#kolyma region

[sheltiechicago]

Mask of Sorrow: The Crying Monument of Magadan

Mask of Sorrow is a brutalist monument located in Magadan, Russia. The statue was designed to commemorate the people in the Gulag prison camps in the Kolyma region of the Soviet Union who lost their lives under harsh conditions. Ernest Neizvestny created the design; the monument’s constructor was Kamil Kazaev, and it was unveiled in 1996.

Photographer: buttonartorg

lyubatours

one_love_magadan

oksana_lobanova

[gacougnol]

Emil Gataullin

Kolyma river near Debin

Magadan region, Russia 2015

[drev-the-procrastinator]

I would like to know more about the fish in your profile pic. :)

oh!!! of course!!! gladly :) here's a full picture of the little fella:

so this guy's a Perca fluviatilis, or European perch, or just a perch, or in Finnish, ahven!

It's a predatory fish that lives in both fresh and brackish water, so here in Finland, dotted with over 180 000 lakes (albeit most are very small) and surrounded by the brackish waters of the Baltic Sea (or Itämeri in Finnish, which is funny because it means the East Sea even though from Finland said sea is to the west, but it's a direct translation from Swedish, to whom it is in the east lol anyway), it's a very common fish. In fact, it's the most common fish in Finland! There are a lot of little lakes and ponds in which it might be the only fish. It's also the national fish of Finland!

The important characteristics are the red (or really orange usually) fins and tail, the darker stripes, and the spikey dorsal fin, with the little black dot at the end towards the tail. In some of the darkwater lakes they can get almost black, though, so the stripes aren't always visible, but for example in the sea, where the water is clearer, you can see them well.

They can grow pretty big, but are usually 15-30 cm and weigh at most something like 350 grams, though occasionally bigger fish are found. When it comes to people who fish for fun, and not like, with big ships, the perch is the most commonly fished fish in Finland, I think? They can also withstand waters quite a lot acidic than most Finnish fish, which contributes to them living in tiny bog ponds as the only fish in there. Mostly they live in Europe (aside from Spain and Italy) and all the way to the Kolyma River in the Russian far east, but they've been planted in places such as Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa, South Africa and even China I think? Where they're endangering the native fish species :[ so that's not good

They're pretty curious little fishies! They live in schools of fish during the day and look for food together, but at night they rest on their own at the bottom of the body of water they live in. A few times, when I've gone swimming in a lake with clear water, I've spotted them in the shallow water rather close to people swimming, and when I stayed in place for long enough they came really close a few times! I could've almost touched them, but they're also really fast, so they would've (and probably did) sprint away.

I've caught them a few times, but the ones I've fished have been too small so I've let them go. When my dad's side of the family used to have the cottage in the archipelago my mom has now, my grandparents used to put out the fishing nets (I helped a few times as well!) and then in the morning I'd help take the fishes out of the net, and there'd be perch there pretty often. I've also filleted these fish, and eaten them haha. My favorite is perch covered in flour and fried in butter, served with mashed potato! But most of all I do like just watching them :)

A couple more fun facts! They have a sharp boney spike at the edge of their gill cover, so you have to be careful when you hold them for example taking it off a hook! And the spikes on their back! They're very spiky fish :D

The word for ahven here in Russian is окунь, okun', which according to a version of the etymology, comes from the old word for eye, oko. In Finnish, ahven is pretty close to the reconstructed Proto-Finnic form *ahvën, but we don't know what the etymology for that is! The name for the fish is really similar in most Finnic languages though:

Lastly, the Finnish name for the big island and autonomous region of Åland is Ahvenanmaa, with ahvena being a dialectal form of ahven, and thus the name is like, the land of the perch :) It might come from the fact that in the 1500s, the people from there paid their taxes in perch? The etymology on that one is a little unlcear still! Just a fun little fact. :)

Here's a picture of a little ahven I took in 2018!

I just really like them :) ahven my beloved <3 <3 <3

[epistrefei]

From the early 1980s until the late 1990s Artemis mainly resided in the extreme rural northeastern region of Siberia in the Soviet Union/Russia. This was markedly during the de-escalation of the Cold War as well as the era of Perestroika, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev. While it was an era of great political turmoil particularly in the more populated areas of the country, this influence could be felt even in far reaches of Russia.

Artemis resided in the village Усть-Среднекан (Ust-Srednekan) which was located just off of the river Колыма (Kolyma). Access to Ust-Srednekan was very difficult as the roads were in poor condition and the weather was temperamental. For a Goddess like herself, it was the perfect location to stay if one did not want to be found.

Surrounding the Kolyma River and Ust-Srednekan were many abandoned former gulags that had been set up as part of the Sevvostlag--a series of forced labour camps meant to satisfy the construction needs of the region to maintain gold mining and road conditions. Additionally, a partially-completed hydroelectric plant was located some kilometers away from the village.

It was common for Artemis to make the trek to nearby city centers such as Yakutsk to gather well-needed supplies, particularly because the villagers were becoming increasingly elderly.

Artemis stayed in a formerly abandoned izba, essentially a log cabin normally situated on farmland.

Villagers of Ust-Srednekan mainly subsided through hunting and fishing. Most were employed at the nearby gold mine, however when it subsequently shut down, the village slowly depopulated. In the last years that Artemis resided there, the population had dwindled down to just 27.

WIP.

[pwlanier]

Ceremonial headdress, 19th century, North-East Siberia, Kolyma region, youkaghir population.

Fur (curved), skin and fur (seal), skin (canide), tendon (renne), vibrissae, silver, glass beads.

Courtesy Alain Truong

[thelongview]

The abandoned Butugychag Corrective Labor Camp (Russian: исправительно-трудовой лагерь, Бутугычаг) was a russian Gulag that operated between 1945 and 1955 in the Kolyma region of North-Eastern Russia, present-day Magadan Oblast (top left). The camp (top right) is mostly known for its deadly uranium extraction, along with tin and gold. The camp also contained a top secret research-medical facility where a series of experiments were conducted on camp inmates. Witnesses state that the camp took the life of some 380,000 people in the 10 years of its existence, despite a maximum capacity of 31,500 only having been reached in 1952.

In local folklore the area is known as Death Valley. This name was given to the area by the nomadic tribes that domesticated and raised deer in the area. As they travelled along the Detrin River, they stumbled upon a huge field filled with human skulls and bones. Soon after, their deer became ill with a mysterious disease; the first symptom was loss of fur on their legs, followed by lack of energy and refusal to walk. The settlement has only recently come to light, and is not even listed among the abandoned camps as though it never existed. The landscape surrounding the ruins is heavily scarred by what looks like manual mining (bottom).

Wikipedia

61°19′00″N 149°11′20″E

[forgeofideas]

Geo-Cultural Groups

Europe: 

-Caucasian: mountains 

-Sarmatic Plains: Swamps, woodlands, plains, and small Vikings élite 

-Balkanatolia: heartland of Hellenic civilization 

-Italic: (North) City States & Germandom, (Mid) Papal states, (South) Byzantine and Norman Polities with Islamic influence 

-Iberian: 

-Nordic: 

-Variscidia: Aside from the Papal states, Variscidia was the heartland of catholic powers during the early middle ages. It’s cultural background was a syncretism between Latin and Germanic traditions. Variscidia was the region of Europe that served as a bulwark against northern pagan Europeans, Eastern-Oriental Christendom, and Islamic expansion. 

-British Isles: 

-Visigrad: Transitionary phase into western Europe, Catholicism, Slavs and Steppe peoples (mongols, avars, gepids and magyars) 

Asia:

East Asia: 

-Tibetan Plateau: 

- Northern River Basins: 

-Southern River basin 

- Goguryeo Mountain Enclosure: 

-Mongolian Steppe 

-East Asian Desert Complex 

-Japanese Archipelago: 

North Asia:

-Siberian Plateau (Eastern Mountain Complex, Central Mountain Complex)

-Siberian Plain 

-Kolyma 

-Yakutsk Basin 

-Central Asian Desert Complex (West Asian Mountain Complex Included) 

Southeast Asia: 

-Indochinese Peninsula

-Malay Archipelago 

Indosphere: 

-Deccan Polities: 

-Indo-Gangetic Polities: 

Oceania: 

-Polynesia 

-Micronesia 

-Melanesia 

Middle East:

-Levant: 

-Arabian Peninsula: 

-Mesopotamia: 

-Iranian Plateau: 

Africa:

-Sahelian Kingdoms: Muslim & Sahelian, mounted warfare 

-Guinean Kingdoms: Forested & Folk Religions 

-Nile Kingdoms: Egypt, Nubia, axum 

-Maghreb: 

-Kongo Kingdoms: 

-Lake Kingdoms: 

-Kalahari Plateau: 

-Swahili City States: 

North America:

Appalachian Woodlands: Iroquoise & Algonquian, wooded,  Haudenosaunee, long houses

Great Lakes: 

Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere: Chimakuan, woodlands, mound builders, south east,  

Great Plains: 

Great Basin: aztec tanoan,  "Desert Archaic" or more simply "The Desert Culture" refers to the culture of the Great Basin tribes. This culture is characterized by the need for mobility to take advantage of seasonally available food supplies. The use of pottery was rare due to its weight, but intricate baskets were woven for containing water, cooking food, winnowing grass seeds and storage—including the storage of pine nuts, a Paiute-Shoshone staple. Heavy items such as metates would be cached rather than carried from foraging area to foraging area. Agriculture was not practiced within the Great Basin itself, although it was practiced in adjacent areas (modern agriculture in the Great Basin requires either large mountain reservoirs or deep artesian wells). Likewise, the Great Basin tribes had no permanent settlements, although winter villages might be revisited winter after winter by the same group of families. In the summer, the largest group was usually the nuclear family due to the low density of food supplies.

Oasisamerica: Pueblo, cities, agrarian 

Plateau: 

Californian: The Pauma Complex is a prehistoric archaeological pattern among indigenous peoples of California, initially defined by Delbert L. True in northern San Diego County, California.The complex is dated generally to the middle Holocene period. This makes it locally the successor to the San Dieguito complex, predecessor to the late prehistoric San Luis Rey Complex, and contemporary with the La Jolla complex on the San Diego County coast.

Northwest Coast:

Arctic: 

Subarctic: 

Mesoamerica: 

South America: 

Andes: 

Amazon: 

Plains:

Australia: 

Blaze

0 notes

[marketresearchreportsinsights]

Gold Smelting Market Set to Surpass USD 27.1 billion by 2031 - Latest report by TMR

The global gold smelting market was valued at an estimated USD 20.3 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 27.1 billion by 2031, representing a CAGR of 3.9%. The gold smelting market plays a crucial role in extracting and purifying gold from various sources, transforming it into usable precious metal for diverse applications. This report examines the current state of the market, its key drivers, challenges, and future trends.

Gold smelting is the process of extracting gold from its ore through heating and chemical reactions to separate the precious metal from impurities. It is a critical step in the gold production chain, enabling the transformation of raw materials into high-purity gold bullion or ingots suitable for further processing or investment.

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Growth Drivers and Opportunities:

• Focus on responsible sourcing: Growing emphasis on ethical sourcing and responsible supply chains in the gold industry creates opportunities for regulated and sustainable smelting practices. • Advancements in hydrometallurgy: Adoption of eco-friendly hydrometallurgical techniques for gold refining helps reduce environmental impact compared to traditional methods. • Integration of digital technologies: Utilization of blockchain technology and digital platforms can enhance transparency and traceability in the gold supply chain. • Rising demand for high-purity gold: Increasing demand for high-purity gold in electronics and certain industrial applications necessitates advanced refining techniques.

Market Growth:

This growth is driven by several factors: • Rising demand for refined gold: The increasing demand for gold from various industries, including jewelry, electronics, and investment, necessitates continuous refining of raw gold materials. • Growing recycling of gold: A significant portion of the gold supply comes from recycling, especially from end-of-life jewelry and electronics, contributing to the demand for gold smelting services. • Expansion of gold mining: Increased gold exploration and mining activities globally generate more raw gold material that requires refining before entering the market. • Technological advancements: Advancements in smelting technologies like hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy are improving efficiency, reducing environmental impact, and enabling the processing of complex gold-bearing materials.

Key Players:

The gold smelting market is dominated by established players, with some regional variations. Major players include: Chongjin Gold Corporation, Ronghua Industry Group Co. Ltd., Ohio precious metals LLC, Global Advanced Metals, Chenzhou Mining Group Co. Ltd., Johnson Matthey Ltd., Materion, Ohio precious metals LLC, Gannon and Scott, Aida Chemical Industries Co. Ltd., Yuyuan Tourist Mart Zijin Mining Group Co. Ltd., and OJSC Kolyma Refinery.

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Recent Developments:

• Focus on sustainability: Smelters are increasingly adopting environmentally friendly practices, such as reducing energy consumption and minimizing waste generation. • Growing demand for traceable gold: Consumers are demanding ethically sourced and traceable gold, prompting smelters to implement stringent sourcing practices and certification schemes. • Expansion into emerging markets: Established players are entering new markets with high growth potential, particularly in Asia Pacific and Africa.

Strategies for Market Players

• Technology Investment: Investment in R&D to develop and commercialize innovative smelting technologies with higher efficiency, lower emissions, and reduced environmental impact. • Market Diversification: Diversification of product and service offerings to target emerging markets such as small-scale mining operations, artisanal gold producers, and industrial end-users.

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Transparency Market Research, a global market research company registered at Wilmington, Delaware, United States, provides custom research and consulting services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insights for thousands of decision makers. Our experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools & techniques to gather and analyses information.

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[tifoti]

The Mask of Sorrow is a monument located on a hill above Magadan, Russia, commemorating the many prisoners who suffered and died in the Gulag prison camps in the Kolyma region of the Soviet Union during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

It consists of a large concrete statue of a face, with tears coming from the left eye in the form of small masks. The right eye is in the form of a barred window. The backside portrays a weeping young woman and a man on a cross with his head hanging backward. Inside is a replication of a typical Stalin-era prison cell. Below the Mask of Sorrow are stone markers bearing the names of many of the forced-labor camps of the Kolyma, as well as others designating the various religions and political systems of those who suffered there.

The statue was unveiled on June 12, 1996 with the help of the Russian government and financial contributions from seven Russian cities, including Magadan. The design was created by the sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, whose parents fell victim to the Stalinist purges of the 1930s; the monument was constructed by Kamil Kazaev. It is 15 meters high and takes up 56 cubic meters of space.

Wiki

[nicklloydnow]

“Toward the end of The Brothers Karamazov, as the prosecutor Ippolit Kirillovich makes his case for Dmitri Karamazov’s condemnation, he brings up the image of two abysses between which the defendant, in his view, is caught. One is the “abyss beneath us, an abyss of the lowest and foulest degradation,” while the other is “the abyss above us, an abyss of lofty ideals.” “Two abysses, gentlemen,” says the prosecutor, “in one and the same moment — without that […] our existence is incomplete.”

This image of the two intertwined abysses can be said to be a picture of Russia itself. The basest and the highest, the most despicable and the noblest, profanity and sainthood, total cynicism and winged idealism, all meet here. Andrei Tarkovsky has an uncanny ability to articulate this synthesis of opposites into a mystical vision of sorts — most of his films take the viewer from the depths of a dark, corrupted world all the way up to a realm of splendors and a vision of beatitude. In Andrei Rublev that happens literally as, at the end of the film, you are led from a black-and-white “vale of tears,” all mud and blood, to the serene contemplation of Rublev’s divine images, all in full color now. Outsiders may find this hard to take, but for a Russian sensibility such a transition is a natural movement. There is no break here, just the normal traffic between the two abysses of the soul.

Since the two abysses cannot be disjointed, along with the abyss of Katyn and of the Ukrainian famine, East Europeans get to know intimately the other one as well: the abyss of “lofty ideals” — of Russian literature, music, cinema, philosophy, and religious thought. Stalin has marked Eastern Europe forever, but so have Dostoevsky, Shostakovich, Tarkovsky, and Shestov. Historically, Russia has caused much suffering in the region, but it has also shaped people’s minds and affected their sense of being in the world. Russia’s cultural proximity has translated for East Europeans into an expanded repertoire of feelings, sensibilities, and states of being. In the long run, the situation has no doubt enriched — philosophically and existentially — the East European cultures.

(…)

Varlam Shalamov, who spent some 17 years in the camps, writes in his Kolyma Tales: “at the age of 30 I found myself in a very real sense dying from hunger and literally fighting for a piece of bread.” The task that he, along with other Gulag writers, sets himself is precisely to map out these gray areas where humanity dissolves into inhumanity. The job is tremendous because you have not only to live in hell with some dignity, but also to write about it with a certain degree of compassion, which under the circumstances is next to impossible. “All human emotions,” says Shalamov, “love, friendship, envy, concern for one’s fellow man, compassion, longing for fame, honesty,” all of them “had left us with the flesh that had melted from our bodies during our long fasts.” The camp was a “great test of our moral strength, of our everyday morality, and 99 percent of us failed it.” These places “do not permit men to remain men; that is not what camps were created for.”

It may well be because East Europeans have known Russia’s abyss of the “lowest and foulest degradation” so intimately that they are in a good position to look into its abyss “of lofty ideals.” Having survived the Russian tanks, or secret police, or brainwashing, you are placed in an ideal situation to understand the greats of Russian letters. That may explain why Varlam Shalamov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Eugenia Ginzburg, and other authors of camp literature have been some of the best-received Russian writers in Eastern Europe. They describe states of being and limit-situations that East Europeans have known, too. The latter, too, have been there, whether actually or vicariously. Herta Müller may have never spent time in the Gulag, but she writes as if she has. In The Hunger Angel, she identifies herself with the camp dwellers so completely that her novel seems to come straight out of Siberia. “Never was I so resolutely opposed to death as in the five years in the camp,” says The Hunger Angel’s narrator-hero. “To combat death you don’t need much of a life, just one that isn’t yet finished.” This may well have been uttered by Shalamov himself.

(…)

Smerdyakovism is an obscure, yet tremendous force that runs deep throughout Russian history. Its basic principle is formulated succinctly by the lackey himself: “The Russian people need thrashing.” Why? Just because. Smerdyakovism flares up especially in the form of leaders and institutions that rule through terror alone; repression for the sake of repression. Its impact is overwhelming, its memory traumatic, and its social effects always paralyzing. Joseph Conrad sees “something inhuman,” from another world, in these Smerdyakovian institutions. The government of Tsarist Russia, relying on an omnipresent, omnipotent secret police, and “arrogating to itself the supreme power to torment and slaughter the bodies of its subjects like a God-sent scourge, has been most cruel to those whom it allowed to live under the shadow of its dispensation.” And that was just the beginning.

It was Stalin who brought Smerdyakovism to perfection. Under his rule, Smerdyakov starved to death millions of Ukrainian peasants and killed tens of thousands of Polish prisoners. In Siberia he built a vast network of camps and prisons whereby a significant part of Russia’s population was turned into slave labor. All this for no particular reason — just because. In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn documents the whole thing in maddening detail. The Great Terror that Stalin orchestrated and put into practice with the help of the NKVD in the late 1930s is perhaps the most eloquent example of Smerdyakovism in 20th-century Russia. Without any trace of rational justification, the country’s artistic, scientific, political, and military elites were decimated within a few years. Some of its best writers, scientists, engineers, and generals received then a bullet in the head. Among them was Pavel Florensky (1882-1937), philosopher, theologian, mathematician, physicist — one of the greatest minds Russia ever had, often called the “Russian da Vinci.” And so was Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), one of its finest poets. But maybe we should not be surprised that Stalin killed poets: after all, Smerdyakov never liked poetry. “Verse is nonsense,” “who on earth talks in rhymes?” he complains. “Verse is no good.”

The more fascinating the philosophical vistas opened up by The Brothers Karamazov, the more puzzling its author. Dostoevsky is a complicated case. As a creative artist, he is as insightful as it gets. He has given us access to regions of the human soul that few before or after him have. He is bold, visionary, and uncannily prophetic. As a novelist, Dostoevsky is a most generous demiurge: each of his novels emerges as a universe in its own right, a polyphonic world where characters have their distinct voices, independent from their author’s. Yet as a journalist Dostoevsky can be embarrassing. He was narrow-minded, often mediocre, and parochial, when not openly xenophobic and anti-Semitic. This Dostoevsky — the nationalist, the inveterate Slavophile for whom Russia was a “God-bearing country” that had some natural right over others — would have likely approved of Putin’s efforts to save Ukraine from the paws of the godless West. Ever since he died Dostoevsky has not ceased to supply Russia’s political establishment with ideas, one fancier than the next.

(…)

Putin, too, is Smerdyakov. The institution that created him (the KGB) is one of the most Smerdyakovian institutions ever devised. His unapologetic defense of the Soviet Union and his attempts to revive it, his recycling of the Stalinist propaganda machine, the silencing of human rights movements all over Russia, the manner in which he annihilates his opponents — all are signs that Smerdyakovism enjoys a new life in today’s Russia. Most significant of all, however, is Putin’s recent vivisection of Ukraine; Smerdyakov’s signature is all over it. An army of faceless, nameless, insignia-less “little green men” who steal themselves into the country under the cover of night and, before anyone knows it, cut off a piece of it. Since they do everything on the sly, and the whole operation looks more Mafia-like than military, people liken Putin’s army to a gang of thugs. That’s inaccurate: the “little green men” are not thugs, they are Smerdyakovs in action. There is nothing fake about them; their modus operandi is the lackey’s 100 percent.

To be sure, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is not Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. They are both Smerdyakovian, but, by its very nature, Smerdyakovism is protheic, multidimensional, complex. Stalin’s Smerdykovism manifests itself especially in his “just because” acts, while Putin’s in his anonymous, cowardly mode of operation. But that’s little consolation to an Eastern Europe traumatized for centuries by its stronger, always erratic, always drunk-like neighbor. For these countries the danger does not necessarily come from Putin or Stalin personally, but from Russia’s timeless Smerdyakovism, of which they are only temporary embodiments.”

“As an American, there is a lot that I admire about Russia. But if I were Ukrainian, I think I would hate Russia from the depths of my soul for this.

(…)

Occurs to me that something similar might be said of the American South. Minnesota is by most standards a better place to live than Mississippi, whose history includes great poverty and racist cruelty. But then again, Minnesota never produced a Faulkner, a Welty, or a Percy, and could not have done. I’m not putting Minnesota down over this. I’m just saying that Mississippi, and the American South in general, is abyssal in the same tragic way as Russia’s. Think about it: Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit is Smerdyakov.”

[ivanseledkin]

Магадан

Дорога в Магадан / Road to Magadan В сентябре этого года мне довелось проехать автостопом по трассе Р504 «Колыма» протяжённостью 2032 километра. В связи с развитием горнодобывающей промышленности в 1920-х годах, в Якутии и на Колыме Советское государство начало создавать сеть местных дорог. В ноябре 1931 года был создан «Дальстрой» — «Государственный трест по промышленному и дорожному строительству в районе Верхней Колымы», одной из задач которого стала постройка автодороги от Магадана до Усть-Неры и ответвления на Якутск с использованием труда заключённых Севвостлага. Летом 1932 года заключёнными и вольнонаёмными специалистами были введены в эксплуатацию первые 30 км дороги и 90 км зимника. Остальные 1042 км до Усть-Неры строились до 1953 года. In September of this year, I hitchhiked along the P504 Kolyma highway with a length of 2032 kilometers. Due to the development of the mining industry in the 1920s, in Yakutia and Kolyma, the Soviet state began to create a network of local roads. In November 1931, Dalstroy, the State Trust for Industrial and Road Construction in the Upper Kolyma Region, was created, one of the tasks of which was the construction of a highway from Magadan to Ust-Nera and a branch to Yakutsk using the labor of prisoners from Sevvostlag. In the summer of 1932, the first 30 km of the road and 90 km of the winter road were put into operation by prisoners and civilian specialists. The remaining 1,042 km to Ust-Nera were built until 1953.

Read the web version: 2.nn.org.ru Do you like the blog? I will accept your gratitude

[bookoffixedstars]

Tomasz Kizny (1958) - Remains of the Butugychag' Mine, Kolyma region, North-Eastern Russia, 1995.

source

[mostly-history]

Opening of a new livestock breeding complex of the Bytantay farm for 120 Yakutian cattle, in the village of Batagay-Alta (Sakha Republic, Russia, 2018).

The Eveno-Bytantaysky District is the only region where Yakutian cattle are kept in genetic purity.  Their remote location has helped to keep the breed pure.

Yakutian cattle are relatively small, and they can survive at very low temperatures.  They grow subcutaneous fat very quickly during the short pasture season, and can survive through the poor feed conditions of winter.  Other adaptations to the cold are a thick winter coat, a fur-covered udder or scrotum, and low metabolic rates at low temperatures.

The Yakuts people brought their cattle with them when they migrated from the southern Baikal regions to the lower reaches of the Lena, Yana, Indigirka and Kolyma Rivers in the 1200s.  They also brought with them the Yakutian horse, which along with the cattle formed the basis of the Sakha culture of meat and dairy livestock.

Yakutian cattle remained purebred until 1929, when there was extensive crossbreeding with other breeds.  Many other cattle varieties were lost due to this, but the Yakutian breed was saved thanks to traditional cattle breeders and scientists.  Today, there are about 1200 pure Yakutian cattle in the Sakha Republic, most of them in the Eveno-Bytantaysky District.

[briannaisuntitledatpresstime]

“In those first days, there were mixed feelings. I remember two: fear and insult. Everything had happened and there was no information: the government was silent, the doctors were silent. The regions waited for directions from the oblast, the oblast from Minsk, and Minsk from Moscow. It was a long, long chain, and at the end of it a few people made the decisions. We turned out to be defenseless. That was the main feeling in those days. Just a few people were deciding our fate, the fate of millions.

“At the same time, a few people could kill us all. They weren’t maniacs, and they weren’t criminals. They were just ordinary workers at a nuclear power plant. When I understood that, I experienced a very strong shock. Chernobyl opened an abyss, something beyond Kolyma, Auschwitz, the Holocaust. A person with an ax and a bow, or a person with a grenade launcher and gas chambers, can’t kill everyone. But with an atom . . .”

—Lyudmila Dmitrievna Polenkaya, village teacher, evacuated from the Chernobyl Zone, in a letter reprinted in Voices from Chernobyl (p. 185) by Svetlana Alexsievich.

[autodidact-adventures]

Siberian History (Part 4): Native Peoples

By the time Russia began their conquest of Siberia, there were already around 140 different native peoples living there.  Pastoral nomads, with cattle and sheep herds, roamed the south-western steppes; forest nomads hunted and fished in the taiga; reindeer nomads drove their great herds along fixed routes in the tundra.

Agriculture was practised in the Amur River Valley, but only on a basic level.  In the extreme north-east, tribes hunted wild reindeer or whales, walruses and seals along the shores of the Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk.

Some of the tribes living in the steppes and forest regions were in the Iron Age, and had developed links with China and Central Asia. Those living in the tundra regions were in the Stone Age.

The Paleosiberian peoples were the descendants of Siberia's prehistoric inhabitants.  They include:

In the north-east – the Chukchi, Yukaghir, Siberian Yupik (used to be called the Asiatic Eskimos) and Kamchadals.  The Kamchadals covers all the peoples living on the Kamchatka Peninsula, including the Ainu, Alyutors (in the north, and also on the Chukchi Peninsula), Chuvans, Itelmens and Koryaks.  Also living in the north-east were the Kereks, who during the 1900s were almost completely assimilated into the Chukchi.

On the lower Yenisei River – the Ket (used to be called the Yenisei Ostyaks).

On the northern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula – the Alutor.

In the lower Amur River Basin & the northern half of Sakhalin Island – the Nivkh.

On the southern half of Sakhalin Island & the Kuril Islands – the Ainu.

[The Yukaghir are one of the oldest peoples in North-East Asia, but they do not speak a Paleo-Siberian language.]

From the 200s AD onwards, Neosiberian tribes began to join the original inhabitants:

Finno-Ugric peoples – the Khanty (old name Ostyaks), Mansi (old name Voguls), and Samoyedic peoples (the name comes from “Samoyed”, an obsolete term for some indigenous Siberian peoples).  The Samoyedic peoples were the Nenets, Enets, Nganasans and Yurats (Northern Samoyeds); and the Kamasins, Koibal, Mators and Selkups (Southern Samoyeds).  The Yurats, Kamasins, Koibal and Mators now no longer exist.

Turkic peoples – including the Siberian Tatars, Yakuts, Chuvash, Dolgans and Tuvans.

Tungusic peoples (sometimes called the Manchu-Tungus) – including the Evenks (old name Tungus) and Evens (old name Lamuts).  They are sometimes grouped together as “Evenic”.  There were also the Nanai people (old name Goldi).

The Mongols – subgroups in Russia are the Buryats and Kalmyks. There were also the Daur people, who nowadays mostly live in north-eastern China.

The Khanty & Mansi were semi-nomadic, living in the forests and marshes of the Ob-Irtysh Basin.  The Samoyedic peoples were reindeer herders, roaming the Yamal and Taymyr Peninsulas, as well as the tundra west of the Yenisei River.

The Yakuts lived in the Lena Valley.  They had settlements along the headwaters of the Yana, Indigirka and Kolyma Rivers.

The Evenks lived in a region that stretched east from the Yenisei Valley to the Pacific Ocean.  The Evens, cousins to the Evenk, lived on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk.  The Nanai people lived on the middle Amur Basin.

During the 1200s and 1300s, the Buryats established themselves in areas of steppeland around the southern end of Lake Baikal.

In the 1600s, some (or all) of the Daur people were living along the Shilka River, upper Amur River, Zeya River, and Bureya River.  In 1640, the Qing Dynasty crushed the Evenk-Daur Federation, and the Amur Daurs came under their influence.

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Apart from the Siberian Tatars, who were Muslims, all the native Siberian peoples followed pagan religions.

The Buryats and Yakuts were descendants of Central Asian pastoral nomads, and were the most advanced of all the Siberian peoples.  They kept cattle & horses, and had clan chiefs.

The reindeer-herding peoples had no (or little?) institutionalized hierarchy, congregating regularly as small family bands for councils and seasonal rituals, or to share meat from hunts.  Those in the far nothern tundra had a hard life, following their great reindeer herds from place to place, pausing only long enough for the reindeer to paw up the snow for moss around their encampment.

The Koryaks of northern Kamchatka were probably the most isolated. They roamed over great moss-covered steppes, among extinct volcano peaks 1.2km above sea level, sometimes enveloped in drifting clouds, swept by frequent rainstorms and snowstorms.

[sabath68]

Kolyma - Exposé of the Soviet Union's Most Brutal Siberian Concentration...

This film, based on eyewitness testimony, details the most notorious gulag in Siberia - and some of its horrific crimes and atrocities.

The Kolyma region (Russian: Колыма]) is located in part of the Russian Far East. It is bounded by the East Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean in the north and the Sea of Okhotsk to the south. The extremely remote region gets its name from the Kolyma River and mountain range, parts of which were not discovered until 1926.

The Kolyma, part inside the Arctic Circle, is characterized by frigidly cold winters lasting up to six months of the year. Permafrost and tundra cover a large part of the region. Average winter temperatures range from -19 °C to -38 °C (even lower in the interior), and average summer temperatures, from +3 °C to +16 °C.

In the Stalinist era, Kolyma became the most notorious region for the Gulag labor camps. A million or more people may have died en route to the area or in the Kolyma's series of gold mining, road building, lumbering, and construction camps between 1932 and 1954. It was Kolyma's reputation that caused Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, to characterize it as the "pole of cold and cruelty" in the Gulag system. The Mask of Sorrow monument in Magadan commemorates all those who died in the Kolyma forced-labour camps. (Source: Wikipedia)