The Road to Irkutsk

rkutsk, located on the Angara River (a tributary of the Yenisey) is one of the great centers of Siberian culture. Indeed, we could say that Irkutsk is the culmination of Siberia, both geographically and culturally. The great rift that created Lake Baikal also serves as a dividing line between Siberia proper and that part of the Russian Far East known as “beyond Baikal” (Zabaikalye).

But before Irkutsk, let us return to Tomsk (see Russian Life, November-December), the point of departure for this final segment of our Siberian journey. Getting from Tomsk back to the mainline of the Trans-Siberian railway is far more difficult that it should be, particularly if going eastward. In a major blunder, the city’s merchant elite made no attempt to persuade Russia’s Ministry of Transportation to build the mainline north through Tomsk, and therefore the city had to settle for a branch line, constructed in 1896, to a lonely junction known as Taiga, 80 kilometers to the south.

As a result, a typical connection to Krasnoyarsk involves taking a small train in the late evening down the Tomsk spur to Taiga, which is indeed in the middle of the taiga forest, anchored by nothing more than a major rail junction. At Taiga, the train car from Tomsk is uncoupled and sits, unventilated, for a couple of hours until the express from Novosibirsk pulls in. At that point (after midnight), the Tomsk car is slammed into the end of the express and the journey continues.

Late the next morning, the train emerges from forested hills to arrive at the city of Krasnoyarsk (current population around 925,000), which is now the capital of one of Russia’s largest administrative regions, stretching all the way to the Arctic Ocean. Founded in 1628 as a frontier outpost on the mighty Yenisey River, the town for the first century of its existence consisted of little more than a Cossack detachment.

The area’s rich natural resources gave rise to industrial and crafts production, particularly after the opening of the Moscow Road (1735-41), a more even, southerly route that redirected settlement and transportation in Siberia. By the turn of the 18th century, a few brick churches were constructed, of which the Intercession Church is the best preserved, with decoration in the florid manner typical of late 18th-century Siberian architecture.

As with Omsk to the west, Krasnoyarsk was transformed in the 19th century from a provincial garrison town into a major transportation center by the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The increase in economic activity gave rise to a merchant elite that included Gennady Yudin, a bibliophile who sold much of his valuable collection of books to the Library of Congress in 1907.

After the revolution, the industrialization campaign of the 1930s led to the construction of major new sites for heavy industry, as did the evacuation of factories from the European part of the Soviet Union in 1941-42. As in many Siberian industrial cities, the preservation of historic architecture in Krasnoyarsk has often been neglected in the 20th century, as churches were closed and other buildings destroyed to make way for Soviet administrative buildings. For that reason, the most interesting ensemble of historic architecture in this region is in the much smaller town of Yeniseysk, located 340 kilometers to the north of Krasnoyarsk and also situated on the Yenisey River.

The main line of the Siberian railway, however, moves east and then south into the territory of Irkutsk Province. The track winds through forested hills of great beauty, particularly in September, when the birches and larches are brilliant against the dark background of coniferous forest. Sadly, the birch groves are in many cases the result of irresponsible logging, in which the forests are not replanted and the birches are simply first to grow back.

After almost a full day of travel from Krasnoyarsk, the train arrives at the imposing main Irkutsk station, on the left bank of the Angara River. On the opposite side of the river is the central district of Irkutsk.

Small Russian settlements had existed in the Irkutsk area from the early 17th century. After another attempt to found a winter base on the Angara in 1652, a log fort was constructed in 1661. Its original purpose was to establish Russian authority and trade with the region’s aboriginal Buryats. Other forts were built in 1668-69, and Irkutsk grew rapidly because of its favorable location. In 1686 it gained the status of town, and shortly thereafter began sending trading caravans to China, which became an important source of wealth and even cultural influence for Irkutsk.

In the 19th century, Irkutsk became a major administrative center, but in 1879 a catastrophic fire destroyed much of the town. Nonetheless, the disaster left untouched many of the churches, which were among the most interesting in Siberia, and the town rapidly rebounded on the strength of gold mining and expanding trade. Instructed by the hapless precedent of Tomsk, the powers of Irkutsk actively lobbied (and perhaps bribed) to convince the Ministry of Transportation to direct the Trans-Siberian Railway through Irkutsk, although that involved considerable natural difficulties and additional costs. The first train arrived in 1898, but passage still involved a cumbersome and often dangerous ferry passage over Lake Baikal. Not until almost a decade later was the Baikal Circumference Railway completed, allowing complete rail passage to the Orient.

During the ruthless civil war (1918-1921) Irkutsk was occupied by many different forces, including the soldiers of the famous Czech Legion, which fought primarily against the Bolsheviks. Ironically, it was the Czechs who delivered the former supreme commander of the white forces, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, to revolutionary forces in Irkutsk. After a brief trial, they executed Kolchak on February 7, 1920. Although his reputation has since been “rehabilitated,” there is still no monument on the site of his death. There is, however, a local beer named after Admiral Kolchak, and its back label gives a resume of his accomplishments as a polar explorer and naval officer.

Today, the central part of Irkutsk (population around 640,000) has preserved much of the pleasant ambiance created during the commercial and building expansion at the beginning of the 20th century. Irkutsk has now become the leading cultural, educational, and industrial center of eastern Siberia, as well as the gateway to one of the world’s natural wonders, Lake Baikal. The European ambiance created by waves of exiles and immigrants is evident in the town’s beer gardens with good brew, including the Czech Pilsner served by “At Shvejk’s”—a reference to the fact that Jaroslav Hashek, author of The Good Soldier Shvejk, was here briefly during the turbulent days of the civil war.

In visual terms, the cosmopolitan nature of Irkutsk is most evident in the array of its houses of worship. Despite the serious losses inflicted on the churches of Irkutsk during the Soviet period—including the dynamiting of the city’s main cathedral—Irkutsk remains one of the most interesting centers of church design in Siberia, rivaled only by Tobolsk in the west (see Russian Life, May-June, 2000). Indeed, there are few provincial towns in Russia whose church architecture can compare with that of Irkutsk. The profuse decorative styles and unusual forms at times combined Russian and Ukrainian influences with motifs that seem derived from Asian, Buddhist culture.

Moscow, of course, played a central role in defining the forms of religious architecture in Siberia, but the pioneering culture of the Russian north—in towns such as Vologda, Totma, Veliky Ustyug, and Solvychegodsk—also provided inspiration for the remarkable churches of Siberia and Irkutsk. Thus, within the broad sweep of Russian Orthodox architecture, there arose local Siberian traditions that assimilated and transformed the work of predecessors.

This process unfolded with unusual creativity in the 18th-century churches of Irkutsk, such as the Church of the Savior (1706-10), whose basic design reflects the parish architecture of Moscow and Yaroslavl at the end of the 17th century. This is a rare example where we know the name of the architect, Ivan Dolgikh, who was a descendant of Moscow brick masons. But the most remarkable feature of this church came almost half a century later with the construction of its great bell tower (1758-62), which literally overshadows the rest of the church. Indeed, a number of churches in the Irkutsk area have unusually large, polygonal bell towers—a testimony to the now-silent power of the bells whose art once covered the spaces of Siberia. Today, the Church of the Savior is still used as a local history museum.

Formerly, the Church of the Savior stood just to the north of the massive Cathedral of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God— begun in 1875, damaged in the fire of 1879, revived in 1885 and consecrated in 1894. Among the largest Orthodox churches in all Russia, with a capacity for 5,000 worshippers, the neo-Byzantine cathedral dwarfed all surrounding structures and thus became a prime target for destruction after the consolidation of Soviet power. In August of 1932 several explosive charges were used to bring the building down, in a manner similar to other late imperial churches, such as the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow (see Russian Life, July 2000). After much effort, the site was finally cleared, and in 1938 work began on the House of Soviets, which to this day remains the main administrative building of Irkutsk Province. Its gray style is so ponderously ugly that one local preservationist said that “it could easily suit the center of Pyongyang [capital of North Korea].”

Fortunately, not all of historic central Irkutsk was leveled during the Soviet period. Across the street to the east of the Church of the Savior are two reminders of role of Irkutsk as the spiritual and cultural center of eastern Siberia: the Cathedral of the Epiphany and the Roman Catholic Church of the Assumption. As with the Savior Church, the oldest parts of the Epiphany Cathedral were built in the early 18th century, but much was subsequently added to the original structure. Indeed, so colorful and capricious is the array of its forms, that the cathedral seems to be something designed for the staging of an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov. And yet this is the real thing, influenced by the 17th-century architecture of Moscow and Yaroslavl, as well as the Trinity Church in Verkhoturye. This church, too, was closed and vandalized during the Soviet period, but the Russian Orthodox Church has decided to make the cathedral the focus of restoration efforts for the Irkutsk Eparchy. Already the spacious western vestibule is open for worship, with walls repainted in remarkably beautiful contemporary frescoes. And restoration of the main sanctuary, with its baroque icon screen, is nearing completion.

The tall, Gothic Revival spire of the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady, built in 1881-85, is a tribute to the strong Polish community that flourished in Irkutsk during the late 19th century. Although most arrived in Siberia as the tragic result of the brutally suppressed uprising of 1863 in Poland, it is not widely known that many of the exiles reconciled themselves to their new home. Consequently, they and their descendants advanced into the higher ranks of education, finance, and other administrative professions. The right to build this imposing church was a measure of their financial success and of the trust placed in them by government authorities. During the Soviet era, this church was nationalized and eventually used as a concert hall—a typical fate for former Catholic and Lutheran churches because of the presence of an organ, an instrument not permitted in Orthodox churches.

The Polish diaspora in Irkutsk continues to be active in the professional life of the city as well as in the revived Catholic parish. Boleslav Shostakovich, now professor of history at Irkutsk State University (as was his father before him), explained that many Siberian Poles combined a love for their ancestral homeland with a deep commitment to their adopted region. Incidentally, this is the same family that produced the great composer Dmitry Shostakovich. At the turn of the 20th century, one part of the family moved to St. Petersburg, while the other remained in Irkutsk. There have been a number of conferences in both Warsaw and Irkutsk dedicated to the Poles in Siberia, the Polish government apparently intends to open a consulate in Irkutsk, and there are even rumors of a possible Warsaw to Irkutsk flight—not improbable in view of the growing importance of the Irkutsk airport as a gateway to the Orient.

As for the parish, recent negotiations to have the Assumption Church returned to the full use of the Catholic community proved unsuccessful, but city authorities granted permission to construct a Roman Catholic cathedral across the Angara River in a relatively new region of the city. Although this location is considerably farther from the city center, it is also home to two institutions of higher education and a substantial working-class community. On September 8 of last year, the Bishop of Siberia, Jan Schotte, led an international delegation in the dedication of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God. Not surprisingly, the Orthodox Church now intends to build a church in the same area.

Among the dozen or so other churches that survived in Irkutsk, the most interesting in terms of form and decoration is the Church of the Elevation of the Cross, built in 1757-62. From the tall steeple over the bell tower in the west to the panoply of Ukrainian-style domes over the vestibule and main sanctuary, this church remains an imposing presence in the southern part of central Irkutsk. On closer inspection, the decoration of its facades, which have recently been superbly restored, shows unmistakable traces of Buddhist influence, such as images of prayer wheels and stupa-like forms. Although the specific origins of these forms are not precisely defined, it is quite possible that the traditional significance of Irkutsk for trade with China (and India) played a role in this cross-cultural work of art.

The tradition of diverse Orthodox church design continues even to this day with the new Church of the Savior, built on the site of the tragic 1997 crash of a passenger jet into a grade school. The church, now a local shrine, is closely modeled on the 12th-century Church of the Intercession on the River Nerl, near Vladimir—several thousand kilometers to the west.

Despite the changes wrought by the 20th century, Irkutsk also has a rich heritage of wooden houses from the 19th and early 20th centuries. These houses often display carved decorations, even if not quite on the scale of the wooden houses of Tomsk. Despite modern development pressures and inadequate funds, this urban ensemble is under the protection of an active Center for Preservation, effectively led by Nadezhda Krasnaya. This is difficult work, but there have been notable successes, such as the careful renovation of houses that belonged to the exiled Decembrists Prince Sergey Volkonsky and Prince Sergey Trubetskoy. The houses are now museums to these noble rebels against the tsar (in December 1825), and the director of the museum complex, Evgeny Yachmenev, was encouraged by the visit of President Putin to the museum this past spring. Indeed, Yachmenev sees the possibility of developing a “Decembrist” tourist route not only to Irkutsk, but also to surrounding towns and villages, such as Urik, Kuda, Ust-Kuda, Usolye, and Belsk—many of which are connected with the Decembrists’ exile.

Whatever the results of this idea, Irkutsk is one of the few Siberian towns with a clearly expanding base in tourism and foreign trade. Although its airport needs a thorough modernization, new flights to China, Korea, and Japan are appearing as the result of economic development within a new political environment of cooperation, actively encouraged by the Putin administration.

The promise of Irkutsk as a center for tourism is greatly enhanced by the presence of Lake Baikal, located some 40 kilometers up the Angara River to the east. Despite environmental threats from ill-advised industrial development on and near the lake, the remarkable purity of this largest fresh-water lake in the world has been largely preserved through the combined efforts of local, national, and international campaigns. The route to Baikal, along the Angara River, is picturesque, and includes stops at the open-air museum Taltsy, which includes an excellent collection of log structures representing the various ethnic groups that settled the Irkutsk area. The director of the museum, Vladimir Tikhonov, is very proud of the fact that Taltsy is financially self-supporting, at a time when many other such museums are barely surviving.

The final stop on this road to the southwestern shore of Baikal is the small town of Listvyanka, located at the point were the lake narrows into the Angara River. With the increased level of the Angara—the result of damming for the mammoth Bratsk Hydroelectric project—part of the original Baikal Circumference Railway was submerged. The remaining part, accessible by boat from Listvyanka to Port Baikal, has become an extraordinarily beautiful hiking site, with a trail along the remaining line, which is occasionally used for train excursions. (The main Trans-Siberian line now takes a shortcut from Irkutsk to the south shore of Baikal.)

Despite the proliferation of tourist cabins, Listvyanka itself is also delightfully picturesque with its log Church of St. Nicholas. The bluffs above Listvyanka offer a particularly good view of the lake in all its glory. As a great natural boundary between Siberia and the Far East, sacred Lake Baikal provides the ideal setting for contemplating the peaceful existence of peoples and cultures whose paths cross near its shores.