Sibirica

Sibirica’s bibliogenesis lies in a gathering of a dozen or so British academics who shared a common interest in Siberia and the Russian Far East, at the University of Lancaster, UK, in September 1981. That was the first meeting of what came to be called the British Universities Siberian Studies Seminar (BUSSS). Over the next few years the Seminar met on a number of occasions (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge – 1983, 1984; School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London – 1986, 1993; University of Glasgow – 1988, 1989; and Kemerovo, Western Siberia – 1991). During that period, membership of BUSSS grew from the original handful to over two hundred individual and institutional subscribers to the Seminar’s journal Sibirica, in which were regularly published the proceedings of the various conferences, as well as other invited contributions. In all, nine issues appeared, the first five as samizdat publications financially subvented by the then Department of Russian and Soviet Studies at Lancaster University, the next two published under the title Siberica (sic) by the Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon, USA, and the last two by Ryburn Publishing, Keele University Press, UK.

On 8 August 2001, John Albert White passed away in League City, Texas, six days before his ninety-first birthday and six decades after his debut as a historian of Russia in Asia.

After a long and serious illness, the celebrated Russian historian of Siberia, Leonid Mikhailovich Goryushkin, died on 26 September 1999 at the age of 71 in Novosibirsk. At the time of his death, he was the first Director of the newlyformed Institute of History at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SO RAN), previously part of the Institute of History, Philology and Philosophy of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (SO AN SSSR) where he had worked for thirty-six years.

Many earlier studies of the economic development of Siberia at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries presented an oversimplified view of the reality, and did not take account of the multifarious types of economic relationships or modes of production. Two collective works on the history of the Siberian peasantry and working class, published in the 1980s, demonstrate the complex and highly varied nature of the Siberian economy during the period studied. This included both small- and large-scale enterprises, concentration of capital, rapid expansion of the agricultural sector, huge population growth, significant foreign investment, co-operative associations and private artisan workshops, and the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway. Economic relationships comprised not only capitalist, but also small-scale commodity and even feudal structures. These were to some extent inter-active and inter-dependent, but the basic direction of development was towards capitalism, though at a slower pace than in European Russia.

This article traces developments in Siberian trade and manufacturing in the period between the emancipation of the serfs and the early 1900s. Particular emphasis is placed on the evolving nature and role of the guild merchants. Attention is devoted to social change among the merchants, including education and their significance in local government and philanthropy.

This is the first half of a two-part critical survey of writings by British and American visitors to the Russian Altai between 1848 and 1928. In the first half the published travel accounts of Thomas and Lucy Atkinson (1848-53), George Kennan (1885), Elim Pavlovich Demidov (1897), Henry Elwes (1898), Samuel Turner (1903) and Harald Swayne (1903) are summarised and put into context. These sources are then assessed in turn to determine how useful they are for specialists in Siberian Studies, and specifically those investigating the Altai. The conclusion is that several retain value, particularly in the post-communist era when the Russian Altai is opening up for business and tourism, and researchers there are trying to rediscover their lost heritage. The extensive annotations provide scholarly backup for the author's contentions and point to other known travellers who might have written relevant accounts, details of which are not as yet available. Biobibliographical notes place people and places in context.

The author considers that the term 'shamanism' is inappropriate to designate the phenomenon generally so described. Materials on the shamanism of the peoples of Inner Asia lead to the identification of two separate archetypes, i.e. east-Asian and southwest-Asian. Two traditional cultural codes are discussed - that concerned with the principal 'personages' (the supreme deities), and that with the 'agents' (the performers of the ritual). In the east-Asian archetype, the two principal deities are the Sky and the Earth, and the major socially significant rituals - for example, New Year - are carried out by secular leaders, such as the khan, elders, heads of clans, and others. In the southwest archetype, which developed under the influence of ancient Iranian and Indo-Arian traditions, there was a triad of heavenly beings, of which the major one was the Sun, accompanied by groups of other, lesser deities - those of the 'right' and those of the 'left'. The author concludes that only where the cult of the Sun is observed (later possibly mingled with the Thunder-god) do 'white' shamans perform the sacred functions and rituals.

This contribution consists of excerpts from the diary of a missionary-priest, preceded by an introduction to him and his descendants. Mikhail Suslov was a central figure in the Enisei Missionary Society in the late nineteenth century. He had a deep sympathy for the peoples with whom he came in contact, attempting to understand the shamanic world-view as well as to spread Orthodoxy. His son, also Mikhail, served a six-year apprenticeship with Evenki reindeer-herders before following in his father's footsteps. The third in the line, Innokentii Mikhailovich, became an early Bolshevik administrator, adopting an approach, recalling that of his grandfather to an earlier stage of modernisation. The excerpts from the diary evocatively describe the harsh conditions of the natural setting, the way of life of the native peoples, and aspects of their reception of Russian culture.

Petra Rethmann, Tundra Passages: History and Gender in the Russian Far East

Stephen Kotkin and Bruce Elleman, eds, Mongolia in the Twentieth Century: Landlocked Cosmopolitan

Frederick Nixson, Bat Suvd, Puntsagdash Luvsandorj and Bernard Walters, eds, The Mongolian Economy: A Manual of Applied Economics for a Country in Transition

Edward J. Vajda, Yeniseian Peoples and Languages. A History of Yeniseian Studies, with an Annotated Bibliography

Wieland Hintzsche, Thomas Nickol and Ol’ga Vladimirovna Novochatko, eds, Georg Wilhelm Steller: Briefe und Dokumente, 1740

Wieland Hintzsche, ed., Georg Wilhelm Steller, Stepan Krašeninnikov, Johann Eberhard Fischer: Reisetagebücher, 1735 bis 1743

In 1991 I published an annotated bibliography of English language publications about Siberia and the Russian Far East. The following list is the first part of a chronological extension of the original bibliography to the present. However, because of space and time considerations, there will be no annotations; items to do with foreign relations and shorter than six pages are usually omitted. I would be very grateful for information about any items which have escaped my attention, so that they can be included in a subsequent retrospective section.