Draft:Siberian Urbanization

Siberian Urbanization is the process that resulted in the permanent residence of large concentrations of people in Siberian cities. Urbanization is the shift from loosely-populated, rural communities to densely populated settlements, called cities. This process primarily occurred in Siberia over the period from 1581, with the initial Russian settlement of the territory, to 1985, with the ascendancy of Gorbachev, which spelled the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union.

Urbanization can unfold in different ways based on the geographic location in which it is occurring, the qualities of the cities that are being increased in concentration, the demographics of people in the area and their methods of subsistence, and the natural resources or economic utility that they provide a nation. In Siberia, this manifested in the fact that this territory was a colony of western Russia, and its economy was an extractionary one. This meant that urbanization occurred at rates that were congruent with the relative importance to the nation of the natural resources that were extracted in each region. It was also influenced by the fact that Siberia was a place of exile and forced labor. This involuntary migration was the origin of a large part of the urban populations that peopled Siberia because there were various other factors that limited or discouraged voluntary migration. One of these reasons was that peasants, tied up in the bonds of serfdom until they loosened after emancipation in 1861, were not able to populate this territory, even though they would have viewed it as a haven of free land.

Centralized economic efforts by the Tsarist and Soviet governments drove this urbanization, first with stimuli like the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad—which generated the first full-scale migrations of Russains into Siberia —and, later, with Soviet economic programs like the first Five Year Plan, which greatly accelerated the development of Siberian cities. Another important aspect of the way that urbanization works is that it can unfold both as a result of immigration, as happened frequently in Russia, but also as a reconsolidation of population concentrations from rural areas to urban ones. While both of these aspects were present in Siberian urbanization at all times, the latter was especially representative of the Soviet period.

Pre-modern urban settlements in Siberia
Pre-modern history in Siberia saw population concentrations which were focused on rural societies, primarily subsisting on hunting and gathering or reindeer herding. Though the first real towns were constructed as a result of Russian annexation in 1581, there was historical precedent for this eventuality: the fact that external colonization, trade, influence, or immigration were the main drivers of Siberian urban development. Siberia was under the control of the Mongol Khanate of the Golden Horde from roughly 900 C.E. to 1450 C.E., under the influence of which cities appeared along frequented trade routes. These cities, founded under the Golden Horde, flourished due to the networks of the Silk Road. Some examples of these cities, in the Volga Region, include “Mashaik (Khajitarkhan), Selitryanoe (Sarai), Tsarevskoe (Sarai al-Jadid), Vodyanskoe (Gulistan), Uvekskoe (Ukek), Bolgarskoe (Bolgar), Bilyarskoe (Bilyar) and Kazanskoe (Kazan).”

Influence of Russian colonization on urban development
Many of Siberia’s cities draw their origin from the Russian colonization of this territory, which began, officially, with a Cossack invasion in 1581, led by Ermak Timofeevich, which defeated the Khanate of Sibir. This invasion, however, was preceded by the incremental siege of border cities under Ivan the Terrible. Ivan began his assault in Western Siberia by seizing the cities of Kazan (1551) and Astrakhan (1557). In October 1582, following the invasion of Timofeevich, he defeated Khan Kuchum in a three-day battle at the Irtysh River, opening the whole of Siberia to Russian control. In the resultant colonial period, during the 1500s and 1600s, Russian explorers, trappers, and traders built towns at strategic points that they discovered in their exhibitions, gradually subjugating the majority of the territory by the middle of the 18th century. These settlements were military camps with fortifications, and they eventually developed into permanent administrative centers for military activity.

Due to this history, many Siberian cities retained a military look—with towers and walls—even as they, over time, attracted wider groups of people, and burgeoned with the influence of wider society. The towns that existed on trade routes, like the aforementioned Silk Road towns, profited from external trade. Trade opportunities, in fact, led to permanent Russian presence in these settlements. According to the U.S. Library of Congress, “commercial activity, spurred by traders and trappers as well as merchants such as the Stroganovs, soon established a permanent Russian presence in Siberia. The snowy and seemingly endless expanses of wilderness contained many fur-bearing species of great value in European markets. Indeed, the pelt of the sable became the symbol for the immense wealth of Siberia and continued to draw Russians to their eastern borderlands for centuries.” Some examples of military cities emboldened by trade and Siberian riches are Tyumen (1586), Tomsk (1604), Krasnoyarsk (1628), and Irkutsk (1652). The search for furs, and the pursuit of a fabled “Northwest Passage,” led Russian explorers to travel east and north into Siberia, arriving at the Pacific Ocean in 1693.

The initial inhabitants of the Siberian cities that sprung up as a result of Russian exploration included various groups that sought refuge from persecution, such as religious sects and political exiles. The economic and cultural identity of Siberia were primarily influenced by the forced migration of those incarcerated and exiled in and to the region. The Decembrists, exiled to Siberia after their uprising in 1825, Poles, exiled after uprisings in the 19th century, and more influenced the development of Siberian culture, and also brought education. The Poles, for example, brought with them Roman Catholicism and other aspects of Western European society, and educated political exiles, like the Decembrists, brought educational enrichment. Siberian cities experienced immense growth in the 19th century, due to the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, from 1891 to 1905, which promoted both trade and immigration. Immigration of Russian settlers was virtually nonexistent, in fact, until the construction of this railroad, which prompted a large population movement into the area. This railroad, on top of its introduction of trade and migration opportunities, promoted the increase in the cultivation of cereal grains, the production of dairy products, and the mining of coal.

Soviet-era industrialization and urban planning
Over the course of conquest and population of Siberia in the Tsarist era, the relationship of western Russia with its eastern acquisition became and remained extremely extractionary. The Russian pursuit of “soft gold”—or pelts—in the initial expansion period, precious metals in the 18th century, and other harvested animal resources (including excavations of Plesitocene mammoth carcasses), led to the view of Siberia as a land of riches from which wealth could quickly and covertly be generated. By the end of this period, and the transition into the Soviet period, Russia’s relationship with Siberia was a colonial one where western Siberia was dependent upon primary resource extraction from the east, and Siberia was dependent on the return of these goods in the form of manufactured items. In the early twentieth century, Siberia was, firstly, an agricultural colony, with lesser influence of both furs and minerals still present.

With this economic focus on extraction from the east, and the recent completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, an increase in migration to Siberia was seen, but it consisted of political exiles and those fleeing persecution. This population of Siberian industrial cities with exiles paved the way for Soviet and Stalinist programs of forced urbanization and industrialization. The initial Soviet Five Year Plan (1928-1932) introduced industrialization, in the form of increased coal mining and metallurgy, resulting in an increase in urban population density. Stalin’s industrialization policies led to the creation of 33 new cities between 1928 and 1941, and the population of these Siberian cities exploded, with 600,000 migrants between 1938 and 1940. This focus on urbanization and industrialization of the east under Stalin was exacerbated by the Second World War—and the incursion of the Nazis into the U.S.S.R. in 1941—leading to an eastward shift of industrial production. Millions of workers and thousands of factories were relocated to the east during the Nazi occupation, leading to further swelling of urban populations, and this was accompanied by construction of all-new industrial plants and associated settlements. Not only were Soviets relocated from the western Soviet Union to Siberia during the War, but extant rural populations in Siberia were reconstituted into urban populations in order to provide the workforce for the new industrial metropolises. This led to an increase of 700,000 in the population of Siberian cities during the Second World War. From 1929 to 1939, as a result of the industrialization visited by the First Five Year Plan, the percentage of Siberians who lived in cities increased from 14 to 31 percent, and, at the end of World War 2, this number burgeoned to 43 percent. Due to the inheritance of the Tsarist colonial and extractionary economy, this industrialization and urbanization only served to reinforce the dependence of Siberian cities on western Russia.

The post-Stalin period was characterized by continued economic extraction of Siberian resources to the west, but now, it was in the guise of mega projects. These mega projects, coming into existence under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, constituted large economic projects that were intended to benefit the national economy. These included the construction of hydro power stations, railroads, and more, and were detrimental to the national economy. These policies, however, resulted in a high concentration of urban populations in Siberia. By the end of this period, in fact, Siberia and the Far East had experienced the most urbanization in the whole U.S.S.R., resulting in 70 percent of its population living in urban environments. Urbanization occurred at a greater rate over this period than in the rest of the Soviet Union and the urban population increased by around 80%, resulting in an urban populace of 7.9 million. The Pacific Coast of Siberia experienced the greatest urbanization, which can be attributed to railroad mega projects, ports, and maritime trade. The corresponding driver of western Siberian expansion was the economic stimulus of fossil fuels. Administrative cities also showed increased aptitude to grow in concentration, some of which include Novosibirsk, Omsk, Barnaul, Kemerovo, Tomsk, Tyumen, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Chita, Ulan-Ude, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Blagoveshchensk, and Yakutsk. According to a study by Gary Hausladen, the reason that administrative centers led growth is because “it is in these centers that service establishments, higher-educational and research institutes, and government and economic institutions have been concentrated, adding to their attractiveness for future investment and development” (Hausladen, 36). By the time of Gorbachev, a long process of local urbanization without national infrastructure investment had created a poor standard of living in Siberian cities, causing labor shortages—though many people still remained in these cities. The trend of urbanization as a result of external colonization, immigration, travel, and influence is continued in this post-Stalin history of urbanization, as most of the population growth in Siberian cities was among ethnic Russians, increasing the homogeneity of Siberia and, thereby, promoting Soviet control of this territory.

Urbanization and Indigenous communities
Throughout this process of the subjugation of Siberia, which led to its control by a centralized authority, industrialization, and subsequent urbanization, the effect on Indigenous communities was one of erasure and replacement. Urbanization in Siberia was primarily an increase in the population of Russians that dwelt in Siberian cities, whether previous exiles and their descendants, new exiles, or those relocating because of the Second World War, and this resulted in a replacement of indigenous Siberians with Russians. Urbanization began to be undertaken in the Polar regions of Siberia in the 1920s and 1930s, and was characterized by the forced urbanization of indigenous peoples. According to an article by Marlene Laurelle, “until the 1960s, cities in the Arctic were created through state intervention, planned by the political center, and erected by a workforce brought in from outside. Their ‘otherness’ to indigenous culture was one of these cities’ structural features. This equation has slowly been rewritten with the rising urbanization of indigenous peoples themselves. The Soviet Union was the first to begin urbanizing indigenous communities.” (Laurelle, 3) These trends of urbanization were extremely detrimental to indigenous populations in Siberia, disconnecting them from their traditional subsistence lifestyle, and causing a loss of language, a loss of knowledge about the environment, and a deterioration of identity. In the present day, one of the primary sources of fallout of the Siberian push for urbanization was its associated resource extraction, which has caused indigenous peoples to suffer the effects of a damaged environment. Nenets, for example, have been featured widely in the news for their protests against the Russian pipelines that interfere with their reindeer grazing lands. A current trend among Nenets has shown that, even for those indigenous peoples who remain in traditional communities practicing their inherited subsistence customs, these traditional ways have been increasingly seen as incapable of yielding a prosperous and comfortable life. This is also reinforced by the fact that Nenet families living in rural areas have lower incomes than those in urban areas. Nenets in the arctic of Siberia, drawn to cities by the promise of urban wealth, have been forced to give up their traditional practices—which, until recently, saw Nenets unwilling to ever depart the forests and tundras in which they found subsistence.

Though the vast majority of Native interactions with the centralized authorities have been exploitative, from the Soviet period on, the Russian government has attempted to draw indigenous peoples into civic and political engagement in urban centers. This continues into the present day from Soviet policies that glorified a fabricated, altered, and simplified brand of indigeneity that was not tied to rural nomadism. This was, in part, accomplished by including indigenous symbolism in urban planning, and was undertaken in order to hide the detriments of indigenous urbanization in order to encourage Native people to move into urban centers. Nenets, in one example of these policies, have been officially recognized by the Russian government as the indigenous people of the arctic, and, thus, arctic cities have been intentionally infused with their cultural influence. This trend has often taken the form of exoticization and has extended from cultural and political references to appropriation of Nenet cultural elements by small businesses in Siberian arctic cities.