Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/109

 Rh The Siberians are very bitter about this, for they feel that they are being deliberately cut off from modern education by the officialdom of old Russia.

There is one remarkable monument in Minusinsk which marks the advance of education and enlightenment in Central Siberia during the last decade. This is the museum, which is, in spite of the isolation of Minusinsk, the best in all Siberia. Many towns in Siberia have museums created by the order of officialdom of the same type as that which I saw at Krasnoyarsk. In Minusinsk, however, there lived a few years ago a cultivated Siberian gentleman. A keen enthusiast on more than one scientific subject, he spent a large part of his life in the creation of a museum which should be representative of all the scientific knowledge of the Southern Yenisei Government. The museum building, which along with the vodka factory and the prison shares the distinction of being among the finest in the whole town, contains collections of geological, botanical, archaeological and historical interest, and also exhibits showing the economic possibilities of Southern Siberia. It is remarkable that such an educational monument should have been created by a private individual and his friends in Siberia without the aid of any Government department, and this indeed shows the Russian character in a very different light from that in which we usually regard it. There are no more enlightened people than the Slavs if once they are thoroughly imbued with Western ideas; but the number of those who really absorb these ideas is so far very small.

I found another interesting example of the extra-