Sibir by Farley Mowat
From April 19, 2008:
“Just finished Sibir by Farley Mowat, It is a good book and makes me want to go to Siberia. The book chronicles Mowat’s travels to the area first in 1966 with Claire (his wife) and then again in ‘69 with a photographer friend John de Vissiers. *(I wonder if it is possible to find photos from the trip?)
They travel to Lake Baikal, Irkutsk, Yakutsk a place on the arctic ocean called Thersky, etc. The most frustrating to me is that it is potentially (almost certainly) outdated, the story being 40 years old and during the Soviet era. So, on top of the normal extra-cultural and geographic curiosity (what is it like over there?) there is the added the temporal curiosity (what is it like now?/ How has it changed?).
Mowat paints a picture of Siberia that is full of hearty, loving people in touch with the land and their futures(the native peoples or “small peoples” anyways) and of Russians who have wandered Northwards and Eastwards and fallen in love with a challenging and rewarding life. He also paints a positive image of Soviet government types, party members that is. Everyone is working with nature to build sustainable human settlements. This includes conservation related to lake Baikal, fish stocks off the east coast, study and use of permafrost, advanced animal breeding techniques (reindeer), food self-sufficiency to limit transit-intensive imports, encouraging traditional knowledge and ways of life, etc. I am incredibly, curious about what happened in the next 20 years of Soviet era and then the 20 years since. A friend of mine who was in Russia suggested that Siberia may not have been hugely effected by the fall of the Soviets because it is so isolated. But i am skeptical of this hypothesis because the area seemed to receive a lot of support from Moscow in subsidies and in providing a market for goods that were being produced in the north. On the other hand, the people as described by Mowat seemed to have internalized the values of the Soviets, or maybe not, in the sense that the values of Communism perhaps weren’t taught by Soviets but were there all along…
But still the question remains: How did the fall of the Soviet government affect the political consciousness/ideology of the people where Mowat visited? How did it affect their hopes and plans, and their ability to achieve them?
Tags: books, farleymowat, politics
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 2:20 pm and is filed under ideas from previous jottings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.