In Siberia

Picked up another book by Colin Thubron at the restocked Raynes Park platform library a few days ago, this one about his trip to Siberia, otherwise reference 1. A paperback with no photographs, but a serviceable map of Siberia at the front and just under 280 easy read pages of text arranged in nine chapters. Nothing by way of preface or introduction. Very much the same sort of book as the same author’s later book about a trip along the Amur and covering some of the same ground. Noticed at reference 2.

Roughly speaking, the northern coast of Siberia follows the 70th parallel. With the British Isles running, by way of comparison from the 50th to the 60th. But we are helped along by the warming Gulf Stream, at least for the present – so we are temperate rather than continental. With Siberia having several very big rivers, all flowing north, and a lot of mountains. And while some of it is very cold all the year round, some of it is very hot in the summer.

I was reminded of the takeovers of other large spaces – Canada, the US and Australia – where mainly European settlers pushed over the land, pushing the first peoples to the margins or to their deaths. And like Canada, with the population concentrated on the southern border. Just mines, miners and first peoples out in the often freezing conditions of the far north. This is reflected in this journey, mainly along this southern border, with three incursions into the far north – Vorkuta, Dudinka and Magadan.

I read of the Indo-European Scythians of reference 3, with their wide realm and the barbaric funeral arrangements for their leaders. Pushed out, in their turn by the Mongols, not Indo-Europeans at all. With my prior acquaintance being limited to references 4 and 5.

We have the same squalid remnants of the Soviet Union that we came across in the earlier book. Dead mines, factories and farms. Dead prison camps. Near dead villages and towns. Moribund museums and libraries. But lots of churches, with lots of old women – and some younger people – turning back to the church, which the communists in their 70 odd year rule had not managed to exterminate.

Lots of mining over the years, a lot of it done by convicts, a lot of it closed down now. The death rate among convicts, particularly in Stalin’s time, particularly in the grim conditions around Magadan in the far north east, were appalling, with their guards not faring that much better. And lot of attendant pollution – including acid rain killing off the forests and the sparse vegetation of the tundra beyond.

At the time of writing, much unemployment, poverty, crime and drunkenness. Things have probably got better during Putin’s reign. Maybe one of Putin’s achievements has been to use some of the money from gas and oil to do something about the grinding poverty of the life of so many of the people that Thubron comes across.

Old Believers of reference 7; people who used to die for the right to make the sign of the cross with two fingers, rather two fingers and the thumb. Some pagans, mostly revivals of a recently lost past, so a bit more authentic than our druids.

Old fashioned nationalists, nostalgic for the days when the Soviets, the Tsars or the Slavs were on top. From where I associate to a correspondent who went to the bicentenary celebrations of the Battle of Borodino outside Moscow in 2012, the battle which, in fable if not fact, marked the beginning of the end for the French. Celebrations which were full of crudely nationalistic young men who reminded him of the supporters of the National Front in this country in the 1970’s.

And then there are the mainly older people who are nostalgic about a golden era when all the nationalities of the Soviet Union pulled along together in peace and harmony, the Great Patriotic War and the horrors of Stalin’s reign notwithstanding.

Thubron clearly has a knack for getting to know people, a lot of them on the fringes of society. But he remains rather coy about the timetable and the nuts & bolts of his travels. He tells us nothing of any seriously unpleasant encounters which one might have thought must have come his way from time to time as an older traveller, travelling light and off-piste. But he does tell us of hiding dollar bills in innocent looking bottles in his luggage. One also suspects that he has done his homework: he seems to know a lot about the first peoples he encounters on his way. He seems to know a lot about the history of Siberia.

A good read, and I dare say that I would read another of Thubron’s books if it were to fall into my lap. But I shall not be going off to Amazon.

PS: during the read, I came across the article at reference 8, about the tension between one of Norway’s first peoples and wind farms, with the former regarding the latter as desecration. Perhaps the Russians have enough space to avoid problems of this sort – not that they are moving very quickly into wind. Not least because they lack our natural advantages in this department and they have plenty of fossil fuel.

References

Reference 1: In Siberia – Colin Thubron – 1999.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/a-trip-along-amur.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythians. 

Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/09/helmet.html.

Reference 5: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/10/falling-out-of-thieves.html. 

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Borodino. 

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Believers. 

Reference 8: Greta Thunberg accuses Norway of ‘green colonialism’ over wind farm: Climate activist and members of Sami community stage protest after Oslo ignores court ruling – Richard Milne, Financial Times – 2023.