A Land of Exile?

Siberia’s history tells two very different stories: one of freedom and one of imprisonment. From the early days of colonization, Siberia attracted people who opposed the political regimes in the European part of the Russian Empire (previously known as Muscovy or the Principality of Moscow). At the same time, these individuals supported colonizing new territories and peoples eastward. This includes both the Pomor sailors who reached the Arctic Siberian seashores as early as the end of the 16th century and Yermak’s Cossacks who crossed the vast Siberian spaces around the same time. However, what is important for this lesson is that since the late 17th century, Siberia has been one of the major territories where political dissidents and criminals were often exiled. The intersection of freedom and imprisonment linked with the colonization of Siberia will be the focus of this lesson.

Task 1

Write down what you know about Siberian katorga, exile, and GULAG. Why is Siberia often associated with imprisonment?

 

The Russian colonization of Siberia in the 17th century began with the building of “ostrogs,” wooden fenced forts. Through these constructions, first Muscovite Russia and then the Russian Empire established their power and extended their frontier deeper into the east.

Many of those who were the first colonizers and then settled in these forts moved to Siberia to escape various forms of persecution in the European/western part of the country, seeking a free space beyond the “rock” (kamen’) —the Ural Mountains. Throughout the history of Russian colonization of Siberia, settlers frequently clashed with local kingdoms and Indigenous groups. At times, these clashes escalated into full-scale local wars, as seen in Chukotka on the Asian shore of the Bering Strait in the 18th century.

 

Old Believers

Along with those settlers, the colonial expansion into Siberia facilitated a large movement of peasants and religious dissidents, such as the Old Believers (staroobryadsy or starovery), who opposed the church reforms of Muscovite Russia in the second half of the 17th century. Many of them saw Siberia as a utopian space where they could live freely. However, their movement did not end in Siberia and the Far East. Some crossed the ocean and settled in the Americas and various other places around the globe to seek geographical distance as a way of preserving their customs. The largest community of Old Believers here in the U.S. is in Oregon. Some of Dr. Dima Arzyutov’s and Michelle Verbitskaya’s (the authors of this module) ancestors were among those who made their way to Siberia due to religious, political, and ethnic persecution in the western part of the country.

Those eastward movements of Slavonic groups shaped the first generation of what we call today Russian colonizers. They established settlements (derenvi and zaimki) and introduced agricultural practices on occupied Indigenous lands, which were more suitable for various forms of pastoralism. The most famous story of an Old Believers family in Siberia is likely that of the Lykov family, whose only surviving descendant, Agafia, lives in the deep Siberian taiga. You can learn more about this family in the film ‘Far Out: Agafia’s Taiga Life‘ (2013).

 

Katorga and exile

Criminals and political dissidents were now not only jailed in specially constructed buildings in cities (also known since the 18th century as ostrogs) but were also sent to the imperial peripheries. From the metropolitan point of view, remote Siberia seemed a suitable place to isolate both criminals and political dissidents. As early as the second half of the 17th century, Siberia became a major destination for exile and forced hard labor, known as katorga. To give an example, we can refer to the history of Aleksandr Menshikov, the closest associate of Peter the Great, who was sent to Siberia, to what is now the city of Khanty-Mansiisk, in 1728 after he conflicted with the Emperor.

It may surprise you, but one of the first analytical works on the history of the Siberian exile system was done by George Kennan (1845-1924), an Ohio-born American explorer who traveled across Siberia in 1885-1886. His two-volume work “Siberia and the Exile System” (1891, vol.1 and vol.2) was a significant contribution to this subject. It’s worth mentioning that at the very same time, Siberia faced massive peasant migration from the European part of Russia. People tried to find ways for better lives assuming that “unpopulated” Siberia with its vast territories may bring them prosperity. In other words, the katorga and the peasant migration for a better life in Siberia became entangled. Two centuries of Siberian katorga became one of the tropes in Russian classic literature. Here we refer to the stories of Decembrists and the renowned Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

The anti-government movement in the 1810s and 1820s was a major social and political event in Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire. The failed coup d’état of December 1825, organized by liberal-minded intellectuals, led to a conservative shift in Russian politics and the prosecution of the so-called Decembrists. Historians often use the term “Decembrists” to refer to a few clubs of metropolitan intellectuals who shared anti-monarchist ideologies and opposed the existing serfdom in the Russian Empire. Some of the revolutionaries were executed, while others were exiled to Siberia, or more precisely, to the lands around Lake Baikal, the homelands of Michele Verbitskaya, a co-author of the present course. Aleksandr Pushkin, the most famous Russian poet, who was closely associated with this anti-government movement, wrote the poem in 1827,

Deep in the Siberian mine,
Keep your patience proud;
The bitter toil shall not be lost,
The rebel thought unbowed.

The sister of misfortune,
Hope, In the under-darkness dumb
Speaks joyful courage to your heart:
The day desired will come.

And love and friendship pour to you
Across the darkened doors,
Even as round your galley-beds
My free music pours.

The heavy-hanging chains will fall,
The walls will crumble at a word;
And Freedom greet you in the light,
And brothers give you back the sword.

(translated from Russian by Babette Deutsch)

As a predominantly male community of revolutionaries, they were followed by their wives, who voluntarily exiled themselves to Siberia to be close to their husbands. The tragic story of Decembrists’ wives inspired the Russian poet Nikolai Nekrasov to write “The Russian Women” poem (1872-3) and many years later, in the Soviet Union, there was the movie “The Captivating Star of Happiness” (which you can watch following the link below) depicting the female history of the Decembrists in Siberia.

But the history of the Siberian katorga did not end with the Decembrists. In 1850, Siberia saw the arrival of another famous Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, whose katorga experience was also related to his anti-government activities in Saint Petersburg. While already in chains in Siberia, in the city of Tobolsk, Dostoyevsky met several wives of the Decembrists, who gave him and other convicts clothes and food. This meeting established a kind of Siberian genealogical connection between the Decembrists and Dostoyevsky. Unlike the Decembrists, Dostoyevsky met his future wife while in exile. After receiving a pardon in 1857, they returned to St. Petersburg together. Dostoyevsky wrote about his katorga and exile experience in his semi-autobiographical novel “Memoirs from the House of the Dead.” The stories of Siberian exile and katorga are prominent in the works of many Russian famous writers. For example, Leo Tolstoy wrote one of his best short stories, ‘God Sees the Truth, But Waits‘ (also known as ‘Exiled to Siberia’) (1872). Anton Chekhov depicted the life of exiles in his ‘Sakhalin Island‘ (1893-1895).

It is important to specify that katorga and exile (ssylka) are not synonyms. Katorga referred to a form of punishment in the Russian Empire that, apart from confinement, included hard forced labor under harsh conditions. Katorga often replaced the death penalty, as in the case of Dostoyevsky. Exile (ssylka), on the other hand, referred to the relocation of political dissidents to Siberia or other remote areas, often colonies.

Before we move to the Soviet history of imprisonment in Siberia, we would like to focus on three episodes from the history of exile.

 

Ethnic Exile

After a brief observation of the history of Siberian exile and katorga, one might conclude that the system targeted only political dissidents and those considered criminals. In fact, the exile system also affected entire ethnic groups. This practice began during the Russian Empire and continued through the years of Stalinism, which we will discuss later in our lesson. One example of massive ethnic migration from the European borders of Russia to Siberia was the forced relocation of participants in the Polish–Russian War of 1830–31, also known as the November Uprising (Powstanie listopadowe). This violent relocation led to the establishment of a Polish community on the eastern borders of the Russian Empire (sybiracy). Other ethnic communities were also forcibly relocated as exiles due to wars, state-sponsored ethnic and racial ideologies, and voluntary migration of groups in search of “free lands” and better lives. As a result, these migrations shaped a new cultural geography of Siberian settlers.

 

Exile and Science

Discussing the new cultural geography, we would like to highlight that many exiles remained in Siberia after being pardoned or released. Numerous field disciplines—such as geology, biology, geography, and anthropology—were significantly shaped by these exiles. Some of the Decembrists and other exiles dedicated their lives to enduring the harsh conditions in Siberia, where they maintained relations with Indigenous and local communities, studied their languages and cultures, and explored the region’s flora, fauna, and minerals. In other words, the intellectual history of many fundamental disciplines is indebted to those who were forcibly sent to the eastern frontier of the Russian Empire.

 

Exile and Anti-Colonial Criticism

Those who settled in Siberia found a degree of freedom that allowed them to speak more openly about Russian colonialism, the situation of Indigenous communities, and even the possibility of Siberian autonomy. Thus, the critical reflections on the exile system were raised in Tomsk, one of the major intellectual centres of Siberia, where a group of scholars and travellers started talking about the colonial history of Siberia and the profound impact of Russian colonialism on the political sovereignty of the regions and identity of those living there. Known as Siberian regionalism, the movement in many ways was rooted in the discussions about the exile system. Although the cultural effect of Siberian regionalism was strong across not only settler but also Indigenous communities, the attempts to build autonomous Siberia failed.

 

Task 2

Reflect upon the similarities and differences between the Siberian exile system and the exile of criminals and socially minoritized groups from the UK to the US, Australia, and New Zealand. Please list three similarities and three differences between these two colonial approaches.

 

GULAG

In 1918, right after the Russian Revolution, on the wave of decolonial criticism of the Russian Empire and the pioneering discussions about social justice, the system of political exile was officially abandoned. However, the colonization of Siberian space and people never ended. The vast territory of Siberia, with its rich deposits of minerals, metals, and other resources—some of which had been discovered by exiles in the recent past—was needed for the newly established socialist economy. In our next lesson, we will elaborate in detail on the environmental history of the region. Here, we would like to tell the story of how, under Stalin, the Soviet Union once again turned many regions of Siberia into lands of exile.

The political transformations and Civil War that followed the Soviet Revolution, Joseph Stalin‘s governance after Vladimir Lenin‘s death desperately required more resources to fuel the economy. The rise of totalitarian ideologies and rapid industrialization from 1929 to 1941 coincided with the persecution of counter-revolutionaries across all social groups, targeting those perceived as opposing the Soviet regime. These factors culminated in the establishment of one of the most terrifying forced labor systems of the 20th century: the GULAG, or Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps. As depicted on the map, this network of camps spanned the entire country. Many camps in Siberia and the Far East were intricately linked with large-scale industrialization projects, utilizing forced labor from individuals publicly labeled as “enemies of the people.”

Siberia experienced a surge in prisoners — workers, university professors, peasants, artists, and poets — criminals, and entirely innocent individuals alike. The harrowing conditions and social dynamics within these camps were extensively documented by eyewitnesses, though their accounts were initially published outside the Soviet Union, after Stalin’s death. Among the most renowned works are Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” and Varlam Shalamov’s “The Kolyma Tales,” which vividly depict the experiences of GULAG prisoners in the Siberian Arctic.

The vast Siberian landscape was transformed into a mineral resource laboratory that fueled Stalinism’s militaristic and totalitarian ideology and economy. Taymyr’s forced camps provided nickel, Sakha/Yakutia’s camps provided gold and diamonds…

The following documentary (‘Kolyma – Exposé of the Soviet Union’s Most Brutal Siberian Concentration Camps‘, 1992) features oral history testimonies from survivors of imprisonment in the Siberian Arctic GULAG camps.

 

“Ethnic deportations”

However, the story of the GULAG network would be incomplete without considering the “ethnic deportations,” a terrifying method of executing entire ethnic groups. Some communities, accused of collaborating with fascists during World War II (such as the Karachay, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, and Crimean Tatars), were targeted. The total number of people deported to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia remains unknown, though historians estimate it exceeded one million individuals. The recent novel “Zuleikha” by Guzel’ Yakhina and the novel “Between Shades of Gray” by Ruta Sepetys, we believe, may better understand the tragedy of mass ethnic deportations to Siberia under Stalinism. Both of the mentioned novels have been adapted into films: ‘Ashes in the Snow’ (2019) and ‘Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes‘ (2020, available only in Russian).

In Siberia, “special colonies” were established for these communities, intended to sever their ties to ancestral lands and forcibly resettle them in new territories. The trauma inflicted on these populations by the Soviet state continues to resonate through public discourse, art, and literature across numerous regions. Notably, Japan also had its war prisoners, among others, sent to Siberia during this tumultuous period.

 

Indigenous responses

How did Indigenous and local communities respond to the exile system and GULAG? During the imperial era, exiled intellectuals played a crucial role in developing education for Indigenous communities. Unfortunately, the interactions between GULAG prisoners and Indigenous groups remain underexplored in current scholarship. Within the expanding field of Indigenous studies, there is a conceptualization of GULAG camps as “ghost places.” Stories about encounters with GULAG escapees and the abandonment of some camps following Stalin’s death are still heard in various local and Indigenous communities in the Siberian tundra and forest.

Thus, the history of exile, katorga, and the GULAG continues to persist. The recent tragic death of the most prominent Russian political opposition to the Kremlin Alexei Navalny in a Northern Siberian prison cannot but evoke memories of darker times of exile and oppression, the story we have told you in our lesson today.

 

Task 3

Read one of the novels or memoirs listed below and write a short essay (300 words) on the significance of stories about exile, katorga, and the GULAG for those of us living in the US today.

 

Resources

 

Fiction/Memoirs

Dostoyevsky, F. (1956). Memoirs from the House of the Dead. Translated by Jessie Coulson. Oxford University Press.

Shalamov, V. (1995). Kolyma Tales. Translated by John Glad. London: Penguin.

Sepetys, R. (2011). Between Shades of Gray. London: Penguin.

Yakhina, G. (2019). Zuleikha. Simon and Schuster.

 

Non-fiction

Gentes, A. A. (2008). Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822. Palgrave MacMillan.

Gentes, A. A. (2010). Exile, Murder and Madness in Siberia, 1823-61. Palgrave MacMillan.

Beer, D. (2017). The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Badcock, S. (2016). A Prison Without Walls?: Eastern Siberian Exile in the Last Years of Tsarism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Applebaum, A. (2012). Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps. London: Penguin Books.

 

Academic articles

Ulturgasheva, O. (2017). Ghosts of the Gulag in the Eveny World of the Dead. The Polar Journal 7 (1): 26–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/2154896X.2017.1329256.

 

Movies

Ashes in the Snow, 2019, Director: Marius A. Markevicius

The Captivating Star of Happiness, 1975, Director: Vladimir Motyl

 

Documentaries

‘Far Out: Agafia’s Taiga Life‘ (2013)

Gulag, The Story. Part 1(1918-1936)

Gulag, The Story. Part 2 (1937-1945)

‘Kolyma – Exposé of the Soviet Union’s Most Brutal Siberian Concentration Camps‘ (1992)