The Henrichenburg boat lift facilitates a change in elevation of the Dortmund-Ems-Kanal in Waltrop-Oberwiese. The boat lift is part of the Waltrop Lock Park (Schleusenpark), which includes the old Henrichenburg boat lift built in 1899, a disused shaft lock from 1912, the new boat lift built in 1962 and a modern ship lock from 1989.

 

The Henrichenburg boat lift is a popular destination for cyclists along the canals of the northern Ruhr Area.

 

The old boat lift was opened in 1899. It was an important structure on the Dortmund-Ems-Kanal without which it would not have been possible to navigate to Dortmund Port. The lift was the biggest and most spectacular structure on the old Dortmund-Ems-Kanal. It was inaugurated by Kaiser Wilhelm II on 11 August 1899.

 

This technically very interesting construction managed to lift approximately 1000 tonnes of ship and water filled trough using a relatively small amount of power. The trough was supported by 5 cylindrical floats each immersed in 40 metre deep water-filled wells. The lift from the floats was the same as the load of the water filled trough therefore, only a small electric motor sufficient to overcome friction and viscous resistance was needed to set the trough in motion in either direction. Four steel worm gears, 20 metres long and 280 mm in diameter were used to direct the trough in the appropriate course.

 

The old lift was closed shortly after the opening of the new lift. A year later in 1963 an attempt was made to restart the old lift. It was found that the trough had tilted and that it could no longer be moved into either the fully up or fully down positions. The lift remains in this condition today and is conserved as part of a museum.

facilitated by

Stable Diffusion «image to image»

DiffusionBee «image to image»

Prompt: Henri Rousseau Style

Input Strength: 40

Steps: 25

Guidance Scale: 15

2020 is very likely to be the last winter for the Sandouling open cast coal pit in China and thus the use of steam traction at this facility will cease.

With reserves nearly depleted the future of the mine will be reviewed in April/May.

Here we see stalwart traction for the coal trains in the form of Class JS 2-8-2 locomotive No 8190. She was built in the mid 80s and is still going strong today.

The area is on the edge of the Gobi desert and is largely featureless and expansive. This man made hole facilitates the removal of the coal from the mine at Xikang to the washery at Xuanmechang. From there it is transferred for onward transportation by diesel locomotive being loaded in the Nanzhen freight yards.

Temperatures during my visit ranged from -7 to -23.

Unusually for the area there was some prolonged snowfall. The area is usually bone dry the last light covering of snow being in 2012.

Liisa Sorsa, principal of Think Link Graphics, produced this graphic in real time as I spoke at a conference of GE communicators held in Orlando in March 2011. She produced similar graphics for each speaker, producing a record that supports both textual and graphical elements.

Pitches

I facilitated a photo trip to the Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve in Colorado. Not seeing me on the dune above him, a member of the group wandered into my shot. I rarely have people in my landscapes, and I sometimes think that's a mistake. These dunes are huge, reaching 750 feet high, and it really adds some scale as well as interest.

Helsinki is the capital city of Finland, which has been named the world's happiest country for the last five years.

 

Learn More www.visitfinland.com/en/articles/7-reasons-why-you-can-fi...

 

Helsinki also has one of the highest ambitions to become Sustainable in the World. It is a leader in entrepreneurship and innovation, with Startup and Investor events like SLUSH and Arctic15.

 

www.myhelsinki.fi/en/business-and-invest/invest-in-helsinki

www.slush.org/events/helsinki/

arctic15.com/arctic15-helsinki-2023/

 

For CleanTech and Impact Solutions from Finland, Nordics, and Baltics, with Financing, Advisory, and Facilitation, welcome and connect with CleanTech Region Impact Group.

linktr.ee/cleantechregion

 

Photos and videos credit: Lars Ling

linktr.ee/larsling

 

All rights reserved (c) copyright.

Santo Domingo de la Calzada es una localidad y un municipio español de la comunidad autónoma de La Rioja, situado a orillas del río Oja, en la comarca homónima a la localidad, situada esta a su vez dentro de La Rioja Alta.

Su nombre procede de su fundador Domingo García, que entre otras construyó allí un puente para hacer seguro el cruce del río, un hospital y un albergue de peregrinos, para facilitar con ello el peregrinaje del Camino de Santiago a su paso por la localidad.

Es famoso el milagro del gallo y la gallina, según el cual se dice que Domingo García demostró la inocencia de un peregrino acusado erróneamente de muerte al hacer volar una gallina que estaba asada en el plato. En recuerdo del estos hechos, en la catedral calceatense hay siempre un gallo y una gallina vivos y se extendió el dicho de «En Santo Domingo de la Calzada, donde cantó la gallina después de asada». Este milagro se cuenta también, con pocas variantes, del Gallo de Barcelos, Portugal.

En 2019 se cumplió el milenario de la muerte de su fundador.

En 1973 su casco antiguo fue declarado Conjunto de Interés Histórico Artístico. En la actualidad, la ciudad de Santo Domingo de la Calzada cuenta aproximadamente con 7000 habitantes y es un importante centro de servicios de la comarca, con una gran proyección administrativa, comercial, industrial y turística.

 

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Domingo_de_la_Calzada

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domingo_de_la_Calzada

 

Santo Domingo de la Calzada is a town and a Spanish municipality in the autonomous community of La Rioja, located on the banks of the river Oja, in the region with the same name as the town, located in La Rioja Alta.

Its name comes from its founder Domingo García, who among others built a bridge there to make the river crossing safe, a hospital and a pilgrim's hostel, thereby facilitating the pilgrimage of the Camino de Santiago as it passes through the town.

The miracle of the rooster and the hen is famous, according to which it is said that Domingo García proved the innocence of a pilgrim wrongly accused of death by blowing up a hen that was roasted on the plate. In memory of these events, in the cathedral of Calzada there is always a live rooster and a hen and the saying of "In Santo Domingo de la Calzada, where he sang the hen after roasting," spread. This miracle is also told, with few variations, of the Rooster of Barcelos, Portugal.

2019 marked the millennium since the death of its founder.

In 1973 its old town was declared a Site of Historic Artistic Interest. At present, the city of Santo Domingo de la Calzada has approximately 7000 inhabitants and is an important service center in the region, with a great administrative, commercial, industrial and tourist projection.

 

Excerpt from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%8Dan-ji:

 

Ryōan-ji (Shinjitai: 竜安寺, Kyūjitai: 龍安寺, The Temple of the Dragon at Peace) is a Zen temple located in northwest Kyoto, Japan. It belongs to the Myōshin-ji school of the Rinzai branch of Zen Buddhism. The Ryōan-ji garden is considered one of the finest surviving examples of kare-sansui ("dry landscape"), a refined type of Japanese Zen temple garden design generally featuring distinctive larger rock formations arranged amidst a sweep of smooth pebbles (small, carefully selected polished river rocks) raked into linear patterns that facilitate meditation. The temple and its gardens are listed as one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, and as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

The temple's name is synonymous with the temple's famous Zen garden, the karesansui (dry landscape) rock garden, thought to have been built in the late 15th century.

 

The garden is a rectangle of 248 square meters (2,670 square feet), twenty-five meters by ten meters. Placed within it are fifteen stones of different sizes, carefully composed in five groups; one group of five stones, two groups of three, and two groups of two stones. The stones are surrounded by white gravel, which is carefully raked each day by the monks. The only vegetation in the garden is some moss around the stones.

 

The garden is meant to be viewed from a seated position on the veranda of the hōjō, the residence of the abbot of the monastery. The stones are placed so that the entire composition cannot be seen at once from the veranda.

 

The wall behind the garden is an important element of the garden. It is made of clay, which has been stained by age with subtle brown and orange tones. In 1977, the tile roof of the wall was restored with tree bark to its original appearance. When the garden was rebuilt in 1799, it came up higher than before and a view over the wall to the mountain scenery behind came about. At present this view is blocked by trees.

 

The garden had particular significance for the composer John Cage, who composed a series of works and made visual art works based on it.

 

Like any work of art, the artistic garden of Ryōan-ji is also open to interpretation or research into possible meanings. Many different theories have been put forward inside and outside Japan about what the garden is supposed to represent, from islands in a stream, a tiger family crossing a river, mountain peaks, to theories about secrets of geometry or the rules of equilibrium of odd numbers. Garden historian Gunter Nitschke wrote: "The garden at Ryōan-ji does not symbolize anything, or more precisely, to avoid any misunderstanding, the garden of Ryōan-ji does not symbolize, nor does it have the value of reproducing a natural beauty that one can find in the real or mythical world. I consider it to be an abstract composition of 'natural' objects in space, a composition whose function is to incite meditation."

Facilitador Dual - No Fragmentación

  

Posted by Second Life Resident Torley Olmstead. Visit Sweet Mermaids.

The Henrichenburg boat lift facilitates a change in elevation of the Dortmund-Ems-Kanal in Waltrop-Oberwiese. The boat lift is part of the Waltrop Lock Park (Schleusenpark), which includes the old Henrichenburg boat lift built in 1899, a disused shaft lock from 1912, the new boat lift built in 1962 and a modern ship lock from 1989.

 

The Henrichenburg boat lift is a popular destination for cyclists along the canals of the northern Ruhr Area.

 

The old boat lift was opened in 1899.It was an important structure on the Dortmund-Ems-Kanal without which it would not have been possible to navigate to Dortmund Port. The lift was the biggest and most spectacular structure on the old Dortmund-Ems-Kanal. It was inaugurated by Kaiser Wilhelm II on 11 August 1899.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWnAnLUJHTs

 

Dont You Worry - John Legend

 

This young lady is one of Paulo's best personal trainers

See previous upload

In fact I prefer she would be my trainer than the Portuguese Man O War !

:-))))))))

A team is not made of 1 person !

Olympic gold is a team effort

So don't you worry!

Canada is in competent hands

 

g

O Parque de Avioso - S. Pedro está inserido na freguesia de S. Pedro de Avioso e Vila de Castelo da Maia. Tem uma dimensão de cerca 30 hectares e possui à volta de 4,5 km de percursos pedestres. A sua localização favorece o acesso, seja de transporte individual, através das Estradas Nacionais, seja através de transporte público.

 

The Parque de Avioso - S. Pedro is inserted in the parish of S. Pedro de Avioso and Castelo da Maia. It has a size of about 30 hectares and has around 4.5 km of footpaths. Its location facilitates access, whether individual transport, through the National Roads, either through public transportation.

 

__________________________________________________

 

Copyright © 2009 - 2012 Nuno Gomes all rights reserved.

 

All my images are protected under international author’s copyright laws and you may NOT! print, download, reproduce, copy, transmit, manipulate or edit any of my images without my prior written permission.

 

Please don't post your own images within my Photostream.

I consider this rude and unwelcome.

__________________________________________________

 

[View Large on Black (with BlackMagic)]

 

[View Awards Count]

Facilitated by: Natalie Pierce (Head, Global Shapers Community)

With: Ostap Lutsyshyn (Advisory Council, Lviv Hub), Adam Amoussou (Community Champion, Cotonou Hub), Tariq Al-Olaimy (Foundation Board Member), Vanessa Lancaster (Community Champion, Edmonton Hub), Simge Sandal (Community Champion, Dusseldorf Hub

speaking in the Leadership Skills Workshop: Practising Collaborative Leadership to Achieve Consensus session at the Global Shapers Annual Summit 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, 17 June 2023. World Economic Forum Headquarters, Mont Blanc A&B. Copyright: World Economic Forum/ Thibaut Bouvier

Making a bad situation infinitely worse. Now that's in my job description.

For sale: www.hangart.com/art/artist_directory/specifics.cfm?Artwor...

Time for some touch up painting...but I can't be trusted to paint without the help of blue painters tape (and even then it's a nightmare!).

Another Volvo Olympian which likes to "sleep" is former lothian P416KSX now an exhibition bus for a cooker company. Interesting the height of this vehicle has been raised to facilitate its new use !

Odaiba (お台場) es una extensa isla artificial en la bahía de Tokio, en Japón. Está conectada al centro de Tokio a través del Rainbow Bridge. Se construyó inicialmente por motivos defensivos en la década de 1850 y fue expandida a finales del siglo XX, cuando en la década de 1990 se desarrolló como una importante zona comercial, residencial y de ocio.

El nombre de Odaiba proviene de una serie de seis fortalezas isleñas construidas en 1853 por Egawa Hidetatsu del shogunato Tokugawa para proteger Edo de ataques marítimos. Daiba en japonés se refiere a la batería de cañones que se instalaron en las islas. En 1928, la Batería Nº3 Dai-San Daiba (第三台場) fue reformada y desde entonces abierta al público como el parque metropolitano Daiba.

Aunque originalmente se planearon once baterías, sólo cinco de ellas llegaron a completarse. La isla moderna de Odaiba comenzó a tomar forma cuando el puerto de Tokio abrió en 1941. Hasta mediados de 1960 todas, excepto dos baterías fueron o bien quitadas, para evitar obstaculizar el paso de barcos, o bien incorporadas a las instalaciones del puerto de Shinagawa y la isla Tennozu. En 1979 el, por entonces, llamado "vertedero Nº 13," (actualmente los distritos de Daiba, Higashi Yashio y Aomi), se terminó de unir con la Batería Nº 3. La "Batería Nº 6," en la que está prohibido aterrizar, se dejó a la naturaleza.

El gobernador de Tokio, Shun'ichi Suzuki, comenzó un plan de desarrollo más vasto a principios de la década de 1990 para desarrollar Odaiba como Tokyo Teleport Town, una muestra de estilo de vida futurista con nuevas zonas residenciales y comerciales que dieran cabida a una población de más de 100.000 personas. Se planeó terminar el desarrollo a tiempo para la "International Urban Exposition" en la primavera de 1996.

El sucesor de Suzuki, Yukio Aoshima, detuvo el plan en 1995 cuando los gastos del proyecto superaban el trillón de yenes y Odaiba aún carecía de una población abundante. Muchas de las compañías creadas para el desarrollo de la isla cayeron casi en bancarrota. El colapso de la burbuja financiera e inmobiliaria en Japón fue el principal factor (frustró el desarrollo comercial en Tokio en general). La zona también se vio inapropiada para los negocios debido a que sus conexiones con el centro de Tokio (el puente Rainbow Bridge y el monorail Yurikamome) hacían el tiempo de viaje relativamente largo.

El área comenzó a cobrar vida de nuevo a finales de 1990 como una zona turística y de ocio, con varios grandes hoteles y centros comerciales. Algunas grandes compañías, como Fuji TV, trasladaron su sede a la isla, y la comunicación con la zona mejoró con la conexión de la línea Rinkai Line a la línea de ferrocarril JR East en 2002 y la extensión hacia el este de la línea Yurikamome hasta Toyosu en 2006.

Desde su desarrollo en la década de 1990 Odaiba se ha convertido, además de una zona comercial y residencial, en un importante centro de entretenimiento y turismo. Por ello cuenta con numerosas atracciones y varias opciones de alojamiento.

Algunas de las atracciones más destacadas de Odaiba son:

Rainbow Bridge (レインボーブリッジ Reinbō Burijji), puente que conecta Odaiba con el distrito Shibaura del barrio Minato.

Estudios de Fuji TV (フジテレビ Fuji Terebi), con su peculiar diseño obra del arquitecto Kenzō Tange.

Odaiba Kaihin Koen (お台場海浜公園), una de las dos playas disponibles en la zona urbana de Tokio.

DECKS Tokyo Beach (デックス東京ビーチ), centro comercial que contiene el Sega Joypolis.

AQUA CiTY ODAIBA (アクアシティお台場), centro comercial localizado justo frente a los estudios de Fuji TV.

Réplica de la Estatua de la Libertad.

Oedo-Onsen-Monogatari, sentō (baño público japonés).

Museo Nacional de Ciencias Emergentes e Innovación (日本科学未来館 Nippon Kagaku Mirai-kan), conocido por su sobrenombre Miraikan (未来館 lit. "Museo del futuro").

Museo de Ciencias Marítimas (船の科学館 Fune-no-kagakukan), edificio en forma de barco.

Centro de Exposición Internacional de Tokio (東京国際展示場 Tōkyō Kokusai Tenjijō), conocido por su sobrenombre Tokyo Big Sight (東京ビッグサイト Tōkyō Biggu Saito).

Palette Town: una de las atracciones más completas. El complejo está localizado en el centro de Odaiba y es fácilmente accesible por la estación de Aomi de la línea Yurikamome, contiene las siguientes atracciones:

Daikanransha, una noria de 115 metros, duodécima más alta del mundo. Cuando abrió en 1999 ocupaba la primera posición de dicha clasificación.

Venus Fort, centro comercial que recrea el ambiente veneciano.

Sun Walk, centro comercial.

Megaweb, centro de exhibición de Toyota.

Zepp Tokyo, uno de los clubes nocturnos y salas de conciertos más grandes de Tokio.

Leisure Land, centro con horario de 24 horas con bolera, videojuegos y karaoke.

Dos líneas de Shuto Expressway tienen comunicación con la zona: la ruta 11, desde el centro de Tokio cruzando el puente Rainbow Bridge; y la línea Wangan Line, desde Shinagawa a través del Tokyo Port Tunnel (subterráneo) y desde las áreas de las bahías de las prefecturas de Tokio y Chiba por el este.

En transporte público, se puede acceder a Odaiba a través de la línea automatizada Yurikamome (común y erróneamente llamado "monoraíl") desde Shimbashi y Toyosu. La línea privada Rinkai Line opera entre Shin-Kiba y Ōsaki, pero muchos de los trenes conectan directamente con Shibuya, Shinjuku e Ikebukuro. Los autobuses de la ciudad ofrecen una alternativa más barata, a la par que más lenta. Los transbordadores conectan Odaiba con Asakusa, recorriendo el río Sumida y el Kansai Rinkai Park en el este de Tokio.

En varias temporadas de la franquicia Digimon, Odaiba es el lugar donde viven la mayoría de los protagonistas. El lugar es frecuentemente mencionado y retratado con acierto según el estado de la zona en los años que ocurren las tramas. Aparece en Digimon Adventure (1999), Digimon Adventure 02 (2000) y Digimon Adventure tri. (2015). Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 , comienza con dos hermanos visitando una exposición de robots en esta isla cuando un fuerte sismo azota y destruye gran parte de Tokio.

 

Odaiba - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

 

Odaiba - Google Maps

 

Odaiba (お台場) today is a large artificial island in Tokyo Bay, Japan, across the Rainbow Bridge from central Tokyo. Odaiba was initially built in this area for defensive purposes in the 1850s. The original Odaiba opened in 1860 as a port and shipyard in the city today known as Yokosuka, site of the joint Japanese-US fleet HQ. Reclaimed land offshore Shinagawa was dramatically expanded during the late 20th century as a seaport district, and has developed since the 1990s as a major commercial, residential and leisure area. Odaiba, along with Minato Mirai 21 in Yokohama, is among a few manmade seashores in Tokyo Bay where the waterfront is accessible, and not blocked by industry and harbor areas. For artificial sand beaches in the bay, Sea Park in Kanazawa-ku is suitable for swimming, Odaiba has one, and there are two in Kasai Rinkai Park area looking over to the Tokyo Disneyland.

Daiba (台場) formally refers to one district of the island development in Minato Ward. Governor Shintaro Ishihara used Odaiba to refer to the entire Tokyo Waterfront Secondary City Center (東京臨海副都心, Tōkyō Rinkai Fukutoshin), which includes the Ariake and Aomi districts of Kōtō Ward and the Higashi-Yashio district of Shinagawa Ward.

The name Odaiba alludes to daiba (台場, "batteries" / "forts"), which formed small islands nearby. They were constructed in 1853 by Egawa Hidetatsu for the Tokugawa shogunate in order to protect Edo from attack by sea, the primary threat being Commodore Matthew Perry's Black Ships, which had arrived in the same year. In 1928, the Dai-San Daiba (第三台場, No. 3 Battery) was refurbished and opened to the public as the Metropolitan Daiba Park.

Of the originally planned 11 batteries, seven construction projects started, but only six were ever finished. No. 1 to No. 3 Batteries were completed in eight months in 1853. Construction on Nos. 4 to 7 started in 1854, but only Nos. 5 and 6 were finished by the year's end. Nos. 4 and 7 were abandoned, with 30% and 70% unfinished (respectively), and an alternative land-based battery near Gotenyama was built instead. However, they resumed construction on No. 4 in 1862 and completed it the following year.

Until the mid-1960s, all except two batteries (Nos. 3 and 6) were either removed to facilitate ship navigation or incorporated into Shinagawa port and Tennōzu. In 1979, the "landfill no. 13" (now Minato-ku Daiba, Shinagawa-ku Higashi-Yashio and Kōtō-ku Aomi districts) was finished and connected to the park that was No. 3 Battery. On the other hand, No. 6 was left to nature (access prohibited).

 

Today's Odaiba is a popular shopping and sightseeing destination for Tokyoites and tourists alike. Major attractions include:

Palette Town, including Daikanransha (Ferris wheel), the Toyota exhibition hall called Megaweb, MORI Building Digital Art Museum, Tokyo Leisure Land, a Venice-themed shopping mall called VenusFort, and Zepp Tokyo

Fuji Television studios, with a distinctive building designed by Kenzo Tange

Miraikan, Japan's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation

Rainbow Bridge, connecting Odaiba to the heart of Tokyo

Tokyo Big Sight (Tokyo International Exhibition Center)

Aqua City, a shopping center featuring a chapel, Toys "R" Us and 13-screen United Cinemas

DiverCity Tokyo Plaza, a shopping center containing Unko Museum Tokyo, the world's first Doraemon Future Department Store (ドラえもん未来デパート), and

Gundam Base Tokyo, featuring a 19.7-meter (64.6 feet) tall statue of Gundam

another Zepp location (Zepp DiverCity)

Decks Tokyo Beach shopping mall, featuring Sega Joypolis, Odaiba Takoyaki Museum, Madame Tussauds and Legoland Discovery Center

Museum of Maritime Science (Fune no kagakukan), with swimming pool

Oedo-Onsen-Monogatari sentō: Water to the baths rise up from 1400 meters underground. 14 different baths

Shiokaze park with BBQ places and Higashi Yashio park

Telecom Center Building (MXTV's former headquarters), with observation deck

One of two beaches in urban Tokyo (swimming prohibited), along with Kasai Rinkai Park in Edogawa Ward

A replica of the Statue of Liberty

Panasonic Center, a science and technology showroom

Sea Forest Waterway, the regatta venue for rowing and canoeing at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

 

Two Shuto Expressway lines access Odaiba: Route 11 enters from central Tokyo crossing the Rainbow Bridge, while the Bayshore Route enters from Shinagawa Ward through the Tokyo Port Tunnel and from the bayfront areas of Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture to the east.

By public transport, Odaiba is accessible via the automated Yurikamome transit system from Shimbashi and Toyosu. The privately operated Rinkai Line runs between Shin-kiba and Osaki, but many trains connect directly to Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Ikebukuro. City buses provide cheaper if slower access. Ferries connect Odaiba with Asakusa running along the Sumida River and the Kasai Rinkai Park in eastern Tokyo.

The Tokyo Cruise Ship is a water bus operator in Tokyo that offers services including public lines as well as event cruises and chartered ships. Such as from Asakusa → Odaiba Seaside Park → Toyosu → Asakusa.

 

Odaiba - Wikipedia

 

No correspondence.

 

A decorated Bavarian Offizierstellvertreter from Königlich Bayerisches 9. Infanterie-Regiment „Wrede“ circa 1916.

 

Offizierstellvertreter or acting officer, was a rank created in June 1915, partly to facilitate the replacement of subaltern officers, ensigns and platoon commanders by non-commissioned officers.

After over one thousand days into the Saudi bombing of Yemen, which is almost entirely UK/US equipped and supported, the first large protest takes place in London of a few hundred people outside Downing Street.

 

[ Just in case anyone is interested I have attached a link to my research on British crimes in and against Yemen since the bombardment of Aden in 1839. Use the following url and scroll down the list of countries alphabetically for Yemen - roguenation.org/choose-by-country/ ]

 

They are outraged that the British government is not just rolling out the red carpet for one of the most brutal family dictatorships in the Middle East, but also quite deliberately facilitating and aiding the Saudi terror bombing of civilian targets in Yemen, including numerous schools and hospitals, in the full knowledge that this will only exacerbate the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

 

Since the war in Yemen started the UK has exported over £4.6 billion worth of arms, including Typhoon and Tornado aircraft as well as weaponry and Paveway IV bombs which have been used with appalling consequences in Yemen. We have even been training the Saudi air force.

 

The same day as the protest against the welcoming of Mohammad bin Salman at Downing Street, the British corporate owned mainstream media embarked on a massive campaign to whitewash the crown prince who has become Saudi Arabia's feared absolute ruler and who's corrupt regime has a cosy relationship with many of Britain's biggest businesses.

 

The deaths of tens of thousands in Yemen was, several newspapers claimed, of little or no importance in comparison to the prince's reforming zeal. The decision to allow women to drive and the reintroduction of cinemas was highlighted as the evidence that this was a regime Britain could and should support economically and diplomatically. That the Saudi government has just launched a brutal purge of political opponents and the country's Shia minotiry was not considered important or relevant.

 

Not since Hitler instigated a purge of his paramilitary SA in 1934, has the British press gone so far out of its way to praise a murderous dictator. Then Hitler was lauded as a moderating influence on the Nazi party. This was a deception carefully cultivated by Hitler's minister of propaganda Jozef Goebbels. Today the Saudi dictatorship have also become highly skilled in developing a propaganda campaign of which Goebbels would have been envious and the British Spectator magazine has even honoured MBS, a standard shortening of the Saudi tyrant's name, with the title "Prince of PR.."

 

MBS clearly understands that images of dead and dying children in Yemen could cost him dearly, so he has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the British media and public, buying numerous pages of advertising in multiple newspapers, but especially in The Financial Times, so crucial in influencing Britain's business elite. Similarly billboards went up across London lauding Bin Salman as a "great reformer."

 

For anyone who might feel even partially persuaded by the media attempt to whitewash the Saudi regime, try and imagine how the media would react in another similar situation. Let us suppose Iran, which has been introducing extensive reforms and is now far more democratic than Saudi Arabia which makes no pretence at holding elections, had been bombing Israeli civilians for three years killing tens of thousands. Let us suppose the British government now not only welcomes the Iranian leader to visit London, but promises to continue supplying British aircraft and bombs to Iran in the full knowledge that this would mean that more Israeli schools and hospitals would be bombed and that a large part of the Israeli population could die from cholera and famine. Would the British media be so supportive then ? Of course, not, they would almost certainly demand military action against Iran. The very opposite of what they are doing now !

 

Surveys conducted by the Yemen Data Project, a group of academics, human rights and national security experts, showed that as of 2016 at least one third of all Saudi air strikes had hit civilian targets with the United Nations estimating in 2017 that 5,000 civilians had been killed by the Saudi bombing. The predictable indirect consequences of the bombing however have been even more catastrophic.

 

Britain continues to be complicit in one of the worst war crimes of the twenty first century by supplying the aircraft and weapons and the diplomatic support for Saudi Arabia's three year bombing campaign. This together with a tight blockade on basic imports of food, fuel and other essentials has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis with 76% of the population in need of humanitarian aid and 8.4 million at risk of famine, according to the United Nations World Food Programme. Additionally, over one million Yemenis have now contracted cholera while a recent outbreak of diphtheria is spreading rapidly.

 

While British media outlets focus on alleged Iranian violations of the arms embargo on Yemen, there is a deafening silence on the devastating role played by British aircraft and weapons, with the government granting arms export licenses worth £1.12 billion to Saudi Arabia during 2017 alone.

   

C-GWUF, a Cirrus SR22, heading south on taxiway "Bravo" to runway 33 at Toronto Buttonville Municipal Airport in Markham, Ontario.

 

The spirited sportster was heading north to Collingwood, Ontario from its base.

 

This image sums up a key advantage of private aviation - enabling individuals to travel whenever they want to, to wherever this wish to.

 

Buttonville closed down on November 24, 2023. This aircraft's new home became Oshawa Executive Airport at Oshawa, Ontario.

Women in Abu Shouk Camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) near El Fasher, North Darfur, attend English classes conducted by volunteer teachers and facilitated by the police component of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID). Nearly 100 women, many with children, attend these classes three times a week in a school in the camp with materials (exercise books, notebooks, blackboards and chalk) provided by UNAMID Police.

 

UN Photo/Albert González Farran

18 February 2014

El Fasher, Sudan

Photo # 580613

Facilitated by: Natalie Pierce (Head, Global Shapers Community)

With: Ostap Lutsyshyn (Advisory Council, Lviv Hub), Adam Amoussou (Community Champion, Cotonou Hub), Tariq Al-Olaimy (Foundation Board Member), Vanessa Lancaster (Community Champion, Edmonton Hub), Simge Sandal (Community Champion, Dusseldorf Hub

speaking in the Leadership Skills Workshop: Practising Collaborative Leadership to Achieve Consensus session at the Global Shapers Annual Summit 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, 17 June 2023. World Economic Forum Headquarters, Mont Blanc A&B. Copyright: World Economic Forum/ Thibaut Bouvier

A yurt (from the Turkic languages) or ger (Mongolian) is a portable, round tent covered and insulated with skins or felt and traditionally used as a dwelling by several distinct nomadic groups in the steppes and mountains of Inner Asia. The structure consists of a flexible angled assembly or latticework of wood or bamboo for walls, a door frame, ribs (poles, rafters), and a wheel (crown, compression ring) possibly steam-bent as a roof. The roof structure is sometimes self-supporting, but large yurts may have interior posts supporting the crown. The top of the wall of self-supporting yurts is prevented from spreading by means of a tension band which opposes the force of the roof ribs. Yurts take between 30 minutes and 3 hours to set up or take down, and are generally used by between five and 15 people. Nomadic farming with yurts as housing has been the primary life style in Central Asia, particularly Mongolia, for thousands of years.

 

Modern yurts may be permanently built on a wooden or concrete platform; they may use modern materials such as metal framing, plastics, plexiglass dome, or radiant insulation.

 

Etymology and translations

Old Turkic yurt "tent, dwelling, abode, range" may have been derived from the Old Turkic word ur - verb with the suffix +Ut. In modern Turkish and Uzbek, the word "yurt" is used as the synonym of "homeland" or a "dormitory", while in modern Azerbaijani, "yurd" mainly signifies "homeland" or "motherland". In Russian, the structure is called "yurta" (юрта), whence the word came into English.

 

Translations

alaçıq/alaçık/alasıq – in use in Azerbaijani, Turkish and Bashkir languages.

гэр (transliterated: ger, [ˈɡɛr]) – in Mongolian simply means "cover, shell and home".

тирмә (transliterated: tirmä) is the Bashkir term for yurt.

киіз үй (transliterated: kiız üi, [kɪjɪz ʏj]) – the Kazakh word, and means "felt house".

боз үй (transliterated: boz üy, [bɔz yj]) – the Kyrgyz term meaning "grey house", because of the color of the felt.

ak öý ([ɑq œj], "white house") and gara öý ([ʁɑˈɾɑ œj], "black house") – in the Turkmen language, which term is used depends on its luxury and elegance.

qara u'y (IPA: [qɑrɑ́ ʉj]) and otaw ([uʊtɑ́w]) – in Karakalpak the first term means "black house", while the second means "a newborn family" and is used only to name a young family's yurt.

In Hungarian yurt is called "jurta". Besides the more scientific modern-era word "jurta", Hungarians in everyday life still use "sátor" for all tent-like dwellings, which could be the original word Hungarians used for yurts in historic times.

In Bulgarian yurt is called "юрта" (yurta).

"Kherga"/"Jirga" – Afghans call them.

"Khema" (خیمه /ख़ेमा) in Hindustani is the word for a yurt or a tent-like dwelling in India and Pakistan, from the Arabic: خَيْمَة

In Persian yurt is called چادر (châdor)

In Tajik the names are "yurt", "khona-i siyoh", "khayma" (юрт, хонаи сиёҳ, хайма).

өг (ög, Tuvan pronunciation: [œɣ]) is the Tuvan word for yurt.

кереге (kerege, /keɾeɣe/) is the Southern Altai word for a yurt made from felt.

A Yaranga is a tent-like traditional mobile home of some nomadic Northern indigenous peoples of Russia, such as Chukchi and Siberian Yupik.

 

History

Yurts have been a distinctive feature of life in Central Asia for at least two and a half thousand years. The first written description of a yurt used as a dwelling was recorded by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. He described yurt-like tents as the dwelling place of the Scythians, a horse riding-nomadic nation who lived in the northern Black Sea and Central Asian region from around 600 BC to AD 300.

 

Yurts beyond Central Asia

As popularity grew, it extended beyond Central Asia. In the 13th century, during the height of the Mongol Empire, yurts were introduced to parts of Europe and the Middle East. Marco Polo's writings even mentioned the use of yurts in the court of Kublai Khan. In more recent history, yurts have gained attention in the West for their unique aesthetics and practicality.

 

Construction

Traditional yurts consist of an expanding wooden circular frame carrying a felt cover. The felt is made from the wool of the flocks of sheep that accompany the pastoralists. The timber to make the external structure is not to be found on the treeless steppes, and must be obtained by trade in the valleys below.

 

The frame consists of one or more expanding lattice wall-sections, a door frame, bent roof poles, and a crown. The Mongolian ger has one or more columns to support the crown and straight roof poles. The (self-supporting) wood frame is covered with pieces of felt. Depending on availability, felt is additionally covered with canvas and/or sun covers. The frame is held together with one or more ropes or ribbons. The structure is kept under compression by the weight of the covers, sometimes supplemented by a heavy weight hung from the center of the roof. They vary in size and relative weight. They provide a large amount of insulation and protection from the outside cold of winters, and they are easily changed to keep the yurts cool for summertime.

 

A yurt is designed to be dismantled and the parts are carried compactly on camels or yaks to be rebuilt on another site. Complete construction takes around 2 hours

 

Insulation and decoration, symbolism

The traditional insulation and decoration within a yurt primarily consists of pattern-based woollen felted rugs. These patterns are generally not according to taste, but are derived from sacred ornaments with certain symbolism. Symbols representing strength are, for instance, the temdeg or khas (swastika), the four powerful beasts (lion, tiger, garuda – a kind of avian, and dragon), as well as stylized representations of the four elements (fire, water, earth, and air), considered to be the fundamental, unchanging elements of the cosmos. Such patterns are commonly used in the home with the belief that they will bring strength and offer protection.

 

Repeating geometric patterns are also widely used, like the continuous hammer or walking pattern (alkhan khee). Commonly used as a border decoration, it represents unending strength and constant movement. Another common pattern is the ulzii, a symbol of long life and happiness. The khamar ugalz (nose pattern) and ever ugalz (horn pattern) are derived from the shape of the animal's nose and horns, and are the oldest traditional patterns. All patterns can be found among not only the yurts themselves, but also on embroidery, furniture, books, clothing, doors, and other objects.

 

In Kyrgyz felted rug manufacturing the most common patterns are the Ala kiyiz and Shyrdak. Ornaments are visualising good wishes or blessings of the makers to a daughter who gets married, to children, or grandchildren.

 

The shangyrak or wooden crown of the yurt (Mongolian: тооно, [tɔːn]; Kazakh: шаңырақ, romanized: Shañıraq [ɕɑɴəɾɑ́q]; Kyrgyz: түндүк [tyndýk]; Turkmen: tüýnük) is itself emblematic in many Central Asian cultures. In old Kazakh communities, the yurt itself would often be repaired and rebuilt, but the shangyrak would remain intact, passed from father to son upon the father's death. A family's length of heritage could be measured by the accumulation of stains on the shangyrak from decades of smoke passing through it. A stylized version of the crown is in the center of the coat of arms of Kazakhstan, and forms the main image on the flag of Kyrgyzstan.

 

Today a yurt is seen as a national symbol among many Central Asian groups, and as such, yurts may be used as cafés (especially those specializing in traditional food), museums (especially those relating to national culture), and souvenir shops. In celebration of the city of Mary's year as Cultural Capital of the Turkic World, the government of Turkmenistan constructed a yurt-shaped structure, called Ak Öýi (White Building) and described as "The World's Largest Yurt", of concrete, granite, aluminum, and glass. Established on November 27, 2015, the structure is 35 meters high and 70 meters in diameter. According to the Turkmenistan state news agency, "A white yurt is a symbol of an age-old, distinctive historical-cultural legacy, a sign of preservation of our roots and origins." This three-story structure includes a café, offices, and VIP apartments ,as well as a large auditorium with 3,000 seats.

 

Buddhism in Mongolia

The design of the Mongolian ger developed from its ancient simple forms to actively integrate with Buddhist culture. The crown—toono adopted the shape of Dharmachakra. The earlier style of toono, nowadays more readily found in Central Asian yurts, is called in Mongolia "sarkhinag toono," while the toono representing Buddhist dharmachakra is called "khorlo" (Tibetan འཀོར་ལོ།) toono. Also the shapes, colors, and ornaments of the wooden elements—toono, pillars, and poles of the Mongolian yurt—are in accord with the artistic style found in Buddhist monasteries in Mongolia. Such yurts are called "uyangiin ger", literally meaning "home of lyrics" or "home of melodies".

 

Westernization

Enthusiasts in other countries have adapted the visual idea of the yurt, a round, semi-permanent tent. Although those structures may be copied to some extent from the originals found in Central Asia, they often have some different features in their design to adapt them to different climate and uses.

 

In Canada and the United States, yurts are often made using hi-tech materials. They can be highly engineered and built for extreme weather conditions. In addition, erecting one can take days and it may not be intended to be frequently moved. Such North American yurts are better thought of as yurt derivations, as they are no longer round felt homes that are easy to mount, dismount, and transport. North American yurts and yurt derivations were pioneered by William Coperthwaite in the 1960s, after he was inspired to build them by a National Geographic article about Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas's visit to Mongolia.

 

In 1978, American company Pacific Yurts became the first to manufacture yurts using architectural fabrics and structural engineering, paving the way for yurts to become popular attractions at ski resorts and campgrounds. Yurts are also popular in Northern Canada. In 1993, Oregon became the first state to incorporate yurts into its Parks Department as year-round camping facilities. Since then, at least 17 other US States have introduced yurt camping into their own parks departments.

 

In Europe, a closer approximation to the Mongolian and Central Asian yurt is in production in several countries. These tents use local hardwood, and often are made for a wetter climate with steeper roof profiles and waterproof canvas. In essence they are yurts, but some lack the felt cover and ornate features across the exterior that is present in traditional yurt. There are UK-made yurts that feature a metal frame in use in at least two glamping sites in Somerset and Dorset.

 

The palloza is a traditional building found in the Serra dos Ancares in Galicia (NW Spain). Pallozas have stone walls and a conical roof made of stalks of rye.

 

Different groups and individuals use yurts for a variety of purposes, from full-time housing to school rooms. In some provincial parks in Canada, and state parks in several US states, permanent yurts are available for camping.

 

Since the late 1920s the German youth and Scouting movements have adapted a variant of the yurt and the Sami Lavvu (Kohte), calling them Schwarzzelt (black tent), a term mainly used for tents from North Africa.

 

Ergaki Nature Park (Russian: Природный парк Ергаки, also referred to as Irgaki) is located in located in the Ergaki mountain range in southern Siberia, Russia. The park was established in 2005 and it is referred to as the "Russian Yosemite".

 

Background

On April 4, 2005, Ergaki Nature Park was established as a protected area of Siberia. The purpose of the nature park designation was to protect and preserve the area and resources while also developing tourism. The Western Sayan Mountains are in the park and they were thought to be an area which would attract recreational tourism. The park covers an area of over 217,000 ha (540,000 acres).

 

History

The park is in the in Krasnoyarsk Krai and it is a popular tourist area. It is known for its recreational uses and there is a hiking trail which is 35 km (22 mi) long. The trail was started in 2005 and it takes tourists through the park passing glacial lakes, mountains, canyons and rivers with waterfall features. It is recommended that hikers allow themselves three to five days to complete the trail. The trail ends at Lake Raduzhnoe, which is below a natural feature and attraction known as the Hanging Stone. One quarter of the park is off limits to visitors so that the areas are not disturbed. Threats to the park include tourism, poaching, and logging. The park is monitored by the Natural Park Protection Service.

 

Features

The park also has a rock ridge known as 'Sleeping Sayan". The ridge appears to be a silhouette of a man lying on his back. Authorities say that the park was visited by 120 thousand tourists per year. Many of the peaks have been given names, like Mirror, Bird, Star, Dragon's Tooth and Cone.

 

The highest point found in the park is found in the Aradansky mountain range: it is 2,466 m (8,091 ft). The second highest is found in the middle of the Ergaki mountains (Zvezdny peak) 2,265 m (7,431 ft). Also within the park is a natural feature called the Hanging Stone. It is large stone which seems to teeter on the cliff face perched high above Lake Raduzhnoyeke.

 

Flora

There park has hundreds of different mosses, liverworts, lichens and fungi. The park is estimated to have 1,500 different species of vascular plants. There are more than fifty species of the Asteraceae flowering plants. There are Ergakov mushrooms which have not been the subject of studies.

 

Siberia is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its various predecessor states since the centuries-long conquest of Siberia, which began with the fall of the Khanate of Sibir in the late 16th century and concluded with the annexation of Chukotka in 1778. Siberia is vast and sparsely populated, covering an area of over 13.1 million square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi), but home to roughly a quarter of Russia's population. Novosibirsk and Omsk are the largest cities in the area.

 

Because Siberia is a geographic and historic concept and not a political entity, there is no single precise definition of its territorial borders. Traditionally, Siberia spans the entire expanse of land from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, with the Ural River usually forming the southernmost portion of its western boundary, and includes most of the drainage basin of the Arctic Ocean. It is further defined as stretching from the territories within the Arctic Circle in the north to the northern borders of Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China in the south, although the hills of north-central Kazakhstan are also commonly included. The Russian government divides the region into three federal districts (groupings of Russian federal subjects), of which only the central one is officially referred to as "Siberian"; the other two are the Ural and Far Eastern federal districts, named for the Ural and Russian Far East regions that correspond respectively to the western and eastern thirds of Siberia in the broader sense.

 

Siberia is known for its long, harsh winters, with a January average of −25 °C (−13 °F). Although it is geographically in Asia, Russian sovereignty and colonization since the 16th century have rendered the region culturally and ethnically European. Over 85% of its population are of European descent, chiefly Russian (comprising the Siberian sub-ethnic group), and Eastern Slavic cultural influences predominate throughout the region.[7] Nevertheless, there exist sizable ethnic minorities of Asian lineage, including various Turkic communities—many of which, such as the Yakuts, Tuvans, Altai, and Khakas, are Indigenous—along with the Mongolic Buryats, ethnic Koreans, and smaller groups of Samoyedic and Tungusic peoples (several of whom are classified as Indigenous small-numbered peoples by the Russian government), among many others.

 

The early history of Siberia was greatly influenced by the sophisticated nomadic civilizations of the Scythians (Pazyryk) on the west of the Ural Mountains and Xiongnu (Noin-Ula) on the east of the Urals, both flourishing before the common era. The steppes of Siberia were occupied by a succession of nomadic peoples, including the Khitan people,[citation needed] various Turkic peoples, and the Mongol Empire. In the Late Middle Ages, Tibetan Buddhism spread into the areas south of Lake Baikal.

 

During the Russian Empire, Siberia was chiefly developed as an agricultural province. The government also used it as a place of exile, sending Avvakum, Dostoevsky, and the Decemberists, among others, to work camps in the region. During the 19th century, the Trans-Siberian Railway was constructed, supporting industrialization. This was also aided by discovery and exploitation of vast reserves of Siberian mineral resources.

 

Prehistory and antiquity

According to the field of genetic genealogy, people first resided in Siberia by 45,000 BCE and spread out east and west to populate Europe and the Americas, including the prehistoric Jomon people of Japan, who are the ancestors of the modern Ainu.

 

According to Vasily Radlov, among the Paleo-Siberian inhabitants of Central Siberia were the Yeniseians, who spoke a language different from the later Uralic and Turkic people. The Kets are considered the last remainder of this early migration. Migrants are estimated to have crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America more than 20,000 years ago.

 

The shores of all Siberian lakes, which filled the depressions during the Lacustrine period, abound in remains dating from the Neolithic age. Countless kurgans (tumuli), furnaces, and other archaeological artifacts bear witness to a dense population. Some of the earliest artifacts found in Central Asia derive from Siberia.

 

The Yeniseians were followed by the Uralic Samoyeds, who came from the northern Ural region. Some descendant cultures, such as the Selkup, remain in the Sayan region. Iron was unknown to them, but they excelled in bronze, silver, and gold work. Their bronze ornaments and implements, often polished, evince considerable artistic taste. They developed and managed irrigation to support their agriculture in wide areas of the fertile tracts.

 

Indo-Iranian influences in southwestern Siberia can be dated to the 2300–1000 BCE Andronovo culture. Between the 7th and 3rd centuries BCE, the Indo-Iranian Scythians flourished in the Altai region (Pazyryk culture). They were a major influence on all later steppe empires.

 

As early as the first millennium BCE, trade was underway over the Silk Road. Silk goods were imported and traded in Siberia.

 

The establishment of the Xiongnu empire in the 3rd century BCE started a series of population movements. Many people were probably driven to the northern borders of the great Central Siberian Plateau. Turkic people such as the Yenisei Kirghiz had already been present in the Sayan region. Various Turkic tribes such as the Khaka and Uyghur migrated northwestwards from their former seats and subdued the Ugric people.

 

These new invaders likewise left numerous traces of their stay, and two different periods may be easily distinguished from their remains. They were acquainted with iron, and learned from their subjects the art of bronze casting, which they used for decorative purposes only. They refined the artistry of this work. Their pottery is more artistic and of a higher quality than that of the Bronze Age. Their ornaments are included among the collections at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

 

Middle Ages

The Mongols had long maintained relations with the people of the Siberian forest (taiga). They called them oin irged ("people of the forest"). Many of them, such as the Barga and Uriankhai, were little different from the Mongols. While the tribes around Lake Baikal were Mongol-speaking, those to the west spoke Turkic, Samoyedic, or Yeniseian languages.

 

By 1206, Genghis Khan had united all Mongol and Turkic tribes on the Mongolian Plateau and southern Siberia. In 1207 his eldest son Jochi subjugated the Siberian forest people, the Uriankhai, the Oirats, Barga, Khakas, Buryats, Tuvans, Khori-Tumed, and Kyrgyz. He then organized the Siberians into three tumens. Genghis Khan gave the Telengit and Tolos along the Irtysh River to an old companion, Qorchi. While the Barga, Tumed, Buriats, Khori, Keshmiti, and Bashkirs were organized in separate thousands, the Telengit, Tolos, Oirats and Yenisei Kirghiz were numbered as tumens. Genghis created a settlement of ethnic Han craftsmen and farmers at Kem-kemchik after the first phase of the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty. The Great Khans favored gyrfalcons, furs, women and Kyrgyz horses for tribute.

 

Western Siberia came under the Golden Horde.[9] The descendants of Orda Khan, the eldest son of Jochi, directly ruled the area. In the swamps of western Siberia, dog sled Yam stations were set up to facilitate collection of tribute.

 

In 1270, Kublai Khan sent an ethnic Han official, with a new batch of settlers, to serve as the judge of the Kyrgyz and Tuvan basin areas (益蘭州 and 謙州). Ögedei's grandson Kaidu occupied portions of Central Siberia from 1275 on. The Yuan dynasty army under Kublai's Kipchak general Tutugh reoccupied the Kyrgyz lands in 1293. From then on the Yuan dynasty controlled large portions of Central and Eastern Siberia.

 

The Yenisei area had a community of weavers of ethnic Han origin. Samarkand and Outer Mongolia both had artisans of Han origin.

 

Novgorod and Muscovy

As early as the 11th century the Novgorodians had occasionally penetrated into Siberia.[4] In the 14th century the Novgorodians explored the Kara Sea and the West Siberian river Ob (1364). After the fall of the Novgorod Republic its communications between Northern Russia and Siberia were inherited by the Grand Duchy of Moscow. On May 9, 1483, the Moscow troops of Princes Feodor Kurbski-Cherny and Ivan Saltyk-Travin moved to West Siberia. The troops moved on the rivers Tavda, Tura, Irtysh, up to the River Ob. In 1499 Muscovites and Novgorodians skied to West Siberia, up to the river Ob, and conquered some local tribes.

 

Khanate of Sibir

With the breakup of the Golden Horde late in the 15th century, the Khanate of Sibir was founded with its center at Tyumen. The non-Borjigin Taybughid dynasty vied for rule with the descendants of Shiban, a son of Jochi.

 

In the beginning of the 16th century Tatar fugitives from Turkestan subdued the loosely associated tribes inhabiting the lowlands to the east of the Ural Mountains. Agriculturists, tanners, merchants, and mullahs (Muslim clerics) were brought from Turkestan, and small principalities sprang up on the Irtysh and the Ob. These were united by Khan Yadegar Mokhammad of Kazan. Conflicts with the Russians, who were then colonising the Urals, brought him into collision with Muscovy. Khan Yadegar's envoys came to Moscow in 1555 and consented to a yearly tribute of a thousand sables.

 

Yermak and the Cossacks

In the mid-16th century, the Tsardom of Russia conquered the Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, thus annexing the entire Volga Region and making the way to the Ural Mountains open. The colonisation of the new easternmost lands of Russia and further onslaught eastward was led by the rich merchants Stroganovs. Tsar Ivan IV granted large estates near the Urals as well as tax privileges to Anikey Stroganov, who organized large scale migration to these lands. Stroganovs developed farming, hunting, saltworks, fishing, and ore mining on the Urals and established trade with Siberian tribes.

 

In the 1570s, the entrepreneur Semyon Stroganov and other sons of Anikey Stroganov enlisted many cossacks for protection of the Ural settlements against attacks by the Tatars of the Siberian Khanate, led by Khan Kuchum. Stroganov suggested to their chief Yermak, hired in 1577, to conquer the Khanate of Sibir, promising to help him with supplies of food and arms.

 

In 1581, Yermak began his voyage into the depths of Siberia with a band of 1,636 men, following the Tagil and Tura Rivers. The following year they were on the Tobol, and 500 men successfully laid siege to Qashliq, the residence of Khan Kuchum, near what is now Tobolsk. After a few victories over the khan's army, Yermak's people defeated the main forces of Kuchum on Irtysh River after a 3-day battle of Chuvash Cape in 1582. The remains of the khan's army retreated to the steppes, abandoning his domains to Yermak, who, according to tradition, by presenting Siberia to tsar Ivan IV achieved his own restoration to favour.

 

Kuchum was still strong and suddenly attacked Yermak in 1585 in the dead of night, killing most of his people. Yermak was wounded and tried to swim across the Wagay River (Irtysh's tributary), but drowned under the weight of his own chain mail. Yermak's Cossacks had to withdraw from Siberia completely, but every year new bands of hunters and adventurers, supported by Moscow, poured into the country. Thanks to Yermak's having explored all the main river routes in West Siberia, Russians successfully reclaimed all of Yermak's conquests just several years later.

 

Russian exploration and settlement

Siberian river routes were of primary importance in the process of Russian exploration and conquest of Siberia.

In the early 17th century, the eastward movement of Russian people was slowed by the internal problems in the country during the Time of Troubles. However, very soon the exploration and colonization of the huge territories of Siberia was resumed, led mostly by Cossacks hunting for valuable furs and ivory. While Cossacks came from the Southern Urals, another wave of Russian people came by the Arctic Ocean. These were Pomors from the Russian North, who had already been making fur trade with Mangazeya in the north of the Western Siberia for quite a long time. In 1607 the settlement of Turukhansk was founded on the northern Yenisey River, near the mouth of the Lower Tunguska, and in 1619 Yeniseysky ostrog was founded on the mid-Yenisey at the mouth of the Upper Tunguska.

 

In 1620, a group of fur hunters led by the semi-legendary Demid Pyanda started out from Turukhansk on what would become a very protracted journey. According to folk tales related a century after the fact, in the three and a half years from 1620 to 1624 Pyanda allegedly traversed the total of 4,950 miles (7,970 km) of hitherto unknown large Siberian rivers. He explored some 1,430 miles (2,300 km) of the Lower Tunguska (Nizhnyaya Tunguska in Russian) and, having reached the upper part of the Tunguska, he came upon the great Siberian river Lena and explored some 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of its length. By doing this, he may have become the first Russian to reach Yakutia and meet Yakuts. He returned up the Lena until it became too rocky and shallow, and by land reached Angara. In this way, Pyanda may have become the first Russian to meet Buryats. He built new boats and explored some 870 miles (1,400 km) of the Angara, finally reaching Yeniseysk and discovering that the Angara (a Buryat name) and Upper Tunguska (Verkhnyaya Tunguska, as initially known by the Russian people) were one and the same river.

 

In 1627, Pyotr Beketov was appointed Yenisey voevoda in Siberia. He successfully carried out the voyage to collect taxes from Zabaykalye Buryats, becoming the first Russian to enter Buryatia. There he founded the first Russian settlement, Rybinsky ostrog. Beketov was sent to the Lena River in 1631, where in 1632 he founded Yakutsk and sent his Cossacks to explore the Aldan and further down the Lena, to found new fortresses, and to collect taxes.

 

Yakutsk soon turned into a major base for further Russian expeditions eastward, southward and northward. Maksim Perfilyev, who earlier had been one of the founders of Yeniseysk, founded Bratsky ostrog in 1631, and in 1638 he became the first Russian to enter Transbaikalia. In 1639 a group led by Ivan Moskvitin became the first Russian to reach the Pacific Ocean and to discover the Sea of Okhotsk, having built a winter camp on its shore at the Ulya River mouth. The Cossacks learned from the locals about the proximity of the Amur River. In 1640 they apparently sailed south, explored the south-eastern shores of the Okhotsk Sea, maybe even reaching the mouth of the Amur River and discovering the Shantar Islands on their return voyage. Based on Moskvitin's account, Kurbat Ivanov draw the first Russian map of the Far East in 1642. He led a group of Cossacks himself in 1643 to the south of the Baikal Mountains and discovered Lake Baikal, visiting its Olkhon Island. Subsequently, Ivanov made the first chart and description of Baikal.

 

In 1643, Vasily Poyarkov crossed the Stanovoy Range and reached the upper Zeya River in the country of the Daurs, who were paying tribute to Manchu Chinese. After wintering, in 1644 Poyarkov pushed down the Zeya and became the first Russian to reach the Amur River. He sailed down the Amur and finally discovered the mouth of that great river from land. Since his Cossacks provoked the enmity of the locals behind, Poyarkov chose a different way back. They built boats and in 1645 sailed along the Sea of Okhotsk coast to the Ulya River and spent the next winter in the huts that had been built by Ivan Moskvitin six years earlier. In 1646 they returned to Yakutsk.

 

In 1644, Mikhail Stadukhin discovered the Kolyma River and founded Srednekolymsk. A merchant named Fedot Alekseyev Popov organized a further expedition eastward, and Dezhnyov became a captain of one of the kochi. In 1648 they sailed from Srednekolymsk down to the Arctic and after some time they rounded Cape Dezhnyov, thus becoming the first explorers to pass through Bering Strait and to discover Chukotka and the Bering Sea. All their kochi and most of their men (including Popov) were lost in storms and clashes with the natives. A small group led by Dezhnyov reached the mouth of the Anadyr River and sailed up it in 1649, having built new boats out of the wreckage. They founded Anadyrsk and were stranded there, until Stadukhin found them, coming from Kolyma by land. Later Stadukhin set off to the south in 1651 and discovered Penzhin Bay on the northern side of the Okhotsk Sea. He also may have explored the western shores of Kamchatka as early as the 1650s.

 

In 1649–50, Yerofey Khabarov became the second Russian to explore the Amur River. Through the Olyokma, Tungur and Shilka Rivers he reached the Amur (Dauria), returned to Yakutsk and then went back to the Amur with a larger force in 1650–53. This time he was met with armed resistance. He built winter quarters at Albazin, then sailed down the Amur and found Achansk, which preceded the present-day Khabarovsk, defeating or evading large armies of Daurian Manchu Chinese and Koreans on his way. He charted the Amur in his Draft of the Amur river.

 

In 1659–65, Kurbat Ivanov was the next head of Anadyrsky ostrog after Semyon Dezhnyov. In 1660, he sailed from Anadyr Bay to Cape Dezhnyov. Atop his earlier pioneering charts, he is credited with creation of the early map of Chukotka and Bering Strait, which was the first to show on paper (very schematically) the yet undiscovered Wrangel Island, both Diomede Islands and Alaska.

 

So, by the mid-17th century, the Russian people had established the borders of their country close to the modern ones, and explored almost the whole of Siberia, except eastern Kamchatka and some regions north of the Arctic Circle. The conquest of Kamchatka would be completed later, in the early 18th century by Vladimir Atlasov, while the discovery of the Arctic coastline and Alaska would be nearly completed by the Great Northern Expedition in 1733–1743. The expedition allowed cartographers to create a map of most of the northern coastline of Russia, thanks to the results brought by a series of voyages led by Fyodor Minin, Dmitry Ovtsyn, Vasili Pronchishchev, Semyon Chelyuskin, Dmitry Laptev and Khariton Laptev. At the same time, some of the members of the newly founded Russian Academy of Sciences traveled extensively through Siberia, forming the so-called Academic Squad of the Expedition. They were Johann Georg Gmelin, Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt and others, who became the first scientific explorers of Siberia.

 

Russian people and Siberian natives

The main treasure to attract Cossacks to Siberia was the fur of sables, foxes, and ermines. Explorers brought back many furs from their expeditions. Local people, submitting to the Russian Empire, received defense from the southern nomads. In exchange they were obliged to pay yasak (tribute) in the form of furs. There was a set of yasachnaya roads, used to transport yasak to Moscow.

 

A number of peoples showed open resistance to Russian people. Others submitted and even requested to be subordinated, though sometimes they later refused to pay yasak, or not admitted to the Russian authority.

 

There is evidence of collaboration and assimilation of Russian people with the local peoples in Siberia. Though the more Russian people advanced to the East, the less developed the local people were, and the more resistance they offered. In 1607–1610, the Tungus fought strenuously for their independence, but were subdued around 1623. The Buryats also offered some opposition, but were swiftly pacified. The most resistance was offered by the Koryak (on the Kamchatka Peninsula) and Chukchi (on the Chukchi Peninsula), the latter still being at the Stone Age level of development. Resistance by local people may have been the result of forced unfair terms, that recorders would have benefitted from omitting.

 

The Manchu resistance, however, obliged the Russian Cossacks to quit Albazin, and by the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) Russia abandoned her advance into the basin of the river, instead concentrating on the colonisation of the vast expanses of Siberia and trading with China via the Siberian trakt. In 1852, a Russian military expedition under Nikolay Muravyov explored the Amur, and by 1857 a chain of Russian Cossacks and peasants were settled along the whole course of the river. The accomplished fact was recognised by China in 1860 by the Treaty of Aigun.

 

The scientific exploration of Siberia, commenced in the period of 1720 to 1742 by Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt, Johann Georg Gmelin, and Louis de l'Isle de la Croyère, was followed up by Gerhard Friedrich Müller, Johann Eberhard Fischer, and Johann Gottlieb Georgi. Peter Simon Pallas, with several Russian students, laid the first foundation of a thorough exploration of the topography, fauna, flora, and inhabitants of the country. The journeys of Christopher Hansteen and Georg Adolf Erman were the most important step in the exploration of the territory. Alexander von Humboldt, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, and Gustav Rose also paid short visits to Siberia, which gave a new impulse to the accumulation of scientific knowledge; while Carl Ritter elaborated in his Asien (1832–1859) the foundations of a sound knowledge of the structure of Siberia. Aleksandr Fyodorovich Middendorf's journey (1843–1845) to north-eastern Siberia — contemporaneous with Matthias Castrén's journeys for the special study of the Ural-Altaic languages — directed attention to the far north and awakened interest in the Amur, the basin of which soon became the scene of the expeditions of Akhte and Schwarz (1852), and later on of the Siberian expedition, advanced knowledge of East Siberia.

 

The Siberian branch of the Russian Geographical Society was founded at the same time in Irkutsk, and afterwards became a permanent centre for the exploration of Siberia; while the opening of the Amur and Sakhalin attracted Richard Maack, Schmidt, Glehn, Gustav Radde, and Leopold von Schrenck, who created works on the flora, fauna, and inhabitants of Siberia.

 

Russian settlement

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Russian people that migrated into Siberia were hunters, and those who had escaped from Central Russia: fugitive peasants in search for life free of serfdom, fugitive convicts, and Old Believers. The new settlements of Russian people and the existing local peoples required defence from nomads, for which forts were founded. This way forts of Tomsk and Berdsk were founded.

 

In the beginning of the 18th century, the threat of the nomads' attacks weakened; thus the region became more and more populated; normal civic life was established in the cities.

 

In the 18th century in Siberia, a new administrative guberniya was formed with Irkutsk, then in the 19th century the territory was several times re-divided with creation of new guberniyas: Tomsk (with center in Tomsk) and Yenisei (Yeniseysk, later Krasnoyarsk).

 

In 1730, the first large industrial project — the metallurgical production found by Demidov family — gave birth to the city of Barnaul. Later, the enterprise organized social institutions like library, club, theatre. Pyotr Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, who stayed in Barnaul in 1856–1857, wrote: "The richness of mining engineers of Barnaul expressed not merely in their households and clothes, but more in their educational level, knowledge of science and literature. Barnaul was undoubtedly the most cultured place in Siberia, and I've called it Siberian Athenes, leaving Sparta for Omsk".

 

The same events took place in other cities; public libraries, museums of local lore, colleges, theatres were being built, although the first university in Siberia was opened as late as 1880 in Tomsk.

 

Siberian peasants more than those in European Russia relied on their own force and abilities. They had to fight against the harder climate without outside help. Absence of serfdom and landlords also contributed to their independent character. Unlike peasants in European Russia, Siberians had no problems with land availability; the low population density gave them the ability to intensively cultivate a plot for several years in a row, then to leave it fallow for a long time and cultivate other plots. Siberian peasants had an abundance of food, while Central Russian peasantry had to moderate their families' appetites. Leonid Blummer noted that the culture of alcohol consumption differed significantly; Siberian peasants drank frequently but moderately: "For a Siberian vodka isn't a wonder, unlike for a Russian peasant, which, having reached it after all this time, is ready to drink a sea." The houses, according to travellers' notes, were unlike the typical Russian izbas: the houses were big, often two-floored, the ceilings were high, the walls were covered with boards and painted with oil-paint.

 

Russian Empire

The Siberia Governorate was established in 1708 as part of the administrative reforms of Peter I. In 1719, the governorate was divided into three provinces, Vyatka, Solikamsk and Tobolsk. In 1762, it was renamed to Tsardom of Siberia (Сибирское царство). In 1782, under the impression of Pugachev's Rebellion, the Siberian kingdom was divided into three separate viceregencies (наместничество), centered at Tobolsk, Irkutsk and Kolyvan. These viceregencies were downgraded to the status of governorate in 1796 (Tobolsk Governorate, Irkutsk Governorate, Vyatka Governorate). Tomsk Governorate was split off Tobolsk governorate in 1804. Yakutsk Oblast was split off Irkutsk Governorate in 1805. In 1822, the subdivision of Siberia was reformed again. It was divided into two governorates general, West Siberia and East Siberia. West Siberia comprised the Tobolsk and Tomsk governorates, and East Siberia comprised Irkutsk Governorate, and the newly formed Yeniseysk Governorate.

 

Decembrists and other exiles

Siberia was deemed a good place to exile for political reasons, as it was far from any foreign country. A St. Petersburg citizen would not wish to escape in the vast Siberian countryside as the peasants and criminals did. Even the larger cities such as Irkutsk, Omsk, and Krasnoyarsk, lacked that intensive social life and luxurious high life of the capital.

 

About eighty people involved in the Decembrist revolt were sentenced to obligatory work in Siberia and perpetual settlement here. Eleven wives followed them and settled near the labour camps. In their memoirs, they noted benevolence and prosperity of rural Siberians and severe treatment by the soldiers and officers.

 

"Travelling through Siberia, I was wondered and fascinated at every step by the cordiality and hospitality I met everywhere. I was fascinated by the richness and the abundance, with which the people live until today (1861), but that time there was even more expanse in everything. The hospitality was especially developed in Siberia. Everywhere we were received like being in friendly countries, everywhere we were fed well, and when I asked how much I owed them, they didn't want to take anything, saying "Put a candle to the God"."

"...Siberia is an extremely rich country, the land is unusually fruitful, and little work is needed to get a plentiful harvest."

Polina Annenkova, Notes of a Decembrist's Wife

 

A number of Decembrists died of diseases, some suffered psychological shock and even went out of their mind.

 

After completing the term of obligatory work, they were sentenced to settle in specific small towns and villages. There, some started doing business, which was well permitted. Only several years later, in the 1840s, they were allowed to move to big cities or to settle anywhere in Siberia. Only in 1856, 31 years after the revolt, Alexander II pardoned and restituted the Decembrists in honour of his coronation.

 

Living in the cities of Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Irkutsk, the Decembrists contributed extensively to the social life and culture. In Irkutsk, their houses are now museums. In many places, memorial plaques with their names have been installed.

 

Yet, there were exceptions: Vladimir Raevskiy was arrested for participation in Decembrists' circles in 1822, and in 1828 was exiled to Olonki village near Irkutsk. There he married and had nine children, traded with bread, and founded a school for children and adults to teach arithmetics and grammar. Being pardoned by Alexander II, he visited his native town, but returned to Olonki.

 

Despite the wishes of the central authorities, the exiled revolutioners unlikely felt outcast in Siberia. Quite the contrary, Siberians having lived all the time on their own, "didn't feel tenderness" to the authorities. In many cases, the exiled were cordially received and got paid positions.

 

Fyodor Dostoevsky was exiled to katorga near Omsk and to military service in Semipalatinsk. In the service he also had to make trips for Barnaul and Kuznetsk, where he married.

 

Anton Chekhov was not exiled, but in 1890 made a trip on his own to Sakhalin through Siberia and visited a katorga there. In his trip, he visited Tomsk, speaking disapprovingly about it, then Krasnoyarsk, which he called "the most beautiful Siberian city". He noted that despite being more a place of criminal rather than political exile, the moral atmosphere was much better: he did not face any case of theft. Blummer suggested to prepare a gun, but his attendant replied: What for?! We are not in Italy, you know. Chekhov observed that besides of the evident prosperity, there was an urgent demand for cultural development.

 

Many Poles were also exiled to Siberia (see Sybirak). In 1866 they incited rebellion in Siberia.

 

Trans-Siberian Railway

The development of Siberia was hampered by poor transportation links within the region as well as between Siberia and the rest of the country. Aside from the Sibirsky trakt, good roads suitable for wheeled transport were few and far apart. For about five months of the year, rivers were the main means of transportation; during the cold half of the year, cargo and passengers travelled by horse-drawn sleds over the winter roads, many of which were the same rivers, now ice-covered.

 

The first steamboat on the Ob, Nikita Myasnikov's Osnova, was launched in 1844; but the early starts were difficult, and it was not until 1857 that steamboat shipping started developing in the Ob system in the serious way. Steamboats started operating on the Yenisei in 1863, on the Lena and Amur in the 1870s.

 

While the comparably flat Western Siberia was at least fairly well served by the gigantic Ob–Irtysh–Tobol–Chulym river system, the mighty rivers of Eastern Siberia – Yenisei, Upper Angara (Angara below Bratsk was not easily navigable because of the rapids), Lena — were mostly navigable only in the north–south direction. An attempt to somewhat remedy the situation by building the Ob–Yenisei Canal were not particularly successful. Only a railroad could be a real solution to the region's transportation problems.

 

The first projects of railroads in Siberia emerged since the creation of the Moscow–St. Petersburg railroad. One of the first was Irkutsk–Chita project, intended to connect the former to the Amur river and, consequently, to the Pacific Ocean.

 

Prior to 1880 the central government seldom responded to such projects, due to weakness of Siberian enterprises, fear of Siberian territories' integration with the Pacific region rather than with Russia, and thus falling under the influence of the United States and Great Britain. The heavy and clumsy bureaucracy and the fear of financial risks also contributed to the inaction: the financial system always underestimated the effects of the railway, assuming that it would take only the existing traffic.

 

Mainly the fear of losing Siberia convinced Alexander II in 1880 to make a decision to build the railway. Construction started in 1891.

 

Trans-Siberian Railroad gave a great boost to Siberian agriculture, allowing for increased exports to Central Russia and European countries. It pushed not only the territories closest to the railway, but also those connected with meridional rivers, such as the Ob (Altai) and the Yenisei (Minusinsk and Abakan regions).

 

Siberian agriculture exported a lot of cheap grain to the West. The agriculture in Central Russia was still under pressure of serfdom, formally abandoned in 1861. Another profitable industry is the fur trade, which contributed greatly to the national revenue on top of covering administrative costs in Siberia.

 

Thus, to defend it and to prevent possible social destabilization, in 1896 (when the eastern and western parts of the Trans-Siberian did not close up yet), the government introduced Chelyabinsk tariff break (Челябинский тарифный перелом)—a tariff barrier for grain in Chelyabinsk, and a similar barrier in Manchuria. This measure changed the form of cereal product export: mills emerged in Altai, Novosibirsk, and Tomsk; many farms switched to butter production. From 1896 to 1913 Siberia on average exported 30.6 million poods (~500,000 tonnes) of cereal products (grain, flour) annually.

 

Stolypin's resettlement programme

One early significant settlement campaign was carried out under Nicholas II by Prime Minister Stolypin in 1906–1911.

 

The rural areas of Central Russia were overcrowded, while the East was still lightly populated despite having fertile lands. On May 10, 1906, by the decree of the Tsar, agriculturalists were granted the right to transfer, without any restrictions, to the Asian territories of Russia, and to obtain cheap or free land. A large advertising campaign was conducted: six million copies of brochures and banners entitled What the resettlement gives to peasants, and How the peasants in Siberia live were printed and distributed in rural areas. Special propaganda trains were sent throughout the countryside, and transport trains were provided for the migrants. The State gave loans to the settlers for farm construction.

 

Not all the settlers decided to stay; 17.8% migrated back. All in all, more than three million people officially resettled to Siberia, and 750,000 came as foot-messengers. From 1897 to 1914 Siberian population increased 73%, and the area of land under cultivation doubled.

 

Tunguska event

The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at around 7:14 a.m.[34] (0:14 UT, 7:02 a.m. local solar time[35]) on June 30, 1908 (June 17 in the Julian calendar, in use locally at the time).

 

The cause of the explosion is controversial, and still much disputed to this day. Although the cause of the explosion is the subject of debate, it is commonly believed to have been caused by a meteor air burst: the atmospheric explosion of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3.1–6.2 miles) above the Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates of the object's size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across.

 

Although the Tunguska event is believed to be the largest impact event on land in Earth's recent history, impacts of similar size in remote ocean areas would have gone unnoticed before the advent of global satellite monitoring in the 1960s and 1970s. Because the event occurred in a remote area, there was little damage to human life or property, and it was in fact some years until it was properly investigated.

 

The first recorded expedition arrived at the scene more than a decade after the event. In 1921, the Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik, visiting the Podkamennaya Tunguska River basin as part of a survey for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, deduced from local accounts that the explosion had been caused by a giant meteorite impact. He persuaded the Soviet government to fund an expedition to the Tunguska region, based on the prospect of meteoric iron that could be salvaged to aid Soviet industry.

 

Kulik's party reached the site in 1927. To their surprise, no crater was to be found. There was instead a region of scorched trees about 50 kilometres (31 mi) across. A few near ground zero were still strangely standing upright, their branches and bark stripped off. Those farther away had been knocked down in a direction away from the center.

 

Russian Civil War

By the time of the revolution Siberia was an agricultural region of Russia, with weak entrepreneur and industrial classes. The intelligentsia had vague political ideas. Only 13% of the region's population lived in the cities and possessed some political knowledge. The lack of strong social differences and scarcity of urban population and intellectuals led to the uniting of formally different political parties under ideas of regionalism.

 

The anti-Bolshevik forces failed to offer a united resistance. While Kolchak fought against the Bolsheviks intending to eliminate them in the capital of the Empire, the local Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks tried to sign a peace treaty with the Bolsheviks, on terms of independence. Foreign allies, though being able to make a decisive effort, preferred to stay neutral, although Kolchak himself rejected the offer of help from Japan.

 

After a series of defeats in Central Russia, Kolchak's forces retreated to Siberia. Amid resistance of Socialist-Revolutionaries and waning support from the allies, the Whites had to evacuate from Omsk to Irkutsk, and finally Kolchak resigned under pressure of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who soon submitted to the Bolsheviks.

 

Soviet era

1920s and 1930s

By the 1920s the agriculture in Siberia was in decline. With the large number of immigrants, land was used very intensively, which led to exhaustion of the land and frequent bad harvests. Agriculture wasn't destroyed by the civil war, but the disorganization of the exports destroyed the food industry and reduced the peasants' incomes. Furthermore, prodrazvyorstka and then the natural food tax contributed to growing discontent. In 1920–1924 there was a number of anti-communistic riots in rural areas, with up to 40,000 people involved. Both old Whites (Cossacks) and old "Reds" partisans, who earlier fought against Kolchak, the marginals, who were the major force of the Communists, took part in the riots. According to a survey of 1927 in Irkutsk Oblast, the peasants openly said they would participate in anti-Soviet rebellion and hoped for foreign help.[45] In 1929, one such anti-Soviet rebellion took place in Buryatia, the rebellion was put down will the deaths of 35,000 Buryats. It should also be noticed that the KVZhD builders and workers were declared enemies of the people by a special order of the Soviet authorities.

 

The youth, that had socialized in the age of war, was highly militarized, and the Soviet government pushed the further military propaganda by Komsomol. There are many documented evidences of "red banditism", especially in the countryside, such as desecration of churches and Christian graves, and even murders of priests and believers. Also in many cases a Komsomol activist or an authority representative, speaking with a person opposed to the Soviets, got angry and killed him/her and anybody else. The Party faintly counteracted this.

 

In the 1930s, the Party started the collectivization, which automatically put the "kulak" label on the well-off families living in Siberia for a long time. Naturally, raskulachivanie applied to everyone who protested. From the Central Russia many families were exiled to low-populated, forest or swampy areas of Siberia, but those who lived here, had either to escape anywhere, or to be exiled in the Northern regions (such as Evenk and Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrugs and the northern parts of Tomsk Oblast). Collectivization destroyed the traditional and most effective stratum of the peasants in Siberia and the natural ways of development, and its consequences are still persisting.

 

In the cities, during the New Economic Policy and later, the new authorities, driven by the romantic socialistic ideas made attempts to build new socialistic cities, according to the fashionable constructivism movement, but after all have left only numbers of square houses. For example, the Novosibirsk theatre was initially designed in pure constructivistic style. It was an ambitious project of exiled architects. In the mid-1930s with introduction of new classicism, it was significantly redesigned.

 

After the Trans-Siberian was built, Omsk soon became the largest Siberian city, but in 1930s Soviets favoured Novosibirsk. In the 1930s the first heavy industrialization took place in the Kuznetsk Basin (coal mining and ferrous metallurgy) and at Norilsk (nickel and rare-earth metals). The Northern Sea Route saw industrial application. At the same time, with growing number of prisoners, Gulag established a large network of labour camps in Siberia.

 

World War II

In 1941, many enterprises and people were evacuated into Siberian cities by the railroads. In urgent need of ammunition and military equipment, they started working almost immediately after their materials and equipment were unloaded.

 

Most of the evacuated enterprises remained at their new sites after the war. They increased industrial production in Siberia to a great extent, and became constitutive for many cities, like Rubtsovsk. The easternmost city to receive them was Ulan-Ude, since Chita was considered dangerously close to China and Japan.

 

On August 28, 1941, the Supreme Soviet stated an order "About the Resettlement of the Germans of Volga region", by which many of them were deported into different rural areas of Kazakhstan and Siberia.

 

By the end of war, thousands of captive soldiers and officers of German and Japanese armies were sentenced to several years of work in labour camps in all the regions of Siberia. These camps were directed by a different administration than Gulag. Although Soviet camps hadn't the purpose to lead prisoners to death, the death rate was significant, especially in winters. The range of works differed from vegetable farming to construction of the Baikal Amur Mainline.

 

Industrial expansion

In the second half of the 20th century, the exploration of mineral and hydroenergetic resources continued. Many of these projects were planned, but were delayed due to wars and the ever-changing opinions of Soviet politicians.

 

The most famous project is the Baikal Amur Mainline. It was planned simultaneously with Trans-Siberian, but the construction began just before World War II, was put on hold during the war and restarted after. After Joseph Stalin's death, it was again suspended for years to be continued under Leonid Brezhnev.

 

A cascade of hydroelectric powerplants was built in the 1960s–1970s on the Angara River, a project similar to Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States. The powerplants allowed creation and support of large production facilities, such as the aluminium plant in Bratsk, Ust-Ilimsk, rare-earth mining in Angara basin, and those associated with the timber industry. The price of electricity in Angara basin is the lowest in Russia. But the Angara cascade is not fully finished yet: the Boguchany power plant waits to be finished, and a series of enterprises are planned to be set up.

 

The downside of this development is ecological damage due to low standards of production and excessive sizes of dams (the bigger projects were favoured by industrial authorities and received more funding), the increased humidity sharpened the already hard climate. Another powerplant project on Katun River in Altai mountains in the 1980s, which was widely protested publicly, was cancelled.

 

There are a number of military-oriented centers like the NPO Vektor and closed cities like Seversk. By the end of the 1980s a large portion of the industrial production of Omsk and Novosibirsk (up to 40%) was composed of military and aviation output. The collapse of state-funded military orders began an economic crisis.

 

The Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences unites a lot of research institutes in the biggest cities, the biggest being the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Akademgorodok (a scientific town) near Novosibirsk. Other scientific towns or just districts composed by research institutes, also named "Akademgorodok", are in the cities of Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk. These sites are the centers of the newly developed IT industry, especially in that of Novosibirsk, nicknamed "Silicon Taiga", and in Tomsk.

 

A number of Siberian-based companies extended their businesses of various consumer products to meta-regional and an All-Russian level. Various Siberian artists and industries, have created communities that are not centralized in Moscow anymore, like the Idea (annual low-budged ads festival), Golden Capital (annual prize in architecture).

 

Recent history

Until completion of the Chita–Khabarovsk highway, the Transbaikalia was a dead end for automobile transport. While this recently constructed through road will at first benefit mostly the transit travel to and from the Pacific provinces, it will also boost settlement and industrial expansion in the sparsely populated regions of Zabaykalsky Krai and Amur Oblast.

 

Expansion of transportation networks will continue to define the directions of Siberian regional development. The next project to be carried out is the completion of the railroad branch to Yakutsk. Another large project, proposed already in the 19th century as a northern option for the Transsiberian railroad, is the Northern-Siberian Railroad between Nizhnevartovsk, Belyi Yar, Lesosibirsk and Ust-Ilimsk. The Russian Railroads instead suggest an ambitious project of a railway to Magadan, Chukchi Peninsula and then the supposed Bering Strait Tunnel to Alaska.

 

While the Russians continue to migrate from the Siberian and Far Eastern Federal Districts to Western Russia, the Siberian cities attract labour (legal or illegal) from the Central Asian republics and from China. While the natives are aware of the situation, in Western Russia myths about thousands and millions of Chinese living in the Transbaikalia and the Far East are widespread.

Oscar @ My Studio, Portraits Show, 2021

The Trade Facilitation Programme (TFP) currently includes over 100 Issuing Banks in the EBRD region and more than 800 Confirming Banks worldwide. The event gave EBRD partner banks the opportunity to review and discuss industry challenges, pricing, limits and trade opportunities with key industry specialists, regulators and representatives from the World Trade Organization, the International Chamber of Commerce HQ and local National ICC Committees.

  

It also featured the highly popular award ceremony for ‘The Most Active EBRD TFP Banks’ and ‘The Best Transaction of 2016’.

 

Facilitated by: James Forsyth (Community Lead, South Asia/ASEAN, and Member Relations, Young Global Leaders), Trang Vergari (Operations and Coordination Lead, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship) With: Joo-Ok Lee (Head, Regional Agenda, Asia-Pacific; Member of the Executive Committee), Henna Dazo (Curator, Davao Hub), Roya Baghai (Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, High Resolves) speaking in the Intergenerational Approaches to Local Realities in Asia Pacific & Greater China session at the Global Shapers Annual Summit 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, 16 June 2023. World Economic Forum Headquarters, Villa Mundi – Cedar. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Marc Bader

//What a disaster

 

William Saunderson-Meyer says the floods just another blow to a province that was already on its knees

 

KwaZulu-Natal has declared a provincial state of disaster to try to cope with the devastating floods of the past week.

 

This is normally a temporary mechanism of which the primary purpose is to facilitate speedy national government assistance to hard-pressed provincial and local authorities. It also triggers the release of emergency funds from the National Treasury.

 

But in KZN’s case, they might as well make it permanent. This is a province that has been on its knees for some time and it ain’t getting up any time soon.

 

After all, KZN hasn’t even staunched the bloodied nose it suffered nine months ago. That’s when one wing of the African National Congress government — the Radical Economic Transformation followers of former president Jacob Zuma — tried to bury the other — the so-called reformists led by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

 

KZN hasn’t even properly tallied the body blows it suffered then. The official estimates for the insurrection were 45,000 businesses affected, R50bn in economic damage, 129,000 jobs lost, and 354 killed.

 

These estimates are probably on the low side. For example, the number of people who were killed in the mayhem doesn’t include the many whose bodies were simply never found and counted.

 

And the true economic cost is incalculable. There’s been substantially increased emigration of minorities, cancelled investment, and the loss of international confidence in KZN as a safe tourist destination. In at least a dozen small, country towns, all the business infrastructure was destroyed, paradoxically by the very people who worked and shopped in those buildings.

 

Now the floods. The death toll is over 300 and still rising. Some 6,000 homes have been destroyed and road, water sewage and electrical infrastructure uprooted. As I write this, roaming mobs are opportunistically plundering container depots, stranded trucks, abandoned homes and vulnerable businesses, reportedly unhindered — as was the case during last year’s riots — by the police and army.

 

Naturally, no disaster is complete without a scapegoat. Ramaphosa, as is his style, was quick off the mark to finger the culprit — climate change.

 

“This disaster is part of climate change. It is telling us that climate change is serious, it is here,” Ramaphosa told reporters while inspecting a devastated Durban. “We no longer can postpone what we need to do, and the measures we need to take to deal with climate change.”

 

What balderdash. Whatever role climate change may or may not have played in the larger scheme of things, it’s nonsense to pin on it responsibility for the plight of KZN. That lies with the ANC government.

 

First, this was not an unforeseeable bolt from the heavens. The forecasters warned months back that this was likely to be an exceptionally wet summer because of the La Niña weather pattern that occurs every few years.

 

There are also historical precedents for extreme weather in KZN, which a prudent administration would have taken note of.

 

In 1984, Tropical Storm Domoina wreaked havoc in a swathe from Mozambique, through Swaziland to KZN. Although the current downpour is worse, the scale is nevertheless in the same ballpark.

 

This latest storm — as yet unnamed — dumped 450mm of rain on Durban in 48 hours. Domoina let loose 615mm in 24 hours on Swaziland and northern KZN.

 

But the true difference between those events, 38 years apart, lies in the lack of preparedness on the part of today’s authorities. In 1984 the SA Air Force deployed 25 helicopters to airlift people to safety. In the 2000 Mozambique floods, 17 SAAF helicopters rescued more than 14,000 people.

 

This time, according to a News24 report, the SA Police Service and the SAAF, combined, have been unable to put a single chopper in the air. The erosion of South Africa’s military means that of the SAAF’s 39 Oryx helicopters, only 17 are serviceable.

 

Durban-based 15 Squadron has not a single helicopter available for search and rescue — they are reportedly primarily used as VIP transport — but two SAAF choppers supposedly have been despatched from Gqeberha to help. The SAPS airwing has only one serviceable helicopter but “the pilot on duty has been booked off sick”.

 

Second, throughout the province, local government is also in a state of disaster and unable to do its job. The scale of the KZN impairment can be measured in the flood destruction of homes.

 

Some 4,000 shanties have been destroyed, many because officialdom was too lax to forbid building on the floodplain and against precariously unstable hillsides. Another 2,000 of the homes swept away were so-called RDP houses, shoddily built during the kickback-and-steal bonanza of the government’s Reconstruction and Development Programme of the late 1990s.

 

In Durban, the eThekwini metro is bloated and inert. It carries a rates and services debt of R17bn, of which R1bn is owed by the national government.

 

Durban is also infamously corrupt. Former mayor Zandile Gumede — along with 21 co-accused — is facing fraud, corruption and money-laundering charges in connection with a R320m municipal tender.

 

Yet at the weekend, even as the rain was bucketing down, she won the ANC’s regional leadership contest hands-down, despite the party’s supposed “step-aside when accused” rule.

 

The ANC-aligned Ahmed Kathrada Foundation has no illusions about the party it supports. It issued a statement calling on the government to ensure that unlike the plundering of Covid-19 emergency relief funds, the KZN disaster funds were not stolen or misused.

 

Fat chance. The ANC has already announced that its parliamentary constituency offices in KZN would become “hubs for humanitarian support” and appealed for the donation of relief supplies. Watch the trousering by the ANC’s public representatives of anything that the public is dumb enough to leave with them.

 

It’s in KZN where the ANC’s brazen indifference to the law and antipathy towards the Constitution is at its most obvious and most destructive.

 

On Monday, Zuma's corruption trial once again failed to take off in the Pietermaritzburg High Court when he successfully blocked the process with another round of delaying legal actions. His lawyers also had some carefully threatening words for the judiciary in a separate Supreme Court of Appeal action.

 

They urged SCA President Mandisa Maya to reconsider the dismissal of his latest corruption prosecution challenges. They warned that last year’s deadly July unrest was “in part, traceable to a perceived erroneous and unjust judicial outcome” that put Zuma briefly in prison for contempt of court.

 

“When such conceived mistakes are committed, the citizens (wrongly) feel entitled to resort to self-help…”

 

Floods, fires and locusts are devastating but at least happen relatively rarely. The ANC, alas, is a seemingly unending plague.

 

www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/kzn-what-a-disaster

Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH

Facilitated by: Karen Saez (Lead, Asia & Impact, Global Shapers Community), Debra Everitt McCormack (Lead, Global Board Effectiveness and Sustainability, Accenture) With: Andrea Moore (Project Fellow, Forum Foundations) speaking in the Leadership Skills Workshop: Finding Purpose and Leading Authentically session at the Global Shapers Annual Summit 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, 17 June 2023. World Economic Forum Headquarters, Villa Mundi – Oak. Copyright: World Economic Forum/ Marc Bader

Facilitated by: Natalie Pierce (Head, Global Shapers Community), Olivier Schwab (Managing Director, World Economic Forum) With: Klaus Schwab (Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum), Wanjuhi Njoroge (Foundation Board Member) speaking in the Opening Plenary: Inspiring a New Generation of Leaders session at the Global Shapers Annual Summit 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, 17 June 2023. World Economic Forum Headquarters, Tent. Copyright: World Economic Forum/ Marc Bader

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, or the ROCOR. Still autonomous and reconciled with the Moscow Patriarchate at the moment, it has been planned to reunify with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in a few years..

 

ROCOR currently has 349 parishes and 21 monasteries for men and women in 32 countries throughout the world, served by 462 clergy. The distribution of parishes is as follows: 152 parishes and 8 monasteries in the United States; 42 parishes in Germany; 31 parishes and 4 monasteries in Australia; 21 parishes and 3 monasteries in Canada; 22 parishes in Indonesia; and a handful of institutions in France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, South America, and New Zealand.

 

On December 28, 2006, ROCOR officially announced the signing of Act of Canonical Communion and a full restoration of communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, celebrated by a Divine Liturgy at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, at which the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexius II and the First Hierarch of ROCOR Metropolitan Laurus concelebrated for the first time in history. Present at the signing of the Act and at the Divine Liturgy was Vladimir Putin, who was thanked by Patriarch Alexey for helping to facilitate the reconciliation between the two parts of the Russian Church.

 

75 E 93rd Street, NYC.

Facilitated by: Katie Hoeflinger (Specialist, North America & Caribbean, Global Shapers Community) With: Celina de Sola (Co-Founder and President, Glasswing International), Michelle Howie (Advisory Council, Adelaide Hub), Claudia Valladares (Co-Founder and CEO, Impact Hub Caracas), Njideka U. Harry (Founder and Member of the Executive Board, Youth for Technology Foundation) speaking in the Leadership Skills Workshop: Inspiring Volunteers & Boosting Engagement session at the Global Shapers Annual Summit 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, 17 June 2023. World Economic Forum Headquarters, Tent. Copyright: World Economic Forum/ Marc Bader

The Trade Facilitation Programme (TFP) currently includes over 113 Issuing Banks in 26 countries in the EBRD region and more than 800 Confirming Banks worldwide. The event offered the opportunity to review and discuss industry challenges with leading specialists, including regulators and lawyers. It also featured the award ceremony for The Most Active EBRD TFP banks and Best Transactions of 2014.

Facilitated by: Natalie Pierce (Head, Global Shapers Community), Olivier Schwab (Managing Director, World Economic Forum)

With: Klaus Schwab (Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum), Wanjuhi Njoroge (Foundation Board Member)

speaking in the Opening Plenary: Inspiring a New Generation of Leaders session at the Global Shapers Annual Summit 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, 17 June 2023. World Economic Forum Headquarters, Tent. Copyright: World Economic Forum/ Thibaut Bouvier

Facilitated by: Natalie Pierce (Head, Global Shapers Community)

With: Ostap Lutsyshyn (Advisory Council, Lviv Hub), Adam Amoussou (Community Champion, Cotonou Hub), Tariq Al-Olaimy (Foundation Board Member), Vanessa Lancaster (Community Champion, Edmonton Hub), Simge Sandal (Community Champion, Dusseldorf Hub

speaking in the Leadership Skills Workshop: Practising Collaborative Leadership to Achieve Consensus session at the Global Shapers Annual Summit 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, 17 June 2023. World Economic Forum Headquarters, Mont Blanc A&B. Copyright: World Economic Forum/ Thibaut Bouvier

Facilitated by: James Forsyth (Community Lead, South Asia/ASEAN, and Member Relations, Young Global Leaders), Trang Vergari (Operations and Coordination Lead, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship) With: Joo-Ok Lee (Head, Regional Agenda, Asia-Pacific; Member of the Executive Committee), Henna Dazo (Curator, Davao Hub), Roya Baghai (Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, High Resolves) speaking in the Intergenerational Approaches to Local Realities in Asia Pacific & Greater China session at the Global Shapers Annual Summit 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, 16 June 2023. World Economic Forum Headquarters, Villa Mundi – Cedar. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Marc Bader

The National Museum of Ethiopia (NME), also referred to as the Ethiopian National Museum, is a national museum in Ethiopia. It is located in the capital, Addis Ababa, near the Addis Ababa University's graduate school.

 

The museum houses the nation's artistic treasures as well as many of the most precious archaeological finds such as the fossilized remains of early hominids, the most famous of which is "Lucy," the partial skeleton of a specimen of Australopithecus afarensis. Recently added to the basement gallery is a display on Selam, found between 2000 and 2004. Estimated to be 3.3 million years old, this A. afarensis specimen is considered to be the earliest child.

 

In 1936, the concept of a museum was first introduced in Ethiopia when an exhibition was opened, displaying ceremonial costumes donated by the royal family and their close associates. The current NME grew from the establishment of the Institute of Archaeology, which was founded in 1958. The institute was founded to promote and facilitate the archaeological research mission in the northern part of Ethiopia by French archaeologists.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

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We spent a few hours in the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Abeba during our last day in the city; its exhibits range from interesting to bizarre ones, and the museum is definitely worth visiting!

Facilitated by: Albina Krasnodemska (Lead, Growth and Engagement, Europe and Eurasia, Global Shapers Community), Frédéric Paulet (Corporate Social Innovation Specialist) With: Andrew Caruana Galizia (Deputy Head of Europe and Eurasia), Angela Honegger (Community Champion, Zurich Hub), Rocío Cámara Farré (Curator, Bilbao Hub) speaking in the Intergenerational Approaches to Local Realities in Europe & Eurasia session at the Global Shapers Annual Summit 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, 16 June 2023. World Economic Forum Headquarters, Eiger. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Marc Bader

The Trade Facilitation Programme (TFP) currently includes over 100 Issuing Banks in the EBRD region and more than 800 Confirming Banks worldwide. The event gave EBRD partner banks the opportunity to review and discuss industry challenges, pricing, limits and trade opportunities with key industry specialists, regulators and representatives from the World Trade Organization, the International Chamber of Commerce HQ and local National ICC Committees.

  

It also featured the highly popular award ceremony for ‘The Most Active EBRD TFP Banks’ and ‘The Best Transaction of 2016’.

 

Live graphic facilitation from a few years ago.

Facilitated by: Katie Hoeflinger (Specialist, North America & Caribbean, Global Shapers Community) With: Celina de Sola (Co-Founder and President, Glasswing International), Michelle Howie (Advisory Council, Adelaide Hub), Claudia Valladares (Co-Founder and CEO, Impact Hub Caracas), Njideka U. Harry (Founder and Member of the Executive Board, Youth for Technology Foundation) speaking in the Leadership Skills Workshop: Inspiring Volunteers & Boosting Engagement session at the Global Shapers Annual Summit 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, 17 June 2023. World Economic Forum Headquarters, Tent. Copyright: World Economic Forum/ Marc Bader