The incorporation of Siberia into the Russian Empire was accompanied by an influx of colonists and the inauguration of a social system designed to exploit the indigenous populations. The consequences were manifold and immediate: the aboriginal peoples were forcibly suppressed, and made thoroughly aware of their insignificant numeric strength. As happened in the Americas, the colonists who came to Siberia brought with them all kinds of viral and bacterial diseases against which the aboriginal peoples had no immunity – smallpox, measles, and syphilis among them. Recurrent epidemics racked the defenceless communities. Smallpox alone accounted for the deaths of several thousand Yukaghirs.
The yassak system likewise, over time, was to have repercussions that were all but catastrophic for the peoples of Siberia. Together with the diseases it represented a principal reason for the declining numbers in the population of the ethnic groups during the Tsarist period. So oppressive was the levy of furs that local inhabitants were often forced to go to extreme lengths to get hold of ‘the golden pelt’. If the levy had not been fully supplied by the due date, the officers responsible for collecting it had various additional methods of extracting it. One of the more common was to kidnap someone and hold him or her to ransom until it was forthcoming, usually someone important in the community of whoever was defaulting on the tax – perhaps one of the best hunters, a headman, possibly one of the tribal elders. In this way quite often having insufficient time to see to keeping themselves properly fed, exhausted, obliged to do without their leaders or the people most required for the survival of their group, the local people all too frequently underwent periods of famine which, in the environmental conditions natural to the cold north and to Siberia in general, were particularly, insidiously, destructive.
Vasily Surikov, The Conquest of Siberia by Yermak, detail (indigenous archers), 1895. Oil on canvas, 285 × 599 cm. Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Vasily Surikov, The Conquest of Siberia by Yermak, detail (front line), 1895. Oil on canvas, 285 × 599 cm.
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
At the beginning of the 18th century, brutality and massacres accompanied the forcible conversion to Christianity of the indigenous peoples. The Russians had realized that ‘gentle’ methods did not seem to be working. Simultaneously, the colonists continued to exploit the people shamelessly. It was nonetheless only a little later, in 1824, that an official Code of Practice was promulgated by the authorities that was meant to protect the peoples of Siberia from abuses of these kinds. Nothing much came of it.
In the space of two centuries, the conquest and the colonization of Siberia caused a general – in some cases, even permanent – decline in the fortunes of the aboriginal populations. By the end of the 19th century some of the ethnic groups were in such a sorry state (by way of depletion in numbers, wretched health, poverty and low morale) that even then their disappearance altogether was regarded as being only a matter of time – and a short time at that.
On the 9th of November 1901, the following telegram flashed along the wires from Sergei Witte, the Director of Railway Affairs, to his Imperial master, the Tsar:
“On May 19, 1891, your Majesty at Vladivostok turned with your own hand the first sod of the Great Siberian Railway. Today, on the anniversary of your accession to the throne, the East Asiatic Railway is completed. I venture to express to your Majesty, from the bottom of my heart, my loyal congratulations on this historic event.
With the laying of the rails for a distance of 2,500 kilometres, from the Transbaikal territory to Vladivostok and Port Arthur, our enterprise in Manchuria is practically, though not entirely, concluded.
Notwithstanding exceptionally difficult conditions, and the destruction of a large portion of the line last year, temporary traffic can, from day to day, be carried on along the whole system. I hope that within two years hence all the remaining work to be done will be completed, and that the railway will be opened for permanent regular traffic.”
In ten years, four thousand miles of railway had been laid down, averaging more than a mile a day: a record.
A huge country covering five million square miles of swamp and forest and rich corn land, and mountains, and deserts. A country of mighty rivers flowing from the central mountains of Asia to the Arctic Ocean, frozen solid half the year, but at certain seasons among the most magnificent waterways of the world. A country that was once inhabited by a great population, and then for ages the abode of a few wandering tribes; now receiving fresh life from tens of thousands of emigrants, who poured into it from Russia over the iron way. Suddenly, Siberia had leapt into notice as a new Land of Promise, to which were turned the eager and inquiring eyes of half the world.
In the second half of the 19th century, the Russians had acquired an important province in the Far East, washed by the waters of a great ocean, and traversed by a noble river. They determined that it should be joined to their European possessions by something more commodious and more safe than the ill-made, bandit-infested post-road that had previously wound its muddy or frozen length across the steppes and mountains. The government was also becoming more concerned about the fact that the populations of Russia, European and Asiatic, were very disproportionate. The nomadic tribes of Siberia, such as the Bashkires, Khirghiz, Evenks, Buryats, Votiaks, Kamchakdales, and Samoyedes were of small numbers in comparison to the millions of acres comprising Asiatic Russia, the official computation of the population being (including both Russians and aboriginals) one man to every five square miles. The first cause of the extremely slow progress in populating Siberia may be set down to its distance and inaccessibility from the congested districts of Russia. The only means of reaching its heart, up till the commencement of the Trans-Siberian Railway work, was by the lonely tarantass or the occasional steamers playing the tortuous waterways of the Irtish and Obi systems. The Siberian railway, however, promised to considerably alter this state of things.
Another stumbling-block to the rapid development of Siberia until this time been the great prejudice existing against it throughout European Russia, a prejudice which may be said to be far greater than that among foreigners. For many years Siberia had been the dumping-ground for criminals of the worst class. Although the want of communication may be set down as the first, the chief cause undoubtedly existed in Siberia having been made a penal colony.
It is said that the great famine of 1890–1891 which spread throughout Southern Russia, turned the eyes of the Russian government towards Siberia as a possible outlet for surplus population. Tsar Alexander II had always taken a kindly interest in his Asiatic possessions, and it was the dream of his life to see Siberia developed to its fullest extent. The wish was commendable, but the means were lacking.
It was in order to see with imperial eyes what Siberia was that Tsar Nicholas II (then Tsarevitch) took his memorable journey across the steppes and mountains from the Pacific coast. The first sod was cut and the first barrow-load wheeled at Vladivostok by Nicholas at the end of this grand tour of the East in 1891. His royal contribution was laid in that town as the foundation-piece of what would, in the course of a few years, rank as the monumental railway enterprise of the nineteenth century. Alexander, right up to his death, cherished his colonization scheme, and the heritage he left his son was energetically pushed forward. A start was made at the Cheliabinsk end in the following year. Following its commencement, construction steadily progressed in the face of physical and other difficulties at a pace which eclipsed the laying of the great trunk lines of the United States