Perpetradores y víctimas en Chile

1.1 Etymology of the name Siberia

In spite of having been a constant focal point of on-going study and exploration, Siberia, a region so vast that it has been described as the eighth continent63 appears in many ways just as elusive today as it was to the first Europeans who ventured into it a millennium ago. Just the sheer size of the territory makes it almost impossible to pin down.

Even the origin of the toponym, Siberia, remains a mystery and a topic of speculation. Several sources refer to an origin closely related to words in the languages spoken by the original inhabitants of various parts of the region, including those of ancient Ugric, Tatar or Mongolian tribes according to Guzarov,64 while Chinese chroniclers claim the word to be of Chinese origin, dating back to 1206 CE.65 In fact, Stolberg attributes the oldest reference found so far mentioning the Siberian ‘forest people’ to a Chinese source, based on an older Mongol chronicle that gives a description of ‘their life, their customs, and their economy.’66

She also points out that until the 18th century, Western maps originally showed the northern part of Asia not as ‘Siberia’, (in Russian ‘Сибирь’ Sibir) but as ‘Great Tatary,’ an earlier Russian geographical term.

63

Ziegler, G. Der achte Kontinent : die Eroberung Sibiriens. Berlin, 2005.

64

Guzarov: Гузаров, В. Н. История Сибири. Томск, 2012.

65

Baikalov, A. Notes on the Origin of the Name ‘Siberia’. The Slavonic and East European

Review 1950, 29(72). 66

Stolberg, E. The Siberian Frontier and Russia's Position in World History: A Reply to Aust and Nolte Author(s). German Perspectives 2004, 27(3): 245.

36 In the 13th century Arab travellers and merchants referred to the area around the upper valley of the Irtysh River as ‘Ibis-Shibir’ whereas a hundred years later, the first West- European reference to the region appears under the name of ‘Sebur’ in the Catalan World Atlas of 1357. A claim has also been made for a Russian origin of the word, ‘север’ meaning north, though, as Lessner points out the obvious, ‘Siberia is east of ancient Russia, not north.’67

Baikalov (1950) finally opts, with a well substantiated argument, for a word of Turkic origin, ‘Su-Berr,’ which refers to a wilderness with plenty of water. This is exactly what the nomadic tribes came across upon migrating north from the arid steppes of Central Asia. His hypothesis is supported by the tendency among tribal people to choose descriptive names for geographical features that are consistent with their appearance. Likewise the Yenisei River, Amur River and Lake Baikal, which have an exotic ring to a foreign ear, are derived from the rather prosaic Turkic and Mongol words for ‘clear water’, ‘black river’ and ‘big lake’. According to Baikalov (1950, 289) the ‘early foreign travellers, chroniclers and geographers mistook the native general designation of these lands for a geographical name and passed it on, distorting it in accordance with the phonetic peculiarities and alphabetical conventions of their own language.’

1.2 Demarcation of the region

The area officially designated as ‘Siberia’, which covers around 10% of the land surface of the earth and about 77% of the surface of the present Russian Federation, has changed over time and has been defined and redefined by different government administrations. Originally, in historical terms, the entire area east of the Ural Mountains up to the Pacific Ocean, including Sakhalin Island, was regarded as Siberia. It was demarcated as the region in the northern part of Asia, confined to the west by the Ural Mountains and to the east and north by oceans (The Pacific and Northern Ice Sea respectively).68

67

Lessner, E. Siberia: Cradle of Conquerors. New York 1955, 3.

68

37 Müller defines Siberia as the wide tract of country ‘which stretches from the confines of Europe to the Eastern Ocean, and from the Frozen Sea to the present frontiers of China.’69

Since the Soviet era, Siberia proper, in the sense of an administrative region, has included the area east of the Ural Mountains only up to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins, with the areas further to the east being treated as a separate geographic entity.

For the purposes of this study, Siberia is regarded according to the pre-Soviet era definition, as the primary source texts to be studied describe locations situated along routes running the entire length of the region, from the Ural Mountains up to and including Sakhalin Island.

1.3 Geography of the region

The extreme climatic conditions of Siberia, ranging from short, warm, on occasion hot, summers to notoriously severe, freezing, seemingly never-ending winters, quickly became legendary as pioneering adventurers started to trickle into the area from European Russia. In correspondence with the hugeness of the region, natural conditions too were found to vary considerably. Siberia, the eastern part of which according to Baikalov is claimed by geologists to be among the most ancient lands on the surface of our planet,70 was found to consist of varying major zones: the tundra in the arctic north, where the land is covered in snow and ice for about ten months of the year, while the taiga stretches to the south, its great forest belt gradually giving way to the woodlands and grass fields of the forest-steppe, which in turn runs into the vast plains of the steppe itself.

69

Müller, G. The Conquest of Siberia. London, 1842, 29. This work is held as a standard early reference on the history of Siberia and one of the first scholarly accounts of the region. Gerhard Müller (1705–1783) was born in the Duchy of Westphalia, He was invited in 1725 to teach at the recently founded Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. He was a member of the Second Kamchatka Expedition to eastern Siberia in 1735 after which the remainder of his life was dedicated to publishing works on the history of Siberia, earning him the position as the first historian to specialise in the history and culture of the region.

70

Baikalov, A. The Conquest and Colonisation of Siberia. The Slavonic and East European

38 Mountains, being mostly confined to one or two regions, did not present too daunting a prospect for explorers and travellers. Ledonne sketched mountains which ‘created an insurmountable obstacle’ between the Altay region and Lake Baikal,71 _{but fortuitously, in this}

instance, the mountains served as a border with a neighbouring country and did not present a hindrance to travellers confining their voyages to Siberia. However, the relative scarcity of insurmountable peaks were more than amply compensated for by numerous enormous, swift flowing rivers, regularly confronting and challenging the voyager.