The smaller rivers and the numberless lakes begin to freeze in September. In the first or second week of October the whole country is covered with snow. The cold increases day by day. In the middle of the winter the temperature may remain for weeks together below the freezing-point of mercury, and at times will sink to 80 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Such a low temperature gives a keen and penetrating sharpness to the air, and all life seems to have congealed. The Siberian winter does not rage and roar, as does that of northern Europe, but suppresses all motion. Neither the sun, which only for a few hours appears above the horizon, nor the earth, which is frozen to an unknown depth and in the summer melts only two or three feet, can withstand its power. The constantly growing cold compresses the air more and more, until it finally threatens, as it were, to suffocate all life beneath its weight. The strongest currents of air from the Arctic sea, from the Pacific, or from the immense continental regions lying to the south are unable to move this inert and compressed mass of air.
In these northerly latitudes, the ground surface – permanently frozen – is mostly shingle, perhaps covered in algae, lichens and mosses. This is the true Arctic wilderness and characterizes most of the islands, especially those off the coast of the Taimyr Peninsula. Seals, walruses, belugas and polar bears populate the coastline.
As distance increases from the north pole southwards, the Arctic wilderness turns into the tundra – a bare region in which only lichens, mosses, and short, scrubby trees (dwarf species of birch or willow, mainly) shroud the ground, with some spiky plants and Arctic grasses. Winter in the tundra is lengthy – between eight and ten months – and cold. At the end of November the sun dips below the horizon and does not return. This is the polar night, which in the tundra lasts for two or three months (compared with up to six months in the Arctic wilderness). Then finally, in January, the sun reappears once more, and the days little by little lengthen even as the nights little by little become shorter. This goes on until, from sometime in May to sometime in July, the sun doesn’t leave the sky at all.
The tundra under the spring snows (May).
Vasily Surikov, Steppes near Minussinsk, 1873.
Watercolour on paper, 136 × 31.8 cm. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Summer in the Arctic is not so much warm as brisk – temperatures average from 5–12 °C (40–68°F) – and short. Towards mid-August, heralding the end of summertime, the tundra takes on its autumnal coloration. Leaves on the woody plants turn golden, the lichens and mosses turn grey, while the wild mushrooms sprout in abundance and the berries ripen in a vast moving red and orange carpet.
The tundra is the home of the reindeer (caribou), of the Arctic wolf, the wolverine (glutton), the Arctic fox, the lemming, the great white owl, and the ptarmigan (the gallinaceous bird that, unlike any other, winters by hiding itself under the snow). In spring, the tundra welcomes the arrival of the many migratory birds – geese, swans, ducks, terns, gulls and others – that come to breed.
The terrain tends to be marshy, with a scattering of thousands of little lakes of no real depth. Baron Eddel, a traveller who a hundred years or so ago explored the lower reaches of the Indigirka and the Kolyma Rivers, recalled in his memoirs that ‘to draw a map of all these lakes, all you need to do is dip a paintbrush in blue watercolour and bespeckle the paper all over with it’. The tundra is swampy because of the presence beneath the topsoil of permafrost – a stratum of soil frozen solid over thousands of years sometimes to a depth of 1,000 feet (300 metres) or more, whereas the topsoil itself may be no more than a foot (30 centimetres) deep. The permafrost is impervious, which means that although annual rainfall may be comparatively low, the water cannot drain away or be absorbed. Nor does it evaporate, because the air is already extremely humid and the heat is not sufficient.
The southern boundary of the permafrost – a line that actually runs through a little less than two-thirds of the area covered by the Russian state – lies north of the valleys of the lower Tunguska (a tributary of the Yenisey) and the Vilyuy (a tributary of the Lena). It is in the north-east of Siberia that the permafrost is most extensive. To the north of Yakutia the subsoil keeps turning up the fossilized remains of animals – whole cemeteries of mammoths trapped in thick layers of frozen sediments, their bones and their ivory tusks forming colossal repositories. It is also in Yakutia that the coldest place in the Northern hemisphere is located – at Oymyakon, in the Verkhoyansk mountains. Here, the average temperature in January is somewhere between -48 °C and -50 °C (-54°F and -58°F), occasionally getting down to as low as -70 °C (-94°F). However, the air is so dry, and there is no wind at all, so these temperatures do not feel as extreme as they might.
Further south, a change in vegetation indicates a difference in the prevailing climate and conditions. The number of dwarf trees and bushes increases greatly. This is an intermediate zone between tundra and taiga (which many people think of as an individual zone in its own right). Continuing south, the vegetation diversifies. The trees become more numerous and grow much taller. Finally, the environment is that of the taiga – the huge northern forest that cloaks the greater part of Russia.
Comprised mostly of conifers (larch, pine and Siberian cedar) but also the north birch, willow and aspen, in the south and west deciduous species, the taiga forests are home to an important group of larger predatory animals (bears, wolverines, wolves and lynxes), foraging omnivores (foxes, sables, polecats, weasels, ermines, mink and martens), ungulates (deer and elk) and birds (capercaillies, partridges, woodpeckers and nutcrackers). Winters in this region are very long and very cold. Summers, however, can be warm in the central part of the region, where the annual range of temperatures can be as wide as 100 degrees on the Celsius scale (180 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale). The warm months are propitious times for the insects, especially mosquitoes, midges and flies for which the tundra, with its multitudinous marshes and lakes, has been the ideal breeding-ground.
Further south still, the taiga gives way first to the fertile steppes and then to the arid steppes – areas typical of northern Central Asia and Mongolia. Here, the climate is by no means unpleasant: summers are fairly long and warm, and the rainfall is light although the prevailing winds tend to be strong. Much of the steppes is covered by vast prairies of tall grasses growing on humus-rich fertile soil. It is an area well suited to farming, both of crops and of livestock. But there is plenty of wildlife too: marmots, voles and fieldmice, hamsters, jerboas, hares, foxes, saiga antelopes and badgers. Birds of the steppes include bustards, kestrels, Asiatic white cranes and many more.
Amid the arid steppes north of Mongolia, over a length of an extraordinary 400 miles (635 kilometres), stretches the largest inland source of fresh water in the world: Lake Baikal. In places it is 5,300 feet (1,620 metres) deep. A miracle of nature, Lake Baikal provides essential water for all kinds of local populations – including of course the creatures that live in it, which are now regrettably under severe threat from the pollution exuded into the lake as effluent from the timber workings up the rivers that flow into it.
The most easterly part of Russia is an area drained largely by rivers that flow out into the Pacific Ocean – rivers such as the Anadyr in the north and the Amur in the south. In the area around the Amur (which for a time forms the boundary with China), the climate and the overall humidity are favourable to the growth of mixed forest, particularly of broadleaved trees like limes, aspens or oaks. The wildlife here is much the same as in the taiga, with the addition of the Asiatic tiger, the leopard, the civet, the genet, the goral (a goat-like antelope related to the chamois), the sika deer and a great number of bird species.
Northeastern edge of the Chukotka Peninsula, 1998.
Siberia is rich in natural resources. It has minerals that can be extracted – gold, silver, tin, diamonds, nickel and phosphates; it has abundant means for supplying energy – huge reserves of oil and petroleum and of natural gas, extensive coal seams, and a great number of fast-flowing waterways; and it has a wealth of other useful and commercial materials – the timber in its forests and the pelts of its animals. In many ways, then, it is Russia’s warehouse of goodies, contributing around one-fifth of the state’s overall