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Zabaikalie. 1899.
An old family tale goes that Efrosinia walked three thousand miles all the way to the lake Baikal to join her husband Nikon – at least what she always told her daughter Ekaterina, Tanya’s grandmother. Why Efrosinia had to go there in the first place, was described in Part I of this story – The Serf.
The name Efrosinia, as well as the name Nikon, came from the ancient Greek. Euphrosyne – Εὐφροσύνη – was one of the Charities, known in as the “Three Graces”.
We can only imagine what happened to Efrosinia, who was pregnant at the time, and her seven year old daughter, Khristina, during that three thousand mile journey from West to East across the Russian Empire. Efrosinia spoke one of those Western Ukrainian dialects and occasional Russian – the language she did not know well. She began her journey in the warm climate of Podolia and finished in Zabaikalye in December – one of the coldest months in Siberia. That was the month when her second daughter, Ekaterina, was born.
Spoiled by the wonders of modern technology and life style, it is hard for us to imagine what it took to travel through the harsh Siberian landscape a hundred years ago. We can learn from those who made similar journeys around that time and left notes about their experiences.
One of them, the world known playwright Anton Chekhov, originally educated as a physician, volunteered to make a census of the prisoner population that lived on the Far Eastern Sakhalin Island. In one of his letters he wrote:
“There seems no end to the journey… I’ve battled with rivers in flood, with cold, unbelievable quagmires, hunger and lack of sleep… Experiences you couldn’t buy in Moscow for a million rubles.”
A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire by Anton Chekov was published as a part of Penguin’s Great Journeys series. Fascinating read.
Another traveler was Boris Smirnov, a Russian artist who crossed Siberia with prisoners as a volunteer on the way to the front in 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War. He made hundreds of drawings on his journey, that are on display at The Museum of History and Folklore, in Novosibirsk.
There are no photos left of Efrosinia at the time of her journey – only a few, taken in her late years. Maybe she looked like that young woman in one of the Smirnov’s sketches?
Anyway, against all odds Efrosinia finally had reached her destination. Nikon’s labor camp was located in a place called “Bear’s Corner”, where the borders of three countries – Russia, China, and Mongolia – came together and where The Trans-Siberian and Trans-Manchurian Railroads met at the border crossing. The labor camp was deep in the wilderness until the new railroad was built to open a shorter way to transport goods and soldiers to and from Port Arthur and Dalnij (“Far Away”).
The Russia-China relationship was always full of stories about political intrigue and manipulation, Russian and Jewish migrations, Japanese wars, British invasions, Cossack Bandits, The White Terror and The Red Terror. There were other family members who either were born or lived in Siberia, as well as in China, in particular in Harbin – the major hub connecting The Trans-Siberian to Shanghai and Dalnij. But there will be other stories about them.
Nikon worked in that labor camp for three years under terrifying conditions.
Feodor Dostoevsky, the author of The Brothers Karamazov, was once sentenced to katorga in Siberia, as well. In his “Письма” – Letters, he wrote to his brother “…All the floors were rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall … We were packed like herrings in a barrel …” – it’s a pretty long letter – you will be terrified just by reading it. But Nikon, at least, had a roof and walls around.
Efrosinia did not have even that during her first days there. She later found an abandoned Zemlyanka – Землянка – earth-house with a roof made from trees’ trunks, covered with dirt and sod.
Think Hobbit hole – if you know Tolkien. This type of habitat has been used by humans since ancient times, and in our Eco-era, Zemlyankas are once again in fashion, all around the World. This is a modern example from Switzerland.
Efrosinia started working right away – cooking, cleaning, washing – all hands were needed. Settlements grew fast. Freedom and opportunities worked like a magnet. It was the same mix of Ukrainians, Russians, Lithuanians, Poles and Cossacks as in Podolia. Some were descendants of Yermak’s Cossack Army that conquered Siberia in the name of The Russian Tsar, some – from the families of hunters and fur-traders who came to the Siberian taiga and settled there, some, as Nikon, were there for life, after serving their katorga terms, and some were political exiles, for participating in rebellions against The Tsar, such as Feodor Dostoevsky. There were soldiers, railroad workers, teachers, doctors, peasants and hunters – you name it.
With the railroad connecting that region with the West, more people were arriving within a year than for a hundred years before that.
In one of his letters Chekhov wrote how surprised he was to discover that people in Siberian settlements expressed their opinions much more freely and in more radical ways than could possibly be allowed in central Russia. The Revolution of 1905 in Russia had grown on social unrest in every part of the country.
When Nikon’s mandatory term in the labor camp expired, Efrosinia, Nikon, and their two daughters, Khristina and Ekaterina, settled in the Sharsun railroad station with the Boarder Guards’ garrison. Nikon worked on the railroad, but there, in Zabaikalye, he did not get dressed in freshly cleaned white shirts for work, as he did back in Podolia.
