The Heart of Siberia

Eastward from Omsk, the rail line cuts through level plains of dark earth dotted by clumps of large

Siberian birches and occasional conifers. In geographic terms, this is a transitional zone, with the Om River and its forests running roughly parallel to the line in the north and the semi-arid steppes of Kazakstan to the south. Although pleasant, this is landscape best suited for reverie, a good book ... or sleep.

Depending on the class of train, the 632 kilometers to Novosibirsk takes approximately eight hours. As the train approaches this capital of Siberia, the landscape becomes rougher and more arid, marked by small ridges largely devoid of trees. Suddenly, at the very approaches to the city, there appears the broad channel of the Ob River, one of Russia’s most important waterways.

The intersection of the Siberian mainline with the Ob River created Novosibirsk—or Novonikolaevsk, as it was known at the turn of the century. With a current population of some 1,450,000, Novosibirsk has become Siberia’s largest and perhaps most energetic city, far outstripping older settlements such as Tobolsk and Tomsk. It is the quintessential railroad town. Begun in 1893 as a small settlement called New Village, it arose near the site where the great railway bridge for the Trans-Siberian was constructed over the Ob River. In 1903, the town was formally incorporated as Novonikolaevsk, named after Tsar Nicholas II.

The favorable linking of geography and the railroad led to the town’s rapid early growth, traces of which are still evident in buildings surviving from the early 20th century. These include a number of log houses of considerable size, with elaborate decoration. For the first two decades of its existence, Novosibirsk consisted almost entirely of wooden buildings, with only the occasional significant public building of brick, such as the Cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevsky (1896-99; now reopened for worship), and the City Trading Center (1910-11), an imposing brick building that resembles a railway station.

In 1925 the city was renamed Novosibirsk, and it soon became one of the major centers of Soviet industrial development, as well as the administrative center for most of Siberia. Indeed, between 1925 and 1937 Novosibirsk served as the capital of the enormous Siberian Region, composed of five pre-revolutionary provinces. As in Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk), this rapid development was reflected in the modern Constructivist design of large administrative buildings that still line the central city’s major thoroughfare, Krasny (“Red”) Prospekt. One of the best-preserved examples is the sleek Building of the Siberian Regional Executive Committee, completed in 1932. Later in the 1930s the city’s major buildings reflected the traditionalist leanings of Stalinist architecture, epitomized by the gigantic Theater of Opera and Ballet. Construction of this theater lasted from 1931 to 1945, with the final details completed only in 1956. The city’s main rail station, completed in 1939 and still ranked as one of the largest in Russia, also displays the grandiosity of Soviet neoclassicism.

Novosibirsk is, by current Russian standards, a prosperous metropolis, and this is noticeable in the clean, well-kept (relatively speaking) districts of the central city. New apartment and office towers are rising in the bustling downtown; and while no one would mistake this for London’s Canary Wharf, Novosibirsk is definitely on the move. A subway system, begun in 1985, now links districts on both banks of the Ob River. And Novosibirsk has been chosen as one of seven cities in Russia to have the office of a presidential plenipotentiary under President Putin’s new “vertical of power” administrative structure.

Much of the intellectual energy of Novosibirsk comes from the nearby scientific satellite city of Akademgorodok, whose name means “academic town.” Begun in 1957 as part of the Sputnik-era scientific boom, Akademgorodok eventually acquired international renown as an idyllic community devoted to the life of the mind. Although slightly disheveled in appearance (like many academics), the town still possesses a quiet charm characterized by parks and streets lined with trees that screen the faceless 1960s buildings. Despite recent funding difficulties, much of Russia’s significant research in many disciplines continues to occur in Akademgorodok.

In addition to its research institutes, Akademgorodok also has a number of museums, such as the Museum of the History of Siberian Culture, with its famous collection of mummies from the high plains of north central Asia. The most famous of these mummies, the so-called “Princess,” was found in a burial mound in the Altai Mountains in 1993. Dating from perhaps as early as the fifth century B.C., this female form still preserves a tatoo, as well as a rich array of garments and valuable ornaments. In showing off this remarkable collection, Museum Director Andrei Borodovsky mentions that Hillary Clinton once visited the museum. And in an attempt to gain additional financial support, an exhibit from the museum’s collection recently toured Australia under the title “Secrets of Siberia.”

Akademgorodok also has an open-air museum of wooden architecture. Its major display is the reassembled log Church of the Savior, from the village of Zashiversk, located in the Indigirka River basin, some 3,000 kilometers to the east in Yakutia (now known as the Republic of Sakha). Since most regions in Russia have such open-air museums, it is unusual for wooden architectural monuments to be transported beyond the boundaries of the region in which they were built. But this is not your typical log church.

Built around 1700, the Savior Church served the fort of Zashiversk for many decades until the entire population of the village died from an epidemic of smallpox in 1883. After such a devastating catastrophe, Zashiversk acquired the reputation of a haunted site and was avoided by travelers. Although most of its log buildings gradually fell into ruin, the church—built of rock-solid larch—and its bell tower continued to stand. The rediscovery of this “village of the dead” in the 1930s came as something of a sensation. Ironically, its remote location and cataclysmic demise proved a boon for historians, who could examine a unique example of a “mummified” 19th-century wooden village. In 1969-71 the Zashiversk site was carefully studied by a team of experts from the Institute of History within the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences (based in Novosibirsk/Akademgorodok), and in the mid 1970s the church and bell tower were dismantled for shipment to the Akademgorodok architectural museum, where they have now been reassembled. Thus a tragedy in remote Yakutia preserved for posterity a small gem of a church.

From Novosibirsk one could speed by express train directly to Krasnoyarsk. But why hurry? The vast Ob River basin contains many other areas of interest, including the mountainous Altai Region to the south of Novosibirsk. Four hours by train is sufficient to cover the 210 kilometers to the region’s capital, Barnaul (current population around 607,000). Barnaul was founded in the 1730s on the upper reaches of the Ob River as a factory town for the silver refining operations of A. I. Demidov. The Demidovs were among the wealthiest and most enterprising of magnates in the Russian mining and metal-working industries during the 18th century. After 1747, all mining operations and related industries became the property of the imperial court. The silver smelting operations continued to function in Barnaul until 1893.

In addition to industrial production, the laboratories associated with Barnaul’s factories produced a number of technical innovations in the 19th century. Even with the decline of mining and smelting at the end of the 19th century, Barnaul survived as a center for processing the sheepskin produced in abundance on the high Altai steppes. After the revolution, the completion of the TurkSib Railroad allowed direct access to Central Asia and stimulated the growth of new industries in the 1930s, such as large cotton mills that derived raw materials from Uzbekistan. During World War II, factories evacuated from the European part of the Soviet Union expanded the city’s industrial base.

Although a catastrophic fire destroyed much of central Barnaul in 1917, a number of buildings constructed at the turn of the 20th century survived and have now been renovated. They give the central part of the city pleasant, livable scale. A number of churches have also been restored and opened for worship, such as the large Cathedral of the Intercession, originally completed in 1903.

Much of the impetus for preserving the historic scale of the central city is provided by a group of women architects and restorers, such as Lyubov Nikitina, director of the local preservation center “Heritage,” and Yekaterina Shapovalenko, chief architect of the center. There is a pride and energy in their efforts that holds much promise for the future. This impression was reinforced by Galina Ryzhkova, associate director of the Altai Regional Committee on Culture and Tourism, who expressed full support for the revitalization of the city through enlightened reuse of historic buildings. (Notably, Ryzhkova is the mother of one of Russia’s most prominent young politicians, Nikolai Ryzhkov.)

The train from Barnaul north to Tomsk slowly winds through hill country whose foliage is particularly beautiful in the fall. This natural beauty stands in stark contrast to the state of disrepair and the economic depression of the villages along the way. Tomsk, however, is a reasonably prosperous provincial capital (current population around 505,000), with a strong base of energy resources and intellectual capital in the form of major universities and research institutes—some of them top-secret.

Founded in 1604 on the banks of the River Tom (a tributary of the Ob), Tomsk served throughout the 17th century as a major bulwark again the steppe tribes of Kalmyks and Kirgiz. With the expansion of Russian control to the south during the 18th century, the military significance of Tomsk was replaced by trade and transportation, particularly after the Moscow Road reached the city in the middle of the 18th century. The opening of gold mines in the territory during the 1830s increased the town’s significance as a center of mining operations and administration. Tomsk also became one of Siberia’s pre-eminent centers of learning, including the first university in Siberia, founded in 1878. Among Russian institutions of higher learning, Tomsk State University is distinctive in having an attractive campus in the American sense of the word.

Unfortunately, Tomsk missed what could have been a second golden opportunity with the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway at the end of the 19th century. In a major blunder, the city’s merchant elite, apparently fearing the possibility of increased mercantile competition, made no attempt to persuade the Ministry of Transportation to build the line slightly north through Tomsk. They subsequently realized the mistake, but Tomsk had to settle for a branch line, constructed in 1896, to a God-forsaken junction known as Taiga, 80 kilometers to the south of the city.

Nonetheless, Tomsk remained a center of trade and agricultural development in central Siberia. The scale and extent of its architecture—commercial as well as residential—illustrates the breadth and diversity of Siberian culture at the turn of the 20th century. This is particularly evident in the city’s extensive districts of elaborately decorated wooden houses, built of solid logs and usually covered with plank siding. It is no exaggeration to say that the “lacework” of Tomsk’s decorative wooden architecture is unrivaled in Russia for its lavish detail and the extent of its preservation.

Many of these extraordinary wooden houses were built for Tartar merchants who lived in the Tartar quarter of town, preserved to this day. This area also contains the recently renovated White Mosque and a Tartar cultural center, to be located in an expansive mansion built at the beginning of the 20th century for Karym Khamitov, a Tartar financial magnate. Wood was also used for houses of worship, such as the Old Believer Church of the Trinity, built around 1907. The church has been lovingly preserved, just as its friendly parishioners preserve a way of life and dress that reminds of the 17th century.

Tomsk today remains a leading Siberian center for administration, education, and industry. At the same time, concern for its historical environment, including the houses of worship that survived the Soviet era, has preserved a legacy of architecture and crafts that represents a Russian national treasure. Indeed, all three of these Siberian cities—Novosibirsk, Barnaul, and Tomsk—have their origins and owe much of their artistic culture to the Russian genius for building in wood. Despite the fact that Novosibirsk and Barnaul have lost much of this heritage to the inevitable forces of development, each of these cities, and Tomsk in particular, remind us of how much in Russia belongs to the forest.