Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/838

 SIBERIA

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SIBERIA

year-book for Mohileff of 1910 there are in Siberia, including Omsk that geographically belongs to Siberia but is assigned by the Russian government to Central Asia, 27 Catholic priests, 73,800 Catho- lics, 7 parishes with a-s many parish churches, 15 (lej)endent communit ies, and 2 1 chajjels. The parishes are: Irkutsk, Krassnoyarsk, Omsk, Tchita, Tobolsk, Tomsk, Vkwlivostok.

History. — Siberia does not appear in the light of his- tory until a late era. When and whence the original inhabitants migrated to their present homes cannot be definitely ascertained. While the peoples near the polar circle from the beginning until now have been tribes barely subsisting by hunting, the nomadic tribes of herdsmen who probably emigrated from Cen- tral Asia to Siberia, have graduallj' risen to a some- what higher level of civihzation. In some tribes, as the Yakuts, the memory of the migration from the south still exists. During the great migrations from Central Asia the tribes hving on the plateau of Asia were generally drawn into the movement and became incorporated into the empires of nomads that arose in the course of centuries. The tribes in north-western Siberia also, that are grouped together as Ugrians, generally shared this fate. When in the thirteenth century the Mongols of Central Asia advanced as con- querors towards the west they overthrew the peoples of western Siberia also. After the fall of the Mongo- Han empire these tribes belonged to the MongoUan Kingdom of Kiptchak that included besides western Siberia the lowlands of Eastern Russia and the step- pes as far as the Sea of Aral and the Caspian. West- ern Europe came first into connexion with the Ugrian tribes by the trade in skins which adventurous mer- chants of the Russian city of Novgorod carried on as early as the twelfth century with the tribes east of the Ural and on the borders of the Arctic Ocean. These commercial relations led to the estabUshment of per- manent agencies in western Siberia by the rnerchants of Novgorod. These agencies were maintained dur- ing the domination of the Mongols, so that the con- nexion of western Russia with the Ugrians was not interrupted even then.

At the fall of the Kingdom of Kiptchak, which Ti- mur brought under his control, the leaders of the hordes of Nogaian Tatars began to found small prin- cipalities in the country of the Ugrians. The most powerful of these rulers was On, living at the begin- ning of the fifteenth century, who opposed the Nov- goroflians. His son Taibuga drove tlie Novgorodians entirely from the country and founded a small king- dom the capital of which was near the present Tyumen. Weakened by wars with the neighbouring tribes of Ostiaks, Voguls, Kirghizes, and the Mongolian ruler of Kazen, this kingdom was obliged to pay tribute in 140.5 to Ru.ssia, which had now made its appearance as a new power in eastern Europe. The Russian grand duke, Ivan III (1462-150.5), who had coiujucrcd Nov- gorod in 1478, took up the old claims of this commer- cial city to the sovereignty of western Siberia and tKK)n began to transform them into reality. In 1499 th(! territory along the lower course of the River Obi was taken. This caused the Tatar khan to transfer his capital from Tyumen to the Tobol River, where he Vmilt the city of Isker or Sibir. In the middle of the sixteenth century (about 1563) a Usbeke called Ko- ziim, or Kutchum, seized Sibir, took the title of Em- peror of Siberia, and soon entered on a plan of con- quest. He advanced across the Ural, devastating and plundering as he went, towards Perm, where the Russian family of StroganofT had brought the entire Siberian trade under their control in order to play off one enemy against the other. Stroganoff took into his pay the (>jssacks of the Volga, who had re- peatedly ma/le marauding expeditions towards Perm. A horde of about 70(X) Cossacks under the command of the Hetman Yermak and in the pay of the Stroganoff

family, umlertook an expedition into Siberia. In 1580 Yermak carried Tyumen by storm, in 1581 he ad- vanced to the mouth of the Tobol River, and in Octo- ber of that year completely defeated Kutchum's armj' on the Tchuvachenberg near the present city of To- bolsk. On 26 October Yermak entered the city of Sibir.

As Yermak received no further aid either from the Stroganoff family or from the Cossacks still living on the Volga, he turned to the Russian tsar, Ivan the Ter- rible, and did homage to him as the ruler of the new Siberian empire. Yet Russia gave him very little help, and after a time Sibir was lost. In 1584 Yer- mak himself was killed in an ambush that the Tatars had set for him. Soon, however, the knowledge that here in the east there was a wide field for conquest made headway in Russia. The Russians perceived, moreover, that this country gave an opportunity to employ usefully the restless Cossacks, and the con- quests in Siberia were resumed. In 1588 Sibir was taken again and in 1589 Kutchuk Khan who had ruled in the south was driven to the northern slope of Asia. In order to give permanence to the conquest of the new territory large numbers of Cossacks and soldiers of the body-guard were constantly dispatched to Si- beria; these advanced along the large rivers towards the east and estabhshed permanent settlements as props of the Russian supremacy. The Government soon began also to establish Russian peasants in these regions. As early as 1590 nearly thirty peasant fam- ilies were aided to migrate to Siberia; in 1593 the first exiles were deported from Uglitch to Siberia. Slowly but steadily the Russians pushed towards the east. In 1632 Yakutsk on the Lena was founded; in 1643 the first Cossacks advanced to the upper Amur and de- scended along it to the Sea of Okhotsk. In 1644 the fortress Nizhne-Kolymsk was built where the Kolyma flows into the Arctic Ocean. In 1652 Irkutsk was founded and the territory around Lake Baikal was brought under Russian supremacy. The aboriginal tribes with which the Russians came into contact fre- quently fought them courageously, opposing espe- cially the exactment of the tribute in pelts, but their small numbers and the European arms of the Cos- sacks lead to their defeat. Along with their care for the extension and security of the boundaries the Rus- sians combined care for the economic development of the newly-won regions. Whole caravans of country people and women intended for the Cossacks were sent to Siberia at government expense to promote agricul- ture and to accustom the Cossacks to a settled mode of life; this was accompanied by concessions in the payment of taxes. The migration of peasants to Si- beria was encouraged by releasing those who went from the yoke of serfdom. Consequently at the be- ginning of the eighteenth century, there were already 230, (KK) Russians in Siberia. In 1621 the Siberian (■l)arcliy was established for the religious and moral needs of the settlers and for missionary work among the natives.

The Russians came into contact with the Chinese for the first time in the districts along the Amur River. Although in 1689 the Russians were forced to restore their conquests on the upper Amur to the Chinese, the relations between the two powers were, in general, friendly. In 1728-9 the two countries made the first settlement of their boundaries. To pro- tect the southern border against the incursions of the Kirghizes and Kalmucks the Russians founded many permanent towns, for instance, Petropaulovsk, Omsk, Semipalatinsk, and other places. Thereafter, the disturbances on the border gradually ceased and the order thus established permitted the Russian Govern- ment to take up the scientific exploration of the enor- mous region, the greater part of which was totally unknown. The most important of these scientific ex- peditions was the journey of the Danish captain Vitus-