The Future of Siberia: Discussion Author(S): Miss Czaplicka and Leslie Urquhart Source: the Geographical Journal, Vol
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The Future of Siberia: Discussion Author(s): Miss Czaplicka and Leslie Urquhart Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Mar., 1918), pp. 159-164 Published by: geographicalj Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1779376 Accessed: 22-06-2016 03:38 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Wiley, The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Geographical Journal This content downloaded from 128.143.23.241 on Wed, 22 Jun 2016 03:38:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE FUTURE OF SIBERIA: DISCUSSION 159 seems no reason why the north, whose food-producing capacities in many localities are undoubted, should be left unused because of the cold season. Great masses of labour are already migratory according to season in various parts of the world; and, given the possibility at some time in the future of doing most farm work by machinery, it does not require much stretch of imagination to foretell the likelihood of these northern lands being developed by capitalists having summer farms in the north and winter industries in Europe or Southern Asia. The wealth of the harvests on cheap land might stand the cost of the annual migration of the moderate amount of expert white or northern labour required. An experienced Siberian business friend said in 1914 that such methods would pay, but that such experiments could not be carried out under the Government system of that time. There is an immediate effect of this great war which may help to accelerate the development of Siberia. The world is short of food, and the still unbroken lands of Siberia are awaiting development. What better task for Russia than, helped by the combined organizing powers of the United States and Western Europe, to make a great expedition against those lands awaiting the plough ? Behind the opposing combatant lines to-day are improvised road-towns, railway towns, canal towns and camps, great cranes, great guns, all sprung?where were no towns before?in the twinkling of an eye. Could some Russian Government, on the conclusion of peace, divert a small fraction of that organized energy into the placing of tractors and skilled mechanics and agriculturalists on to those vast unbroken lands ? It seems to me that the obstacles are such as a great world-wide emergency might break down. Before the paper the President said: I need hardly introduce the lecturer, Colonel Harald Swayne, who is distinguished as a traveller and even better known as a sportsman. He will tell us something of what he has seen in a part of the world which must be of great interest to us just now?Siberia, and I will not detain you further with any remarks of mine. (Colonel Swayne then read the paper printed above > and a discussion followed.) The President : That part of Siberia with which the lecturer has been dealing is only the fringe of Southern Siberia within reach of the railway. Hereafter I hope that from points on the railway there may be stretches of country reclaimed and brought under cultivation that will enormously increase the cultivable area of Siberia, which is already big enough to accommodate something like half the population of Russia. We have yet to learn what exactly are the conditions of climate and soil in Siberia, which may permit the cultivation of wheat in latitudes far more northern than any yet tried. In Canada it has been found quite possible to cultivate wheat much further north than anybody had expected ; it may be the same in Siberia. Russian methods of colonization no doubt differ from ours: they are slower, and I think in some ways they are surer. I am very glad to near that the Russian Government took some precaution in placing the right class of people on the land, because in other parts of the world they have not been successful. This content downloaded from 128.143.23.241 on Wed, 22 Jun 2016 03:38:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 160 THE FUTURE OF SIBERIA; DISCUSSION I can speak generally for South America, where Russian colonies, particularly in Patagonia, can be described only as an absolute failure. Another matter of interest to everybody just now is the position of the Cossacks, who extend from the Amur River on the extreme north-east, through Central Asia to Orenburg and the Black Sea. My own reminiscences of service with Cossacks are confined to a short period of some six months when I worked with a Cossack escort in the uplands of Central Asia settling boundaries. They were Cossacks of the Black Sea, and I found them most excellent supporters, asking no questions as to provision made for them, but quite content to trust to Providence to find food and water wherever they were going. The Cossacks are the military caste in Russia, and on account of their military service they enjoy certain privileges, including the right of shooting as they please, and I found them exceedingly useful in providing the camp with game. They were well set-up fine men, exceedingly muscular, and had no difficulty, when pitted against a certain number of Sikhs in a tug-of-war, in pulling those Sikhs over the line. I Iearned then that international contests of that kind do not always lead to brotherly love! There were two points about them which impressed me: firstly, their almost ideal reverence for the Tsar. The Tsar was, I am convinced, to a great many of them a real divinity. When every day at the sound of the trumpet they all went down on their knees to pray I feel confident that two-thirds of them prayed to the Tsar. Secondly, I noticed their solid detestation of Germans. The whole Russian army was permeated with Germans ; the chief of the Commission was a German, and nearly all the leading scientific officers; but between the Germans and the best of the Russian officers, particularly the Cossack ofiicers, there was no friendship; they would not even feed together. If that was the case thirty years ago we may easily understand what the conditions were four or five years ago. I have referred to the Cossacks because we have with us a distinguished writer who knows more about the Cossack country than most of us: Miss Czaplicka, whom I will ask to address the meeting. Miss Czaplicka : Siberia has for several years occupied a great deal of my time, and I believe that there are problems to be met with in that land that do not face us in any other European colony. It is even a question whether Siberia, especially Western Siberia as far as the River Ob, is to be considered as a colony, or merely as an extension of Russia. By this I mean that while normally the motherland reaches a high degree of development and stability before any colonization is attempted, in this case the rise of Russian Western Siberia coincides in time with the growth of Muscovite or Great Russia. The popular idea that Siberia was subjugated to Russia by a handful of Volga Cossacks is losing ground under a closer study of the facts. If the people of Eastern and Northern Russia had not voluntarily colonized and populated Western Siberia both previously and subsequently to the time of its conquest by the Cossack Yermak, his presentation of the Tatar Siberian Khanate to Ivan the Terrible of Moscow in 1582-3 would have been an inci- dent scarcely worthy of mention in history. Among many proofs which can be brought forward in support of my view might be cited the fact that when we consider the origin of the Russian settlements of Western Siberia, we find that the overwhelming majority of them were founded by voluntary immigrants. For instance, out of 776 old settlements in the Yeniseisk Government, 674 answer to this description, while 102 developed from the Cossacks' palisaded fortresses or ostrogs. Thus the success of thp Russian advance in Siberia is due to peaceful penetration of the eastern and partly of the southern peasants This content downloaded from 128.143.23.241 on Wed, 22 Jun 2016 03:38:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE FUTURE OF SIBERIA: DISCUSSION 161 and other Russian people. But at the same time it is true that it was the Cossacks who carried Russian government, or properly speaking, the Tsar's authority, into these eastern regions. It is possible that had it not been for the Volga Cossacks, these various Russian and Finnic immigrant elements would have started a new national unit, quite independent of their original home, perhaps something similar to the original Cossack national communities on the banks of the Dnieper and the Don, because the majority of these free colonists left their old country for the same reason, that is, to escape despotic rule. To these free colonists we must add involuntary colonization by political exiles from 1593 (three hundred people from Uglich after the murder of the Tsarevich Dimitri), and by criminal exiles from 1754.