The Anglo-American scholarly community is still poorly informed about the vast region commonly known as west Siberia. There is as yet no monograph devoted to its rich past comparable in scope to, say, J. J. Stephan’s standard work on the Russian Far East.^[1] General histories of Russia usually mention Yermak and Russia’s conquest of the area in the sixteenth century but thereafter devote only episodic attention to its affairs: the trakt along which convicts were despatched to Siberian exile, for instance. Specialists on the late Imperial era will, however, be more familiar with what Donald W. Treadgold (1957) called “the great Siberian migration” of peasant settlers, as well as with the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway, the oblastnichestvo movement for regional autonomy, and the growth of co-operative dairy farming. Accounts of the civil war treat the region incidentally as a key battle ground, but what happened to it under Soviet rule? Two studies by James Hughes^[2] help to fill the gap, but for most foreigners the region’s recent history is mainly a matter of oil and natural gas.
One can only welcome the fine historical work being done in Omsk under the auspices of its state university and the local branch of the Academy of Humanitarian Sciences, to which the two volumes under review draw attention. The university’s Historical Annual for 1998 contains seventeen articles, twelve of which are on Russian (principally Siberian) themes, followed by twelve reports on academic conferences and reviews (among them one of a guide to the local archive).^[3] The Vestnik volume is more informative about the sponsoring body and identifies its fifty-odd contributors (“Nashi avtory”, pp. 241-3), a practice that could be recommended to the editors of the other volume. In conformity with the academy’s praiseworthy aim of encouraging inter-disciplinary studies, some sections bear joint headings, such as “Culture and Philosophy” or “History and Ethnography”; others contain highly professional pieces by younger scholars (“Pervye opyty”), reviews and even a little poetry.
The historical articles in these two collections cover an impressively broad scope, from concepts of honour among early Germanic tribes (O. V. Frik) to the growth of youth organisations in inter-war Britain (S. V. Fomenko), by way of seventeenth-century Chinese politics (S. V. Malakhov) and the correspondence of the French Girondin leader Jacques-Pierre Brissot (A. G. Mu- khina). Here we shall concentrate on those devoted to Siberian themes.
Kraevedenie (the English term “local history” does this sub-discipline less than justice) was for many years scorned as ideologically suspect, but fortunately is now making a spectacular comeback. When treated professionally, with due attention to the general historical context, it does not degenerate into mere antiquarianism but on the contrary brings to life the impact which decisions taken far away, or general socio-economic developments, had on real flesh-and-blood individuals and their immediate communities. This is especially the case when, as here, such studies rest in part on original archival research.
A. V. Remnev offers an informative review of Russian activities in the north-eastern corner of Eurasia in the early nineteenth century (Vestnik, 99-110), in which both the government and the Russian-American Company are taken to task: their policy objectives were seldom clear or well co-ordinated and their operations brought few advantages for the inhabitants, whether natives or Russian settlers. Egoism and short-term thinking led to crass exploitation of the region’s human and natural resources,^[4] but by the 1840s St. Petersburg belatedly began to revise its priorities, under the threat of foreign intervention, so foreshadowing the expansionist course pursued by Murav’ev-Amursky. One might add that the RAC’s record was not all black and needs to be set against that of similar commercial enterprises set up by the Dutch, British and others. Nor was Russia the only empire to neglect far-flung possessions: one thinks of Britain and the Falkland Islands prior to 1982!
Moving on to the late nineteenth century, T. N. Sorokina (Yezhegodnik, 13-22) seeks to recalculate the scale of Chinese immigration into the Russian Far East, notoriously hard to estimate because so many of these unskilled labourers escaped the census-takers. The administration’s policy, initially benevolent, later became harsher for reasons that are not made sufficiently clear here. An element of racial prejudice was certainly involved (especially under governor-general Unterberger), but Sorokina overlooks this, instead stressing anti-Russian sentiment on the Chinese side and the criminal propensities of the immigrants (or “economic migrants”, as they would be more politely called today). Many of them were indeed involved in the activities of mafia-like gangs, usually as victims, but a glance at the European Union’s current immigration policies might have yielded a more balanced view.
Several contributors deal with the civic initiatives made possible by Alexander II’s “great reforms”. Although Siberia was not granted zemstvo institutions, there was ample scope for cultural and charitable work by voluntary societies. D. I. Po-pov offers two items (Yezhegodnik, 57-67; Vestnik, 186-91) focussing on the trusteeships for primary education set up from 1882 onwards and similar bodies, whose number increased markedly in the 1900s: by 1909 Omsk alone boasted 44 such societies, despite the closer control exercised by the administration in the wake of the 1905 revolution. Many people active in these bodies were Kadets, and gendarmes kept a keen watch on lecturers who broached “subversive” themes. For a more rounded picture one would need to take some account of the pedagogical activities carried on in schools run by state agencies or the Church. G. I. Vorob’eva (Vestnik, 161-6), who confines her study to Tobol’sk guberniia but coves a longer time-span (1770s to 1890s), shows that after 1856 much was done under official or semi-official auspices to help exiles or prisoners and their families, as well as impoverished students. A governor bearing the seemingly unpromising name of A. I. Despot-Zenovich “opened and maintained from charitable funds a facility for free ambulatory treatment of the poor and sick” (164). She does not tell us how long it lasted, and it is clear that all these initiatives, however worthy, were far from adequate to meet the vast needs of the population. Vorob’eva’s careful study is designed to present scarce factual data and she does not move beyond the familiar bounds of positivist historiography.^[5]
Nor does N. A. Tomilov, the distinguished ethnographer, who directs an Omsk institute within the RAN’s far-reaching network. He contributes an article (Vestnik, 87-98) on the work carried out since its origin in 1879 by the Tiumen’ Provincial Museum of Kraevedenie named for its founder, I.Ya. Slovtsov. With over 200,000 items (edinitsy khraneniia), it is running short of space, yet has managed to mount on average no less than sixteen exhibitions a year over the past decade. Of special importance among its holdings are artefacts of the Nentsy, Khanty, Tatars and other minorities, some of them illustrated here. Though informative, this piece reads like an official report and skates over delicate issues such as the extent to which, in Soviet times, the museum’s propagandist function detracted from its commitment to scientific research, or what the indigenes” attitude was (is?) to the removal of sacred cult objects – a problem besetting museum curators in many parts of the world. The bald statement that “in the 1930s some objects were acquired from Orthodox churches, the Polish kostel”, the Tiumen’ synagogue and the Yembaevo mechet” (90) is insensitive, to say the least.
Two other contributions, evidently excerpts from work in progress, highlight the shortcomings of tsarist administrators. E. Yu. Merenkova (Yezhegodnik, 32-40) shows that town councils were often lax in securing as much revenue as they could have done by selling or leasing municipal land. One supposes that this will have owed something to the assumption that land reserves in Siberia were infinitely ample, and not just to incompetence or corruption. D. V. Kuznetsov (Yezhegodnik, 23-31) notes irregularities perpetrated in the middle Irtysh valley by surveyors and other officials of GUZiZ, the land apportionment agency charged with implementing the Stolypin agrarian reforms. He cites a contemporary critic, P. Berezenko, on the unequal portions allotted to various groups of settlers, the first-comers getting the best, which led to boundary disputes. His point is well taken; yet one wonders how far absolute equality was either desirable or practicable. Once again consideration of an analogous situation abroad, the land rush in Oklahoma, might have served as an instructive comparative bench-mark.
Addressing more political themes, O. V. Ishchenko (Yezhegodnik, 68-75) reaches uncontroversial conclusions about the growth of student activism before 1914, while N. M. Korneva and Yu. P. Rodionov (ibid., 40-51, 52-6) contribute lively sketches of two Duma deputies, neither of whom was from the region. A. L. Karavaev of Perm’ trained as a doctor before becoming involved in revolutionary politics. His sympathies were with the moderate Popular Socialist (NS) party; in October 1905, during a pogrom in Yekaterinoslav, he “was one of the few who tried to stop it” and administered medical aid to people wounded in the street fighting. Elected to the Duma in 1907, he was murdered the following year by two activists of the far-right Union of Russian People (SRN) who were tried and sentenced to death many years later. Better known, from memoirs published abroad in 1910, is V. E. Mandelberg, a Jewish Social Democrat (Menshevik). Rodionov’s brief remarks on his experiences in Irkutsk in 1905-7 are pertinent but he does not mention Mandelberg’s disconcerting experience, while campaigning for election, of being told by a potential voter that in Russia there could be no such thing as a Duma – graphic testimony to Siberia’s remoteness from the political whirl in the capital!
The SRN is the focus of a study by A. P. Tolochko (Vestnik, 121-6), the author of a recent book on the subject.^[6] The far right had relatively little support in Siberia (an estimated 5200 in 1905, but 30 branches four years later), but it won backing from some outspoken clergymen, notably Bishop Gavriil of Omsk; subsequently quarrels between its leaders spoiled its image and led to its “organisational and ideological-political degradation”. It would be worth examining what role, if any, its adherents played in the bitter power struggles in the region in 1918-19. For students of this era A. V. Dobrovol’sky of Novosibirsk supplies a well-documented if rather dry analysis (Yezhegodnik, 76-84) of the SRs’ “All-Siberian Regional Committee”, whose activities were much less important in practice than the organisation’s grandiose title might lead one to suppose.
Two contributors tackle the NEP years. T. F. Yashchuk (Yezhegodnik, 85-93) takes on the difficult subject of local budgets in Siberia and finds that by 1925/6 Sibrevkom had managed to bring the revenue and expenditure of a myriad local authorities under better control; however, a lot was spent on administration (36% in the latter year) and it is not clear where it all went. Regions with native populations did better than others, but what is tactfully called here “lack of strict financial discipline” meant that sometimes “payments by the provincial commission were… expended as local, not state funds”: what this involved concretely the reader is left to imagine. More important is Yashchuk’s finding that in 1925/6 the Siberian krai administration, which maintained a sizeable reserve fund, exceeded its anticipated revenue by 60%, whereas raion budgets fell short of target. This must surely have given the former a measure of autonomy vis-à-vis the Centre in Moscow – a major concern than as now.^[7] Yashchuk observes that, in reply to a 1924 request by Sibrevkom, the CEC increased its financial support “but at the same time gave localities greater responsibility over items of expenditure” (91). Such behaviour is of course not unknown in other federal countries such as Canada, where the central government is engaged in a constant tussle with provincial administ-rations over scarce funds.
Finally, D. A. Alisov (Vestnik, 111-20) offers a detailed review of socio-economic developments in Omsk, which experienced a rapid population influx that strained the urban infrastructure, provides ample material on the city transport system, housing and other essential services and goes on to consider the cultural scene: newspapers, schools, libraries etc. There is much of interest here but the approach taken is schematic. As in Tomilov’s article, one detects a certain disregard for human-rights issues: there is no mention of censorship, for example.
In general little attempt is made in these two volumes to come to terms with the less attractive episodes in Siberia’s twentieth-century history: wars, revolutions, Stalinist repression. For the latter topic at least one may consult a series of volumes published in Moscow to commemorate victims in the region.^[8] This silence may have something to do with the restrictive policies of the local archival authorities, eloquently condemned by Samosudov in his review.^[9] The contributors might also have been bolder in adopting a comparative approach and considering the insights of contemporary cultural-historical studies.
Some articles in Vestnik will alarm readers of a liberal persuasion by their exclusivist, nationalistic stance. In “Rossiia ne natsiia, no tselyi mir” (22-30) L. M. Dmitrieva and A. A. Nurullaev call for a new supra-ethnic ideology designed to reintegrate the peoples of Russia who, they hold, share a distinctively un-Western “single system of socio-cultural values”. Though not wholly lacking in merit, their plea rests on a slanted view of history that owes much to Eurasian teaching. It is correct to point out the positive contributions of the Turco-Tatar peoples to Russia’s development up to the sixteenth century, but the record is not wholly rosy, and the same applies to the next four hundred years of Russian/Soviet rule when, as the authors put it, the Muslim peoples were “recipients” rather than “donors”. If one insists that the “uniting” (priobshchenie) of Muslims to Russia was “beneficial for the development of the Muslim peoples” national culture” (26) one should also mention Gaspirali and the jadids, the 1916 revolt in Central Asia, the “Pan-Turkic threat” scare, and so on.
In another piece (47-56) M. P. Kleimenov and R. G. Chefkhodze press the claims of a new discipline they call “ethno-criminality” by digging up old discredited allegations against Chechens, Balts and others in a polemical style that reminds one of the xenophobic effusions of far-right extremists elsewhere in Europe: surely there is no place for such “literature” in a serious academic journal?
Although he too takes some liberties with historical data, there is more to be said for I. V. Bestuzhev-Lada’s essay in futurology (15-21), which predicts a catastrophic end to industrial civilisation unless current ecologically suicidal policies are abandoned. His idea of a world government enforcing conservationist measures, inspired by a mix of puritanism and Confucianism, may not be a feasible proposition in political terms but at least sets readers thinking – as will much else in these two volumes. One wishes their sponsoring organisations continued success.