I present to the readers a very interesting selection of pre-revolutionary photographs of the period of the development of territories, the times of the Stolypin resettlement and the construction of a railway in Siberia, Transsib. But I will do this with a bias of searching for something unusual from the point of view of Kungurov's version (young forests) and lost technologies. So, let's begin…
Siberia 1906:
Thin soil on a hill.
On the horizon - not a tree … Who developed such endless expanses of Siberian fields?
Promotional video:
Pay attention to the wood: small tree logs? By the time of Stolypin's settlement there were no longer any large trees?
Look here Irkutsk pre-revolutionary
Why are there practically no trees in the city, and if there are on any street or alley, then - young?
And why don't we have such trees?
Kauri tree, New Zealand.
Is the climate different? But sequoias do not grow in the tropics …
Sequoia, USA.
The whole forest is clearly young, thick pines are not visible. But this is a deaf untouched taiga with a lack of population.
2552 versts. Excavation of excavation and embankment. Construction period 1909 No thick trees.
I wonder what kind of rectangular stone "stumps" the workers dug up? There is an opinion that this is a metric - they measured how much soil was taken out by workers - they counted their earnings.
I came across this photo:
2551 versts. Stone pipe hole 0.75 carbon black. Construction period 1909
From the album.
Pay attention to the masonry! Masonry - as in the technology of ancient builders! And each block is made with an edge along the edges, as, for example, the laying of the Tsarskoe burial mound 4 km from Kerch:
2552 versts. Construction of a stone double-span pipe, hole 1.70 soot. x 2. Construction period 1908
What do we see? From the edges - a stone tunnel, and in the center - a monolithic structure! And, attention, here is the technology for making this masterpiece:
2557 versts. Construction of a stone pipe otv. 1.00 soot with an embankment height of 12.74 soot. Construction period 1908
Workers construct formwork to pour … what? Concrete? Where does he come from here in such numbers? They are clearly not engaged in stonemasonry in this photo. Then from what do they pour the solution into the formwork? Geopolymer concrete, which was produced on the spot?
But back to the young forests of Siberia:
Tomsk region, 1909 There are meadows on the horizon.
Source.
Why did Yermak and Dubensky not walk on horseback with a retinue across the steppes and meadows during the alleged development of Siberia, but moved along rivers and portages? This is a big question! Maybe the area was simply unsuitable for such routes? Swamps, marshes, and the absence of trees after the flood did not yet suggest such overland movements. Yes, the flood of the late 16th century, which practically destroyed Tartary, Muscovy and Europe got it too.
This is not the steppe of Kazakhstan - this is the beginning of the 20th century. near Bogotol
While looking at Google maps, I came across the name of one village in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, which does not fit in with the area where it is located.
The village is called Bolshaya Steppe. Link to the map. Bolshaya Steppe village, Dzerzhinsky district. The village is tiny, one street. The name clearly has nothing to do with the settlement itself, it refers to the territory. But the territory is not a steppe at all!
These are fields with forests. I drove through these places. The territory there cannot be called a steppe.
55 ° 52 '30.60 "N 95 ° 46' 14.30" E Of course, there are such landscapes nearby. Kansk region, to the south. Lonely pine tree. But it is difficult to call this territory a steppe, there are forests on the horizon.
There are also other interesting names of villages and towns. For example, Dolgiy Most village of the same Krasnoyarsk Territory - the village where I was born and raised. At school we were told how this name came about. The village is surrounded by swamps on several sides. And across one of them a deck bridge was laid. Travelers traveling in carts to the north, if they happened to get to this place in the evening, never risked passing it at dusk. We were breaking a halt at the bridge. Moving across the bridge ended up taking a lot of time, although it would have been possible to travel some more distance before dark. The bridge was long, in fact. I don't know how true it was. But I remember this description.
There are Dolgie Mountains, the southern Urals, the Orenburg region.
Moving around such a terrain is also a long matter. More details.
Let's return to the landscapes of Siberia captured in old photos:
General view of the village of Bogotol, Krasnoyarsk Territory.
Not only forests are not visible, but not a single tree on the horizon
Types of Bogotol.
Bogotol today.
This is no longer a steppe. In the vicinity of the forest
Was there a steppe in the Krasnoyarsk Territory at the beginning of the 20th century? Or the village of Bolshaya Steppe - does this name mean something else?
***
I myself owe Peter Stolypin at least the fact that I was born here in Siberia. My ancestors settled in a remote village, the road to which is already overgrown, and the village itself has not existed for 30 years. Only the name and the approximate place of the turn off the track remained in my memory. But in the light of the latest facts, I had a question: how did the immigrants, together with their families, belongings, cattle, end up in those remote Siberian places, where, not only on carts, it is difficult to walk on foot? Yes, they got to the junction stations by train, but then on foot. But the village of my ancestors is not the most inaccessible place on the map. There are also "cooler" places. And now, looking at these and similar photos, you come to the conclusion that dense forests were not so dense at that time. I think they resembled a forest-steppe. The territory of the Trans-Baikal Territory and Khakassia now presents just such a picture. The woodlands could either be bypassed, or easily passed, passed, maneuvering between trees. I have no other explanation. Otherwise, it takes months to get to the desired place. I will also add that in our country those fields that remained after the collapse of collective farms (15-20 years have passed) are already overgrown with young pines and birches. In some places you can't even say that there used to be fields here.
The conclusion is that forest tracts in some regions of Siberia, even at the beginning of the 20th century. there were few, and those that were - not so dense and impassable. And if we draw the conclusion even deeper, looking back into the past, then Siberia was completely devastated both humanly and in another biological component, and this catastrophe happened quite recently on a chronological scale. Otherwise, we would have seen here at the beginning of the 20th century. huge thickets of humus, peat bogs, impenetrable thickets, tall and voluminous pines (as high as sequoias), taiga at any point.
Author: sibved