The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

by John Vaillant

  Several interviews, specifically those with Sasha Dvornik, the late Ivan Dunkai, and the late Vladimir Kruglov, were graciously shared by Sasha Snow and Dale Miquelle. They have enriched this book tremendously. I also wish to thank Misha Jones for his translations of key Russian texts. Monica Hong and Si Nae Park supplied valuable assistance with Korean translations and sources.

  Notes

  Epigraphs:

  1 Arseniev, p. 70.

  2 Heaney, tr., Beowulf, lines 2415–16.

  Chapter 2

  1 Epigraph: Chehkov, p. 41.

  2 “The area around these harbors”: Khisamutdinov, pp. 133–34.

  3 “There are several kinds”: James, p. 545.

  4 “If you stand with us”: Personal communication, March 3, 2007.

  5 “Manchurian and Sakhalin-Hokkaido Provinces”: A.L. Takhtadzhian, ed. Problemy paleobotaniki: sb. nauch. tr. [“Problems of Paleobotanists: A Collection of Scientific Works”]. Leningrad: Nauka, Leningr. otd-nie, 1986.

  6 “The general appearance of the tiger”: Heptner, p. 98.

  7 “Now I felt afraid of nothing”: Arseniev, p. 100.

  8 “The prohibition on shooting”: Ibid., p. 335.

  9 “My … landmarks had vanished”: Ibid., p. 340.

  10 “Arseniev had the good sense not to live to be old”: Ibid., p. viii.

  11 the total elapsed time: Khisamutdinov, p. 91.

  Chapter 3

  1 Epigraph: Jeffers, p. 204.

  2 “Terminal Modernism”: Hudgins, p. 150.

  3 “So, what brings you to this asshole of the world?”: Personal communication, May 6, 2008.

  4 “Siberian conversation”: Landsdell, Vol. 2, p. 247.

  Chapter 5

  1 Epigraph: Gogol, p. 226.

  2 “Each Siberian would be confronted”: Izvestia, Science section, June 8, 2004, http://www.inauka.ru/english/article47379.html.

  3 “Maybe it’s near Iran”: Personal communication, July 12, 2008.

  4 “You came here alone?”: Irina Peshkova, March 21, 2007.

  5 “absorb no less than one-third”: R. Craig Nation, Black Earth, Red Star: A History of Soviet Security Policy, 1917–1991 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 267, quoted in Goldstein.

  Chapter 6

  1 Epigraph: Coxwell, p. 122.

  2 200,000 people were imprisoned: Interview with Roy Medvedev on Ekho Moskvy Radio, March 5, 2003.

  Chapter 7

  1 Epigraph: From “The Book of Rites”; translation by Josh Stenberg, 2008.

  2 Party slogans like “Rob the Robbers!”: Valery G. Yankovsky.

  3 “It is precisely now”: Pipes, The Unknown Lenin, pp. 152–54.

  4 In 2008, nineteen of the world’s one hundred richest people were Russians: Luisa Kroll, ed., “The World’s Billionaires,” Forbes, March 5, 2008.

  5 “There’s no government here”: Personal communication, March 21, 2007.

  6 “People don’t live in Sobolonye, they survive”: Vasily Dunkai’s daughter, Olga, personal communication, March 17, 2007.

  7 “The truth of Necessity, therefore, is Freedom”: G. W. F. Hegel, Logic, The Encyclopœdia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part 1. Translated by William Wallace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 220.

  Chapter 8

  1 “The entire winter life of a solitary tiger”: Kaplanov, 1941.

  2 “Its massive body and powerful skeleton system”: Baikov.

  3 “must have belonged to an animal that measured 14 feet”: Sowerby, The Naturalist in Manchuria, Vol. 2, pp. 30–31.

  4 tigers have killed approximately a million Asians: Matthiessen, p. 89.

  5 “When the majority of people have no means”: Personal communication, April 6, 2009.

  6 “Father’s first two kills were immediately discredited”: Caldwell, pp. 36–37.

  7 “Those who missed”: Neff, April 18, 2007.

  8 “Before long we came upon a startling scene”: Taylor, p. 77. In 1907, shortly after the Japanese occupied Korea, the Tiger Hunters Guild was ordered to disarm. According to Kim Young-Sik, the former editor of the South Korean Internet journal Koreaweb Weekly, the guild’s response to this command was to assassinate the magistrate who issued it and launch a guerrilla war against the invaders. Despite being hopelessly outnumbered, this band of charismatic patriots, led by the famous tiger hunter and general Hong Pomdo, carried on a deadly campaign against the Japanese for more than ten years. Finally, in the fall of 1920, after a series of particularly savage battles in which the Japanese suffered heavy casualties, the high command in Tokyo assembled three armies to crush the independence movement once and for all. Hong and his allies were forced to take refuge in Manchuria and Primorye where they found sympathy with the Russians, who had suffered devastating losses against the Japanese while fighting for control of Korea and coastal Manchuria in 1904–1905.

  With the Kremlin’s support, Hong’s army was able to make cross-border raids for another decade until the new Soviet leadership, wishing to normalize relations with Japan, finally forbade them. Not long afterward, Stalin’s increasingly repressive policies and paranoia caught up with the Korean rebels and many were forcibly relocated to Kazakhstan along with the leader of the Tiger Hunters Guild, who languished there until his death in 1943. A reported side effect of the Tiger Hunters’ shift to freedom fighting was an increase in the incidence of tiger attacks in the Korean countryside. However, this problem—and its cause—was short-lived: the Japanese took the same approach to tigers that they had to their hunters and, by the time the Japanese were forced to abandon Korea in 1945, the tiger was effectively extinct there.

  Today, Hong Pomdo is considered a hero in South Korea.

  9 Apparently, this is a timeless: Defense Department photo (Marine Corps) No. A373217: “This was the largest tiger ever killed within the 1st Marine Division TAOR,” http://www.footnote.com/image/51219707/.

  10 “A cornucopia!”: Eric Miller, “The Fifth of April, 1793,” in The Reservoir (Victoria, BC: Ekstasis Editions, 2006), p. 23.

  11 The Maharaja of Udaipur…(one thousand one hundred fifty only)”: Schaller, p. 226.

  12 “No, the bogatyri have not died out in Russia”: Vsevolod Sysoev, in Troinin, p. 122.

  13 “When I got it it was in a paroxysm of rage”: Sowerby, Vol. 1, p. 69.

  14 “There were cases”: Baikov.

  15 “the most precipitous peacetime decline”: Pipes, Communism, p. 53, from Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, p. 208.

  16 “We cannot expect charity from nature”: Feshbach and Friendly, p. 43.

  17 “Let the fragile green breast of Siberia”: Pearce, “All Polluted on the Eastern Front.”

  18 “ ‘universal values’ such as avoiding war”: Keller, p. A1.

  Chapter 9

  1 “It’s more of a silence”: Sergei Boyko.

  2 “it killed nothing”: Schaller and Lowther, p. 329.

  3 “that under similar conditions”: Ibid., p. 328.

  4 “If among all the members of our primate family”: Ardrey, p. 8.

  5 “Never blame the man”: Jeffers, p. 433.

  6 “We heard the sound of voices”: Thomas, The Old Way, p. 101.

  7 “All of the seven lion groups”: Schaller and Lowther, p. 328, fn.

  8 Schaller later speculated that this may have been due: Personal communication, August 7, 2009.

  9 “a web of socially transmitted behaviours”: Thomas, The Tribe of Tiger, 1994, p. 111.

  10 “The lions around here don’t harm people”: Ibid., p. 157.

  11 “Beyond our fire”: Ibid., p. 131.

  Chapter 10

  1 Epigraph: Gogol, p. 128.

  Chapter 11

  1 Epigraph: Thomas, The Tribe of Tiger, p. 17.

  2 “… The male strode slowly”: Strachan, pp. 244–45.

  3 “Usually animals shot and wounded”: Heptner, p. 194.

  4 “I’d wear different hats”: Personal communication, June 16, 2009. />
  5 “In January 1941”: Kaplanov.

  6 “Once upon a time”: Lopatin, p. 208.

  7 “They are semi-savages”: Fraser, pp. 221–22.

  8 “Some years ago”: Shreider, pp. 42–44.

  9 “It is heavy going”: Chekhov, p. 31.

  10 “Sixty-five tigers”: Landsdell, Vol. 2, p. 324.

  11 “The Russians were probably”: Correspondence with the author, May 15, 2008.

  12 “God be with you, children!”: Trofimov, p. 209.

  13 “All of a sudden”: Rooney, pp. A-1, A-2.

  14 “None of us had ever heard of anything”: Personal communication, July 7, 2009.

  15 “Will the tigress leave the area”: Energiya TV, Luchegorsk, December, 9, 1997.

  Chapter 12

  1 Epigraph: Fontenrose, p. 254.

  2 “like a tiger”: Nikolaevna, p. 163, fn.

  Chapter 13

  1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (London: Blackwell, 1953/2001), p. 190.

  2 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1888), p. 193.

  3 Dersa Vzala epigraph: Arseniev, p. 19.

  4 “To do so, we must first”: Uexküll, p. 5.

  5 “The eyeless tick”: Ibid., p. 7.

  6 “These different worlds”: Ibid., p. 6.

  7 “we have no means of describing cognitive processes that do not involve words”: Budiansky, p. 192.

  8 “All species have been shaped”: Page, p. 116.

  9 anywhere but here principle: Barrett, “Adaptations to Predators and Prey,” p. 219.

  10 “I’ve read a tiger’s not dangerous”: Vladimir Solomatin via Suvorov.

  11 “entirely ordinary occurrences”: Suvorov.

  12 “Give me a company of soldiers and I’ll conquer China”: Stephan, p. 57.

  13 “Our clothes, always stiff with blood and sweat”: Martin, p. 158.

  14 “Using towels as loin-cloths”: Ibid., p. 157.

  15 “My paleolithic soul feels at home here”: Ibid., p. 135.

  16 “They were like people you meet”: Ibid., pp. 98–99.

  17 “We learnt to recognise”: Ibid., p. 116.

  18 “The longer we lived with animals”: Ibid., p. 222.

  19 “Animals began to play an increasing part”: Ibid., p. 276.

  20 “Perhaps this was the origin”: Ibid.

  Chapter 14

  1 Epigraph: Budiansky, p. 33.

  2 “I hid inside the cavern”: Brain, p. 271.

  3 “But whence came the race of man?”: Jeffers, pp. 432–33.

  4 “If a man-eater continues to kill and eat people”: Rushby, p. 183.

  5 “The baboons were apparently too terrified”: Stevenson-Hamilton, p. 262.

  6 “When the lion sees the zebra”: Barrett, “How Do We Understand the Behavior of Others?,” Slide 28.

  7 “The lion wants to chase/bite/kill the zebra”: Ibid., Slide 28.

  8 “When the lion catches the zebra”: Ibid., Slide 29.

  9 “The lion hurts/kills/eats the zebra”: Ibid., Slide 29.

  10 “Jurassic Park syndrome”: Barrett in Grimes; see also Barrett, “Cognitive Development and the Understanding of Animal Behavior.”

  11 “the results herein implicate”: New, p. 16603.

  12 “People develop phobias”: Bryner.

  Chapter 14

  1 Epigraph: Coxwell, p. 114.

  2 “It became a bit of a joke”: Anatoly Sukhanov (Kopchony).

  3 “Those folks are tougher than nails and hardened from horrors”: Karin Elliot, personal communication, June 5, 2009.

  Chapter 16

  1 Epigraph: Van Deusen, p. 176.

  Chapter 17

  1 Epigraph: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or the Whale (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, 2001), p. 203.

  2 “Optimists study English”: Mike Bakst and Josh Stenberg, personal communications.

  3 “What went wrong”: Stephan, p. 3.

  Chapter 18

  1 Epigraph: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or the Whale (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, 2001), p. 389.

  2 “as with a razor”: Troinin, p. 117.

  3 “you learn to read the writing”: Martin, p. 123.

  4 “There is a high demand for artistry here”: Chekhov, p. 41.

  5 “Don’t ever assume anything with tigers”: Via Linda Kerley, personal communication, May 7, 2008.

  Chapter 19

  1 Epigraph: Peter H. Lee, editor and translator, Poems from Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1974), pp. 128–29.

  2 “But when the blast of war blows in our ears”: William Shakespeare, Henry V, III, 1.

  Chapter 22

  1 Epigraph: Pushkin, p. 121.

  Epilogue

  1 “For tigers to exist”: Goodrich, p. 29.

  Selected Bibliography

  Alexievich, Svetlana. Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from a Forgotten War. Translated by Julia and Robin Whitby. London: Chatto & Windus, 1992.

  Andrews, Roy C. Ends of the Earth. Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing Co., 1929.

  Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History. New York: Doubleday, 2003.

  Aramilev, Ivan. Beyond the Ural Mountains: The Adventures of a Siberian Hunter. Translated and adapted by Michael Heron. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1961.

  Ardrey, Robert. The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man. New York: Atheneum, 1976.

  Arseniev, V. K. Dersu the Trapper. Translated by Malcolm Burr. Kingston, NY: McPherson, 1996.

  Baikov, N. A. “The Manchurian Tiger.” Harbin: Society for the Study of the Manchurian Region, 1925. Translated by Alex Shevlakov, 1999.

  Barrett, H. Clark. “Adaptations to Predators and Prey,” in The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, David M. Buss, ed. New York: Wiley, 2005, pp. 200–23.

  ———. “Cognitive Development and the Understanding of Animal Behavior,” in Origins of the Social Mind, B. Ellis and D. Bjorklund, eds. New York: Guilford, 2004, pp. 438–67.

  ———. “How Do We Understand the Behavior of Others?: The Agency System” (lecture with PowerPoint presentation), from “Human Cognitive Adaptations to Predators and Prey” (Ph.D. Diss.: University of California at Santa Barbara, 1999). UMI Microform number 9986870.

  Becker, Jasper. Hungry Ghosts: China’s Secret Famine. London: J. Murray, 1996.

  Bloch, Alexia, and Laurel Kendall. Museum at the End of the World: Encounters in the Russian Far East. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

  Brain, C. K. The Hunters or the Hunted?: An Introduction to African Cave Taphonomy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

  Bryner, Jeanna. “Modern Humans Retain Caveman’s Survival Instincts.” LiveScience, posted September 24, 2007, http://www.livescience.com/health/070924_ancestors_eyes.html.

  Brynner, Rock. Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond. Hanover, NH: Steerforth, 2006.

  Budiansky, Stephen. If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness. New York: Free Press, 1998.

  Caldwell, John C. China Coast Family. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953.

  Canda, Edward R. “The Korean Tiger: Trickster and Servant of the Sacred.” Korea Journal (November 1981): 22–38.

  Cartmill, Matt. A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature Through History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.