hernańdez Estevan, “The Colonial Far East Question”, The Diplomat, 20 ​ ​ Underdevelopment of Africa by Europe and January, 2016 the United States”, Liberation, 30 November ​ ​ 76. Tooley V. Ronald & Bricker, Charles, 2014: http://www.liberationnews.org Landmarks of Mapmaking, Phaidon Press, ​ 5. Spartacus Educational, “Prison Camps in 1977 Siberia”: http://www.spartacus-educational. 77. Troyan, N. “The Philosophical Opinions of ​ com/RUSsiberia.htm the Petrashevsky Circle”, Journal of ​ 6. Zanon, Ksenia, “Fyodor Dostoyevsky”: http:// Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, ​ ​ ​ ​ www.executedtoday.com/tag/petrashevshy-ci Vol. 6, No. 3, March 1946 rcle

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32 Volume 18 | Issue 1 | Compilation 1.0 © 2018 London Journals Press 7. Zylberkan, Daniel, “The Causes of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05. Geopolitics, Orientalism and Russian Far Eastern Policy”: https://www.academia.edu/4070238

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