Sibir

by Farley Mowat

  It was still pitch dark and 33° below zero as our Bobyk bounced out to the airport and delivered us to an enormous MIL-4 helicopter personally piloted by the assistant district chief of Polar Aviation, a big, bony and handsome man. His crew consisted of a co-pilot, navigator, radio operator, and engineer, and considering we were about to make a two hundred-mile flight into the tundra in what was effectively the middle of the night, I did not feel that any one of them was redundant.

  Our own party numbered ten, but since everyone was bundled to the eyes in monstrous coats and fur hats, it was difficult to know just who was who. Only Victor was easily recognizable. His was the one voice audible above the roar of the engine as we lifted off.

  Shortly before 9 a.m. the sky began to grey and we could see the featureless white ocean of tundra below us. We thundered over it, and just as the sun tipped the edge of the horizon, a black smudge loomed far ahead on the now saffron-tinted snow. It grew and took on form until it became a solidly packed mass of deer, above which hung a silver cloud of glittering frost crystals condensing from the living warmth of this great herd.

  We circled once at low altitude and I expected the milling mass of beasts to stampede, but they only flung back their heads so their antlers ranged the sky like a forest shaken in a gust of wind. They were used to helicopters, which visited them at least once a week, bringing mail and supplies for the herdsmen.

  A few hundred yards to one side stood three large skin tents – yarangas. A handful of people came running toward us as we settled to the tundra.

  They were the herders Nikolai Dyatchiv and Mikhail Kimirgin, men in their early thirties; Innokenty Khodyan, the chief herder, a man of fifty; and the wives of Khodyan and Kimirgin. All were Yukagir. They were dressed in ancestral garb, clad from sole to crown in reindeer skins. We were introduced and then with much grinning, shouting and some impromptu dance steps from Victor, made our way to the Khodyan’s yaranga. Our visit was unexpected, but on the tundra hospitality is always waiting.

  The tent was constructed of double layers of deer skins with a vestibule for storing gear and to act as a heat-lock. We pushed through the double flaps to enter the Khodyan home and found ourselves in a spacious room, about twenty feet in diameter, with wall-to-wall carpeting of thick, soft reindeer robes. A small sheet-metal stove glowed red in the middle of the room, and beside it stood a table about ten inches high. There were no chairs. Everyone squatted or lay where they pleased.

  Victor came in last, dragging a big burlap bag that clinked. Out of it he drew endless bottles and we hoisted a few “sun-risers” while snacking on chips of raw frozen fish. Glasses of heavily sweetened tea completed this second breakfast.

  We shared it with Innokenty Khodyan’s grandmother who, at the age of 107 years, refused to stay at home in the comfort of the reindeer breeders’ permanent settlement but insisted on continuing to live the nomadic life of the herders. She told us how surprised she was to meet people from another continent – “across the frozen waters” – and she hoped we would remain at least until the spring as her grandson’s guests.

  Her age-blackened and dessicated face turned toward a little girl who sat solemnly staring at us. The child was named Elizaveta (Elizabeth). She was the old woman’s great, great grand-daughter.

  “I am too old to travel much anymore, but this little one may someday visit your yaranga. It is good for people who are from far away to visit each other,” the old lady told us.

  While we breakfasted the two younger men slipped off to bring the herd closer to the camp. We went outside to find ourselves surrounded by the living host of the reindeer. Nearly three thousand of them stood passively about, staring incuriously at the helicopter, or pawing through the hard snow to snatch a mouthful of moss.

  Armed with rawhide lassos, and with several silent, furry little dogs close at their heels, the three herders loped into the middle of the herd, which spread to let them pass and closed in again behind them. Deep in that maze of antlers they were looking for an especially fat deer with which to make a feast to celebrate our coming.

  They lassoed several before they found a suitable one. Dumbly it followed them out of the herd. It stood braced against the rope while Khodyan gentled it and then with a flashing movement thrust his knife between its ribs. Slowly the beast sank to its knees, crumbling to the snow.

  The men having done their job, the women squatted beside the animal, neatly paunched it, skinned it, and butchered the steaming meat. They worked without gloves despite the searing frost – the body heat of the dead reindeer keeping their hands from freezing.

  While the women prepared the meal in another tent, Victor challenged me to a reindeer race. Laughing and shouting in the brittle air, the herdsmen rounded up several “driving deer” and hitched them to the sleds – slight constructions of thin larch planks bound together with rawhide. We drivers were each given a long willow wand, on the very end of which was fastened a tiny bone hammer. Yura explained that this was my accelerator. When I wanted my deer to speed up I had only to tap him under the tail.

  “Not too hard!” Yura warned me. “Or he will fly!”

  Bellowing like a bison, Victor pulled away while I rather tentatively explored the technique of deer driving. It turned out to be easy enough and because my deer had to pull only about half of Victor’s weight, we soon caught up to him and the two sleds went slithering across the barren plain at speed. On the home stretch I took the lead, beating Victor by two lengths. He looked just a bit downcast but rallied with a booming laugh as the gallery cheered me home. This was the first of several little tests he was to put me through.

  “Now you don’t need Aeroflot to get you back to Canada,” Vasily Amisov, the Yukagir team leader of the farm reindeer section told me. “If you want, you and your wife can drive home. Ten days good sledding should take you there.”

  “I think we’d prefer to stay right here.”

  It was the proper thing to say. Vasily embraced me, rolled me on the snow, then putting his jew’s harp in his mouth, led a pied piper procession back to the yaranga.

  The main tent bulged. Champagne corks popped incongruously and, even more incongruously, Yura tuned in on the Voice of America on the Khodyan’s portable radio. The announcer was explaining how much better off the Alaskan Eskimo were than their depressed relatives in Siberia. Everyone listened politely, then Vasily proposed a toast to the announcer, suggesting we invite him to Tchersky so he could see for himself how terribly the native people were suffering.

  The women now pushed through the flaps bearing iron pots full of steaming reindeer brisket and we got down to work. Because the meat had been so freshly killed it was a little tough, but greasily delicious. We ate with our hands and I noted that Victor could hold a juicy piece between his teeth while slicing off a mouthful with one slash of his sheath knife. I had learned the same trick while living with the Eskimo. It is a procedure best practised by people with short noses.

  In the babble of talk I learned that the camp had to be shifted every two or three days as the herd slowly grazed across the frozen plain. Once a week one of the men would hitch up a team and drive south to timberline for a load of firewood. And once a month helicopters carried out an exchange of herders and their families.

  I asked Innokenty Khodyan whether he did not prefer the comfort of the settlement. He was amazed.

  “Why should I want that? The best days of my life are here on the tundra with the herds. I am doing good, useful work, and it is work I love.”

  I remember what Madam Ovchinnikova had said about the native reindeer herders.

  “We are against any attempt to force the nomadic peoples to stay in one place. It is for them to make their own choice. If they choose to remain nomads, we try to make it possible for them to do so but still have the benefits of modern society. They repay us a hundred times. No one can surpass them as reindeer breeders, and without reindeer it would be much harder for us to develop the north as we are doing.”


  It is a witless misapprehension to think of reindeer solely in terms of Santa Claus and his Disneyland team. Soviet archeologists believe these Asian caribou were first domesticated about four thousand years ago, and throughout that stretch of time they have been the veritable staff of life to northern people from Norway to Bering Strait. In all northern regions of the Soviet Union, but particularly in Siberia, they play an increasingly vital role in human affairs. The arctic and sub-arctic taiga and tundra are not notably good food-producing regions, but they can produce one thing in abundance – first-rate protein in the form of reindeer meat.

  In 1968 there were 2,400,000 domestic reindeer in the U.S.S.R., and meat production topped 50,000 tons, while an additional eight thousand tons was harvested from wild reindeer herds. This was sufficient to supply the primary protein needs, not only of the native northern races but of many of the new northern towns and cities. There was even some available for export to Japan, where its excellent flavour and high nutritive value (considerably higher than that of beef) makes it a much sought-after food.

  Soviet reindeer experts estimate that their North has a carrying capacity of 4,500,000 head of domestic reindeer with an annual production of at least 100,000 tons of meat; and they expect to reach these figures within eight years. When they do, the northern regions, including all the new development centres, will not only be self-sufficient in primary meat production, but the tundra wilderness will be contributing significantly to the meat shortages that are already plaguing the world’s temperate regions.

  There are any number of side effects to the intense efforts the Russians have made, and are making, in reindeer culture. For one thing, reindeer husbandry now provides a solid economic base for about 120,000 people – the breeders and herders and their families. The average income of these people in cash and kind is slightly higher than the average income of factory workers in the south. The reason is that reindeer breeding has become one of the most profitable of all types of animal husbandry. Because the animals are hardy, self-sufficient, require no planted crops or hay to sustain and fatten them, and no buildings to shelter them, the cost of producing a pound of reindeer meat is extremely low. Beef raised in central Yakutia costs four to five times as much as an equal amount of reindeer meat; and even beef raised in the best cattle districts of the Soviet Union still costs twice as much as reindeer meat, pound for pound. From a capitalist point of view, reindeer husbandry ought to be irresistibly attractive. Every ruble invested in reindeer in the Soviet Union during 1964 had, by 1970, returned two rubles, eleven kopeks, or 111% profit.

  Norway, Sweden and Finland are well aware of the profits to be made and between them have a base herd of a million animals, which is about the maximum their territory can support. Northern Canada and Alaska together could carry as many as five million head, according to Dr. V. N. Andreev, one of the world’s foremost reindeer authorities. A herd of less than half this size would still return an annual profit of millions of dollars and would provide an economic raison d’ětre for all of our northern natives, who at present are mostly surviving (where they have survived at all) on relief and welfare. It would also dramatically increase the supply of meat available to southerners, and the competition provided by reindeer meat might be expected to reduce the price paid by consumers for all types of meat.

  It seems incredible that a free enterprise, competitive society such as ours should not have turned the Christmas reindeer-in-the sky into a going industry. The truth is that we tried – or, rather, a pair of perceptive young men in Alaska did. They were the Lomas brothers and they saw what the Soviets and Scandinavians were seeing and acted on that vision. Largely due to their efforts, a herd of nearly a million reindeer came into existence in Alaska, employing many hundreds of Eskimos as well as whites.

  But there was a catch. The market for the meat was in the south, and soon after the first shipments reached San Francisco the demand for reindeer meat became so great that the beef barons became alarmed. They went to Washington. Not long thereafter, reindeer meat was embargoed by law in the United States. Deprived of markets by the beef lobby, the Lomas herds went into decline and today there are only about 30,000 reindeer left in all Alaska.

  Reindeer husbandry suffered a similar fate in Canada. During the 1930s a herd of several thousand reindeer was purchased from the Lomas brothers and brought to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. It was intended as the nucleus for herds which would spread right across the Canadian arctic, thereby providing a means of livelihood for the northern natives while at the same time supplying a valuable export to the south. Those who planned this concept were honest men – and they were simple dreamers. Immediately the significance of the plan was realized in the south, the Canadian government of the day lowered the boom. Successive governments have kept it down. Today the dream is represented by a token herd of fewer than three thousand animals, and the current Canadian government and its corps of so-called arctic experts explode in a fury of embarrassment when reminded that the herd exists at all.

  In 1949 I became deeply embroiled with the grim fate of Canada’s Eskimos, many of whom were then quite literally starving to death due to a drastic decrease in the wild caribou population, combined with almost total neglect by the Canadian government.* I initiated (and the government promptly took over) the first major study of the tundra caribou herds. The government and I soon parted company, and I undertook a campaign to establish a reindeer industry as a means of giving Eskimos and northern Indians a chance to survive and to grow into the modern world as a viable people. The results amounted to absolutely nothing, but at least I learned a lot about reindeer. Much of what I learned came from the foremost experts in the business, but chief amongst these was Dr. Andreev, a member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences and winner of the Lenin Prize for his reindeer work.

  A quiet, gentle, and erudite man, he is possessed by reindeer, viewing them as one of nature’s great gifts to mankind. Sitting in an easy chair in his pleasant dacha outside Yakutsk, while his pregnant cat slumbered on my knee, I listened to him for hours as one would listen to a very rational prophet. A prophet not without honour in his own country, let it be noted. Here follows some of his thoughts about reindeer.

  “It is a foolish habit of men when they go into a new region to fasten their eyes only on one thing – the most valuable thing they can find. They thus become blind to the whole natural structure of the region and, in their blindness, fail to develop the entire structure as an integrated unit. Not only that, but this failure leads them to do great and often irreparable damage which, in the long run, may cost man far more than he gains by his initial treasure seeking.

  “Many years ago some of us in this country foresaw the coming opening of the northern regions and we also foresaw the dangers implicit in it. We realized that only the widest, and the wisest, use of the resources of the north would make it possible for man to populate this region on a large scale, on a permanent basis, and without destroying or damaging the environment.

  “I, together with many others, worked with reindeer. For thousands of years small herds, primitively husbanded, had supported a small population of arctic peoples. Our task was to see how this husbandry could be improved so all the native peoples, together with the hundreds of thousands of expected newcomers, would be benefited.

  “We set up a number of research stations. We recruited hundreds of enthusiastic young workers in zoology, botany, geobotany, and kindred sciences. The state was at first unimpressed by our enthusiasm but we later convinced some of the authorities and they made money available for our task.

  “Things went badly at first. Mistakes were made. Perhaps we were too enthusiastic. Nevertheless by the middle 1950s when Russia really began to move north in earnest, we were ready.

  “By 1954 we had built a new science around the reindeer. Our research people had bred a series of special types with special characteristics. They had developed strains resistant to specific diseases; there were others
that put on weight much more rapidly than ordinary deer; others had a far greater meat to general weight ratio; and so on. At the same time our parasitologists and veterinary researchers were controlling the anthrax plague, hoof rot, and infestations by bott and warble flies. Other teams had studied food requirements and had mapped millions of hectares of tundra and taiga in order to assess their capacity to feed the herds. Still other teams had worked out a whole new rationale for the handling and herding of animals in the field.

  “In 1960 we justified the hundreds of thousands of rubles spent, and the years of labour. That year the north produced 12,000 tons of high-quality reindeer meat, and even our severest critics, who had claimed that minerals, timber and fur were the only important resources in the north, came over to our side. This was because our work was saving them a great deal of money in their efforts to establish new communities in the Far and the Near North. This was something they could understand.

  “Now the reindeer industry is the most valuable husbandry in our north. It outclasses cattle breeding, fishing, trapping or fur raising. In 1968, in Chukotka, for instance, the cash return from their base herd of half-a-million reindeer was fourteen million rubles. The Chukchee and Eskimo who are the natives of that region are becoming amongst the best-paid people in the Soviet Union. The new developments there – the new cities – are being supplied with reindeer meat at very low cost, and the inhabitants much prefer the fresh meat to canned or frozen meats which must be transported from the south at very great expense.

  “Meat is not the only product. About half-a-million hides are now processed annually into high-grade suede. Tanned hides with the hair attached are in increasing demand for standard northern clothing, and in the south for fashion clothing. Reindeer hair is used for mattress stuffing and, since it is hollow and very light, for life preservers. Antlers from a special race are processed to produce a substance which may prove to be very useful against cancer. Glandular extracts account for an income of hundreds of thousands of rubles a year. Before long we will be able to use every part of the animal as profitably as we now use all parts of cattle in the south.