323. Drang Nach Osten Russian Style 😪
“Куда идем мы с Пятачком, большой, большой секрет.” [1]
B. Zahoder, Song from the animation “Winnie the Pooh”
“She followed him to Siberia and ruined all his hard labor sentence.”
Unknown author
“Since Siberia exists, and it has a known use to you at times, I would like to relocate young bored officers and beauties with upset nerves there. "You're asking for a passport to Paris, so here's your passport to Tobolsk."”
A. de Custine
“Чтобы не попасть в капкан,
Чтобы в темноте не заблудиться,
Чтобы никогда с пути не сбиться
Чтобы в нужном месте приземлиться, приводниться,
Начерти на карте план.
И шагай и пой беспечно,
Тири-тири-там-там-тирам,
Встреча обеспечена, в плане все отмечено,
Точно, безупречно и пунктиром,
Тири-тири-там-там-тирам, жирненьким пунктиром,
Тири-тири-там-там-тирам, жирненьким пунктиром.” [2]
V. Vysotsky, ‘Song about the plans’
Russia 1890s.
Problem with a progress. Of course, progress was presumably a good thing, especially in moderation, but after the first ever census in the Russian Empire was conducted in 1897 the government found that population of the empire exceeded 100,000,000. For which, obviously, the progress was to blame: the greatly improved medical services and better living standards cut on the infant, and not only, mortality rates. On one hand this probably a cause for celebration but OTOH the fast growth brought up the obvious question how to fed all that growing population and had it occupied: by the same census, 35% of the population in European Russia were “excessive”.
The times of Peter the Great, when population of the whole gubernias could be mobilized to dig some really big hole in a ground “from here to dinner” and then abandon activity because sovereign suddenly lost interest had been long gone and it was expected that the population has to figure out how to keep itself busy in a gainful manner. But it still was something of a government’s responsibility to see that there is a
physical possibility to find a meaningful occupation. Fortunately, now the government had in its disposal a giant resource of a collective wisdom of the State Duma and elected part of the Council of State. Surely,
they will be able to come with something meaningful. The people’s representatives took the challenge quite seriously and after a prolonged and heated debate came with the astonishing discovery that there is a need of much more agricultural land. From this point of consensus the opinions varied in a wide range from confiscation and redistribution of the big estates and to a massive resettlement of the peasants out of the European Russia. These options, and everything in between, had been severely criticized by the proponents of other ideas and discussion was running in the circles.
The seemingly obvious solution involving Eastward migration was scaring bejesus out of many Duma’s members and of the administrators as well because the ongoing experience was looking as a mixed blessing to do the difficulties related to the handling migration even in the existing volumes. The ideas of what may go wrong with a much greater migration were plain scary.
A meaningful proposal came from an unexpected corner. Young governor of Saratov, Pyotr Stolypin, [3] sent a detailed proposal regarding a program of
organized mass resettlement into the Eastern parts of the Russian Empire. He was summoned to the interview with the Emperor, impressed him with his “Modernity and efficiency” platform and, following the venerable tradition that the initiative is punishable, was made Minister of Internal Affairs.
Earlier history. Historically, the noticeable peasants’ resettlement to the Asiatic Russia started in the mid-XIX but it was not an organized process. The peasants had been moving on their own risk and expense with a minimal or no government’s involvement along the route or at the destination point. Taking into an account a hardship and complexity of a travel, usually, the resettlers had been traveling in the big groups.
Those who made it to the area which they considered suitable had been just grabbing a piece of a free land to be settled upon. Initially, there were enough of the good, easy to develop, places and many of the “old settlers” had been doing just fine either individually or within a communal model which made survival in the new place easier. The model was somewhat different from one in European Russia because the land was available and there were no estate owners. In general, the reasonably successful settlers were ending up being better off than their counterparts in European Russia: they had bigger and better houses and more livestock.
But with more people coming, the “good” free lands became in a short supply and when government opened for settlement the state land in Altai region, the issue became even more complicated because these lands were given as a rental property with the long-term contract.
So, as the first step of an organized program, government started doing some mapping of the lands for resettlement, with the officials being in charge of their distribution. In many cases these lands were not immediately ready for the agricultural usage and required a considerable amount of work (cutting the forest, drying the swamp, etc.), and quite often a collective one. Due to the shortage of funds, the government’s role was more or less limited to the land distribution and establishing the primitive temporary camps for the migrants to stay until they get a land slot assigned. After that, the settlers were getting a small loan and were mostly on their own.
This arrangement soon enough proved to be inadequate and in Siberia and the Far East, special resettlement areas were allocated, each of which created resettlement organizations that had to do land drainage, hydrotechnical and road batches, warehouses of agricultural machinery, agronomic departments, their own schools and hospitals. Two districts (Western and Eastern) were allocated on the Siberian Highway to organize the movement of migrants. The instruction of the Settlers Administration indicated that newcomers should settle in specially designated vacant plots of land, and not in villages of old-timers to avoid the conflicts over the land. Of course, this was all nice on a paper but in a reality the Settlers administration sometimes did not have resources to accomplish all planned work in a needed volume and the migrants were sent to the places which were mapped but not fully prepared.
The flow was still manageable but then the TransSib kicked in adding a completely new dimension in the terms of a volume. To start with, how to transport these settlers? Initially, the settlers were moving with their livestock and household items so the 1st solution was to allow one or few families to take a small two-axel railroad car part of which was the “living quarters” and the rest of the space was occupied by the animals, food (the settlers had to provide their own) and household stuff.
Now the number of resettlements and the rate of resettlement
greatly exceeded the pace of preparation of the sites for settlement and the earlier problems grew on steroids because funding of the existing institutions was well behind the needs. There were not enough officials for this work, their qualifications did not always meet the requirements, there were bribery and corruption. This led to violations of the settlement order: in many places they did not have time and resources to prepare sections and to lead roads to them. Resettlement points were still under construction, and the settlers have already arrived. Loans were issued not in full, but in parts, sometimes very insignificant. The established loan of 150 rubles was too small to get a farm and feed for two years until the first harvest was obtained. The same applied to the available amounts of livestock, agricultural equipment, etc. As a result, the settlers were often finding themselves in the extremely hard situation, which could be dealt with only by a collective effort and even then with difficulty.
The process of getting used to living in the area was difficult. The settlers from the Southern gubernias met with unusual climatic and weather conditions. Siberia is characterized by weather volatility - stable and prolonged winter cold, returnable spring and autumn early frosts, as well as droughts that repeat after about three years for the fourth, and the strongest - in 10 years, are often biennial. Other methods of agricultural work, intensification of labor in a short time, the most favorable for agricultural activities, were required. Many settlers went bankrupt and returned to their native places. The rate of return was over 10%. There are many reasons for the departure of settlers: lack of land plots and their real quality; unsatisfactory work of resettlement stations; difficulties in the development of new lands, especially in the areas close to taiga forest; the discrepancy between weather and climatic conditions familiar in European Russia; arbitrariness of officials and personal motives.
(The map below shows settlement density in Siberia and Central Asia)
New boss in charge. Initially, Stolypin viewed the whole program exclusively along the lines of it being the “safety valve” for placing the extra population but after visiting the area he recognized its economic potential and came with a plan for the future development:
- There were still areas suitable for settlement, which meant that the program had to be continued and even expanded. As practical measures to continue resettlement, it was proposed to carry out a set of measures to prepare the hard-to-reach areas for settlement: drainage wetlands, forest uprooting in taiga areas and road construction. At least one third of the “colonization fund” had to be allocated for the individual settlements.
- Allocate considerable funds for creating social infrastructure in the new regions by increasing construction of the hospitals, schools and churches. It was proposed to expand food aid to the settlers in the years of crop failures and to introduce advanced agronomic methods.
- To change the agrarian policy in Siberia towards "accommodating the establishment of better, more profitable forms of land tenure and land use." It was proposed to abandon the preservation of state ownership of land transferred to settlers, to embark on the path of creating and strengthening private property in Siberia as firmly as in European Russia. To solve this problem, it was planned to adopt a new law on Siberian land management. One of the first tasks was encouragement of the individual ownership.
- In Stolypin’s estimates, very soon the Siberia and Steppes Region will be able to produce a considerable surplus of the agricultural products, especially grain and butter, which could be exported.
Within the first 4 years the annual sums allocated for the food purchase and medical services grew from 213 788 rubles to 1 313 717 rubles and a number of the medical stations grew from 152 with 263 doctors and paramedics to 475 with more than 800 of medical personnel.
Purchase and sale of the land had been permitted and a branch of the Peasant Bank was opened in Omsk for this purpose. Creating of the individual farms proved to be more successful than expected and the idea became popular even among the old-timers. As a result, in 4 years more than 40% of the agricultural land was in the individual ownership and in some gubernias it was over 50%. Due to the growing demand, the offices responsible for the land measuring and other activities related to getting out of the communal land had been getting increasing funding.
Logistics. Arrangements related to the transportation improved as well. To start with, now the settlers were expected to purchase the livestock and agricultural implements at the destination point [4]. Which meant that a new type of the transporting railroad cars had to be introduced to handle the greater numbers, the “cars of the 4th class”. It had separate compartments for the limited amount of a household items and more space for the passengers with the benches unfolded to provide sleeping arrangements at night.
There were also converted cargo cars with a sliding door in the center. In the middle of the car there was a fairly large free area with an iron stove, the pipe of which went up through the ceiling. Around the stove there were benches or boxes on which you could sit. At the front and at the end of the car, two level bunks stretched 2.5 m to its entire width. Luggage could be kept under the bunks and in the headboard or in separate luggage cars.
There was one more aspect of the problem. The re-settlers were traveling by a special discounted tariff and, as a result, had to use special cars. But they were appearing on the railroad stations at unpredictable times and in unpredictable numbers.
Minister of Transportation: “
Currently, the movement of migrants by rail is spontaneous, migrants are at the station when they please and in an unlimited number, in the vast majority of cases without any warning to the railway administration, which, as a result, is not always able to provide without delay their necessary number of special cars and trains for transportation; settlers are remaining at the stations and waiting for being seated under the sky because station can’t accommodate all of them.”
Therefore, the settlers required a sufficient number of special trains running on a known schedule and organized placing in them. A huge number of people who were forced to spend a lot of time in the cramped railroad cars needed medical care, food and water. Situation was aggravated by the fact that the settlers went with whole families, with children and the elderly. They were carrying a lot of luggage with them. All this put a huge burden on the railway network and on officials of the resettlement department.
It was impossible to handle situation without close cooperation between the General Directorate of Land Management and Agriculture and the Ministry of Transportation. Finally, they developed a schedule of the special migrant trains with the migrants being divided into the groups based upon the destination point. Now, before the departure local representative of Land Management and Agriculture was checking the list of migrants, selecting a group leader to hold the travel documentation and making sure that all of them passed medical examination to prevent appearance of the sick on a train. Doctors had to prevent contagious patients from entering trains, monitor the health of passengers along the entire route, provide timely medical care to the sick, monitor the cleanliness of the cars, the quality of water and food. Each train of 10 cars with a number of seats of no more than 127 had a special sanitary car with medical personnel. In addition, numerous medical and food points were established along the route of the transfer train. Their function was to provide medical care and supply resettlement passengers with water and food. Medical care, both on the train and at medical and food resettlement points, was provided to migrants free of charge. But they had to buy food and water at their own expense (a portion cost 2 - 4 kopecks), about which they were warned in advance. An exception was made for children under the age of 10: they were given food, water and milk free of charge.
Of course, not all the rules were universally followed either due to the sloppiness of the officials in charge or simply due to the shortage of available resources.
Quite often the rivers were the only way to get from the nearest railway station to the place of settlement and for those using the steamships, there was also a special lowered tariff. But quite a few had been going the old way, by the rafts.
System starts working. Stolypin was appointed in 1897 and within 3 years the results were showing:
- Size of a developed agricultural land in the Russian Asia increased from 6,750,000 hectares to 11,000,000.
- Average annual grain production in Siberia grew from 172,100,000 puds (1 pud = 16 kg) to 286,200,000.
- Number of the cattle grew from 11,900,000 to 18,600,000.
- Sharply increased the butter production: from 1,000,000 puds to 4,500,000 making it a noticeable export item.
- Purchases of the agricultural equipment kept growing. Numbers of the hay mowers, horse rakes, threshers in Siberia were only 2 times smaller than in European Russia, with a population of twelve times smaller.
One of the big non-technical problem was “Chelyabinsk Wall”. As soon as the TransSib was constructed, the big landowners of the European Russia out of fear of a big influx of a cheap agricultural products from Asia insisted on establishing an internal tariff for the grain coming from the East and it took a considerable effort to put this wall down. Actually, with the growing demand, domestic and foreign, for grain the prices did not went down after removing this tariff.
Siberian butter. “Butter Rush" began in Siberia at the end of the XIX century: historians call the starting point of 1886, when merchant A. Y. Pamfilova built the first butter factory on the Black River in Tyumen Uyezd. Well, soon the first Laval separators appeared in Siberian villages, which made it possible to produce not primitive melted, but high-quality butter. At this time, throughout Europe, and above all in England, there was a frantic demand for butter, and after the opening of the TransSiberian Railway, butter-making began to spread throughout Siberia at the speed of a steppe fire: butter was whipped not only by peasants, but also by traders, officials, and even clergy. At the turn of the century, 275 butter factories were already operating on the territory from Tyumen to Krasnoyarsk. Naturally, the development of butter business gave impetus to a sharp increase in the number of livestock. For example, only in Tomsk gubernia there were more than 2 million cows at the end of the XIX century.
Initially, the production and sale were rather chaotic. Most of the butter-producing plants were small businesses with 2-3 employees and the export business was mostly in the hands of foreign (predominantly Danish) companies. But this bonanza did not last long. The Siberian big producers got enough capital and experience to handle the profitable business on their own.
A major local butter producer, Balakshin, in 1897 sent his son Andrei on a voyage in Europe to study the market and search for opportunities for selling Siberian butter without intermediaries. The son returned from abroad with the words: "It's time to act!" Balakshin called upon the local producers to cooperate with each other and to take the trade part of a business into their own hands. Upon his application, all-powerful Minister of Finance Sergei Witte personally ordered to allocate 7 thousand gold rubles per year for three years for the organization of a cooperative butter movement in Siberia. Balakshin created association which proceeded with changing the whole structure of the business, starting with convincing the peasants that cooperative organization will put them in a much better position when it comes to bargaining the milk prices.
The association was giving interest-free state loans to middle-class peasants who had cows and wished to unite in artels (cooperatives) for the construction of artel butter factories, i.e., in modern language, on the terms of co-financing. It also advertised new agrotechnologies, provided the villagers with plans for the construction of plants free of charge, established the Union of Butter Masters, held competitions of buttermakers, published its newspaper, attracted outstanding people from among peasants, volost scribes, priests and other representatives of the then thin rural educated class. Of course, the association was not welcomed by the big producers and distributors but Balakshin kept working and eventually was successful in creation of a major Union of the Siberian Butter Producers which united more than 200 producers with a capital of over 2,000,000 rubles and 5 offices.
Squeezing the Danes out was an uphill battle because, understandably, they did not want to give up a profitable market [5]. For example, all expired or low-quality butter supplied by the Danes to England and Germany was specifically called "Siberian". Foreign buyers often unexpectedly cancelled already concluded deals, local foreign agents raised purchase prices for butter, trying to cut off "undecided" peasants from the Union. But the Union steadily was pushing competitors out because it was offering the suppliers (peasants with the cows) the better package which included the coop shops and technical services, its specialists were engaged in the organization of breeding farms in villages, taught proper cow care, and rational feeding of livestock. Union also successfully lobbied State Bank to provide the favorable credits for the new butter plants and attracted participation of the regional credit unions. Engaged in buttermaking and being a member of the Union was really profitable for a small peasant: the annual oil revenue averaged more than 100 rubles per peasant yard. This created a material incentive for peasants and aroused interest in raising cattle. In the big Siberian cities butter was packed into the special wooden barrels and sent westward in the special refrigerator train cars [6]
The annual cost of the butter export was reaching 65,000,000 rubles. The market prices were as follows: "export" butter went in London for 10-15 rubles per pud, "cream" - 10-14 rubles, "sour cream" - 9-11 rubles, "simple" - about 8 rubles.
With the business firmly established, Balakshin made a “strategic move”. Together with the British firm “Lonsdale”, he opened the Union joint trading enterprise in London. This firm, bypassing Danish intermediaries, sold Siberian butter to small European traders on average no more than three barrels in one hand, receiving from 30 kopecks to 3 rubles more for a pud than wholesale firms in the same London market for butter from Siberian buyers, competitors of SSMA in Siberia. "Union" offices were also opened in the United States, China, the largest European capitals - a total of 16 branches. Russia became the world 2nd butter exporter after Denmark. The members of the Union were, according to the most conservative estimates, half a million peasants in Siberia who held three million cows.
________
[1] “Where are we going the Piglet is a big, big secret.”
[2] “In order not to get into the trap,
In order not to get lost in the dark,
In order never to go astray
To land in the right place, to land,
Draw a plan on the map.
And walk and sing carelessly,
Tiri-tiri-tam-tam-tiram,
The meeting is secured, everything is noted in the plan,
Accurate, flawless and dotted,
Tiri-tiri-tam-tam-tiram, a fat dotted line,
Thiri-tiri-tam-tam-tiram, a fat dotted line.”
[3] Moved a decade ahead of the schedule: don’t want to invent a fictitious figure. In 1897 he was 37, which is young but not prohibitively so, especially taking into an account that he was from a prominent aristocratic family.
[4] It was expected that a family brings with it at least 180-190 rubles, which means that majority of the settlers were reasonably well off peasants who felt themselves restrained by the land shortage at home.
[5] The Siberian butter was labeled by “Danish”.
[6] Modern refrigerators were not available, yet, so this were specially termo-insolated train cars packed with ice and there were big ice storages along the route. Had been widely used for transporting meat, butter and other perishable products.
