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Beginning
From the history of North Baikal area
(published in Northern Baikal Gazzette, Nos 42-47, 1985)
Special thanks to A. Voronin,
the sonof the author of this history research paper
The history of North Baikal area (NBa) can not be traced down to the ancient times, still it has quite a great longitude. Compared with other places in Eastern Siberia, NBa became one of the few places where the explorers settled down in Middle Ages.
 The historic data give us some facts that Russian "servicemen" showed up in the estuary of the Upper Angara river in 1644 after they spent a winter "on Lake Baikal shores opposite the Olkhon Isle". In summer, "two weeks before St.Peter's day, the group, with ataman Vasily Kolesnikov as a leader, went up the left side of the lake and almost reached the Upper Angara river. Here they met a local Evenki tribe of Prince Kotega who had a group of 10 people with him…". Prince Kotega advised Kolesnikov to send people up the Upper Angara river. The Yenisey voevode Feudor Uvarov wrote about this in his note to the tsar on November,14,1646 about the construction of the stockaded town "on Lake Baikal shore close to the estuary of the Upper Angara river".
The second half of the 17th century was noted for the active exploration of Siberian lands. They would build stockaded towns and forts everywhere. Bratsk stockaded town was built in 1631 and its watch tower has been maintained up to this time, Verkhnelensk stockaded town was built in 1641, Vasily Kolesnikov started the construction of Verkhneangarsk stockaded town in 1644, the Udinsk fort was built in 1648, and only in 1652 Irkutsk hunter's hut was built.
 We have all the foundations to think that the exploration of this area used to be quite peaceful. The proof for that is the fact that peasants and craftsmen were the first people to settle down here. The majority of the first "settlers" of the territory, as well as the whole of Siberia, were the migrants from the northern part of European Russia, its grand Russian regions, like Arkhangelsk, Vologda and bordering on them territories of Ustuga, Pinega, and Yaronsk. The people born in different regions were totally assimilated by the northerners. The latter would bring their customs and traditions, legends and songs, as well as their local dialect. They would construct their churches, forts and settlings the way they were used to do it back at home. In spite of the fact that the migrants had to deal with the local polulation a lot, they preserved the live Grand Russian language, which stands closest to the Russian literary language. We can still hear this original dialect, the relict of the past, from the native people of Kuhmora village. To our great regret, it gradually becomes extinct, and we are losing it for good.
Let's go back to the chronicles of NBa exploration. It's hard to say where is the place of the first stockaded town, built by Vasily Kolesnikov. We can only guess that it was the site called Dagary, pointed as the only place to live in NBa. Though, the second place for the people to live has quite a certain location - the northern shore of Irkana lake. In the end of the 17th century several families were ordered to transfer to Verkhneangarsk (that would be the name of the settling later) by the edict of Barguzin authorities. Due to this edict the settlers were provided with cattle, grain and tools for farming. From this very moment the story of NBa exploration has started.
 The information about initial stages of Verkhneangarsk development is scarse and confusing, that's why it's hard to come to certain conclusions if rely on it. The most precise and lively description of Verkhneangarsk can be found in the paper "The News of the East-Siberian Department of the Empire Geographic Society" of 1890, under the title "The trip to the Upper Angara". The author was a famous traveler N.Grigorovsky. He was an extraordinary and educated person, who did a lot for the study of the history of Lake Baikal area. The final goals of his trip was to clarify if the the rivers - the Upper Angara and the Vitim - were good enough for navigation. The Irkutsk trading company of brothers-merchants Kuznetsovs needed such information for some reason. That was the main reason why Grigorovsky went up here.
He started his cruise on board the steamboat "Dmitry" on the 28th of June 1888. On the 3rd of July he reached the estuary of the Kichera river. After that he transferred to the estuary of the Upper Angara river, where he rented a rowing boat with 6 rowers. They started their trip up the river. It was a very hard thing to do as they met no settlings, no people up to the Kotera tributary. There was not even a single chance to use a sail, so they had to row all the time. The rowers were reluctant to drag the boat on a rope as all of them were exhausted of hard work and lack of food. The only food they could eat before they reached Verkhneangarsk was bread and omul (Lake Baikal endemic fish).
 Half a mile from the estuary of the Kotera there were finally some signs of life. They found a place, called Chencha, where five brothers Komarytsins had their houses. From Chencha they could get further to the settling Kuhmora, where ten families lived. After that they could walk to Verkhneangarsk. It's interesting to note that the archive papers of that time give us the name of the settling Kuhmora as Komara. Well, they don't explain the origin of the word, anyway. Verkhneangarsk was a small village of around 60 houses with two streets shaped in a form of the letter T. In spite of being that small, the village is shown in the dictionary of Brockhouse and Efron (1892) as "the most important settling in the valley of the Upper Angara river". Together with the villages of Chencha, Komara and Duhshkachan, the settling of Goremika on Lake Baikal shore, Verkhneangarsk formed the special Verkhneangarsk community, which included all the Russian-speaking population of the area. In 1885 the total number of the population in all the five settlings was 467 persons. Verkhneangarsk counted 295 people, 60 households, a church, but no school.
 The main occupations of the settlers were arable farming and fishing. Still, as Grigorovsky notes, the peasants did both irrationally, not to say the worse. Irkana lake was full of fish, but the settlers didn't have any decent fishing tackle. Many households were not fenced, some didn't even have the outhouses. Many settlers had cows and horses, but those had to take care of themselves. "In general, laziness and happy-go-lucky way of life do prevent the well-being of the Verkhneangarsk residents. The peasants do not have any extra jobs, but fishing in summer time", Grogorovsky wrote. It's easy to accept his discontent taking into consideration the situation he found himself in Verkhneangarsk.
Grigorovsky left Irkutsk alone with an idea to hire workers for the expedition in Verkhneangarsk, as he thought they knew how to do things in the taiga forest. But his discontent was really great, because he found out that the settlers were absolutely useless as workers in the taiga forest. Those peasants remained peasants and what they did was mostly arable farming. They harvested mostly rye and unground buckwheat. The crops of buckwheat were quite good, about 13 metric centhers from a hectar, and that was really good for such a place. There were five water- mills around the village and the crops could be processed right there. The settlers had kitchen-gardens as well, but the choice of vegetables was minimal - potatoes, cucumbers, beetroots.
 Doctor of medicine Kirillov traveled to Verkhneangarsk in 1885 and wrote the following conclusions: "There are enough lands in this place to give food to the population ten times bigger than the current one if the peasants would have reasonable attitude towards their work. Instead, in the first decade of August, when haying is not yet over, the crops of rye and buckwheat are not yet harvested, the ploughland should be prepared for the next year, yet around forty strongest men, some togrther with their families, go down to Nizhneangarsk for the seasonal work at the fishery. Were it good old times when even women were paid 4 roubles per a barrel of cleaned fish and she could earn around 40 roubles per season, now even men would earn only 15-20 roubles. And these people give up the well-being of their households for thess pittances. Moreover, the strangest thing was that some of them would spend all their earnings to buy bread which the majority didn't have enough to survive".
We can judge about the spiritual side of their life by the presense of only two literate people in the village. The peasants were occasionally taught by the people in exile who were brought there by the will of fortune. There was no teacher in the village, though there was a priest who lived in the church.
Furthermore, Grigorovsky bitterly notes: "The life of a Verkhneangarsk peasant is no joy in all the senses. Separated from the rest of the world by 140-mile desert, related to that world by a single road, he lives in a separate world of the narrow frame of his interests. The rural mail arrives here rarely, sometimes, the mail bag sent from Barguzin, gets lost or travels somewhere for a month or so. The only positive moment of such isolated life, not to speak about having any use of it, is that the local dialect had been preserved almost with no slight changes".
 All the other places of NBa were formed in much later times than the time of the formation of Verkhneangarsk. The people who lived in them were of different origins and places. Most of them were exiled people from all over the Russian Empire. That was the reason why the spirit of ancient times, its colorful vividness were lost in such places, if they ever existed there. In fact, Verkhneangarsk is the oldest place in NBa, as its history has a steady development. A different story has the Verkhneangarsk fort. Having served as a an advanced post of this land exploration it gradually strted to lose its value. The peasants had no interest to the fort, as they were farmers and the lands around it were all swamps, moreover, the land belonged to the Kindigir Evenki tribe. It was used for collecting fur tax for some time. The north-eastern part of Lake Baikal area became familiar to the Cossacks right after the construction of the fort, as there was an ice-road from Barguzin over the lake in winter time. The evidence is found in the following lines: "The boyar's son Ivan Galkin and his team came to lake Baikal and built the stockaded town near the Barguzin river.(We must note that Verkhneangarsk fort had already existed by that time). And he sent his servicemen, with Andryushka Dubina as a leader, over the ice-road to the Angara river lands, and they collected fur tax there and came to the fort and spent the winter there. Then, on the 16th of August, 1649 the Cossacks went back to Barguzin town to reunite with Ivan Galkin's people".It was the evidence given by the witnesses Ulian Stepanov and Rychka Vasiliev, written down by someone at those times. Still, the fur tax collecting became the prerogative of the Barguzin authorities, and Verkhneangarsk fort's role declined considerably. The 18th century documents never mention it as a place where people lived. There was an impression that people left it for good, but the circumstances changed. As you remember, Grigirovsky was terribly discontent with the locals that they were much too far from hunting and fishing.
 Time went on, and closedness to lake Baikal, extremely rich in fish, started to influence the settlers' habits. The experience of the indigenous people of the area made settlers copy their skills and develop fishing for surviving. This issue was the reason for the formation of the second village - now Nizhneagarsk. (Verkhneangarsk - up the Angara river, Nizhneangarsk - down the Angara river - direst translation of the places). In the 19th century the whole country between two rivers - the Kichera and the Upper Angara - was called Nizhneangarsk. The two villages of Chichevka (Chencha) and Dagary were consolidated under this name.
The resurrection of Nizhneangarsk began in the late 18th and early 19th century. When the famous naturalist G. Radde arrived in Nizhneangarsk in the summer of 1855, he found it quite a lively place with lots of residents. Though the population of the town was mostly temporary. The vast majority of it were the hired workers from Irkutsk, Verkholensk, Olkhon and other places. As Radde came over there in the high fishing season, he could be mistaken by the real size of the population. A more precise picture of the life of the town in the second half of the 19th century we can find in the article of doctor Kirillov. He was sent to Nizhneangarsk by the East-Siberian Department of the Empire Geographic Society in 1855 to research the socio-economic situation in NBa and the fishing industry problems of the region. The results of his research were published in the article "The trip to Nizhneangarsk of Barguzin district in Baikal region in 1855".
 This article contains the information that the territory of the Upper Angara estuary belonged to the Kindigir Evenki tribe under the leadership of the elected "shulenga" - boss and a Russian clerk. The tribe had two branches, the first one were mostly hunters, the second had more of fishermen. The capital was Dushkachan, where they had a bakery and a gunpowder warehouse. The December and the April fairs would take place there as well. 3 or 4 peasant families had settled down in the village by that time, so there was a "ramshackle church" in the village.
Due to the absense of fishing tackle and low skills in this business the Kindigirs gave the northern shore of Lake Baikal to the fishing business people for rent. Several places for seine fishing were good enough for the tribe and they left for themselves. The fish businesses had two wharfes in Nizhneangrsk, the main wharf was Dagary (from Evenki word "dagar" - estuary), and the second one was Chichyovki. Dagary was a small settling along the tributary of the Upper Angara river - the Angarakan. The residents were mostly fishermen who lived in 13 shabby huts. There were also some fish businessmen's buildings, their houses, warehouses and stores.
 Kirillov left us the description of the typical fishery - the main type of buildings in Nizhneangarsk of the 19th century. The most important and the most visible place of the fishery was a shed without walls, always overlooking the lake. Under the shed, right in the middle, there was a row of bins, where the caught fish was deposited. The sides of the bins were made from logs or boards, 20-25 cm. wide, so that fishermen could sit on them and clean the fish. In the back of the fishery there were barrels with fish and caviar, it was also the place where they were nailed. Close to the shed, on both sides there were two houses, one was the household of the owner, the second was for the shop-assistant. Behind the fishery there was a bakery and a kitchen. The kitchen, or the way they called it - the tearoom, was a small wooden shed with a hole in the roof. There was always a camp-fire burning on the dirt floor and a three-bucket sized copper was hanging over it. There was always brick-tea boiling in it. All the people, residing in the fishery, or the ones who would come from fishing, would come over to the tearoom, whenever they wanted, sit down on the benches in the corner with less smoke, and drink hot tea.
Further on there were "shabby little huts, old and dirty, with holes and broken windows, totally overcrowded with wooden bunks. 15 to 20 women with children would be accommodated on 16 square meters in the place. The windows were rarely larger than 71 square cm., and those huts had them even smaller, that's why it was dark and gloomy in them even in the daytime".
Finally, behind those huts there were barns, steamhouses and other buildings, which had no stoves, instead they were heated by the open fire. The carpenter's shop and the blacksmith's forge were separate from the other buildings of the fishery. Sometimes the sick and exhausted people would find the steamhouses as places to live. That is the description of a typical fishery, but we must admit, that there were worse fisheries, where there were fewer buildings.
Apart from the fisheries, Dagary had a small church, a hospital, two hotels (one belonged to the local merchant, three more would arrive in the fall), more than 20 Evenki yurts, and several yrts for the seasonal workers. The specific feature of the residents' occupation and competition stipulated the appearance of the new architectural element in the households of the fishing businessmen. Professor A.A. Korotnev, who made his biological research in this place, wrote: "The fishing businessmen watch the turns of putting seines carefully, that's why many of them have balconies on the houses, similar to fire-observation towers, from which they observe the lake".
 The second half of Nizhneangarsk, the place, called Chichyovki, was located from on the side of the Kichera river estuary, and was much smaller, than Dagary. The place had similar buildings as Dagary did. The fishing businessmen would arrive to Dagary mostly in the fall. Chichyovki had them in spring, as they showed up there after the ice on the lake would thaw and summer type of fishing on Lake Baikal started. Apart from fishing the place had annual fall and winter sable fairs, where Barguzin and Irkutsk merchants would come to trade. The regional police and the fur-tax office were also located here. That was the way, the famous Lake Baikal researcher F.K. Drizhenko, the author of the first sailing directions of the lake and the founder of navigation signs, saw Chichyovki in 1904. His expedition team erected the Dagary lighthouse, its office and other buildings, in the estuary of the Upper Angara. A similar lighthouse was erected in the estuary of the Kichera river, which was called the Dushkachan lighthouse. Drizhenko also mentions another settlement on the northern lake shore - "A village of Tala is located along the Goremyka river; there's one more, with the name of Letniki, along the Rel river, on the steep bank. The first has 30 households, the second has 40. Together they are often called Goremyki. The residents are mostly involved in hunting and fishing, as well as in arable farming". As far as the fishing is concerned, the Goremyki residents would work in Nizhneangarsk on seasonal basis.
As we have already mentioned, Nizhneangarsk appeared due to the people, who started fishing businesses there. The Evenki didn't have enough capacity for industrial size fishing, and earned their money by rent. The major and permanent renters were Irkutsk businessmen Ulishev, Shipunov, and Sverlov. The rent size was really small - 20 roubles per seine, so the Evenki earned around 1,200 roubles annually, when the businessmen profited around 100,000 roubles a year.
 The artel workers from Irtutsk region and Trans-Baikalia would start arriving in Nizhneangarsk in April, when the ice on the lake was still hard to travel over. The seasonal fishing happened twice a year - in summer and in the fall. The first one started in late May and continued until mid-July. The fishermen caught only omul. The local fishermen said that this was enough only for food of the artel workers. Though the situation could be different and the multitude of fish was caught, especially in July. Sometimes the take was 50 barrels per haul (each barrel accommodated about 320 kilos of fish). Closer to the fall, the major fishing would start. The fishing was done not in the lake, but in the Upper Angara during the spawning time. Both types of fishing in the lake and in the river were similar, the fishermen used seines. The river seines were much smaller though.
Each seine was served by a special artel, consisting of 15-20 workers and one "bashlyk" - a head. The artel members were mostly peasants, migrants from other areas, sometimes Evenki worked there. It was a seasonal job up to 5 months, each worker would make 25-40 roubles per season. The fisheries had some female workers as well, so called "fish cleaners". Their job was to disembowel and salt the omul. No need to say how low their wages was, as their profit was about 15-18 roubles per season for such hard labor. But the hardest labor had the seine workers, as they had to pull up the seine two or three times a day standing in the water, no boots were allowed. We must say that the climate was mucg severer at that time. G.Radde was surprised, that "winter in Lake Baikal area comes rather early. In early November of 1884 not only the northern part of the lake got covered with ice, but some mountain springs got frozen, and heavy sledges would already run over the Irkut river". It was not an easy life for the fishermen, as their diet was mostly fish, if there was a successful take. If it wasn't, they would do with a piece of brown bread and hot tea. At the places, where fishing took place, they built light pole booths, covered with bark. A camp-fire would burn in the middle, so that the workers could heat themselves, dry their clothes. They had to sleep right on the dirt, cold and damp floor of such booths.
 Pretending it was a census, Kirillov managed to question about 1000 workers. The total number was around 1400, most of them seasonal workers. Half of them were of special category, one third of those resided in Manzurka, Oka, Telma, Cheremhovo, and some other districts; there were ones who had worked there before or had had a penal servitude, mostly from Vladimir, Saratov, Moscow and other regions. The other half were Irkutsk Philistine residents with all the rights of free people, peasants from Verkhnelensk, Irkutsk, the soldiers on vacation.One could also see some degraded noblemen, sons of government white collars, and retired officers. Most of them were on fishing job many times, they would start that work when young guys and would come over and over again until their old age. What could the reason be, that it dragged them over there, was it their hard living conditions, from which they couldn't escape, or was it that romantic stuff that attracts people to such places, but they would lose both their health and ability to work. To talk about retirement money of the workers, who served for 15-20 years, equaled to the knife at the fishing businesman's throat.The hiring started in Irkutsk in spring. The hired people were paid an advance of 10-20 roubles, their passports were confiscated, they were loaded on steamboats in Listvynka and taken to Nizhneangarsk dor performing their heavy duties. They they would become artel members, and the "bashlyk" (the chief) would become the absolute master of the seine and workers of that seine.
The basic object of the fishing was omul. From time to time they caught grayling, sturgeon, taymen, and sig. Kirillov left some curious facts about sturgeon: "Sturgeon is a very quiet fish. It is a rare thing it is caught in mass. But sometimes there are 200 species per haul. Usually, there are 1 or 2 in a seine, so they are taken to Irkutsk, alive on the ropes put through their gills, behind the steamboats.
The caught fish is preserved by the only known here way - salting. There was also a small number of dried fish, called "upchun", but it was sort of grub food for the workers. They also had "porsy", pieces of cooked boneless omul, dried in the sun".
 The technological process of salting the fish was primitive, it was done roughly, with rock-salt, which gave sediments, and this resulted in a worse taste of the preserved fish. Professor A.Korotaev noted with disgust: "One has to look at the progress in fishing types and fish preservation. I must say, that most of the fishing businessmen are so conservative in everything. They do absolutely nothing to improve the working conditions; they don't even think about learning from other countries, or let's take the Caspian Sea companies, the best ways of fish preserving. It is strange for them to sell omul in glass jars, similar to the Dutch made herring. Moreover, it's not enough to say they preserve fish like in ancient times, they intentionally make stinking fish. The fish that arrives in Irkutsk is still OK, but the one sent to Nizhneudinsk or Verkholensk, God knows, what happens to it. No normal person would enter a room, when there's such a "delicious snack" on the table.
 Well, still, well or poorly preserved fish was loaded on the vessels and sent to Irkutsk. The most typical for the 19th century vessels were the ones of medium size. One of those has survived until nowadays and was getting ruined in the Upper Angara river's estuary. It was 25 meters long and had a deck. Both the front and the back parts had cabins under the deck. The back cabin was for the owner nd the food storage, in the front cabins lived single workers. In the middle, where there was a large hold, they usually put barrels with fish, on which the boards were laid for the the married workers and their families to sleep on. The barrels were rolled in the hold through a side door, which was caulked up , after the vessel started to sail. Then there was only one deck door left. They would put a small booth with two rooms on the deck. One had a stove and the tea was constantly boiling in coppers there, the second was for the shop-assistants. Such vessels cruised under sails, with one or two masts. It's true though, that there was one real steamship "Dmitry" traversing Baikal. It belonged to the company of Nemchinov, an affluent owner of water transportation means in Siberia. The steamship had 5 regular cruises annually. The distance from Listvyanka to Nizhneangarsk was covered in 5 days, but the poor workers didn't have enough money to travel by this vessel. They had to spend endless days and nights in the holds of sailing vessels before the boats would bring back to their homes just to take the same vessel in back direction the following spring.
Here, we could stop our short review of the past of NBa. But, in conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention some ideas of the famous explorers of the lake. These ideas are vital for the generations, separated by centuries.
One of the ideas belongs to the naturalist G.Radde: "The visible decrease of the salmon population in Baikal is noticeable everywhere, and the most important reason for such great extermination is a man himself with his rough ignorance and crazy neglecting of the laws of nature. The time came, that residents of Irkutsk region and Trans-Baikalia feel how small the amount of fish is in the lake. But, to my great regret, it's not yet the high time to start thinking seriously about how and by what means to support the productivity of the exhausting nature". As you see, these words are dated back by 1855, but the alarming notions to preserve and to protect nature were already an issue even by then. As for the pessimistic notes in Radde's words, they are very clear for us now.
V.Voronin
Scentific secretary
of Baikal Department
of the Geographic
Society of the USSR
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