Siberia
3 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Siberia. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a great division of the Russian dominions; occupies all North Asia, stretching uninterruptedly E. from the Ural mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and S. from the Arctic Ocean to the Chinese dominions and Russian Central Asia; total area, 4,831,882 square miles; pop. about 10,378,000. It is divided into the governor-generalships of western Siberia, eastern Siberia, and the Amur region. A region of such vast extent has naturally a very diversified configuration; but generally speaking Siberia may be considered as a vast inclined plane sloping gradually from the Altai, Syan, and Yablonoi mountains on the S. to the Arctic Ocean on the N. In the E. it is traversed in different directions by several mountain ranges, but elsewhere it is almost unbroken by any greater heights than a few hills. It is drained chiefly by the Obi (2,120 miles), with its great tributary, the Irtish (2,520 miles), the Yenisei, and the Lena (3,000 miles), all of which pursue a N. course to the Arctic Ocean; and by the Amur (2,700 miles, 2,400 of which are navigable), which flows in an E. and N. E. direction to the Pacific. The principal lake is Lake Baikal in the S., 400 miles long, 20 to 53 broad, and 1,560 feet above sea-level. The chief islands are the New Siberia group in the Arctic Ocean, and the island of Sakhalin, off the mouth of the Amur, in the Sea of Okhotsk, an arm of the Pacific. The coast line is very extensive, but the Arctic Ocean is icebound at least 10 months out of the 12, and is almost valueless for commercial purposes, and the Sea of Okhotsk, on the Pacific, is infested with masses of of floating ice and dense fogs. The principal ports are Vladivostock, on the Sea of Japan, the chief naval station of Russia on the Pacific; Okhotsk, on the Sea of Okhotsk; and Petropavlovsk, on the E. coast of Kamchatka. South Si- Siberia has a warm summer, but the winter is exceedingly severe. beria has, in many parts, a very fertile soil, which yields rich crops of wheat, rye, oats, and potatoes ; potatoes, but immense tracts of Siberia are utterly unfit for tillage, more particularly the tundras , or great stretches of boggy country along the Arctic Ocean. In the W. are extensive steppes. Roughly speaking , the N. limits of agriculture are 60° N. latitude. Cattle breeding and bee keeping are largely pursued. Hunting and fishing are also sources of remuneration, ermines, sables, and other fur-bearing animals being numerous. The wild animals include the elk, reindeer, and other deer, bear, wolf, white and blue fox, lynx, etc. The forests are extensive and valuable . Even before the World War manufactures and mining were in a backward state, though Siberia has very considerable mineral wealth. Large quantities of gold are obtained, as well as silver, platinum, lead, iron, coal, etc. The trade was mainly with Russia, which took every year from Siberia about $20,- 000,000 worth of raw products, chiefly tallow, hides, furs, and grain; and sent every year to Siberia about $60,000,000 worth of manufactured wares. The foreign trade was insignificant. The chief towns are Irkutsk, capital of eastern Siberia, a trading city; Tomsk , capital of Tomsk province, a trading city , with a university; and Tobolsk, capital of western Siberia. Yermak the Cossack entered western Siberia in 1580, and made a rapid conquest of the W. portion of the country, which he handed over to Ivan the Terrible of Russia. Bands of hunters and adventurers then poured across the Urals, attracted by the furs, and gradually penetrated to the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific. The latest acquisitions by Russia were the Amur territory and coast regions of Manchuria, ceded by China in 1858 and 1860. Exile to Siberia began soon after the conquest, and until the downfall of the Imperial Government in 1917, Siberia was a great penal colony. Hardened convicts and important political offenders were kept under close control, but the great majority of the exiles were simply placed in a particular district and allowed to shift for themselves. Valuable goldfields have been discovered in Yeniseisk, and in the basins of the Obi, Lena and Amur rivers. In recent years thousands of Russian peasants have emigrated hither, and nearly all the fertile soil free of forest land outside the steppes has been occupied. A new sea route through the Kara Sea to Siberia has been opened up lately. The railway connection between Russia and Siberia forms the greatest railway scheme in the world. See RUSSIA: TRANS- SIBERIAN RAILWAY. During, and especially after, the World War, War, radical political changes took place in Siberia, as in Russia proper. After the fall of the Imperial Government, in 1917, and after the fall of the March, 1917, an Provisional Government in the following November, and the rise into power of the Bolshevik Government , political chaos spread over the country , until gradually a provisional government was established by General Alexander Kolchak, with headquarters in Omsk. In January, 1920, the Kolchak Government went down before the assaults of the Red Bolshevist armies, made possible by the internal discontent of the population. During the year ending with January, 1921, still further changes took place. Transbaikalia was divided into two separate districts; the Chita District, where the Cossack leader, Seminov, had established a military dictatorship under the protection of the Japanese army of invasion; and the Verkhne -Undinsk District, where a form of government similar to that of the Bolsheviki was established. The Amur Province remained unchanged, and Blagovieschensk became the headquarters of the rev revolutionary government of the Eastern Siberian Republic, recognized by the Bolsheviki as a concession to Japan, which desired a buffer state between its territory and Soviet Russia. The Maritime Province , which now includes Kamchatka and the northern part of Sakhalin, is administered from Vladivostok by a government which, while strongly inclined toward Socialism, was under the influence of the Japanese army of occupation. In October , 1920, the Red Army, in co-operation with local revolutionary forces, succeeded in driving Seminov out of the Chita District, the Cossack chief himself seeking flight across the Chinese frontier.
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
2026 Editor's Note: This page uses language about other peoples, religions, or nationalities that was commonplace when the book was published and is offensive by today's standards. The text has been left exactly as it was printed, rather than cut or softened, so that the historical record — including how ordinary such language once was — is preserved. (Ed: ET 2026-07-22) The barbarian tribes of Siberia all more or less practise the art of Sorcery , and this has been from time immemorial in the hands of the shamanistic or medicineman class. The Samoyeds who are idol-worshippers believe also in the existence of an order of invisible spirits which they call tadebtsois. These are ever circling through the atmosphere, and are a constant menace to the native, who is anxious to propitiate them. This can only be effected through the intervention of a tadibe or Necromancer, who, when his services are requisitioned, attires himself in magical costume of reindeer leather trimmed with red cloth, a mask of red cloth, and a breast-plate of polished metal. He then takes a drum of reindeer skin (See Lapland ) ornamented with brass rings, and attended by an assistant, walks round in a circle invoking the presence of the spirits, shaking a large rattle the while. The noise grows louder, and as the spirits are supposed to draw near the sorcerer, he addresses them, beating his drum more gently, and pausing in his chant to listen to their answers. Gradually he works himself into a condition of frenzy, beats the drum with great violence, and appears to be possessed by the supernatural influence writhing and foaming at the mouth. All at once he stops, and oracularly pronounces the will of the spirits. The Tadibe's office is a hereditary one, but if a member of the tribe should exhibit special qualifications he is adopted into the priesthood, and by fasts, vigils, the use of narcotics and stimulants in the same manner as is employed by the N.A. Indians (q.v.), he comes to believe that he has been visited by the spirits. He is then adopted as a Tadibe with midnight ceremoinal, and is invested with a magic drum. A great many of the tricks of the priesthood are merely those of ordinary conjuring, such as the rope trick, but some of the illusions which these men secure are exceedingly striking. With their hands and feet tied together, they sit on a carpet of reindeer skin, and putting out the light, summon the assistance of the spirits. Peculiar noises herald their approach, snakes hiss, and bears growl, the lights are rekindled and the tadibe is seen released from his bonds. The Samoyeds sacrifice much to the dead, and perform various ceremonies in their honour, but they believe that only the souls of the tadibes enjoy immortality and hover through the air, demanding constant sacrifice. Sibylline Books Further to the east, inhabiting the more northerly part of Siberia dwell the Ostiaks, who have nominally adopted the rites of the Greek Church , but magic is rife amongst them. Many Ostiaks carry about with them a description of fetish, which they call Schaitan. Whether this name, like the Arabic Sheitan, is merely a corruption of that of Satan, it would be difficult to say. Larger images of this kind are part of the furniture of an Ostiak lodge, but they are attired in seven pearl embroidered garments, and suspended to the neck by a string of silver coins. In a strange sort of dualism they are placed in many of the huts cheek by jowl with the image of the Virgin Mary, and at mealtimes their lips are smeared with the blood of raw game or fish. It is this people, the Ostiaks, with whom the word "Shaman" originated. These Shamans are merely medicine-men. The Mongols, who inhabit the more southern parts of the great waste of Siberia are also ancient practitioners in sorcery, and rely greatly on divination. In order to discover what description of weather will be prevalent for any length of time they employ a stone endowed with magic virtues called yadeh-tash. This is suspended over, or lies in a basin of water with sundry ceremonies, and appears to be the same kind of stone in use among the Turcomans as related by Ibn Mohalhal, an early Arab traveller. The celebrated conqueror, Timur, in his Memoirs, records that the Jets resorted to incantations to produce heavy rains which hindered his cavalry from acting against them. A Yadachi, or weather-conjuror, was taken prisoner, and after he had been beheaded the storm ceased. Babu refers to one of his early friends, Khwaja ka Mulai, as conspicuous for his skill in falconry and his knowledge of Yadageri , or the science of inducing rain and snow by means of enchantment. The Russians were much distressed by heavy rains in 1552, when besieging Kazan, and universally ascribed the unfavourable weather to the arts of the Tatar queen, who was an enchantress. Early in the 18th century, the Chinese Emperor Shitsung issued a proclamation against rain-conjuring, addressed to the Eight Banners of Mongolia. "If," indignantly observes the Emperor, " if I, offering prayers in sincerity, have yet cause to fear that it may please heaven to leave my prayer unanswered, it is truly intolerable that mere common people wishing for rain should of their own fancy set up altars of earth; and bring together a rabble of Hoshang (Buddhist Bonzes) and Taossi to conjure the spirits to gratify their wishes."
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a vast region of northern Asia, a possession of Russia. It comprises nearly all Asia north of the fiftieth parallel. It extends from the Ural Mountains to Bering Sea, a zone of territory 3,600 miles in length. The area of Siberia proper is given usually at 4,833,496 square miles. This estimate must be reduced somewhat by the recent cession of the southern half of the island of Saghalin to Japan. The population in 1907 was returned at 6,893,900. The southern district of Siberia has a general altitude of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet. The entire region slopes northward to sea level. It is convenient, at least, to divide Siberia into an eastern and a western section separated by the one hundred fifth meridian, or, in other words, by a north and south line passing near the western edge of Lake Baikal. The western section is not unlike eastern Russia. Four belts of soil and climate may be noted. Named from south to north, they are the steppe region, in parts arid and salty and in others adapted to grazing; next a belt of black soil not unsuitable for agricultural purposes; then a zone of birch, fir, and pine forests inhabited by fur-bearing animals; and, lastly, a wide extent of tundra, or mossy, half frozen plains sparsely inhabited by reindeer and other arctic animals. This vast territory is drained into the Arctic Ocean by many streams, including the Obi and the Yenisei, along whose banks a scattered population lives chiefly by hunting, fishing, and trapping. This section is one great plain. The rivers are uninterrupted by cascades. Were it not that the Arctic and the lower courses of the rivers are ice-bound for ten months in the year, they might afford waterways for ships of great size. The eastern part of Siberia is the higher and its surface is, on the whole, mountainous. There are valleys capable of cultivation. Those near Lake Baikal are the most fertile in all Siberia, but the eastern section is generally rough and inhospitable. Its mineral wealth and forests are as yet little known. When first known to the historian Siberia was part of the extensive domain of Genghis Khan . In 1580 a band of Russian Cossacks, who had been accustomed to plunder ships on the Volga, fled from justice and established themselves in Siberia. Later they offered to bring a section of the country under the "protection" of the czar on condition of peace and forgetfulness of the past. The Russian advance from one river to another was rapid. In 1689, a century later, a treaty with Peking allowed the claim of Russia clear to the borders of the Pacific Ocean. It would be difficult to describe the native tribes. They are Turks, Mongols, Tartars, or Yakuts, and tribes allied to the Eskimo. Some tribes are hunters and fishers; others move with their flocks from place to place. Siberia is used as a place of banishment, or rather confinement, for Russian political offenders. The story of Siberian exiles, people often of refinement and education, doomed to wear out their lives in the mines and swamps of Siberia is a long one. The Trans-Siberian Railway , constructed near the southern border, connects with Moscow and St. Petersburg and runs to the Sea of Japan at Vladivostok. Passenger trains require thirteen days for the trip; freights take fifty to sixty days. The chief articles of west-bound freight are wheat, oil, seeds, flax, honey, wax, eggs, meat, fish, tallow, furs, timber, cedar nuts, and tea. See Baikal ; Yenisei; Irkutsk; Yakutsk ; Vladivostok ; Saghalin , etc.