GeoCurrents

The Siberian Curse: Whence Siberia?—part 2

2012-05-17T18:11:37Z

As discussed in the preceding GeoCurrents post, Siberia is often considered too big and too cold; and as mentioned in an earlier GeoCurrents post, it is also too polluted. Such problems made Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, the authors of The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold, quip that “Siberia has been a rich and attractive delicacy for the Russian state, but one that has also been extremely hard to swallow” (p. 74). Agreeing with Victor L. Mote, they argue that “the obstacles [to the development of Siberia] are so great that one wonders why Siberia should be developed for permanent settlement at all” (p. 51). Nor would refurbishing and upgrading the existing systems of road, rail, and air transportation, or constructing new infrastructure, provide answers to the Siberian dilemma, as that would only make places more livable (at a high cost!) “where, from an economic point of view, few should live” (p. 5). Instead, their recommendation is that

“to become competitive economically and to achieve sustainable growth, Russia needs to ‘shrink.’ It must contract not its territory (its physical geography), but its economic geography” (p. 5).

In order to “downsize Siberia”, Hill and Gaddy contend, the government should encourage migration of the Siberian population—especially from large cities like Novosibirsk, Omsk, Yekaterinburg, Khabarovsk, and Irkutsk—westward on an unprecedented large scale, restricting industry east of the Urals to extractive operations. Since Hill and Gaddy are opposed to forced means of regulating the economy, this would need to be achieved by free-market tools. The government would have to stop pouring funds into economic and social development of large Siberian cities, which should eventually lead to a more natural existence for these cities, they suggest. Urban areas in the coldest and most remote areas would have to downsize. People and companies wanting to leave the region should be offered financial help from the state. Instead of supporting a huge permanent settlement, the state should encourage a system whereby natural resource mining operations are staffed on a “tour of duty” basis.

The authors of The Siberian Curse see a number of legal, logistical, and social obstacles to “downsizing Siberia”. Instituted during the Soviet time, the propiska, or residency permit, system that requires citizens to register their place of residence with the local police is still in effect in Moscow and many other cities in European Russia, although the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation has ruled it unconstitutional on several occasions. These legal restrictions, together with the absence of significant economic growth, new jobs, and housing in most towns and cities in European Russia, restrict the internal migration possibilities. Moreover, social safety nets in Russia are inadequate, and many people are either reluctant or unable to move. Hill and Gaddy use the example of the war-ravaged cities of Japan after World War II to illustrate the general resistance to downsizing even in the wake of traumatic events, like the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Another, Russia-specific problem in decreasing the population of Siberian cities is that they were not designed with flexible infrastructure and hence cannot easily adapt to changes in population size: “power and heating utilities, sanitation, apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, and so on, were all designed on a … city-wide basis” (p. 163). As a result, it is difficult or even impossible to relocate and consolidate the population of a city to a few viable districts and to demolish depopulated neighborhoods. In many cases, where massive depopulation has taken place, the remaining inhabitants simply have to assume a larger share in maintenance and utilities costs. Where this proves impossible, semi-abandoned apartment buildings are poorly maintained, leading occasionally to the bursting of pipes and the filling of empty apartments with water. As the image on the left (taken by NordRoden in Norilsk) shows, water then seeps out of the building and freezes into gigantic icicles.

But the biggest stumbling block, according to Hill and Gaddy, is not economical, legal, or technical, but ideological in nature: “Siberia… has for several centuries been synonymous with the very image of Russian and tied to conceptions about its future” (p. 72). Many politicians from various parties subscribe to the “Eurasianism” philosophy, which offers a justification for Russia’s unique geographical position between Europe and Asia. Proponents of Eurasianism include Vladimir Zhirinovsky of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party (which is neither liberal nor democratic), whose main support in the 2012 presidential election came from the Far East, especially Kamchatka and Khabarovsk krais (see The Guardian map on the left). Related to the Eurasianism mentality are demographic and geopolitical concerns about the border with China. Many Russian critics of The Siberian Curse emphasize the strategic dangers of depopulating large areas along the country’s periphery. They do not believe, as Hill and Gaddy appear to, that the resulting threats to national security and territorial integrity can be neutralized by “the creation of sensors, new rapid reaction forces, and high-tech weapons systems on Far East borders, which would replace the deployment and support of large conventional land and sea forces” (p. 210). Some pundits regard such technological approach as laughable, noting that “even the U.S. with its colossal financial and technological capabilities still cannot impose full control over its border with Mexico”. Nonetheless, despite all these obstacles on the path to downsizing Siberia, Hill and Gaddy believe that mass westward migration can be achieved by enacting certain laws and adopting financial incentives that would encourage it.

The Siberian Curse provoked with harsh criticism in Russia. Economists and political scientists quibbled about Hill and Gaddy’s choice of mean January temperature, rather than mean annual temperature or the number of days a year with temperature above freezing, as the measure of cold and its effects on human comfort.* For example, economist Yu. P. Voronov claims that this choice “demonstratively paints Siberia in a tragic light”. The focus on mean January temperature also ignores the fact that some areas, especially in southwestern Siberia, enjoy remarkably warm summers, with temperatures up to 30° C (86° F) and in some areas even 40° C (104° F), enabling gardeners to grow roses, melons, grapes, and apricots. To some extent the benefits of warm summers compensate for the costs of cold winters. In Hill and Gaddy’s defense, they point out, “it is not just the mean temperature that is important; the variance also matters” (p. 49). Other charges made against the authors of The Siberian Curse include geographic inaccuracies such as including the south Urals region in Siberia (but see the GeoCurrents discussion of the definition of Siberia) and not taking into account low humidity or the lack of wind (but as pointed out in the previous post, the straight streets and blocky buildings of many Siberian cities create artificial wind tunnels). Some pundits take offense at the fact that Hill and Gaddy blame the Soviets rather than the Tsars for placing so many people in such harsh climatic conditions. However, as discussed in an earlier GeoCurrents post, the rate of populating—chiefly by forced labor—and industrializing Siberia during the Soviet period is incomparable to that prior to 1917. Some Russian analysts went as far as calling the book “an attempted provocation, aimed at yet another break-up of Russia”, full of “designs baneful for Russia” (translation mine). Hill and Gaddy’s formula that “Russians need to start thinking of the vast expanse east of the Urals as Russian but not as Russia” (p.199) has especially been subjected to severe criticism.

The reaction from the Kremlin has been rather frigid too, in part because Hill and Gaddy justifiably accuse the Russian government of “flirt[ing] with the shades of a leadership cult as another method of mobilization… manifested … in the publication of a series of popular books about Putin’s life, the creation of a youth movement… inspired by the president, a number of mass outdoor events such as rock concerts to rally youth behind the government, and the encouragement of a pop song—“I Want a Man Like Putin” [Takogo kak Putin] by an all-girl group—praising Putin as the ideal ‘boyfriend’” (p. 117); this song can be seen, with subtitled lyrics, in this YouTube video.

Among the few economists/politicians who agreed with some of Hill and Gaddy’s conclusions is Yegor Gaidar, who cites The Siberian Curse extensively in his 2005 book Lasting Time: Russia in the World. During the presentation of this book in Dublin, Gaidar was hospitalized with symptoms of severe poisoning. This event happened the very next day after the death of another vocal critic of Putin’s regime, Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned in London by radioactive polonium-210. Many analysts, including several at the BBC and Financial Times, drew a direct connection between these two events. Yegor Gaidar survived the Dublin incident and died three years later of a heart condition.

Not only was The Siberian Curse met with a frosty reception in Russia, but “downsizing Siberia” is decidedly not the current trajectory of Russia’s development. While some areas are depopulating, the overall population of Siberian urban centers is growing. From 2002 to 2010, the 26 first- and second-tier Siberian cities (population between 200,000 and 1,500,000) experienced a net growth of more than 370,000 people. Moreover, the first-tier Siberian cities (population between 600,000 and 1,500,000), which according to Zipf’s formula should not cluster together, are all growing at approximately the same pace. The largest declining Siberian city is Vladivostok in the extreme southeast, population 592,069. Many other “shrinking” cities are located in the relatively mild areas of southwestern Siberia (south Urals): Novokuznetsk, Magnitogorsk, Nizhny Tagil, Kurgan, Biysk, Prokopyevsk. It is rather the cities in the coldest areas—the Republic of Sakha and northern Krasnoyarsk Krai—that are experiencing the most pronounced growth: between 2002 and 2010, Yakutsk has grown by 28% and Norilsk by 30%. In part, the growth of Siberian cities has to do with the depopulation of the rural areas, as people move from the economically futureless villages to the cities. A related development is significant industrial growth, experienced in most of Siberia, and especially its colder northern regions. As can be seen from the map on the left, major increases in the share of industry as a percentage of the total GRP between 1997 and 2001 have been experienced in most areas, with the notable exceptions of southern Siberia and in Chukotka).

So if Siberia is too big, too cold, and too polluted, why is it not “downsizing”? The next GeoCurrents post will focus on the issues that have been unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or misrepresented by Hill and Gaddy and which may explain why Russians continue to view Siberia as a blessing rather than a curse.

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*It is indeed strange that they have chosen mean January temperature, as the February temperatures are lower in many areas.

Linguistic and Biological Diversity Overlap—But Why?

2012-05-17T17:37:45Z

In the early 21st century biodiversity worldwide is sharply decreasing, with annual losses of plant and animal species estimated to be 1,000 times greater than historic rates. As the world is becoming less biologically diverse, it is also becoming less linguistically diverse. Some linguists now predict that 50-90% of the world’s languages will disappear by the end of this century. It has been noticed for some time that biological diversity and linguistic diversity tend to occur in the same places, giving rise to the notion of biocultural diversity. However, many previous studies on this topic suffered from limited spatial precision. Nor did they account convincingly for the observed correlation. A recent study by Gorenflo et al. (2012), published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online, is based on greatly improved data sets, which allowed the authors to correlate the two kinds of diversity more accurately. More importantly, they also examine the issue of why linguistic and biological diversity overlap geographically.

Gorenflo and colleagues focus on so-called biodiversity hotspots and high biodiversity wilderness areas (see map). Hotspots are defined as “regions characterized by exceptionally high occurrences of endemic species and by loss of at least 70% of natural habitat”. Totaling only about 2.3% of the earth’s land surface, the 35 hotspots contain “more than 50% of the world’s vascular plant species and at least 43% of terrestrial vertebrate species as endemics”. High biodiversity wilderness areas, also rich in endemic species, are larger regions (minimally 10,000 square kilometers, or 3,860 square miles) with relatively little human impact, “having lost 30% or less of their natural habitat”. The five high biodiversity wilderness areas cover roughly 6% of the earth’s land area and contain approximately 17% of the world’s vascular plant species and 8% of terrestrial vertebrate species. The data on the geographic distribution of languages, compiled by Global Mapping International, reveals concentrations in the forty regions of high biodiversity, with a total of 4,824 languages spoken there. Hotspots particularly notable for their high linguistic diversity include the East Melanesian Islands (#9 on map), the Guinean Forests of West Africa (#12), Indo-Burma (#15), Mesoamerica (#22), and Wallacea (#34), each with more than 250 indigenous languages. The one high biodiversity wilderness area that stands out in terms of its linguistic diversity is the New Guinea Wilderness Area (#39), with 976 languages—probably, the most linguistically diverse region in the world. However, not all areas of high biodiversity also exhibit significant linguistic diversity: the Chilean Forests (#7), Cape Floristic Region (#3), New Zealand (#26), Southwest Australia (#29), and the Succulent Karoo (#30) hotspots all contain three languages or fewer. Overall, however, nearly 70% of the world’s languages are spoken over roughly a quarter of the earth’s terrestrial surface, where only one-third of the planet’s population lives. And although considerable variability marks individual areas, “in general, regions containing high biological diversity tend to have high linguistic diversity as well”.

Several theories have been proposed to account for this strong correlation between biological and linguistic diversity. Some scholars view a direct link between the two kinds of diversity whereby plentiful, diverse ecological resources enable greater linguistic diversity either by engendering more competition and adaptation to more complex environments (Pagel & Mace), or by reducing the likelihood of having to communicate and share resources with other groups in times of need (Oviedo et al.; Sutherland; Nettle). Another theory proposes that “certain cultural systems and practices, represented by speakers of particular indigenous and non-migrant languages, tend to be compatible with high biodiversity”. While it is true that certain cultural systems may support higher biodiversity, it is not clear why they should be embraced by speakers of varied languages rather than by a single linguistic group.

The three theories outlined above fail to take into account the three “T”s that have been identified as instrumental in creating linguistic diversity: time, terrain, and tribalism. Areas that have had human habitation for a long time without experiencing major episodes of migration or conquest that resulted in linguistic replacement, such as West Africa, the Caucasus, and Papua New Guinea, tend to have a high degree of linguistic diversity. Areas of rugged, mountainous topography, such as Nepal and once again the Caucasus, also tend to be very linguistically diverse. Other topographic features that pose barriers to social interaction and therefore favor linguistic diversity are islands, rugged coastline, swampland, and tropical forests. Finally, tribal societies support the existence of many minor languages, while a large national state typically correlates with a smaller number of dialects/languages. Of these factors, only that of terrain can be said to affect biodiversity, at least directly.

Specific regional examples underscore the idea that biological and linguistic diversity do not arise for the same reasons. For example, Madagascar has extremely high biodiversity, but hosts a small number of languages (the Ethnologue lists 17 languages for Madagascar, all of which are closely related). The island’s high level of biodiversity is due to its “geographic separation millions of years ago that allowed the evolution of unique species”, whereas its relatively low linguistic diversity is because human colonization from a single region (Borneo) less than 2,000 years ago provided little opportunity for linguistic diversification.

Similarly, a closer look at regional variation within New Guinea (further illustrated in a series of Ethnologue maps) reveals that

“the isolated and rugged highlands feature high biological diversity, but less linguistic diversity than the northeastern coast of that large island. Topographic barriers to biological dispersion help account for the former; comparatively lower incidence of malaria in the interior allowed the emergence of large polities and the diffusion of associated language groups that did not occur on the more linguistically diverse northeastern coast, where topography is less rugged but the incidence of malaria higher”.

Thus, it appears that the search for explanation of correlating biological and linguistic diversity must focus not on factors that increase diversity, but on those that decrease it. To put it differently, the real question to be answered is not why areas of high biodiversity also tend to be linguistically diverse, but why is it that certain areas are low in both biological and linguistic diversity. For example, Nettle and Romaine have proposed that the European biological expansion of people, crops, diseases, and languages served to reduce both kinds of diversity in many localities. Since this expansion concentrated mostly in temperate areas that are roughly similar to the European homeland, its impact in the tropics has been much less pronounced, resulting in high levels of both biological and linguistic diversity. As Gorenflo and colleagues conclude:

“Although different processes may have given rise to the diversification of languages, cultures, and species in different areas, similar forces currently appear to be driving biological extinctions and cultural/linguistic homogenization.”

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Sources:

Gorenflo, L.J.; Suzanne Romaine, Russell A. Mittermeier, and Kristen Walker-Painemilla (2012) “Co-occurrence of linguistic and biological diversity in biodiversity hotspots and high biodiversity wilderness areas”. PNAS online.

Nettle, D. (1999) Linguistic Diversity (Oxford University Press, New York).

Nettle, D. and S. Romaine (2000) Vanishing Voices (Oxford University Press, New York).

Oviedo G., Maffi L., and Larsen P.B. (2000) Indigenous and Traditional Peoples of the World and Ecoregion Conservation: An Integrated Approach to Conserving the World’s Biological and Cultural Diversity (World Wildlife Foundation International and Terralingua, Gland, Switzerland).

Pagel M. and R. Mace (2004) The cultural wealth of nations. Nature 428: 275–278.

Sutherland, W.J. (2003) Parallel extinction risk and global distribution of languages and species. Nature 423: 276–279.

Life Expectancy in Moscow Has Reached 75 Years

2012-05-17T16:53:18Z

Several Russian news websites report that life expectancy in Moscow has reached 75 years. The improvement is quite marked, as the corresponding figure in 2010 was only 73.6 years. Among the factors behind the rise in life expectancy in Moscow are modernization of healthcare, decrease in infant mortality, low unemployment, and high level of education. According to the head of Moscow health department Leonid Pechatnikov, “if we are to consider only the life expectancy of residents of Moscow without the rest of Russia, we are not that far behind Western Europe in life expectancy”. However, life expectancy figures for “the rest of Russia” do not look nearly as good, making Mr. Pechatnikov’s claim rather incongruous. Average life expectancy in Russia as a whole is just 70.3 years, and it is mostly due to Russian women whose expected life span constitutes 76 years, while among men the figure is a mere 64 years. As the graph on the left indicates, the expected life span of an average Russian male is about 11 years shorter than that of his U.S. counterpart, while an average Japanese man would outlive an average Russian male by a whopping 16 years!

On his inauguration day earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised “to extend the life expectancy of Russia’s citizens to an average of 74 years … by 2018”. Thus, if his plan comes to fruition, “the rest of Russia” will catch up with today’s life expectancy figures of Moscow only after the end of President Putin’s third six-year term. But many analysts doubt the feasibility of Putin’s promise: the Federal Statistics Service predicts a similar trend, but they see the average Russian life expectancy hit the 75-year mark only in 2024, and then only in the best-case scenario.

In addition to the improving life expectancy figures, Moscow is finally seeing—for the first time since 1988—natural population growth, meaning that there are more births (10.8) than deaths (9.7) per 1,000 residents. This change is mostly due to a decrease in death rates rather than an increase in birth rates. Death rates among Moscovites due to cardiovascular diseases are down by 17%, accidents by 7%, tuberculosis by 18.6%. Major improvements in healthcare are credited for these changes, as well as for lowering infant mortality. However, the issue of what makes Moscow’s health and mortality figures so different is much more complex, as Moscow differs even from other large Russian cities in many economic, social, and cultural factors. According to several studies, education and income are closely linked to health and mortality figures. In Moscow as in Russia as a whole, life expectancy of the educated and well-off is increasing, whereas that of the uneducated poor is decreasing.

More on “Divided Russia” Maps and Xenophobic Nationalist Views

2012-05-16T17:07:15Z

As noted in an earlier GeoNote, many Russian nationalists see the their country in the future breaking into its constituent parts rather than enlarging at the expense of neighboring states. In some instances, such as the ones discussed in the earlier GeoNote, the xenophobic worries of such nationalists focus on religious minorities, especially Muslims, as being too “foreign” for a mostly Orthodox Christian Russia. One Muslim formation, called Idel-Ural, shows up on several xenophobic maps, one of which is reproduced on the left. This map also forecasts the splitting off of the southern Urals, Siberia, the Far East, East Prussia (currently, Kaliningrad oblast), Ingermanland (currently, Leningrad oblast), and northern European Russia, leaving the core of Medieval Russia under the label “Zalesie”. The label “Kazakia” on this map refers to the Cossacks, a social rather than ethnic group. While many Cossack formations are associated with southern Russian lands, Cossacks were also instrumental in Russia’s colonization of Siberia and the Far East; Lensky Cossacks, named after the Lena River in Central Siberia, are famous enough to have been referenced in the James Bond film GoldenEye.

The authors of the map posted on Tengry.org (see image on the left) also conjecture that Muslim states would arise in the Central Volga republics of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan, as well as in (part of) the North Caucasus (shown in bright green on the map). This map also shows “Independent Territories” (in brown) arising in parts of the Far East, in Karelia, and in Kalmykia. Most of the rest of Russia would be incorporated into other big geopolitical players: the southern parts of the Far East would go to China (in yellow); the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, and neighboring mainland areas of the Far East would be joined to Japan (in red); and northern and central Siberia would be appended to the U.S. (in blue). Whatever is left—most of the European Russia, southern and southwestern Siberia—would remain as Russia.

A very different approach is evident in the map reposted on numerous websites and reproduced on the left. It divides the country into many more constituent parts. Most of them correspond to the current federal subjects of the Russian Federation, but the exceptions are worth considering. In the North Caucasus, a number of ethnic republics, as well as Stavropol and Krasnodar krais, would be joined into “Caucasian Confederation”. It is not clear what this proposed unit would have in common, as ethnic, linguistic, and religious schisms are rife in this region. Certain ethnic republics are enlarged at the expense of their neighbors: for example, the proposed “Kalmikia” would swallow up Astrakhan Oblast; the “Khanty-Mansi republic” would be extended to include Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, and Kurgan Oblasts; and the “Federal Republic of Buriatia” would contain Irkutsk Oblast and Zabaykalsk Krai. Certain ethnic groups currently without their own titular republics would receive sovereignty, in most cases by being promoted to the titular ethnic group of a former oblast or krai. Thus, Kamchatka Krai is renamed “Koryak republic”, Magadan oblast becomes “Even republic”, and the Chukotka becomes “Ligoravetlan” (the ethnonym that encompasses the two Chukchi groups, “Maritime Chukchi” and “Reindeer Chuckchi”). “Republic of Nanay” would unify Primorie and Khabarovsk krais. Curiously, in many cases the ethnic group thus promoted would not have a majority or even a plurality in the newly formed countries. In fact, in most cases the titular group would constitute a tiny minority: Koryaks make up only 2% of Kamchatka’s population, Evens constitute only 1% of the population in the Magadan oblast, and the Nanays constitute a meager 0.3% of the population in Primorie and Khabarovsk krais. Other ethnic groups that would gain national standing include the Dolgans and Nenets: in addition to the already existing Nenets Autonomous Okrug in northern European Russia, Nenets and Dolgan would form a “Taymyr Dolgano-Nenets Federation”, whose territory would be coinciding with the currently existing Krasnoyarsk Krai. The two ethnic groups together constitute merely 0.3% of the population in the krai. Among other interesting labels on this map is “Hazaria” in present-day Rostov oblast, which refers to Khazars, a group whose proper place is on the maps of the distant past and not of the future.

Another tongue-in-cheek division of Russia cuts it into just five major parts: European Russia, labeled “All that actually matters in Russia”; northern Siberia, slated to become “part of North Pole or under Santa’s influence”; Kamchatka and Chukotka peninsulas, which would “be part of Alaska or at least visible from Sarah Palin’s house”; southern and central Siberia that would be “under Mongolian influence”; and Novaya Zemlya, which would “go to either Canada or Iceland… or maybe Easter Island”.

Despite the silliness of these maps, a possible future division of the Russian Federation into several independent states is not a purely xenophobic nationalistic idea or a laughing matter. Much serious discussion among Russian economists, politicians, philosophers, culturologists, and writers revolves around the possibility of dividing the country. Economic, political, cultural and demographic factors are seen as driving Russian regions apart. Vladimir Bukovksy, Russia’s most famous dissident, now living in Britain, has long predicted that Russia will eventually fall apart into 7-8 independent states, which may later join together into a confederacy. Those states would correspond roughly to the present-day federal districts, as shown on the map on the left. According to Bukovsky, the only force currently keeping Russia whole is the authoritarian centralized government fed by the oil and natural gas revenues. If the prices of oil and gas fall, Moscow’s hold will weaken and the central government will no longer be able to keep its grip on the far-flung regions. Here is how Bukovsky describes the eventual dissolution of the Russian Federation (translation mine):

“Well, what does the Far East need Moscow for? So some evening the local governor will sit with the local military district commander, drinking whatever it is they drink there. Their conversation: Ivan Ivanovich, does Moscow give you anything? No, only taxes must be paid. And you? They don’t even send us boots for the troops. So why are we fooling around, let’s I be the government and you the head of the army.—What will Russia do? Send in the troops? They won’t have enough oil. Everything will fall apart when the center will weakened, and this will happen when the prices of oil will fall.”

Authoritarian government is also seen as the main factor for the dissolution of the Russian Federation by such pundits as the director of Institute for Globalization Problems Mikhail Delyagin, writer Mikhail Veller, and controversial psychic healer Anatoly Kashpirovsky. Economic factors, such as the uneven development of central Russia and the more far flung regions, the unfair funneling of profits from Siberia to European Russia, the technological backwardness of certain regions, and the disintegration of transportation and communications infrastructure, are seen as crucial by such varied people as Alexander Nemets of Science Applications International Corporation, futurologist Sergey Pereslegin, mathematician Georgy Malinetsky, and the head of the Singaporean company Rogers Holdings Jim Rogers. Many other respectable pundits, including culturologist Igor Yakovenko, publicist Sergey Kurginyan, writer and culturologist Andrei Burovsky, former presidential advisor on economic issues Andrei Illarionov, political commentator George Freidman, president of the Institute for Near East Studies Evgeny Satanovsky, and Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, focus on cultural, religious, and ethnic divisions, much like the xenophobic nationalists discussed above.

Currently, Moscow’s hold on Russia is relatively strong, but should the price of oil and natural gas drop, a very different situation could quickly emerge.

The Siberian Curse: Whence Siberia?

2012-05-17T18:15:31Z

Due to its possession of Siberia, Russia has the distinction of being both the world’s largest country by area and, by some measures, the coldest country. While Russia has for centuries been proud of its vast expanse and its frigid winters, some analysts both in Russia and abroad now see these two attributes as liabilities rather than assets. Whether Russia can harness its size and adequately adapt to its climate will likely determine the future of Siberia and of Russia as a whole, influencing as well the overall geopolitical balance of powers in the world. Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy of the Brookings Institution addressed these issues in their 2003 book The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold. While their suggested solution for Siberia’s—and Russia’s—development is highly controversial, their arguments and conclusions are worth examining, as are some of the issues they overlooked. The remainder of this article will outline Hill & Gaddy’s arguments; problems with their account and additional issues will be explored in forthcoming GeoCurrents posts.

Russia’s daunting proportions and its cold winters lie at the very core of its popular conceptualization, but some mind-boggling facts are worth repeating. Russia in its different permutations (Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation) has been the world’s largest contiguous state for at least four centuries. As discussed in the introduction to this GeoCurrents series, if Siberia were independent, it would have the largest area of any country in the world—by a significant margin. Russia as a whole spans nine time zones, seven of which are in Siberia (see map).* Even after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia still has more neighbors and more international land borders than any other state, except China. Russia’s natural resources are plentiful—40% of world natural gas reserves, 25% of the world’s coal, diamonds, gold, and nickel, 30% of its aluminum and timber, 6% of global oil, and so on—and most of these holdings are found in Siberia. And by most conventional measures of temperature, Russia is the coldest country in the world: “it has twice as much territory above the Arctic Circle as Canada, ten times as much as Alaska, and fifteen times as much as Norway, Sweden and Finland combined” (Hill & Gaddy, p. 233). Again, if Siberia were an independent country, it would claim the distinction of being the world’s coldest, with mean January temperatures ranging between -15° C and ‑45° C (5° F and ‑49° F). The world’s lowest temperature outside Antarctica, ‑68° C (‑90.4° F), was recorded three times: “in Verkhoyansk on February 5 and February 7, 1892, and in Oymyakon on February 6, 1933. Both locations are in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Siberia” (Hill & Gaddy, p. 233).

Siberia’s cold does not derive wholly from its northern location, as southern Siberia lies at roughly the same latitude as southern European Russia; Vladivostok, the largest city of the Russian Far East, is located 22° south of Moscow. However, unlike most of North America, where winter isotherms—that is, lines of constant temperature— run east to west, in Russia the isotherms run more in a north-south direction (see image). As a result, winter conditions do not get colder from south to north as much as they do from west to east. For example, Saint Petersburg is warmer than Moscow, even though it is 400 km further north. A hypothetical traveler who begins a journey in Moscow in January and proceeds due east would, without ever moving farther north, enter progressively colder and colder zones. “By the time the traveler approached Russia’s Pacific coast, that person would not only have covered nearly 7,500 kilometers but would also have traversed a temperature range of more than 20° C” (Hill & Gaddy, p. 33). Similarly, while Tromsø (Norway) and Norilsk are on the same latitude, the difference between the two cities’ mean February temperatures is 30° C (55° F)!

For centuries Russia’s size has been seen as its main source of wealth and power. Already in the sixteenth century, Russian rulers were pleased to learn that their country’s territory was larger than the surface of the moon (Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, p. 84). The cold too has given the Russians a certain sense of invincibility, as they got accustomed to viewing it as a strategic resource. The first sighting of “General Winter” on the Russian soil was in 1707 during the Great Northern War that Charles XII of Sweden fought against Russia’s Peter the Great. That winter was the most brutal of the eighteenth century across Europe—even the salt-water port of Venice froze—but conditions in Russian were worse than what the Swedes had expected. The number of Charles’ troops, drawn by the Russian retreat deeply into the country, nearly halved: by spring only 19,000 out of 35,000 troops remained. The Russians used the same retreat-and-wait-for-the-winter policy in both Patriotic Wars: in 1812-13 and again in 1941-1945. When Napoleon’s Grande Armée of 610,000 men invaded Russia in 1812, the Russian army retreated, burning crops and villages. As a result, starvation, disease, and then the cold caused more casualties than the actual military engagements. Losses were especially severe during the humiliating retreat of the French, which started on October 19, just days before the first severe frosts and less than three weeks before the first snow arrived. As can be seen from the figurative map on the left, fewer than 50,000 French troops made it out of Russia. History repeated itself during World War II, when the Russians again retreated, adopting a scorched-earth policy, and waited for the cold and snow to entomb the Nazi army whose plans for a quick summer victory precluded proper preparations for a Russian winter. Sure enough, the Germans were forced to withdraw from much of the territory they had captured. Subsequent winters proved a challenge as well: “in November 1942, the German Sixth Army was encircled and trapped during its siege of Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga River. Three months later, in February 1943, with its 250,000 men starving and freezing to death in temperatures of -30° C [-22° F], the Sixth Army finally surrendered—Germany’s first major military defeat in World War II” (Hill & Gaddy, p. 27-28).

But Russia’s other wars showed quite clearly that its size can be a liability rather than an asset. The difficulties of mobilization and transportation contributed greatly to Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War in 1854-56. Half a century later, during the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War, the main Russian fleet needed nine months to sail the 30,000 kilometers from its home base in the Baltic Sea to the Far East, where it was promptly blasted from the water by the Japanese navy at the Battle of Tsushima Strait. By then, the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway was almost complete, but the route extended for more than 9,000 kilometers, was only single track, and was missing a vital section around Lake Baikal. The vulnerability of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1905 is the linchpin of Boris Akunin’s acclaimed 2003 historical mystery novel The Diamond Chariot. These two defeats—in 1856 and in 1905—led to major upheavals of Russian history: the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and the Revolution of 1905. They also underscore the true problem with Russia’s size: over such vast distances, effective transportation is extremely difficult. A recent GeoCurrents post highlighted the transportation limitations of Yakutsk, a regional metropolis of more than a quarter million inhabitants that is connected to the rest of the country by a “highway” that is often impassible. But the situation is similar all across the country; as the popular Russian adage goes, “there are two main problems in Russia: fools and roads”.

Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy discuss in detail another way in which Russia’s size is detrimental to its economy: “the primary issue is not just Russia’s physical expanse, but where people are located within that space” (Hill & Gaddy, p. 7). According to their figures, the population density of Siberia is ten times less than that of the United States. Compounding the thinness of settlement is the fact that, most of the inhabitants of Russia, and especially of Siberia, live in cities. However, these cities do not follow the “natural” rank-order population distribution described by Zipf’s Law, which runs as follows: “a country’s largest city is approximately twice as large as the second-largest city, three times as big as the third city, four times as large as the fourth, and so on” (Hill & Gaddy, p. 19). In most other countries, if Zipf’s Law is violated it is only because the country’s largest city is “too big.” Examples of such “primate cities” include Paris and Dublin, Mexico City and Buenos Aires, Kabul and Bangkok.** Russia’s two largest cities—Moscow (population 11.5 million) and Saint Petersburg (population 5.1 million)—fit the Zipf pattern. However, the third-largest city, Novosibirsk, has population of only 1.4 million, and is thus oddly small. Altogether, ten cities in Russia are crowded into the population range extending between 1 and 1.5 million people: Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Omsk, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Rostov-on-Don, Ufa, and Volgograd. The urban areas between 1.5 and 4 million people, predicted by Zipf’s Law, are conspicuously absent. This deviation from the norm derives from the fact that most of Russia’s urban areas did not naturally grow from villages to towns to cities; instead many were created or at least enhanced artificially, Frankenstein-style, in the Soviet period, when planners dictated development based on natural resource exploitation or industrial production needs (see image). Many of these cities were built by Gulag prisoners or other forcibly resettled groups. The transportation and institutional connections among those cities were also dictated solely by the need to extract and process natural resources. Moreover, strict registration laws controlled the population of these cities; in the so-called propiska system, citizens had to register their place of residence with the local police. (In many cities, including Moscow, such regulation are still enforced). According to Hill and Gaddy, such processes resulted in “too many” second- and third-tier cities, which were created by Soviet planners “in their attempt to nominally fill the space from the Urals to the Pacific” (p. 21). In fact, 28% of Russia’s 300 largest cities are located in Siberia.

Soviet policymakers defied not only the economic logic that governs the location and size of urban centers, but they also failed to meet the challenge Siberia’s frigid climate, largely by constructing buildings that were difficult to heat. Concrete walls were thin and poorly insulated, with single-pane windows often nearly covering whole walls. Residential neighborhoods were typically built on a grid model, with straight lines of relatively tall blockwork buildings artificially creating wind tunnels, further increasing heating costs (see the image on the left and the view of Norilsk from an earlier post). But heating represents only a small part of the overall costs associated with Siberia’s frigid climate. Cold reduces the ability of both people and machinery to work efficiently and safely. When the temperature drops below certain thresholds, disastrous damage can be caused to buildings, equipment, and infrastructure: at ‑15° C (5° F) high-carbon steel can break and car batteries must be heated; at -25° C (-13° F) unalloyed steel begins to break and frost-resistant rubber is required; at -35° C (-31° F) trestle cranes fail and some tractor shoes break. According to geographer Victor L. Mote, who in 1983 documented the difficulties to living and working in Siberia, “the number of breakdowns of standard equipment was three to five times greater in Siberia than in more moderate regions” (cited in Hill & Gaddy, p. 50). Human beings are affected by the cold even more than machines: “There is a noticeable drop in labor productivity for outdoor work when temperatures fall below 0° C [32° F] … Once the temperature drops to -20° C [-4° F], warm-up breaks of 10 minutes per hour for each seven-hour work day are imposed… In an average year, total losses to cold comprise 33 percent of all possible working time in the Soviet North” (Hill & Gaddy, p. 50-51).

Given that Russia’s size, cold, and disconnectedness are hardly questionable, what solutions do Hill and Gaddy propose, and what direction has the Russian government taken in its policy on Siberia? These questions will be considered in the next GeoCurrents post.

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* Most of European Russia corresponds to the same time zone, the only exception being the Kaliningrad exclave, which is one hour behind Moscow time. Prior to 2010, there were eleven time zones in Russia, of them eight in Siberia.

**Bangkok is known as “the most primate city on earth”, being forty times larger than Thailand’s second city.

El Salvador to Recognize Indigenous Peoples

2012-05-16T16:23:33Z

The government of El Salvador has moved to constitutionally recognize the existence of the country’s indigenous peoples, although the measure must first be ratified by the legislature. Ratification looks likely, despite opposition from the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). The measure would not provide any direct benefits to indigenous peoples, but it could be used to help protect them against discrimination.

Census figures indicate that El Salvador’s indigenous population is negligible, representing just 0.2 percent of the population. According to the standard national narrative, the county is almost entirely mestizo (of mixed European and Native American ancestry), its indigenous languages having disappeared long ago in favor of Spanish. Indigenous rights associations, however, present a very different picture, arguing that up to 17 percent of the population should be classified as indigenous, belonging to the Nahua-Pipil, Lenca, and Cacaopera ethnic groups. The discrepant figures, they claim, derive from a relatively recent history of ethnic violence. In 1932, the government crushed a peasant revolt that had strong indigenous roots, killing tens of thousands of people in the process. Subsequently, it banned the use of the Pipil language, and villagers began to hide their indigenous roots for fear of reprisals. According to the Wikipedia, Pipil now has only 20 native speakers, although it lists the ethnic population at 20,000. The Ethnologue map posted here greatly exaggerates the extent of indigenous languages in El Salvador.

Pipil is a Nahuan language that is very closely related to the Nahuatl of the Aztecs, spoken today by some 1.5 million people in Mexico. Yet El Salvador was never part of the Aztec Empire. Instead, the language seems to have been introduced to the region much earlier, perhaps in the 12^th century by refugees fleeing the Toltec capital of Tula after a bloody civil war.

Sakha (Yakutia) Since the Fall of the Soviet Union

2012-05-16T16:39:40Z

The past several GeoCurrents posts have examined the history of the Russian Republic of Sakha, formerly and informally referred to as Yakutia. We have focused on Sakha due both to the region’s intrinsic interest and to the fact that it is one of the most widely ignored sections of the Earth’s surface. Today’s post concludes this series within a series by examining Yakutia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Several additional posts later this week will conclude the larger series on Siberia.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, Sakha, like the rest of the vast country, underwent a wrenching transition. The leaders of the Republic tried to take advantage of the confusion to realize their long-standing desire for independence, and therefore declared Yakutia’s sovereignty in 1991. Such a declaration had little significance, but during the rest of the decade Sakha did achieve an unaccustomed degree of political and economic autonomy. By the late 1990s, John Tichotsky could write that, “In the area of regional sovereignty, Sakha is the leader among all of Russia’s political units” (p. 227).

The post-Soviet transition also brought major economic changes. Industrial production plummeted; according to Tichotsky, of all Soviet regions only Kamchatka experienced a greater decline. Personal income dropped as well, and the average life expectancy slipped by three years. As state farms were broken up and herds privatized, livestock was slaughtered with abandon, temporarily increasing meat consumption. But as Tichotsky also specifies, Sakha experienced a more rapid economic recovery than the other parts of the former Soviet Union. Driven mainly by diamond mining, the republic matched and then surpassed its previous level of economic output. In 1995, almost half of its industrial production derived from diamond mining. Currently, Sakha is considerably richer than Russia as a whole on the basis of per capita GRP (Gross Regional Product), with 2009 figures of $18,955 and $12,339 respectively. But such apparent wealth by no means benefits all the people of Sakha. As is true elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, the end the communist system generated both winners and losers. Pensioners in particular have suffered, as their allotments have failed to keep pace with inflation.

The end of the Soviet system also resulted in the demographic transformation of Yakutia. In 1989, the Sakha were a minority within their own republic, accounting for thirty-three percent of the region’s total population, as opposed to the fifty-seven percent constituted by Russians and Ukrainians. As can be seen in the Wikipedia graph posted here, the Russian population dropped sharply after the political transition, as large numbers of Russians abandoned the harsh land of Yakutia in favor of larger cities and milder climes. At the same time, the Sakha ethnic population continued to grown, due mainly to a relatively high birth rate. This trend continues: according to the 2002 census, the Sakha then numbered 432,290, constituting 45.5 percent of the republic’s population; in 2010, they totaled 466,492, coming in at 49.9 percent. Other indigenous ethnic groups also expanded in the same period; the Evenks, for example, increased from 18,232 to 21,008 and the Yukaghirs from 1,097 to 1,281. Russians, Ukrainians and Tatars, on the other hand, all registered population declines in the republic from 2002 to 2010.

Although the Sakha population increased during the post-Soviet period, most rural areas of the republic witnessed significant declines during the same period. The Soviet government had subsidized life in the villages, and when the state farms were discontinued and the subsidies came to an end, rural life became less rewarding. Transportation links to rural areas also deteriorated, due especially to the end of subsidies for aviation fuel. As a result, the Sakha began moving to Yakutsk and the republic’s other towns in significant numbers. Bella Bychkova Jordan and Terry Jordan-Bychkov specify how such changes played out at the local level. In the village that they studied:

It is the younger people who leave, seeking economic opportunity in cities such as Mirny and Yakutsk. Young women emigrate in grater numbers than young men. The number of weddings fell from twelve in 1992 to only one in 1995 and two in 1998. As a consequence, Djarkhan’s population is increasingly elderly. P. 89

As Yakutia is once again becoming a primarily Yakut region, Sakha nationalism shows signs of revival. As previously noted, nationalism in the region is nothing new, dating back at least to the early 1900s. It was also deeply repressed for most of the 20^th century. As Tatiana Argounova-Low argues in a new book, The Politics of Nationalism in the Republic of Sakha (Northeastern Siberia) 1900-2000, “the concept of nationalism was a force used by [Soviet and Russian authorities] to suppress thought, particularly in Sakha…” Accusations of natsionalizm, she argues, were used to target and scapegoat certain individuals, and to “disguise and prevent discussion of a range of complex social, political and ethnic issues.” With the downfall of the Soviet Union and the threat of continued devolution in the 1990s, the “national question” in Sakha gained new urgency. Local leaders have continued to push for more autonomy, and the desire for independence has not disappeared.

As Anna Stammler-Gossmann argues, efforts have been made to develop a new “Yakutiane” identity that could unite the various peoples of the republic within a single group, but success has been minimal. As she further specifies, Russian-speakers in Sakha frequently refer to themselves as “Siberians,” whereas the Yakuts and the other indigenous Siberians almost never to do so, preferring instead their own ethnic designations. National identity is obviously a fraught subject in contemporary Sakha, yet in general terms, relations among the republic’s various ethnic groups have remained reasonably peaceful.

Through the 1990s, Sakha Republic remained averse to foreign investment and the development of large-scale private enterprise. The economy remained under the domination of the state, which focused on the mining sector, and especially on diamonds. As Tichotsky noted in 2000, “Any sector of the economy that that is considered essential to the region is controlled completely or partially by the Sakha government” (p. 227). Tichotsky described the republic’s government as highly inward looking, almost proud of the fact that that foreign investment in the region was negligible.

More recently, such anti-global policies and attitudes have changed to a considerable degree. According to Yakutia Today, “The Republic is second after Sakhalin Oblast among Far East’s regions by volume of foreign investments.” The same article trumpet’s Sakha’s rapidly growing international trade, noting that it has established commercial representation in a number of other countries, including China, South Korea, Japan, and Germany. Connections seem to be strongest with South Korea. Outside of the former Soviet Union, Yakutia Airlines flies regular, non-seasonal routes to three cities: Ulan Bator (Mongolia), Harbin (China), and Seoul (South Korea).

Recent news reports seem to bear out Sakha’s tentative transformation to an open, forward-looking economy. Its government, for example, recently announced that it was seeking venture financing to help establish a “tech park” in the center of Yakutsk. Such a facility would focus on the “venture capital company Yakutia, the center for protection of intellectual property of the Academy of Sciences of the republic, as well as consulting and servicing firms.” Any such developments would be facilitated by the presence of the North-Eastern Federal University, formerly Yakutsk State University, which is noted for its technical and scientific faculties. North-Eastern Federal University is also seeking to enhance foreign language instruction, especially of English. To this effect, it has recently partnered with the University of Tromsø in Norway to establish a teaching program based on distance learning, E-learning, IT technologies, and social networks.

Long-distance, “virtual” social interaction and mediation are increasingly popular in the lightly populated and vast republic. Even Sakha’s major beauty contest is now an on-line event: Miss Virtual Yakutia. The contest has not been without problems; in 2007, “scandal hit the Miss Virtual Yakutia contest this year, when it was revealed that one of the finalists… was a man.” Judging from a more recent YouTube “tribute” to the pageant, the contestants seem to be relatively evenly divided between ethnic Russians and Sakhas.

Non-Internet Sources

Argounova-Low, Tatiana. 2012. The Politics of Nationalism in the Republic of Sakha (Northeastern Siberia) 1900-2000. Edwin Mellen Press

Jordan-Bychkov, Terry and Bella Bychkova Jordan. 2001. Siberian Village: Land and Life in the Sakha Republic. University of Minnesota Press.

Granberg, L., K. Soiniu, and J. Kantanen, eds. 2009. Sakha Ynaga: Cattle of the Yakuts. Academia Scientarium Fennica.

Stammler-Gossman, Anna. 2010. “’Political’ Animals of Sakha Yakutia.” In Good to Eat; Good to Live with: Nomads and Animals in Northern Eurasia and Africa, edited by F. Stammler and H. Takakura. Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.

John Tichotsky, 2000. Russia’s Diamond Colony: The Republic of Sakha. Harwood Academic Publishers

Transnistria Open to Freight Traffic

2012-05-15T17:05:49Z

In early May, the European Union welcomed the resumption of railroad freight traffic through the break-away state of Transnistria*, sandwiched between Ukraine and Moldova. Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, described the event as “a crucial step forward for restoring confidence between the sides to the Transnistrian issue.” Freight traffic across the region had been suspended for the past six years, owing largely to the unsettled dispute between Transnistria and Moldova; Moldova claims the entire territory of the unrecognized state, and most of the international community backs the Moldovan position. Seemingly endless negotiations, however, have finally brought some progress. Recently, the two sides:

[A]nnounced they had reached common ground on other issues that will be soon translated into life, such as building cooperation on healthcare between the two banks of Nistru River in order to deliver quality health services, resumption of the phone connection between the two banks of the river, suspended a couple of years ago, resumption of road traffic on the bridge in Gura Bicului; simplification of transit of Transnistria in summer ; arrangements for 100 children on the right bank of the Nistru River to spend the summer holidays in camps. The experts named in charge of these areas are expected to identify real solutions in the near future.

Transnistria is widely regarded as a Russian client state that is a center of human trafficking, the arms trade, and drug transshipments. Its international diplomatic standing is highly limited. As the Wikipedia article on the “Foreign relations of Transnistria” reads in its entirely:

The Transnistrian republic is currently recognized by three states with limited recognition [South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabakh], and is member of one international organization, the Community for Democracy and Human Rights, that was established by these four states. Russia maintains a consulate in Transnistria, but hasn’t recognized it as independent state. During a visit to Kiev, President Dmitri Medvedev said he supported “special status” for Transnistria and recognised the “important and stabilising” role of the Russian army.

On the cultural front, Armenia recently announced that it would “build a church in honor of great Armenian Enlightener Gregory Illuminator in Grigoriopol, Transnistria.” Armenians settled extensively in the Romanian-Moldovan-Transnistrian area in earlier centuries, and Grigoriopol was founded by Armenian immigrants in 1792. In recent years, the city has seen been the focus of Russian-Moldovan tensions. Although Transnistria as a whole has a clear Russian-Ukrainian majority, Moldovans constitute the largest community in Grigoriopol. As the Wikipedia article on the town explains:

[L]ocal Moldavian inhabitants [wanted] to use Romanian language and Latin script in the local Moldavian school, which is against the policy of the government of Transnistria. The Transnistrian press attacked the local authorities “that allowed the fifth column of Moldova in Transnistria to operate.

* Officially, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic

Mapping German Anti-Semitism

2012-05-14T19:18:04Z

Since 1945, anti-Semitism in Germany went from official policy to taboo, but nonetheless a striking proportion of the German population to this day holds—and confesses to—anti-Jewish views. In a series of “cultural economy” studies, German scholars Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth set out to map and explain spatial patterns in the distribution of anti-Semitic attitudes in Germany. The data in Voigtländer and Voth’s study comes from the German Social Survey (ALLBUS) that examined attitudes towards Jews by asking a battery of questions including: Do you think that Jews partly brought persecution in the 20th century on themselves? Would you mind if you had Jewish neighbors? Would you mind if a Jew married into your family? Should Jews have equal rights? Do Jews have too much influence in the world? Jews are exploiting their victim status for their own financial gain – do you agree? The answers ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree); the segment of the population giving a score of 5, 6, or 7 were considered anti-Semitic.* Interestingly, Voigtländer and Voth have found considerable differences at the regional level, depicted on the map on the left (which shows regional differences for answers to the question of whether Jews are partly responsible for their own persecution). In some areas, only 8% think that the Jews are to blame; in others, 38% think so. While mapping present-day anti-Semitism is in and of itself a worthwhile project, it is the two correlations accounting for the distribution of attitudes across space—discovered by Voigtländer and Voth—that are especially interesting.

The first finding is the persistence of regional patterns: deep-rooted historical attitudes, expressed through voting results for anti-Semitic parties in the late Imperial period (1890-1912), votes for the Nazi Party in the 1920s, and votes for the Nazis in the 1930s, closely correlate with the prevalence of anti-Jewish views held in various districts today. In a different study, the same authors have shown that “the long shadow of the past” is even longer than that: towns that murdered their Jews during the Black Death (1348-1350) were also much more likely to commit violence or engage in anti-Semitic acts in interwar Germany, nearly 600 years later, suggesting that racial hatred can persist over centuries. This is particularly surprising because Germany experienced massive population movements, even if we consider only the 1940s and 1950s: refugees from cities fled the bombing first, then the Eastern expellees flooded into West Germany, and then GDR residents escaped from Communist rule (until the building of the Wall).

The second and perhaps even more surprising finding concerns the effects of the different approaches to de-Nazification adopted by the four allied countries during the post-war occupation of Germany. As Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth put it:

“The American authorities ran a highly ambitious and punitive programme which resulted in many incarcerations and convictions, with numerous, low-ranking officials banned and punished. Citizens were confronted with German crimes, forced to visit concentration camps, and attend education films about the Holocaust. There was a considerable backlash, and perceived fairness was low. The Jewish Advisor to the American Military Government concluded in 1948 that “… if the United States Army were to withdraw tomorrow, there would be pogroms on the following day.” In contrast, the British authorities pursued a limited and pragmatic approach that focused on major perpetrators. Public support was substantial, perceived fairness was higher, and intelligence reports concluded that the population even wanted more done to pursue and punish Nazi officials.”

So which policy was more effective in curbing anti-Jewish sentiment in the long run? According to Voigtländer and Voth, “the former British zone today has by far the least anti-Semitic beliefs… The American zone, on the other hand, has strong levels of support for anti-Jewish views”. Admittedly, the correlation are not visually apparent from a comparison of the anti-Semitism map at the top of this post and the map of occupying powers, as one has to control for pre-1945 differences. The backlash against the harsher U.S. policies may seem counterintuitive at first, but several younger Germans have expressed similar attitudes to me in personal conversations: “Enough with all of this Holocaust education and the talk about how bad the Germans were. We are fed up with it.”

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*As the authors of the study correctly point out, because of the anathema nature of anti-Semitism in post-war Germany, “the fact that some people confess to it to the extent that they do, even in front of an interviewer who might elicit responses that are widely approved, suggests that privately-held views are probably even more anti-Jewish”.

The Yakut Under Soviet Rule

2012-05-14T17:58:09Z

At the time of the Russia Revolution in 1917, the Yakuts (Sakha) were organizing on a national basis and pushing for autonomy and even sovereignty. Yakutia at the time was dominated by the Sakha, with Russians comprising only about ten percent of the population; even Yakutsk was a mainly Yakut town. The Sakha elite were relatively well educated and politically aware—due in part to the tutelage of Russian intellectual exiles. In February 1918, Yakutia formally declared its independence.

But rather than gaining a country, the Yakuts found themselves embroiled in the Russian Civil War. Devoted nationalists wanted to join with parts of far eastern Siberia to form a state under Japanese protection, but others Yakuts supported either the Bolsheviks or the anti-communist White Army. The political and administrative control over Yakutia also shifted back and forth like a pendulum. In the summer 1918 Bolshevik soviets were established in Yakutsk, Vilyusk, and in other towns across the region. But in November 1918 Yakutia fell into the hands of the White Army headed by Admiral Alexander Kolchak, the “Supreme ruler of Russia.” About a year later, the White government in Yakutia was liquidated and the Soviet power re-established. In September 1921 an anti-Bolshevik uprising broke out in Yakutia; insurgents called for—and received—help from the Russian émigrés in Harbin. In late March 1922 the White Army retook Yakutsk. Although the Russian Civil War supposedly came to an end in 1922, the last White forces in northern Siberia were not vanquished until the fall of 1923. A joint Evenk-Yakut ethnic uprising continued fighting until it was crushed by the Red Army in August 1925. According to Forsyth, this seven-year struggle left much of Yakutia “in a state of devastation” (p. 257).

Once the struggle was over, the transformation of Yakutia began in earnest. Moscow had created the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1922, in accordance with Lenin’s nationalities policy. But as was the case elsewhere, its “autonomy” proved largely illusory. Moscow primarily looked to Yakutia to supply resources necessary for industrializing the country, and when major gold deposits were discovered in 1923, a rush ensued.* Mining brought a demographic transformation. Most of the miners were Russian and a few were Korean or Chinese, but the number of Yakuts was negligible. The government of Yakutia did, however, have a certain degree of cultural authority. It helped create a formalized, literary Sakha language, based on traditional Yakut folklore, which was originally written in the Roman script, replaced in 1939 by a modified Cyrillic alphabet. Education was greatly enhanced, and journalism, theater, poetry, and fiction in the Sakha language were encouraged.

Many of the more traditional aspects of Sakha culture were not valued by the Bolsheviks. As early as 1924, Moscow outlawed Shamanism, although the practice persisted in surreptitious form. Stalin’s regime went so far as to ban the summer solstice festival (Ysyakh), the Yakut’s major annual event. As horses play a major role in Yakut culture, they are also central to the celebration of the Ysyakh, which involves the consumption of fermented mare’s milk, tethering a horse to a pole and circle dancing around it, as well as horse (or reindeer) racing. The holiday was much beloved among the Yakut, and after Stalin’s death it began to revive.

In the late 1920s, Yakut intellectual leaders were pushing for restrictions on Russian immigration. The newly formed “Young Yakuts” society agitated against Soviet power under the slogan “socialism without communists.” Not surprisingly, the Russian government reacted harshly. As Forsyth explains:

The conclusion drawn … by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moscow was that the Yakut provincial committee had been too tolerant toward the national intelligentsia, and must in the future maintain a more consistent policy of class conflict by cultivating the support of the rural poor and squeezing the upper and middle classes out of positions of authority, as well as depriving them of their lands.

In the 1930s, the Soviet government mandated agricultural collectivization in Yakutia, disrupting the rural economy. Enforced grain production was particularly damaging. Guided by the irrationally optimistic ideas of Trofim Lysenko, the state insisted on arable agriculture even in such impossible environments as that of frigid Verkhoyansk. As plowing advanced in central Yakutia, hay harvests were compromised, increasing livestock mortality and in some locales generating a human subsistence crisis. Some scholars have argued that hunger and malnutrition resulting from the period resulted in a decline in the Yakut total population from 240,500 in 1926 to 236,700 in 1959 (see Jordan-Bychkov and Bychkova Jordan, p. 65).

Collectivization was resisted in Yakutia, as elsewhere, but resistance generally proved futile. Many Yakuts, it is essential to realize, supported the regime and its policies, especially those without land or herds who benefited from those policies. In 1933, almost half of the membership in the Communist Party of the autonomous republic was ethnically Yakut. Many Yakuts, moreover, had major leadership positions—although many of those leaders would be purged later in the decade.

Improvements in education continued through the pre-war period, and the development of infrastructure made some progress. According to the 1939 census, 54 percent of the Sakha people over age nine were literate, a marked improvement from earlier times. Roads, although seasonally impassible, were constructed and electricity was brought to Yakutsk in the 1930s. Hamlets and homesteads were amalgamated into compact villages to enhance education and social services—and to maintain the state’s eye on the population. Such aggregation hampered hay cutting and firewood gathering, as longer trips to meadows and woods were required. Deforestation eventually became a problem around such amalgamated villages.

After WWII, Russian settlement in Yakutia intensified, propelled by diamonds and other valuable natural resources. The Sakha, who had constituted a commanding majority of the Republic’s population in 1922, were reduced to 46 percent in 1959 and 33 percent in 1989. Yet they remained the major group outside of Yakutsk and the mining towns, and Yakut leaders continued to push for genuine autonomy. In the early 1950s, an official Soviet campaign targeted the “ideological faults” and “bourgeois nationalism” of prominent Yakut writers, although after Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956, such strictures were relaxed. The ruinous agricultural projects also came to an end with Stalin’s demise. In the area studied by Terry Jordan-Bychkov and Bella Bychkova Jordan, grain fields in the early 1950s had yielded a miserable 196 pounds per acre, one seventh the amount necessary to break even. They provide a revealing anecdote: “Viewing a dead grainfield, the villagers reputedly indulged in a sarcastic verbal tribute: ‘Comrade Stalin is a great agronomist.’” (p. 73)

Conditions improved in Yakutia in the 1960s and 1970s, a period that Terry Jordan-Bychkov and Bella Bychkova Jordan call a “golden age.” Infrastructural development proceeded, machinery became more widely available, and wages rose. In central Yakutia, greenhouses were widely adopted, allowing the cultivation of cucumbers and other warm-season vegetables. Efforts to increase milk-production by replacing the native cattle with more productive breeds, however, was at best partly successful; although yields did improve, the new breeds of cattle were difficult to maintain, as they lacked adaptation to the cold. By the end of the Soviet period, the native Yakutian cattle were almost extinct.

One sign of improved conditions in the late Soviet period for the Yakut was a population surge. In the republic overall, the rural population grew by twenty-five percent between 1972 and 1989. Increasing numbers of Sakha also moved to the regional metropolis of Yakutsk. But at the same time, ethnic Russians continued to stream into the region. Yakut activists responded by agitating against Russian immigration, sometimes with force. In 1979, “race rioting” in Yakutsk required the intervention of Soviet troops. The Yakut were also angry at the fact that their republic still housed prison camps for European Russians. As Forsyth notes:

“The continuation of friction between natives and incomers was illustrated by a complaint from a Yakut writer that his native land was ‘under the sway of transients, scroungers, poachers, alcoholics, and drug addicts, who are brought here from the central provinces of the country although we already have more than enough drunkards of our own to cope with.’” (p.411)

* Later gold strikes in the far northeast led the Russian government to carve out a new territory for its Dalstroy slave-camps, reducing the size of Yakutia.

Non-Internet Sources

Forsyth James. 1992. A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony, 1581-1990. Cambridge University Press.

Jochelson, Waldemar, 1933. The Yakut. The American Museum of Natural History

Jordan-Bychkov, Terry and Bella Bychkova Jordan. 2001. Siberian Village: Land and Life in the Sakha Republic. University of Minnesota Press.

Granberg, L., K. Soiniu, and J. Kantanen, eds. 2009. Sakha Ynaga: Cattle of the Yakuts. Academia Scientarium Fennica.

Okladnikov, A.P. 1970. Yakutia Before Its Incorporation into the Russian State. Translated from Russian, and edited by Henry N. Michael. McGill-Queens University Press.

Stammler-Grossman, Anna. 2010. “’Political’ Animals of Sakha Yakutia.” In Good to Eat; Good to Live with: Nomads and Animals in Northern Eurasia and Africa, edited by F. Stammler and H. Takakura. Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.

Takakura, H. ed. 2003. Indigenous Ecological Practices and Cultural Traditions in Yakutia. Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.

John Tichotsky, 2000. Russia’s Diamond Colony: The Republic of Sakha. Harwood Adacemic Publishers