Chuysky Tract, 1880s.

When she was a little girl, Tanya lived in Novosibirsk with her parents, Iskra and Victor, and her grandmother Maria. Tanya called her – Busya. After Tanya’s birth Busya left Altay region, where she had spent all her life, and moved to Novosibirsk.

The mountains of Altay in the southern part of  Siberia are naturally beautiful – the cleanest air, unforgettable views, icy cold rivers, and untamed wilderness that, in most parts, are unspoiled to this day. Countless artists had fallen in love with this place. One of them – Nikolai Roerich – painted hundreds of landscapes during his time in Altay.

Almost every year at the beginning of summer, Busya and Tanya traveled to Altay and getting there was not easy. First, you have to take the train, but railroad ran only half way there, to the city of Biysk. Then you need to traverse the Chusky Tract that crossed the mountains into Mongolia. There was no bus service at that time and travelers waited for truck drivers who were headed in the same direction and agreed to take them. You didn’t have to wait long – the Chusky Tract was always busy. But mountain roads could be scary. Tanya would sometimes close her eyes at every sharp turn in the narrow road, which was squeezed between a vertical rock wall on one side and a bottomless canyon on the other.

The Altay Mountain region – where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan meet – are very rich with copper, silver, and gold. The Mongol Empire, The Golden Horde, and then The Qing Dynasty, the last imperial seat of China, ruled the region until the Russians expanded from Siberia. Russian migration and diplomatic agreements resulted in the factual occupation of the southern part of Altay, and in the middle of the 19th century, those territories were annexed into Russia.

Metallurgy was controlled by the Russian government, but there were a lot more resources in Altay to attract pioneers. Fur – soft gold, as it was called, as well as pine nuts, leather, butter – you name it.

But there was one more treasure – the trade route leading into Mongolia. For millennia it was called the Mungalsky trail – a hiking-only footpath that was mentioned as far back as ancient Chinese chronicles.

The trail was used for pilgrimages to the old sacred tree on Chuya River by local mountain tribes. Because the trail runs along the Chuya River, people began to call it the Chuya Way and later – the Chuysky Tract. Mongolians protected the trail and the pilgrims since the times of the Timurid Empire, when Amir Timur used that same trail for military purposes. Local people joined the pilgrims and soldiers to exchange goods, and in the 19th century that trail became a major trade route for Russian, Mongolian and Chinese merchants. Don’t forget, in some parts it was still only footpath, but a path anyway. Remember The Hobbit?

Merchants invested significant amounts of money to make it drivable, but the tract needed a hundred times more. The most dangerous were places, called bom, with narrow rock lanes along the cliffs. Building a wide road in such places required heavy state investments – which Russia at that time could not afford.

But trade could not wait.

Russian merchants started setting stations, stores, and warehouses throughout valleys along the Chuysky Tract. As in any frontier zone it was a very risky but potentially an immensely profitable business. One wide valley along the Sema River was a perfect location for such a station – pristine drinking water, nutrient rich soil, shallow hills with meadows, and a forest full of berries, nuts, and herbs.

In 1860 the first eight Russian settlers made a base in this valley. The merchant, Shebalin, soon built a few yurts to store his trade goods. Other merchants followed suit and joined him in “Shebalin’s place” – or Shebalino, for short. Within a few years, several warehouses, two factories for processing fur and leather, a grain mill, a wood mill, and a butter factory had been opened. (It took almost a hundred years since that time to build a road and bridges suitable for horse carts and, later, trucks.)

Shebalino grew into a large village and became the volostnoy center that governed several villages, distant settlements and  breeding farms for red deer – also known as maral. Volost was a traditional administrative self-governed territory, similar to a large township. Volost ‘s Administration – Assembly (skhod), Sherif (stanovoy), Court (sud), etc. – were elected in the way similar to electoral caucuses in the US.

In 1880, being one of the very few educated settlers in Shebalino, Tanya’s great-grandfather, Georgy Scherbakov, was elected as Volostnoy Pisar – The Clerk and Registrar. He would hold that post until the Bolshevik Revolution.

In 1892 his daughter Maria was born – Busya – Iskra’s mother and Tanya’s grandmother. Her life alone deserved a novel – so much was put on her shoulders.

And those will be other stories.