Siberia

Siberia (Russian: Сибирь, Sibir') is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its various predecessor states since the centuries-long conquest of Siberia, which began with the fall of the Khanate of Sibir in the late 16th century and concluded with the annexation of Chukotka in 1778. Siberia is vast and sparsely populated, covering an area of over 13.1 million square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi), but home to only one-fifth of Russia's population. Novosibirsk and Omsk are the largest cities in the area.

Quotes

The true discovery of America by mankind came when those first hunting bands crossed over from Siberia 25,000 years ago. This, however, never seems to count. When people speak of the "discovery of America" they invariably mean its discovery by Europeans.
- Isaac Asimov, The Shaping of North America (1973), p. 6

The spring in this place is different, it seems, from the spring ... in Russia. The freeze at night continues, although the sun at midday shines a great deal; the wind is always cold ... Three days ago on the 16th [of April], the freeze was 10 degrees [Fahrenheit]; the following night it was 8 degrees [Fahrenheit] and last evening snow fell and it continues today.
- Alexander N. Radishchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1952), III, p. 363; cited in: Jesse Clardy, "Radishchev’s Notes on the Geography of Siberia", The Russian Review, vol. 21, no. 4 (1962), pp. 362–69

Poetry

Deep in the Siberian mine,
Keep your patience proud;
The bitter toil shall not be lost,
The rebel thought unbowed.
- Alexander Pushkin, "Message to Siberia" [1827] 1874 (tr. Max Eastman), cited in: A Treasury of Russian Verse (1949), pp. 42–43
- On the deportation of the Decembrists to Siberia

Yet more outragious is the season still,
A deeper horror, in Siberian wilds;
Where Winter keeps his unrejoicing court,
And in his airy hall the loud misrule
Of driving tempest is for ever heard.
There thro’ the ragged woods absorpt in snow,
Sole tenant of these shades, the shaggy bear,
With dangling ice all horrid, stalks forlorn;
Slow-pac’d and sourer as the storms increase,
He makes his bed beneath the drifted snow;
And, scorning the complainings of distress.
Hardens his heart against assailing want.
While tempted vigorous o’er the marble waste.
On sleds reclin’d, the furry Russian sits;
And, by his rain-deer drawn, behind him throws
A shining kingdom in a winter’s day.
- James Thomson, "Winter", The Four Seasons, and Other Poems (1735)

But what is this? our infant Winter sinks,
Diverted of his grandeur, should our eye
Astonish’d shoot into the Frigid Zone;
Where, for relentless months, continual night,
Holds o’er the glittering waste her starry reign.
There, thro’ the prison of unbounded wilds,
Barr’d by the hand of Nature from escape,
Wide-roams the Russian exile. Nought around
Strikes his sad eye, but desarts lost in snow;
And heavy-loaded groves; and solid floods,
That stretch, athwart the solitary vast,
Their icy horrors to the frozen main;
And cheerless towns far-distant, never bless’d,
Save when its annual course the caravan
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay
With news of human-kind. Yet there life glows;
Yet cherish’d there, beneath the shining waste,
The furry nations harbour.
- James Thomson, "Winter", The Seasons (ed. 1791)

... a bleak expanse,
Shagg’d o’er with wavy rocks, cheerless, and void
Of every life, that from the dreary months
Flies conscious southward. Miserable they!
Who, here entangled in the gathering ice,
Take their last look of the descending sun;
While, full of death, and fierce with tenfold frost,
The long long night, incumbent o’er their head,
Falls horrible.
- James Thomson, "Winter", The Seasons (ed. 1791)

What are the splendours of the gaudy court,
Its tinsel trappings, and its pageant pomps?
To me far happier seems the banish’d lord,
Amid Siberia’s unrejoicing wilds
Who pines all lonesome, in the chambers hoar
Of some high castle shut, whose windows dim
In distant ken discover trackless plains,
Where Winter ever whirls his icy car;
While still repeated objects of his view,
The gloomy battlements, and ivied spires,
That crown the solitary dome, arise;
While from the topmost turret the slow clock,
Far heard along th’ inhospitable wastes,
With sad-returning chime awakes new grief;
Ev’n he far happier seems than is the proud,
The potent Satrap, whom he left behind
’Mid Moscow’s golden palaces, to drown
In ease and luxury the laughing hours.
- Thomas Warton the Yr., The Pleasures of Melancholy (1747)

In Siberia’s wastes
The ice-wind’s breath
Woundeth like the toothèd steel;
Lost Siberia doth reveal
Only blight and death.
- James Clarence Mangan, "Siberia", in The Nation (April 1846)

External links

Encyclopedic article on Siberia on Wikipedia