“It would be ingratitude not to name the forest among the educators and the few patrons of our people. Just as the steppe brought up in our grandfathers a craving for freedom and heroic pleasures in duels, the forest taught them caution, observation, diligence and the hard, stubborn gait that the Russians always went to their goal. We grew up in the forest … the forest met a Russian person when he was born and forever accompanied him through all age stages: a baby's shake and the first shoe, walnut and strawberries, kubar, a bath broom and a balalaika, a torch on girls' gatherings and a painted wedding arch, free apiaries and beaver rutters, a fishing shnyak or a war plow, a mushroom and incense, a wanderer's staff, a dead man's dugout log and, finally, a cross on a spruce-covered grave.
Here is a list of the original Russian goods, the seamy side of the then civilization, timber and timber, timber and gutter, rim and bast, coal and bast, resin and potash. But from the same forest there flowed even more generous gifts: fragrant Valdai matting, colorful Ryazan sledges and Kholmogory chests with a seal lining, honey and wax, sable and black fox for Byzantine dandies …
The forest fed, clothed and warmed us Russians!"
This excerpt from L. Leonov's novel "Russian Forest" became a real anthem of a grateful person in honor of his benefactor. He really accompanies us from the very first moments of life to the last. Deified since pagan times, the forest has become for people the repository of all gods - both evil and good. Subsequently, they became poetic images, they are still alive in the mind of a person, and therefore the forest for him is also a kind of earthly temple.
The forest breathes, worries, lulls, caresses. In the kingdom of uncomplaining peace among the shady firs, the good-natured hum of pines, the caring whisper of aspens and birches, calm comes. The world begins to seem brighter and more perfect. And how scary to see the cut down, faceless earth with black burns from the fires!
Throughout the centuries-old Russian history, forest and land in the country belonged to the state. In 1802, Emperor Alexander I established the Forestry Department, which was entrusted with the management of state forests. In 1826, the Senate approved the "Regulations on the organization of forestry in the provinces of Russia." According to it, on the territory of all Russian provinces, forestries were created, which in turn were subdivided into forest dachas. Forest dachas were divided into taxation areas depending on the quality of the timber and were sold at auction for felling to everyone. One tithe of coniferous forest cost about 100-300 rubles. The person who bought the timber was issued a felling ticket. In addition, the buyer had to carry out forestry work - uprooting stumps, removing branches and making new plantings.
All trees in forest dachas were branded for accounting. Even the stumps (!) Of trees cut down by intruders were branded, as they represented "material evidence".
Of course, there were violations of the Forestry Regulations then, and the fight against these violations took up the bulk of the forester's time. If legitimate buyers did not cut too much, then the peasants of the surrounding villages often encroached on the sovereign's forests - they often illegally cut trees, plowed meadows, grazed cattle in the forest, collected dead wood, mushrooms and berries. There were also such (now almost exotic violations), such as pulling moss, stripping off birch bark, collecting resin.
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But the forestry were not bloodthirsty administrative bodies that stood only on guard of the treasury and were deaf to the needs of the people. Poor peasants, fire victims and refugees were given the forest on the most favorable terms, or even free of charge.
With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, all forestries were liquidated. The People's Commissariat of Agriculture adopted a temporary provision on forest management in the provinces, according to which all forests - state, private, specific and public - were transferred to the jurisdiction of departments of the provincial land committees. This is how the Russian state forestry management ended, which harmoniously combined the interests of the treasury and the people and stood guard over the native nature.
And now let's give the floor to Leonid Leonov again.
“Hardly any other people entering history with such a rich coniferous fur coat on their shoulders; eminent foreign spies … Russia seemed like a continuous thicket with rare glades of human settlements. This is where our dangerous glory of the forest power came from, cheapening our cheap goods in the eyes of foreign consumers and creating a harmful millionaire psychology among the indigenous population. The day will come when Peter will tear his nostrils and drive him to hard labor for destroying protected groves, but for now there are so many forests in Russia that, as a reward for clearing, exemption from taxes and duties is given for fifteen years, and a little further north - for all forty. The forest stands with such impassable support and such a fabulous assortment that epics are entrusted only to the heroes with the laying of forest roads … Brad at least a thousand days in any direction - and the forest will relentlessly follow you,like a faithful shaggy dog. Here we should look for the roots of our neglect of the forest."
In Western and Eastern Siberia, at the beginning of the 20th century, large tracts of cedar forests were preserved. During the period of pine cones, almost all of the surrounding population, young and old, went here to hunt. The emergence of this craft dates back to distant times. In the 18th century, pine nuts were mined by almost all peoples living in Siberia. The collection of cones from the cedar stanza in Kamchatka was described by S. P. Krasheninnikov and noted that a decoction of cedar branches is a good remedy against scurvy. All members of his expedition drank it like tea or kvass.
In the 19th century, pine nuts were not only a great help in food for the local population. The walnut was bought in bulk in Siberian villages and at fairs and shipped throughout the vast Russia and abroad.
In order to preserve forests when Russian farmers settled in Siberia, the Tobolsk Provincial Chancellery ordered that the settlers not chop cedars for construction needs, "and the nuts and cones needed from those cedars would be plundered, and not only cut down not only the entire tree, but also protected the branches." Those who violated the rules for using cedar wood were severely punished. So, in the Surgut region, the guilty were mercilessly flogged and beaten, and then, stripping naked, tied to a tree and left to punish the taiga gnat. In the Tomsk district, their own punishments were established: for a broken branch of a cedar - 10 rods, and for cutting a tree (depending on its size) - from 25 to 100 rods.
Cedar is a unique tree. The lifespan of the Siberian cedar is four hundred years. For the first ten years, it grows very slowly and reaches full development only by the age of fifty. It is almost not susceptible to disease and bears fruit regularly. The massifs of cedars are essential for the life of sables, squirrels and many other animals and birds.
The cedar forms large tracts and grows together with fir and spruce over a vast territory from the headwaters of the Vychegda River in the west to the upper reaches of the Aldan River in the east. To the east of Transbaikalia, the Verkhoyansk and Stanovoy ridges, the cedar pine is replaced by the cedar elfin. It is a creeping shrub or a small tree 3-4 meters in height (the height of the Siberian cedar is 35-40 meters). Dwarf cedar is found throughout the forest zone of the Far East - from Kamchatka to Primorye.
And these huge cedar massifs have become a serious threat in our XX century. Already in 1923, the forester S. P. Bonishko wrote: “If the most radical measures are not taken to preserve the cedar forests, they will be destroyed. And it will not be just a catastrophe, but a crime against future generations."
The pristine Siberian forests, not yet crippled by human intervention, were usually a continuous closed tree stand of forty or more arshins in height, abounded in valuable animals and birds. Thick layers of accumulated humus for centuries sometimes reached an arshin thickness.
About four centuries ago, the enterprising Stroganovs laid the foundation for industrial culture in the Urals Siberia. To protect their industrial enterprises from restless Siberian neighbors, they hired a Cossack freeman who had fled from the Volga, who soon conquered Siberia without the slightest government assistance. And then Ermak Timofeevich beat the Moscow sovereign with his forehead, bringing the conquered country as a gift. Since then, the descendants of these first brave and freedom-loving Russian Siberians and all the farmers who came after them freely used the forest resources of the region, considering forests to be their inalienable property. In 1621, the Yasak Tunguses came to Yeniseisk in sable coats, some of them even had sable skins on their skis.
There was so much forest that the agricultural culture had to win its right to exist step by step. The weapons of this struggle were ax and fire. Under their influence, centuries-old forests collapsed, and in their place settlements were erected, mows and pastures were cleared. However, all this was so microscopically insignificant among the ocean of forests that it cannot be compared, for example, with the loss that our southern provinces suffered in the past centuries, which lost many forests from the barbarian Asian conquerors and, in general, from the nomadic Mongol tribes. Hordes of Tatars, Kirghiz, and Kalmyks burned forests and deliberately formed steppes for their herds or to exterminate the enemy. As nomadic peoples, these hordes could not live in wooded places: in the forests it was impossible to graze, feed and protect countless herds. Wild animals plunder cattle in the forests,gadflies, mosquitoes and gadflies seize.
To feed their herds, nomadic tribes destroyed forests in every possible way, not at all caring about their preservation for future civilizations. But their behavior was all the same excusable: they were prompted to these actions by necessity. And the harm caused by them is not so terrible, because the forest in the south was deciduous and the annual fall of foliage formed a thick layer of fertile black soil.
But the extermination of coniferous forests in Russia deprives the people of the best building materials, and the death of such forests is practically irreparable. The land on which the age-old pines and spruces grew is unsuitable for agriculture. Pine and spruce forests could not form black soil, and huge areas from under such a forest forever remain ugly deserts, because after cutting down shadow and moisture disappear, the terrain dries up in summer, freezes in winter, greenery disappears.
The main reason for the destruction of forests around Tyumen was given in the last century by the construction of a railway. Before it was held, the neighboring peasants were mostly engaged in carriage. But after the "chugunka" was carried out, a lot of horses remained who lost their jobs, because it was impossible for them to compete with it. The peasants did not want to part with their horses right away, so they started hauling firewood, which they sold in the city for a pittance, in order to somehow feed themselves and the cattle.
In addition, the peasants who were completely unaccustomed to farming soon realized that they could not feed themselves with a cab, they had to return to the fields and vegetable gardens. And soon there was no free arable land left, which had never been before. The peasants of the villages of Malaya and Bolshaya Balda, who were previously engaged in the manufacture of wooden dishes, began to clear the land from under the forest in order to increase the number of arable fields. And in ten to fifteen years (at the end of the last century) something happened that could not have been imagined before. Residents of the Tyumen District began to buy firewood and timber from neighbors - the Esaul, Chikchin and Mullashev Tatars.
Alder also suffered in this area. When one of the first Russian tea companies appeared in Russia, they needed alder boxes for hanging teas. Tea can only be packed in such boxes, as alder has no smell. For Siberian teas, 30,000 boxes a year were needed, for this it was enough to harvest 15,000 trees.
This production was very profitable, but the peasants began to cut one hundred thousand trees annually. There was nowhere to put the excess forest, and it spoiled in the bark, because alder is a very delicate tree. When the prices for alder boxes were lowered, peasants who were dissatisfied with this immediately burned most of the alder groves in the Tyumen district.
Sakhalin Island stretches for almost a thousand kilometers from north to south. Most of its territory is occupied by forests, almost all of them are of natural origin. Anxiety about the fate of the Sakhalin forest has been expressed throughout the history of the island, because in the Sakhalin taiga, daurian larch, ayan spruce, fir, stone and white birch grow.
And what about forest fires? The picture of the destructive action in the forest of the fire element is so terrifying that, perhaps, even the harm of many years of predatory management, the most devastating felling, and mass forest stealing pales before it. The annual losses from forest fires are incalculable in money.
Especially terrible are forest fires in the western zone of Siberia, where continuous plantations - in the form of islands - are scattered among huge treeless swampy peatlands covered with tall grassy vegetation. Here, the fires turn into real fire cyclones, which, moving with terrible speed, destroy and strangle all living things in their path. During the night, such fires can travel up to two hundred miles.
Forest fires have left a special stamp of some sort of death on the Siberian forests: they are poor in small representatives of the feathered kingdom and even in spring they are not very lively.
Forest rivers are heavily littered with fire-fallen trees. This forest gets wet, drowns, rots, infects the water with poisonous decomposition products and makes it completely unsuitable for fish. Forest rivers carry this infection over distances that are quite far from the places of fires.
It is difficult even to find a name for what is happening with Russian forests now. The destruction of forests has never reached such a criminal scale. On large territories, dozens of newly created joint ventures (or simply foreign firms) are cutting down the most valuable tree species in huge forest areas. They cut down barbarously, predatory, leaving behind dirty forest areas, broken young plantations, uncleared branches, branches …
From the book: "HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS". N. A. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev