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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2009
In a great number of articles now, Soviet historians have dealt with the attractive theme of the enormity of western, and especially American, activities on the north-eastern fringes of Siberia—activities which, starting in the 1860's, lasted for three quarters of a century. Yet, showing no disrespect to scholars of the stamp of N. Zhikharev, S. V. Bakhrushin, and M. I. Belov, through the operation of one underlying tendency all these accounts of western penetration of Chukotka may be regarded as comprising one large group. For 40 years they have tended, if not wholly to ignore the final phase of North American commercial ‘intervention’ in Chukotka in the years following 1920, then at least to place no emphasis whatever on the awkward facts, for instance, that ‘friendly direct contact between Alaska's and Chukotka's natives went on for several years’ and that some trips between the continents ‘went on until as late as 1944’. The reasons for this are not hard to find: Chukotkan history of the third decade is potentially embarrassing to Moscow. In 1921 the question of whether or not Chukotka formed a part of the Soviet state had not been settled, nor was absolute authority exercised in the remote north-east by the Bolsheviks at that point or, indeed, in 1922. Now a White Russian force would dominate an area, now a detachment of the Japanese army. Worse, there was hostility towards the Bolsheviks in Chukotka even after the demise of the anti-Bolshevik leader Bochkarev in 1923. But more embarrassing than any anti-Bolshevik or petty-bourgeois sentiment, there can be no doubt, has proved the tiresome fact that Moscow blessed the trips to Anadyr' and other points on the Chukotkan littoral made by western schooner masters. Here is the rub: for the new government ‘found it convenient to encourage some American traders to continue, because the Government's own communications with Chukotka were so uncertain’.
1. See Glinka, G. V. (ed), Aziatskaya Rossiya [Asiatic Russia] (St Petersburg, Izdaniye Pereselencheskogo Upravleniya, 1914), Vol 1, p 96–97Google Scholar; Armstrong, T., Russian settlement in the north (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1965), p 109–10Google Scholar; and the bibliography provided by Levin, M. G. and Potapov, L. P. in Narody Sibiri (Moscow, Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1956Google Scholar; translated, The peoples of Siberia, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964)Google Scholar.
2. Particularly useful are Zhikharev, N.Ocherki istorii severovostoka RSFSR, 1917–1953 [Outlines in the history of the north-east of the RSFSR, 1917–1953] (Magadan, Magadanskoye Knizhnoye Izdatel'stvo, 1961)Google Scholar, and Belov, M. I., Istoriya otkrytiya i osvoyeniya severnogo morskogo puti [History of the discovery and utilization of the Northern Sea Route] (Leningrad, Izdatel'stvo ‘Morskoy Transport’, 1959), Vol 3Google Scholar. A fine example of historical misrepresentation is Slavin's, S. paper, ‘Amerikanskaya ekspansiya na severo-vostoke Rossii v nachale XX-ogo veka’ [‘American expansion in the north-east of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century’] (Letopis' Severa [Chronicle of the north], No 1, 1949), p 136–53Google Scholar. Happily, Slavin's later work on the Arctic was written at a lower political temperature.
3. Kolarz, W., Thepeoples of the Soviet far east (London, George Philip and Son, 1954), p 91–92Google Scholar; see also, on post-1930 contacts, Swenson's, OlafNorthwest of the world (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1944), p 240–70Google Scholar.
4. On the Japanese presence, see Gapanovich, I. I., Rossiya v severovostochnoy Azii [Russia in north-east Asia] (Peking, 1933), Vol 1, 121ffGoogle Scholar; and Bergman, S., Through Kamchatka by dog-sled and skis (London, Seeley, Service and Co, 1927Google Scholar)—an account of a Swedish expedition in the remote ‘Soviet’ north-east in 1920–22. An essential Soviet work on the topic is Pavlovich, M., RSFSR u imperialisticheskom okruzhenii: Yaponskiy imperializm na Dal'nem Vostoke [The RSFSR in the imperialist encirclement: Japanese imperialism in the far east] (Moscow, 1922)Google Scholar.
5. Gapanovich, I.I., op cit, Vol 1, p 75–79Google Scholar; Kolarz, W., op cit, p 92–97Google Scholar. Light is also thrown on this delicate question by a reading of Semushkin's, T. didactic novel, Alitet ukhodit u gory [Alitet goes to the hills] (Moscow, Sovetskiy Pisatel', 1947)Google Scholar, for which the author won a Stalin Prize in 1948.
6. Armstrong, T., op cit, p 165Google Scholar.
7. I thank Diana Rowley, of Ottawa, for access to the unpublished MS of Bernard's Arctic voyages, on which I base this biographical information (p 1–4). In later life, living at Cordova, Alaska, Bernard wrote several essays on his Arctic experiences of 1904–24. Typescripts of two, Moment of fear and A friend in need …, are now in the Alaska Historical Library at Juneau. On Peter Bernard, see Stefansson, V., ‘The Collinson Point difficulties’ in The friendly Arctic (New York, Macmillan, 1944), p 111–17Google Scholar.
8. Arctic voyages, p 5.
9. See Klengenberg's autobiography, Klengenberg of the Arctic (London, Toronto, Jonathan Cape, 1932)Google Scholar; and Reports of the Royal North West Mounted Police (Ottawa), 1911–1914Google Scholar.
10. Files 11, 930, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, Ottawa (Research Division Records); Stefansson, V., My life with the Eskimo (New York, Macmillan, 1913), p 259–60Google Scholar.
11. Stefansson, V., The friendly Arctic, p 766Google Scholar; My life with the Eskimo, p 256–60; The adventure of Wrangel Island (New York, Macmillan, 1925), p 138Google Scholar.
12. The typescript of On the Behring Sea frontier, cited here (p 1), is now kept in the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa, under archive reference: MG30 c3, Vol 73. It was typed in 1923–24 on the basis of a journal, also kept under this reference, dating from the Siberian period. Journal and essay differ only in occasional wording; both were deposited by Rudolph Anderson's widow in 1953, and there are grounds for suspecting that On the Behring Sea frontier was composed at Anderson's suggestion.
13. On the Behring Sea frontier, p 2.
14. On the Behring Sea frontier, p 1–4. Omitted here is Bernard's description of an abandoned Eskimo settlement on Ostrov Ratmanova, the houses of which were entered through underground passages.
15. On the Behring Sea frontier, p 7–8. ‘Chenen’ elsewhere becomes ‘Cheney’.
16. On the Behring Sea frontier, p 10–12. Bernard's comments confirm those on Japanese activities in 1921 made by Zhikharev, N., op cit, p 74–76Google Scholar. Similarly, his remarks on the exposing of corpses are corroborated by Bogoraz, W. in The Chukchee (New York, Leiden, Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, XI, 1904–1909)Google Scholar.
17. On the Behring Sea frontier, p 13–14. For all his scorn of shamanism, Bernard's basic sympathy for the Chukchi stands in striking contrast to the intolerant derision of contemporaries from his continent, for example, Bush, R. J., author of Reindeer, dogs, and snow-shoes (New York, Harper and Bros, 1871)Google Scholar, and employees of the American North-East Siberia Company prior to its collapse in 1912.
18. On the Behring Sea frontier, p 14. The interloper was employed by Hibbard-Swenson Co.
19. On the Behring Sea frontier, p 16–19. It was in fact a compatriot of Bernard, Luc Nadeau, who struck the richest gold vein near Anadyr'; see Swenson, Olaf, op cit, p 17Google Scholar.
20. On the Behring Sea frontier, p 19.