WI: Russia's Wild East
- Thread starter Hendryk
- Start date
Tielhard
Banned
Points to make.
It did happen there was a 'Wild East' and Siberia was developed at exactly the speed it developed. There were good reasons for this including.
a) Siberia, Yakutia and the Soviet/Russian far east are pretty inhospitable places.
b) Most of the natural transportation routes (rivers) are North South in both European Russia and Siberia.
c) Roads are usually only open in Winter (ice roads) and Summer. In the Spring and Autumn they flood or turn to mud.
d) Prior to the development of the trans-Sib. there was only one main road, the Grand Trunk West-East in Siberia and it was a mud track.
e) Siberia has a very short growing season. Even the very modest population it has now cannot be supported by local food production. Food has had to be brought in since (I think) the first Cossack settlements beyond Bikal certainly since the mid-ninteenth century.
f) The eastern seaboard has become a year round point of entry only since the development of modern ice breakers. Magadan, Soviekskya Gavan, Vladivosk, Nakhodha were all closed for part of the year to 19th Century commerce. Hence the importance of Port Arthur and Dilian to both the Russian Imperials and the Soviets.
g) Key distances are three to four times those found in the USA and Canada.
h) Much of central Siberia is bordered to the south by Deserts and mountains and there are very limited access routes.
i) The railways which finally opend up Siberia, primarily the trans-Sib. but also the trans.-Manchurian and the trans.-Mongolian are an enormous network far longer than the railways that opened up the USA and Canada. They were also far harder to build than the CPR by an order of magnitude for any number of reasons, primarily geographical. The railway that is opening up the North the BAM is still not fully functional after nearly 70 years of effort and probably could not have been built using 19th Century technology. There is still no railway or proper foru season road to Magadan or Yakutsk and nothing at all to the Bearing straights or onto Kamchatka.
So to sum up, Adam Smith he say changing the culture that goes east alone will not speed up the colonisation of Siberia. Indeed the population is only as large as it is now because of Soviet command ecconomy measures encouraging relocation and appart from the far east coast the population is falling.
It did happen there was a 'Wild East' and Siberia was developed at exactly the speed it developed. There were good reasons for this including.
a) Siberia, Yakutia and the Soviet/Russian far east are pretty inhospitable places.
b) Most of the natural transportation routes (rivers) are North South in both European Russia and Siberia.
c) Roads are usually only open in Winter (ice roads) and Summer. In the Spring and Autumn they flood or turn to mud.
d) Prior to the development of the trans-Sib. there was only one main road, the Grand Trunk West-East in Siberia and it was a mud track.
e) Siberia has a very short growing season. Even the very modest population it has now cannot be supported by local food production. Food has had to be brought in since (I think) the first Cossack settlements beyond Bikal certainly since the mid-ninteenth century.
f) The eastern seaboard has become a year round point of entry only since the development of modern ice breakers. Magadan, Soviekskya Gavan, Vladivosk, Nakhodha were all closed for part of the year to 19th Century commerce. Hence the importance of Port Arthur and Dilian to both the Russian Imperials and the Soviets.
g) Key distances are three to four times those found in the USA and Canada.
h) Much of central Siberia is bordered to the south by Deserts and mountains and there are very limited access routes.
i) The railways which finally opend up Siberia, primarily the trans-Sib. but also the trans.-Manchurian and the trans.-Mongolian are an enormous network far longer than the railways that opened up the USA and Canada. They were also far harder to build than the CPR by an order of magnitude for any number of reasons, primarily geographical. The railway that is opening up the North the BAM is still not fully functional after nearly 70 years of effort and probably could not have been built using 19th Century technology. There is still no railway or proper foru season road to Magadan or Yakutsk and nothing at all to the Bearing straights or onto Kamchatka.
So to sum up, Adam Smith he say changing the culture that goes east alone will not speed up the colonisation of Siberia. Indeed the population is only as large as it is now because of Soviet command ecconomy measures encouraging relocation and appart from the far east coast the population is falling.
Do you think Germans on Volga shores were natives?
They actually were service men.
"The fierce river"?
Siberia is big and miscellaneous.
Hendryk
Banned
The Volga Germans were a one-off experiment by Catherine II. In OTL they didn't fare so well in the 19th and 20th centuries, highlighting the problem of top-down immigration schemes in authoritarian societies; once the political impetus that brought the settlers disappears, they become a barely accepted minority at best, and an "enemy within" at worst.Do you think Germans on Volga shores were natives?
Stalker
Banned
Might be in perspective. But Decembrists with Pestel as Dictator is something close to Cromwell's time or Jacobine terror in France. It's gonna be 10 years of ruining Russia in local civil wars and uprisings until stabilisation or Royal Restauration.
a) Siberia, Yakutia and the Soviet/Russian far east are pretty inhospitable places.
Yup. But summer even in the flow of the Yana-river is so hot that for short summer there water-melons get ripe.
b) Most of the natural transportation routes (rivers) are North South in both European Russia and Siberia.To get from west to east or otherwise, one has to build roads, however...
c) Roads are usually only open in Winter (ice roads) and Summer. In the Spring and Autumn they flood or turn to mud.
Probably taken from Encyclopedia of 19th century. All main motorways in Siberia are paved.
e) Siberia has a very short growing season. Even the very modest population it has now cannot be supported by local food production. Food has had to be brought in since (I think) the first Cossack settlements beyond Bikal certainly since the mid-ninteenth century.
Oops! I was in Siberia, and I should say, that its southern belt and Baikal are probably the richest lands in the world. Due to hard continentality, the summer is shorter but also hotter. Everything grows there - every usual vegetable for you and me. Add to this that from Vladivostok to Magadan, each man eats red caviar there with tablespoonfulls, but, really, potatoes are hard to grow in Magadan belt.
f) The eastern seaboard has become a year round point of entry only since the development of modern ice breakers. Magadan, Soviekskya Gavan, Vladivosk, Nakhodha were all closed for part of the year to 19th Century commerce. Hence the importance of Port Arthur and Dilian to both the Russian Imperials and the Soviets.Vladivostok and Nakhodka, AFAIR, are unfreezing ports.
Tielhard
Banned
I'm sure you are right however there are not enough watermelons to keep the population of Siberia fed all year.
Yep. and until a few years ago there was no continous proper road from European Russia to the far east. I am uncertain to if it is fully surfaced even now. I have had conflicting reports. There was just the Grand Trunk in the 19th. C..
A few points 1) The info. comes from some guide books I own none published earlier than 1998 and the report of a couple that went cycling in Siberia a few years ago. 2) Are we not talking about a Wild East in the 19th C.? 3) As I recall the situation not all of the roads/never mind the motorwas link up. I'm pretty sure there is no permanent four season road out of Yakutsk?
I am sure you are correct none the less Siberia is more than just the region around Irkutsk and Chita. There is the far north, Western Siberia, the rest of the trans-Bikal, Yakutia and the region beyond Magadan. So if you are in Magadan getting food from the Bikal region is harder than getting it from Japan because the place is so big. In total Siberia is a net importer of food by a considerable margin.
If I remember the situation correctly, and I may not as I have not looked at it for several years. Today, 2006, Vladivostok and Nakhodha are year round ports and Sovgavan is often a year round port. However, this is because the climate is not quite as cold in 2000 as it was in 1850 and more importantly there are modern icebreakers to keep the channels open. I was think about the Wild East in the 19th C.
Tielhard
Banned
abas,
I have just looked it up on the Wiki. The film I was thinking of about Bears was "The Sons of the Great Mother Bear" and it is in fact East German not Soviet and nothing to do with the Wild East sorry.
The Soviet films I was thinking of are:
White Sun of the Desert, which was later than I thought 1969 It is even in colour!
The Body Guard and
Miles of Fire.
They are all much later than I remembered by 30 or so years. Yet another example of Tielhard getting old and his memory failing ...ahhhhhh!.
I have just looked it up on the Wiki. The film I was thinking of about Bears was "The Sons of the Great Mother Bear" and it is in fact East German not Soviet and nothing to do with the Wild East sorry.
The Soviet films I was thinking of are:
White Sun of the Desert, which was later than I thought 1969 It is even in colour!
The Body Guard and
Miles of Fire.
They are all much later than I remembered by 30 or so years. Yet another example of Tielhard getting old and his memory failing ...ahhhhhh!.
Stalker
Banned
Yes, the "Sons of the Great Mother Bear" was shot in DEFA-studios in GDR starring yugoslav Goiko Mitic, the main "Indian" of German westerns. AFAIR, the whole series of westerns based on novels of "German Fenimore Cooper" Karl Mai (sp.?) was made by DEFA. Goiko Mitic also payed Chingachgook in German version of "Deer-slayer" entitled "Chingachgook, The Great Snake"
White Sun of the Desert is the greatest Soviet bestseller, a typical Soviet "eastern", one of the most beloved movies ever in the history of Soviet cinematography, really! Choose each man all over the area of ex-USSR older than 25, and he/she will quote that movie for heart. The plot is simpe: retired Red Army soldier, comerade Sukhov goes back home through the desert of Turkestan and finds a man dug in the sands. Undigging him leads to the whole series of both comic and drammatic events of opposition between Sukhov and the bandit leader Abdullah who wants to recaim the harem of his wives and flee by sea to probably Iran...The undug man, Said, helps Sukhov in his quest in protecting former Abdullah's wives and fighting the band...
Each of us probably uses different stats... According to my data, Siberia is able to feed its 30 million population by its own products. This, of course, doesn not include banana, oranges, pawpaw and date... ;-)Tielhard said:
Siberia, no doubt, is within the belt of so caled "risky agriculture" but nonetheless, it has always fed by its own. That's why the popuation growth was so moderate here. And most fertile regions of Siberia go from Omsk region to Primorye in the Far East through Novosibirsk Southern Tomsk, Kemerovo, Sousthern part of the Land of Krasnoyarsk, Baikal, Altay and partly Transbaikal alon the Amur river. Taken together, these lands are bigger that the whole Europe without Russia. And are popuated by only 25 million. If you only saw these lands, Blue Sayany mountains, endess taiga, and upstream Yenissey with sea-transparent waters full of fish! If you only saw Baikal you would have probably understood all the vainness of other miracles of the wolrd. I cannot even describe the beauty of that vast and caed Siberia, excuse my grandiloquence! ;-)))
Stalker
Banned
Hey! You'd better think again! It would be somewhat hard to make pleasure of sight-seeing when the thermometer shows 30-40 degrees centigrade below zero...I support an AH.com sponsort educational travel to Siberia. Right now.
I suggest that you wait until May-June at least...
Were the Decembrists that bloody-minded or incompetent?
EDIT: It looks like Pestel was. However, according to the Wiki, he wasn't the only Decembrist leader.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrists
Stalker
Banned
I am not a great Chelsea fan, although Shevchenko plays for it, I'd rather shout for MU...
It's a funny thing for Russians having the Chukotka's governer with Jewish surname... Chief-Chukcha Abramovich!
)))Still, it's really not what we usually mean by Siberia, the Godforsaken Far Northern end of the continent.
The Chukchas themselves are the characters of multiple anecdotic stories. They are simple folk who stayed for long at the side of civilisation and thus won the title of "dump people". But, as it often happens, through that dumpness we see simple wisdom of those people.
Here are some of the anecdotes:
(Soviet time) There's a geologist waking across tundra, and here comes the Chukcha with his gun aiming at the man.
"Halt! Who goes there?", Chukcha asks
"Don't shoot, Chukcha", answers the geologist, "It's me, the chief of the (geology) party".
Chukcha shoots saying: "You won't fool Chukcha! Chukcha knows who is the chief of the (communist) party".
Another one:
Chukcha buys a fridge in the store.
"Why do you need it? Someone asks, "I've heard there is already too cold in Chukotka"
"You, fool", Chukcha says, "I am buying it to warm myself".
The Chukcha village of deer-shephers is presented with the new car by the local authorities.
The crowd is gathered around the car, and three oldermen come forward to inspect it.
The 1st approaches the car and bumps on its hood.
"Iron", he says in tones of wisdom.
The crowd around cheers.What wise men they have chosen to govern them!
The 2nd approaches the car and puts his hand on the windshield.
"Glass", he says in the same tones. The crowd cheers again.
The 3rd olderman walks around to see what points he could gain from the situation, then finds something, smiles, snatches at the exhaust pipe and says happily:
"Here, look - a male!"
Hendryk
Banned
The problem is that most people, when they hear "Siberia", think "frozen wasteland where the Czars and the Bolsheviks sent political dissidents to their deaths, and which has become a giant nuclear dump". As PR goes, it isn't that great. But one of the reasons I suggested this WI, and came up with the country of Yakutia in my "Superpower Empire", is because I'm sure Siberia does have the same kind of wild, scenic beauty as, say, Canada and Alaska. Not that I've been there myself, mind. But the alternate Yakutsk I thought up would be, I think, a pretty good place to visit in the summertime.
Stalker
Banned
Well, IMO, they all were aristocratic idealists. They were divided by several main societies - Northern Society, Southern Society, United Slavs...
Were they blood-thirsty? Good question. They thought they were going to present happiness to the Russian people but it looks ike they were going to force the Russian people into liberal freedoms, if needed, by means of arms.
The Northern society (knyaz Trubetskoy, Nikita Muravyev, Kondratiy Ryleyev and others) was more liberal, undecisive, they wanted to arrest the czar and force the Senate to declare the Mainfest calling, among other things, to gather so called Supreme Council to decide upon the further political structure of Russia - many of them stood for constitutional monarchy, but there were many Republicans.
The Southern society was more active, and Pestel, its leader, the author of radical constitution, which he called "Russian Pravda" had realy bonapartist ambitions. He was radical, he was extremely energetic, and should the Decembrist cause win, he would have quicky appeared on the top of the power. He stood for czar's assasination, for immediate abolishing of the serfdom calling it "a shameful slavery of Russian nation".
Well, we all also know that hell is paved with good intentions. To realise all his dreams and survive, Pestel would have to breal Russia over the knee, and in doing so with truly revolutionary consistency, he woud have shed rivers of blood - much more than Robespierre and Cromwell taken together. Russian people were too patriarchal to accept those freedoms from the hands of aristocrates who murdered their Czar. It's an essential moment - simple folk at that time were stubbornly monarchic-spirited, they believed that Czar was always kind, and all evil went down from those bastadrs-aristocrats cheeting and expoiting simple folk.
Yes, should Decembrists impose their rule and policies and survive in uprisings against them and great purges among them at least for ten years of the 2nd "Great Russian Distemper", their policies would finally have given their fruits, but what a painful way it would have been! How many sufferings it would have brought!
Stalker,
Hmmm...is there any possible way the Decembrists could maintain power and make their reforms with minimal violence? One does not ordinarily associate "Decembrists" and "skill," but there might be a political tightrope they can walk.
Perhaps keeping the Czar as a figurehead and engaging in land reforms, with a few particularly unpleasant aristocrats being thrown to the peasantry for PR purposes?
Hmmm...is there any possible way the Decembrists could maintain power and make their reforms with minimal violence? One does not ordinarily associate "Decembrists" and "skill," but there might be a political tightrope they can walk.
Perhaps keeping the Czar as a figurehead and engaging in land reforms, with a few particularly unpleasant aristocrats being thrown to the peasantry for PR purposes?
Stalker
Banned
MerryPrankster,
you are really good at posing hard questions
, and I can ony say that I have not ready-made answers to them.Skill and competence... hmm... Well, many of them were competent in miitary affairs, few in politics but they were no doubt very educated men who was brought on ideas of Votaire and Russeau, Locke and Kant, who learnt recent history by their own experience - many of them fought in Napoleonic wars, and speaking French as their second Mother tongue - all European aristocracy spoke French those days - they were able to communicate with their European counterparts and take lots of new social ideas, ideas of governance etc. So, how competent they would have been - needs thorough studying. One point is that they were mostly unexperienced in public affairs. If they had chosen soft, liberal path - that would have undoubtfully led to provoking counterevolutionary hardliners into trying to overthrow them - and absence of unity among various wings of Decembrist could have paralysed them in most important moment. So, even they realised that the only way was Dictatorship but they understood that in different ways - the "Northerners" thought in may only be temporary position to achieve immediate goals of the Rebellion, the "Southerners" (and Pavel Pestel at their head) suggested imposing Dictatorship during all Transitional period. So, whichever way, the events would have been likely to fix that position for the period of military activities against counterrevolution. Military struggle would have brought up on the top another problem - differences between radical and liberal Decembrists, real or fake plots, and subseguent purges. That Revolution would have also devoured its children! I think, the hardiners-radicals would have eventually won the struggle against liberals and that means that they would have imposed severe terror over everybody who dared to rise against them.
There's also a problem of another crown-prince, Alexander brother Constantine who was married to a simple Polish aristocrate of not royal blood and that morganatic marriage expelled him from the chain of pretenders to the throne. But simple folk loved Constantine, and the soldiers of several rebelling regiments on the Senate Square even said that they stood there for Czar Constantine and his wife Constitution!
That was also suggested. There were multiple ideas among the Decembrists. Which one would have been realised, should Decembrists have won - is just another question...
If I'm not mistaken, most of Russia's peasantry remain stuck to their peasant communities (Obshchina) with little independence for individuals. There are very few landed peasants (kulaks) before Peter Stolypin Agrarian reform. Perhaps if the reform were implemented earlier Russia would have sizable middle-class farmer who're likely to be conservative.
Stalker
Banned
You are quite right. The Stolypin's reform was aimed to ruin peasant communities and create a real master on the land. Even after the end of serfdom in 1861, the traditional Obshchina still remained a mighty obstacle for intensification of farming activities. Pyotr Arkadyevich tried to change things, and I cannot say his reform was unsuccessful.