The most numerous ethnic group of these is that of the Nenets who, in the same census, were counted at 34,190 persons. Now the Nenets are one of the peoples of Siberia who have best preserved their traditional way of life and culture. The Evenki, almost as numerous (29,901 persons), have on the other hand been subject to considerable assimilation, especially into Yakut groups. Next in order of numerical importance are the Khanty (22,283 persons), then the Eveni (17,055), the Shorians (16,652), the Chukchis (15,107), the Nanai people (11,833), the Koryaks (8,942), the Mansis (8,279), the Dolgans (6,584) and the Nivkhi (4,631). The remaining ethnic groups are undoubtedly ‘ultra-minorities’:
• The Selkup, the Olchi, the Itelmen and the Udekhe make up between 2,000 and 4,000 people
• The Chuvantsi, the Nganassi, the Yukaghirs, the Kets, the Saami of western Siberia and the Uit of eastern Siberia number between 1,000 and 2,000 people
• Some ethnic groups comprise no more than a few hundred men and women: these are the Orochon people (883 persons), the Karagas people (722), the Aleuts of eastern Siberia (644), the Negidal people (587), the Enets (198) and the Oroki (179)
• One really tiny ethnic group – so small that it was not even counted separately in the census – was that of the Kereks of southern Chukotka, who in total numbered fewer than 50 representatives.
Assimilation of language and of culture has affected all of these small ethnic groups to one extent or another, but so has such assimilation also affected – if less seriously – the more numerously significant groups, such as the Buryats (listed in the census as numbering 417,425 persons), the Yakuts (380,242), the Tuva people (206,160), the Khakass people (78,500) and the Altai people (69,409). Today, just one small proportion of Siberia’s original inhabitants preserves an ancient and traditional way of life, continues on a daily basis to practise and to teach its ancestral rituals and language. But such efforts are puny in the face of what is massed against them, notably the effects of ‘modern life’ and ‘technological development’ (which include an increased mortality rate, severely depressed morale, stress disorders and diseases, alcoholism, high unemployment, soaring suicides and other measures of progress). It was the frenetic pace at which assimilation was overtaking all these various ethnic groups that caused them to be featured in The Red Book of Ethnic Groups on the Verge of Disappearing, published during the last years of the Soviet Union.
To understand how this demographic and cultural erosion came about, it is necessary to turn back and look once more at history.
Vasily Surikov, Siberian Beauty, 1891.
Oil on canvas, 50 × 39 cm. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Unknown artist, Portrait of Yermak, early 18th century.
Oil on canvas, 70 × 57 cm. V. P. Sukachev Art Museum, Irkutsk.
C. The Trans-Siberian Railway
“The Trans-Siberian Railway featured Europe and Western civilisation at the one extremity, China and Eastern civilisation at the other. In between, the greatest of the continents, and across that continent the unbroken band of iron.”
For a long time blocked by the unwelcome presence of the Tatars, the extension of the Russian Empire on the far side of the Ural Mountains was made possible only by the eventual defeat of the Tatar khan, Kuchum, at the hands of Yermak and his Cossack forces in 1582. The great Asiatic empire established by Jenghiz Khan began to go to pieces in the fifteenth century, and various more or less independent governments were established on the site of the ancient realm. Dissensions among these people caused some of them to spread northward, and in the beginning of the sixteenth century, before Yermak’s expedition, the Tartars had occupied much of the territory east of the Ural Mountains. They had found it easy to overcome the scattered inhabitants who had lived there previously, but they found more difficulty with the Russians with whom they came in contact in the Urals, so that in 1555 the Tartar Prince Ediger agreed to pay a yearly tribute of 1,000 sable skins to the Tsar, though otherwise still preserving a nominal independence. His successor, however, the Khan Kutchum, rebelled against this tribute shortly before Yermak’s arrival, and the Stroganoffs, a powerful family in the Ural Mountains, encouraged Yermak to make his invasion.
When Yermak crossed the Urals he found several well-established Tartar communities, and he first carried on operations successfully on the east slope of the mountains. He moved then eastward and easily captured Isker, the stronghold of Khan Kutchum, in the valley of the River Tobol, near where the town of Tobolsk now stands. He sent messengers to the Tsar describing his victories, and announcing that he held the conquered regions subject to his commands. The Tsar, Ivan IV, surnamed “the Terrible,” greatly pleased with the services of Yermak, raised him in royal favor, and sent him a hundred rubles, a silver cup and two cuirasses, as well as a fur robe which he had worn himself, a sign of special favor. The Tartar legend relates that a small black animal like a hound emerged from the Tobol River, while a large white shaggy wolf emerged from the Irtish. They met on a sandy island near the confluences of the two streams and fought, the smaller animal finally killing the larger one; then both disappeared in the Irtish. The native soothsayers interpreted this as meaning the overthrow of the Tartars by the Russians.
Yermak continued his work of invasion, but in 1584 was defeated by the Tartars, and was drowned in the River Irtish. After his death, however, the Russians promptly followed up the conquests that he had begun, and rapidly occupied the vast regions to the east. In 1587 the now flourishing city of Tobolsk was founded near the site of the old Tartar stronghold of Khan Kutchum. In 1604 the Russian advance had progressed so far to the east that the town of Tomsk, almost 1,000 miles from the Urals, now one of the most flourishing commercial centers of northern Asia, was founded; and in 1622 the town of Yakutsk, over twice that distance, was founded; while in 1647 the Cossack Dezhneff crossed Bering Straits, over 4,000 miles east of the Urals. In 1643 the explorer Poyarkoff discovered the Amur region in southeastern Siberia; and in 1649–52 the celebrated Khabaroff entered this same vast region and defeated the natives and the Chinese armies that defended it. It was, however, subsequently returned to the Chinese by the treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, and was not again recovered by the Russians until 1858, when, by the skill and diplomacy of Count Muravioff, it was ceded to them by the treaty of Aigun without any fighting. Shortly after the middle of the seventeenth century the town of Irkutsk, west of Lake Baikal, and the town of Nerchinsk, east of Lake Baikal, were founded.
Vasily Surikov, The Conquest of Siberia by Yermak, 1895.
Oil on canvas, 285 × 599 cm. Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Thus within less than a hundred years after the campaigns of Yermak the Russians had carried their explorations and conquests across Asia to the farthest points on the Pacific Coast; and all the northern part of the continent, from the Urals to the Pacific, and from the Turko-Mongolian possessions and the Chinese frontier on the south, to the Arctic Ocean on the north, was under Russian control.
The conquest of Siberia had been accomplished at remarkable speed, but at the expense of a great deal of blood.
As they continued in their warlike progress ever eastwards, the Cossacks demanded tribute from the populations they overran – tribute not in the form of money but of furs: the yassak. They also constructed forts to control these new subjects of the Russian Tsar and in which to stockpile the precious tribute. Some of the tribespeople, such as the Yakuts, surrendered without much resistance (the Russians were excellent at knowing whom to treat gently and offer gifts to), only to rise in revolt soon afterwards. It