Sibir

People of the Deer
(1952, revised edition 1975)
The Regiment
(1955, new edition 1973)
Lost in the Barrens
(1956)
The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be
(1957)
Grey Seas Under
(1959)
The Desperate People
(1959, revised edition 1975)
Owls in the Family
(1961)
The Serpent’s Coil
(1961)
The Black Joke
(1962)
Never Cry Wolf
(1963, new edition 1973)
Westviking
(1965)
The Curse of the Viking Grave
(1966)
Canada North
(illustrated edition 1967)
Canada North Now
(revised paperback edition 1976)
This Rock Within the Sea
(with John de Visser)
 (1968, reissued 1976)
The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float
 (1969, illustrated edition 1974)
Sibir
(1970, new edition 1973)
A Whale for the Killing
(1972)
Wake of the Great Sealers
 (with David Blackwood) (1973)
The Snow Walker
(1975)
And No Birds Sang
(1979)
The World of Farley Mowat, a selection from his works
 (edited by Peter Davison) (1980)
Sea of Slaughter
(1984)
My Discovery of America
(1985)
Virunga: The Passion of Dian Fossey
(1987)
The New Founde Land
(1989)

EDITED BY FARLEY MOWAT
Coppermine Journey
(1958)

THE TOP OF THE WORLD TRILOGY
Ordeal by Ice
(1960, revised edition 1973)
The Polar Passion
(1967, revised edition 1973)
Tundra
(1973)

Top of the World

Western Siberia

Eastern Siberia

I
WAS THIRTEEN
years old when I made my first visit to the arctic. Ever since then the northern regions of the world and the people who inhabit them have fascinated me. Over the years I have visited most parts of the Canadian arctic; and I have read extensively about, or travelled in, other northern regions but, until 1966, I knew almost nothing about the realities of the Soviet north. This was not because of any lack of interest on my part; it was because of the almost incredible paucity of information in the West about the “other half of the arctic world.” Most English language sources have painted, and continue to paint, the Soviet arctic and subarctic as a wilderness of trackless forests and snow-covered tundra inhabited mainly by ravening wolves and doomed political prisoners. Even professional northern experts in Canada and the United States seem to have surprisingly little interest in, or knowledge of, the Russian north except insofar as they profess to be concerned about it as a possible springboard for a Red invasion of North America.

By 1965 the Soviets had published several of my northern books in translation and as a result I had been in correspondence with a number of Russian writers. One of these was Yuri Rytkheu, himself an arctic native, born and bred. In the autumn of 1966 he suggested that I visit him. As it happened I had spent that summer making a
comprehensive tour of the Canadian arctic, gathering material for yet another northern book
^*
. The idea of comparing what I had seen in northern Canada with what I might see in the Soviet Union was irresistible. Accordingly I arranged to sail to Leningrad, accompanied by my wife, Claire.

My first visit to the
U.S.S.R.
turned out to be far more extensive than I had anticipated. The most important aspect of it was a 15,000 mile peregrination through Siberia, at the end of which I felt I had acquired some first-hand knowledge of what was taking place in that huge and, for westerners, mysterious region. The idea of writing a book designed to dispel some of our misconceptions about Siberia naturally occurred to me on my return to Canada, but I did not feel I knew enough, as yet, to warrant such a book. A second trip seemed to be called for but I was not able to find the time until the autumn of 1969 when, accompanied by photographer John de Visser, I again returned to the Soviet Union. Yuri Rytkheu met us and we three travelled together for some 14,000 miles from the Ural Mountains to the Sea of Okhotsk, from the Mongolian border to the Arctic Ocean. This book is the outcome of these two journeys.

A word about the problems of collecting information in the Soviet Union. I speak no Russian and made no real attempt to learn the language. In my experience it is a mistake to speak a foreign language badly. Local people tend to assume you understand it much better than you do and will use their own tongue in conversation with you. However, if they realize that you are a linguistic dub they will often make the effort to communicate in
your
language. To a surprising degree the people I met in Russia were able to do just this. Most of my major informants spoke reasonably good English or French. Those
who did not conversed with me through Yuri or through interpreters. To obviate errors as much as possible I made use of a portable tape-recorder. On my first journey both Claire and my interpreter took comprehensive notes so I had three independent sets of notes to work from. During my second journey Yuri acted as a check on the interpreters to ensure that I missed nothing of importance.

Statistics are always a problem. To some extent they have to be accepted at face value, but whenever it was possible to check them through other sources I took care to do so. The statistics I have used here appeared, on the basis of what I saw with my own eyes, to be believable. The population figures I have used are not official because the last Siberian census was in 1964, and was an interim one. The figures I have used – given in round numbers – are the informed estimates of the appropriate local officials.

A word about money comparisons. The ruble had an official exchange value of $1.22 Canadian during both my visits. However a socialist country provides so many economic side benefits that to directly compare, for example, the ruble income of a Soviet truck driver with the dollar income of his North American counterpart would be misleading. In terms of the benefits a Russian worker receives over and above his salary, and the relatively small deductions to which he is subject for taxes and social services, his wages have a real value on the order of two to three times their apparent one. This is a point usually ignored by western writers.

It is our common practice to use the word “Russia” as a generic term to embrace the whole of the
U.S.S.R.
; and to identify the citizens of that entire region as “Russians.” The fact is that there are fifteen distinct Soviet Socialist Republics in the Union, and the “Russian” one – the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic – itself contains sixteen Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, and five Autonomous Regions and
ten National Districts, most of which are not ethnically Russian. Nevertheless, for the sake of simplicity, I have employed “Russia” and “Russians” in their sloppy but widely accepted western usage.