1939: Siberia

Soviet Polar Explorations.

V. Stefansson has pointed out that the Soviet Union is the only country left in which the 19th century frontier spirit persists in full force, the only land where men and women push on to remote places with full confidence in the progress they can make. Soviet Arctic exploration has been brilliant. Not only did Chkalov and Gromov fly almost over the North Pole from Moscow to San Jacinto, Calif. (1937), but the Ivan Papanin party, recording scientific observations, drifted on an ice pack from the North Pole to a point about 71° N., near the coast of Greenland (1937-38). Early in 1939 the ice-breaker, Sedov, having started from Tixie Bay at the mouth of the Lena, drifted almost to the beginning of the arc of Papanin, thus approximately completing scientific observations from Tixie Bay over the Pole to the southern half of Greenland.

By these expeditions Russian scientists learned that the polar region has more violent winds but less severe temperature than had been expected, the average winter temperature being several degrees higher than that recorded for parts of the Lena Valley. They found not only crayfish, worms and iceweed, but gulls, bears and seals in the farthest north. They saw no land at the Pole; only water more than 2½ mi. deep; but they discovered that heavy planes could land and take off from the floating ice packs.

Northern Sea Route.

The Administration of the Northern Sea Route was given control of all land north of 62° and of the sea route almost entirely through Soviet territorial waters from Murmansk to Vladivostock. Since the opening of that sea route in the summer season of 1935, ships plying the northern waters, especially the Kara Sea, have been regularly convoyed by heavy ice-breakers. The new route is a great saving; whereas the sailing distance from Leningrad to Vladivostock by way of Suez or Panama is more than 14,000 mi., the sailing distance from Murmansk east to Vladivostock is less than 7,000 mi. During the four years after the opening of the new sea route, river traffic on the north Siberian streams increased about three-fold and there was an equal rate of increase in traffic on the air lines intersecting the Arctic territory. On Dickson Island and at Igarka (Yenesei River) the increasing population was soon supplied with fresh milk and with hothouse vegetable delicacies sometimes ripened by electric light during the long winter night. There was even a company of professional actors who traveled annually about 10,000 mi. giving about 80 performances of Moliere's plays and other classics at frontier towns, on shipboard and on ice packs.

Natives of the Northern Frontier.

Native peoples such as Yakuts, Tungus and others inhabit the northern frontier especially toward the East. Under the Czarist Régime, they were exploited by the landlords, and by Russian merchants and kulaks, and were decreasing in number. Now the Administration of the Northern Sea Route controls trade and insures better prices for furs. Moreover, it has increased the game by introducing North American muskrats and mink. It has also begun to teach the native herdsmen to cut hay, to raise vegetables and to live in houses instead of huts or tents. When a hunter or reindeer man ventures down to a station or center, the Russians furnish bed and food, buy his pelts, repair his gun, sledge and his clothing. Such stations are called 'centers of culture.' Primers and newspapers are printed in the native languages. Phonographs, bicycles and sewing machines are being introduced. Instead of being reduced or exterminated, the natives again have a normal increase.

Outer Mongolia.

In Outer Mongolia, a half-hospitable country as large as England, France and Germany, the 900,000 Mongol herdsmen who, with Communist aid, had thrown off the yoke of their own feudal lords and of Chinese, were developing their own herds by the end of the thirties, were learning to read and write their own language and their own newspapers and books. They were also beginning to use simple machines in their textile, leather and shoe factories. Ulan Bator Koto even had technical schools. It was the boundary of this territory, near the Khalka river, that was attacked by Japan May-July 1939, but defended by Soviet-Mongolian troops. Toward China and her defense against Japan, however, Soviet Russia continued a detached attitude; there was no suggestion of any alliance with China.

Migrations.

The greatest social change in Siberia in 1939 was the large influx of new population. There were several types. Red Army soldiers, finishing their service in the Far East, often settled on farms there. Secondly, at Khabarovsk and Ussuri, some 1,200 new families arrived during the first half of the year, thus strengthening Maritime Province in military force and economic reserve. Also other parts of Siberia received new settlers from Russia: some, apparently peasants, who failed to cooperate in collective farms, were moved 'with little friction' to eastern regions; others apparently moved quite voluntarily out of the crowded parts of Russia and were assisted by the Government in the matter of transportation, equipment and even farm animals.