(Decolonize Russia/Siberian Land Back) Russian Conquest of Siberia and the spread of Russian Imperialism/Colonialism

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Russian Imperialism Colonialism and Conquest of Siberia

Russian colonialism expansion in Eurasia around 1533 and 1894. The Soviet Union continued to practiced colonialism.

“Russia or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, encompassing one-eighth of Earth’s inhabitable landmass. Russia extends across eleven time zones and shares land boundaries with fourteen countries. It is the world’s ninth-most populous country and Europe’s most populous country. The country’s capital and largest city is Moscow. Saint Petersburg is Russia’s cultural center and second-largest city. Other major urban areas include Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan.” ref

“The East Slavs emerged as a recognisable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus’, arose in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Rus’ ultimately disintegrated, with the Grand Duchy of Moscow growing to become the Tsardom of Russia. By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the third-largest empire in history.” ref

“However, with the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia’s monarchic rule was abolished and eventually replaced by the Russian SFSR—the world’s first constitutionally socialist state. Following the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR established the Soviet Union with three other Soviet republics, within which it was the largest and principal constituent. At the expense of millions of lives, the Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialisation in the 1930s, and later played a decisive role for the Allies of World War II by leading large-scale efforts on the Eastern Front. With the onset of the Cold War, it competed with the United States for global ideological influence; the Soviet era of the 20th century saw some of the most significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first human expedition into outer space.” ref

“In 1991, the Russian SFSR emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as the independent Russian Federation. A new constitution was adopted, which established a federal semi-presidential system. Since the turn of the century, Russia’s political system has been dominated by Vladimir Putin, under whom the country has experienced democratic backsliding and a shift towards authoritarianism. Russia has been involved militarily in a number of post-Soviet conflicts, which has included the internationally unrecognized annexations of Crimea in 2014 from neighboring Ukraine, followed by the further annexation of four other regions in 2022 during an ongoing invasion. International rankings of Russia place it low in measurements of human rights and freedom of the press; the country also has high levels of perceived corruption.” ref

Russian Conquest of Siberia and the spread of Russian Imperialism/Colonialism

I hate all imperialism: American imperialism, and Russian imperialism

“Russian imperialism includes the policy and ideology of power exerted by Russia, as well as its antecedent states, over other countries and external territories. This includes the conquests of the Russian Empire, the imperial actions of the Soviet Union (as Russia is considered its main successor state), as well as those of the modern Russian Federation. Some postcolonial scholars have noted the lack of attention given to Russian and Soviet imperialism in the discipline.” ref

“The Far North was a fabled territory to city dwellers in “civilized,” temperate Europe. Classical Greek and Roman geographers told their readers that north beyond civilized settlements roamed cannibals; dog-headed people who barked; people who hibernated half of the year or spent half the year underwater; people who had no notion of private property, marriage, or laws. Medieval travel writers including Marco Polo repeated the fantastic tales. Meanwhile, the Russian kingdoms of Novgorod and then Moscow developed a trade in expensive furs—sable, fox, and beaver—with northern hunters. By the end of the sixteenth century, Cossacks employed by Russian agents shattered Tatar rule in Sibir and extended the Czar’s sovereignty through a series of fortified trading posts where natives were obliged to pay tribute in the form of furs, receiving “gifts” from “the czar’s exalted hand” in return.” – Shamans and Religion, An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking by Alice Beck Kehoe

“The “gifts” were axes and knives, cloth, beads, tea, sugar, and tobacco, presented with exotic food (Russian bread) and liquor. Superficially, it looked like the Western European trade with American Indians that would develop a century later, except that Russia considered the Siberian nations to be their subjects and enforced tribute with military campaigns. Siberia being an exceedingly large territory, it took Russia a good two centuries to push sovereignty eastward to the Pacific, and then the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 turned the Czar’s rule into Soviet domination.” – Shamans and Religion, An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking by Alice Beck Kehoe

“Russian or Soviet, the conquering power officially classified the non-Russian people as “aliens.” A few “aliens” were formally educated town-dwellers or peasant farmers and could be treated like Russians, many were classified as “nomads” who moved with their herds regularly to seasonal pastures, and others were classified as “wanderers” who hunted and fished apparently (so far as the Russian officials noticed) without fixed movements. Nomads and wanderers were required to turn in annual fur tributes, but the Russian colonial officials let them continue their “alien” customs. “Aliens” who accepted Christian baptism were compelled to settle in Russian outposts. Native women who were married to, or kept as concubines by, Russians expected this, but for native men, it meant leaving their families and occupations of herding or hunting.” – Shamans and Religion, An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking by Alice Beck Kehoe

“For the Russian enterprise, it meant these men ceased to pay fur tribute; therefore, there was little government effort to convert the Siberians until, in 1702, Peter the Great encouraged the Russian Orthodox missionaries to bring soldiers with them to persuade whole villages to accept baptism after the priests burned their shrines and images of spirits. Czar Peter protected the Crown’s revenue by rescinding the rule that converts were freed of fur tribute. Through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Russian interventions in Siberia became increasingly onerous for the indigenous nations. Siberian families became accustomed to trade for metal kettles as well as axes, knives, and traps, and purchased flour, tea, and sugar that were regularly eaten. Liquor and tobacco remained important constituents of the fur trade.” – Shamans and Religion, An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking by Alice Beck Kehoe

“The “aliens” were subject to labor taxes including road building, carting, providing firewood to heat the trading posts, and assisting officials. An 1822 law formally recognized a policy of indirect rule with Russian officials governing through designated male “clan elders” regardless of whether the people had clans. These appointees administered customary law and relieved some of the burdens of tribute collecting. A designated “clan elder” could be a shaman, or simply the oldest active responsible man in a district. Historian Yuri Slezkine (1994:88) considers this attitude toward the empire’s “aliens” to reflect nineteenth-century Western intellectuals’ belief that uncivilized (i.e., not living in cities) peoples are indicative of the early condition of human-kind, incapable of performing the obligations and rights of citizens. Superficially, the policy seems benign, but in fact, it was racist, denying the social achievements of the small nations adapted to the harsh environments of the north.” – Shamans and Religion, An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking by Alice Beck Kehoe

Indigenous peoples of Siberia

 The 2021 census recorded 1,620,000 indigenous Siberians:

Aleuts, Alutor, Ainu in Russia, Altaians, Buryat, Chuvans, Chukchis, Chulyms, Dolgans, Evenks, Evens, Enets, Itelmens, Kamchadals, Kereks, Kets, Koryaks, Khakas, Khanty, Mansi, Nanai, Nenets, Negidals, Nivkh, Nganasan, Orochs, Oroks, Samoyedic, Shors, Selkup, Soyot, Siberian Tatars, Taz, Teleuts, Tofalar, Tuvans, Siberian Turks, Udege, Ugric, Ulchs, Yakuts, Yukaghirs, Yukaghir, and Siberian Yupik. ref 

“A large minority of people in North Asia, particularly in Siberia, follow the religio-cultural practices of shamanism. The people of Siberia comprise a variety of ethnic groups, many of whom continue to observe shamanistic practices in modern times. Many classical ethnographers recorded the sources of the idea of “shamanism” among Siberian peoples.” ref

“Shaman” Terminology in Siberian languages:

• ‘shaman’: saman(Nedigal, Nanay, Ulcha, Orok), sama (Manchu). The variant /šaman/ (i.e., pronounced “shaman”) is Evenk (whence it was borrowed into Russian).
• ‘shaman’: alman, olman, wolmen(Yukagir)
• ‘shaman’: [qam](Tatar, Shor, Oyrat), [xam] (Tuva, Tofalar)
• The Buryatword for shaman is бөө (böö) [bøː], from early Mongolian böge. Itself borrowed from Proto-Turkic *bögü (“sage, wizard”)
• ‘shaman’: ńajt (Khanty, Mansi), from Proto-Uralic*nojta (c.f. Sámi noaidi)
• ‘shamaness’: [iduɣan](Mongol), [udaɣan] (Yakut), udagan (Buryat), udugan (Evenki, Lamut), odogan (Nedigal). Related forms found in various Siberian languages include utagan, ubakan, utygan, utügun, iduan, or duana. All these are related to the Mongolian name of Etügen, the hearth goddess, and Etügen Eke ‘Mother Earth’. Maria Czaplicka points out that Siberian languages use words for male shamans from diverse roots, but the words for female shaman are almost all from the same root. She connects this with the theory that women’s practice of shamanism was established earlier than men’s, that “shamans were originally female.” ref

“More than 1.67 million people in Canada identify themselves as an Aboriginal person, according to the 2016 Census.” ref

So basically there are as many indigenous peoples in Canada as there are in Siberia.

To me, Russia, Canada, and America should give back land and give reparations too. If they think they can’t give the land back then they should make a “colonizer tax” and give all funds to the Indigenous peoples of each area.

ref

“The Paleolithic dog was a Late Pleistocene canine. They were directly associated with human hunting camps in Europe over 30,000 years ago and it is proposed that these were domesticated. They are further proposed to be either a proto-dog and the ancestor of the domestic dog or an extinct, morphologically and genetically divergent wolf population. There are a number of recently discovered specimens which are proposed as being Paleolithic dogs, however, their taxonomy is debated. These have been found in either Europe or Siberia and date 40,000–17,000 years ago. They include Hohle Fels in Germany, Goyet Caves in Belgium, Predmosti in the Czech Republic, and four sites in Russia: Razboinichya Cave in the Altai Republic, Kostyonki-8, Ulakhan Sular in the Sakha Republic, and Eliseevichi 1 on the Russian plain.” ref

1. 40,000–35,500 years ago Hohle Fels, Schelklingen,Germany
   2. 36,500 years ago Goyet Caves,Samson River Valley, Belgium
   3. 33,500 years ago Razboinichya Cave,  Altai Mountains, (Russia/Siberia)
   4. 33,500–26,500 years ago Kostyonki-Borshchyovo archaeological complex, (Kostenki site) Voronezh, Russia
   5. 31,000 years ago Predmostí, Moravia, Czech Republic
   6. 26,000 years ago Chauvet Cave, Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, Ardèche region, France
   7. 17,300–14,100 years ago Dyuktai Cave, northern Yakutia, Siberia
   8. 17,000–16,000 years ago Eliseevichi-I site, Bryansk Region, Russian Plain, Russia
   9. 16,900 years ago Afontova Gora-1, Yenisei River, southern Siberia
   10. 14,223 years ago Bonn–Oberkassel, Germany
   11. 13,500 years ago Mezine, Chernigov region, Ukraine
   12. 13,000 years ago Palegawra, (Zarzian culture) Iraq
   13. 12,800 years ago Ushki I, Kamchatka, eastern Siberia
   14. 12,790 years ago Nanzhuangtou, China
   15. 12,300 years ago Ust’-Khaita site, Baikal region, Siberia
   16. 12,000 years ago Ain Mallaha (Eynan) and HaYonim terrace, Israel
   17. 10,150 years ago Lawyer’s Cave, Alaska, USA
   18. 9,000 years ago Jiahu site, China
   19. 8,000 years ago Svaerdborg site, Denmark
   20. 7,425 years ago Lake Baikal region, Siberia
   21. 7,000 years ago Tianluoshan archaeological site, Zhejiang province, China ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Here are my thoughts/speculations on where I believe is the possible origin of shamanism, which may have begun sometime around 35,000 to 30,000 years ago seen in the emergence of the Gravettian culture, just to outline his thinking, on what thousands of years later led to evolved Asian shamanism, in general, and thus WU shamanism as well. In both Europe-related “shamanism-possible burials” and in Gravettian mitochondrial DNA is a seeming connection to Haplogroup U. And the first believed Shaman proposed burial belonged to Eastern Gravettians/Pavlovian culture at Dolní Věstonice in southern Moravia in the Czech Republic, which is the oldest permanent human settlement that has ever been found. It is at Dolní Věstonice where approximately 27,000-25,000 years ago a seeming female shaman was buried and also there was an ivory totem portrait figure, seemingly of her.

And my thoughts on how cultural/ritual aspects were influenced in the area of Göbekli Tepe. I think it relates to a few different cultures starting in the area before the Neolithic. Two different groups of Siberians first from northwest Siberia with U6 haplogroup 40,000 to 30,000 or so. Then R Haplogroup (mainly haplogroup R1b but also some possible R1a both related to the Ancient North Eurasians). This second group added its “R1b” DNA of around 50% to the two cultures Natufian and Trialetian. To me, it is likely both of these cultures helped create Göbekli Tepe. Then I think the female art or graffiti seen at Göbekli Tepe to me possibly relates to the Epigravettians that made it into Turkey and have similar art in North Italy. I speculate that possibly the Totem pole figurines seen first at Kostenki, next went to Mal’ta in Siberia as seen in their figurines that also seem “Totem-pole-like”, and then with the migrations of R1a it may have inspired the Shigir idol in Russia and the migrations of R1b may have inspired Göbekli Tepe.

Seeming Connections: Totem poles, Ceremonial poles, Spirit poles, Sacred poles, Deity poles, Deities with poles, Pole star, Axis Mundi, Sacred trees, World tree, Maypole, Sun Dance with poles, etc.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Based on the seeming evidence, I speculate that around 14,000 years ago, it could be possible Siberian Shamanism (along with dogs and a bird carving, different but yet possibly related to the bird carvings in Siberia dating from 24,000 to 15,000 years ago) was transferred to China, after “N” DNA reached Siberia bringing them pottery. Bird sculptures through ethnographic comparison at 24,000–15,000 years old Mal’ta with objects used by Siberian shamans, suggest a fully developed shamanism.

ref

Origins of ‘Transeurasian’ languages traced to Neolithic millet farmers in north-eastern China about 9,000 years ago

“A study combining linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence has traced the origins of a family of languages including modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian and the people who speak them to millet farmers who inhabited a region in north-eastern China about 9,000 years ago. The findings outlined on Wednesday document a shared genetic ancestry for the hundreds of millions of people who speak what the researchers call Transeurasian languages across an area stretching more than 5,000 miles (8,000km).” ref

“Millet was an important early crop as hunter-gatherers transitioned to an agricultural lifestyle. There are 98 Transeurasian languages, including Korean, Japanese, and various Turkic languages in parts of Europe, Anatolia, Central Asia, and Siberia, various Mongolic languages, and various Tungusic languages in Manchuria and Siberia. This language family’s beginnings were traced to Neolithic millet farmers in the Liao River valley, an area encompassing parts of the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the region of Inner Mongolia. As these farmers moved across north-eastern Asia over thousands of years, the descendant languages spread north and west into Siberia and the steppes and east into the Korean peninsula and over the sea to the Japanese archipelago.” ref 

“Eurasiatic is a proposed language with many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia; which typically include Altaic (Mongolic, Tungusic, and Turkic), Chukchi-Kamchatkan, Eskimo–Aleut, Indo-European, and Uralic.” ref

“Voiced stops such as /d/ occur in the Indo-European, Yeniseian, Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic, Japonic and Sino-Tibetan languages. They have also later arisen in several branches of Uralic.” ref

“Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family of Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskimo–Aleut and besides linguistic evidence, several genetic studies, support a common origin in Northeast Asia.” ref

ref, ref, ref

“Lighter skin and blond hair evolved in the Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) population. The SLC24A5 gene’s derived threonine or Ala111Thr allele (rs1426654) has been shown to be a major factor in the light skin tone of Europeans. Possibly originating as long as 19,000 years ago, it has been the subject of selection in the ancestors of Europeans as recently as within the last 5,000 years, and is fixed in modern European populations.” ref, ref

I don’t see it as white skin being more evolved than those with dark skin, as bigots could see it, but rather it is just one of many factors that happen when the evolutionary pressures on a region like Siberia have on evolutionary changes that would not have happened if not for the different climate pressures the far north have that is not experienced in lower latitudes.

• Evolution of human skin color, white-skin is really under 10,000 years old?
• White (light complexion skin) Bigotry and Sexism started 7,000 years ago?
• Anti-White racism isn’t a thing? What do you mean by that?
• Your embracing and supporting “white privilege” makes me sick!!!

Pic ref, ref

Bridging the Boreal Forest: Siberian Archaeology and the Emergence of Pottery among Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers of Northern Eurasia

Globalization and the Emergence of Ceramic-using Hunter-gatherers in Northern Eurasia 

A comparative perspective on the ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ Neolithics of Eurasia: Ceramics; agriculture and sedentism

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Japan’s population Origins and Religious Beliefs from around 35,000 to 500 years ago

ref

This person states: Lakota, Yurok, and Ojibwa

“The Lakota believe that everything has a spirit; including trees, rocks, rivers, and almost every natural being.” ref – so what I call Animism

“In Lakota mythology, the spirit Makȟá-akáŋl (Earth spirit), and her lover, Father Sky.” ref, ref

“Yurok religion comprised of rituals and ceremonies performed to honor their Creator (Sky Father) and Mother Earth for providing them their daily means of livelihood. Women functioned as shamans or doctors who healed people of their illnesses.” ref

“the earth is the mother; light the father” So… Sky Father and Earth Mother

“The Ojibwe religion infiltrated into every part of life, believing in only one Supreme Being, Gitchie Manitou, The Creator, whose mighty power governs and directs the beginning and end of all things. Gitche Manitou (Gitchi Manitou, Kitchi Manitou, etc.) means “Great Spirit” in several Algonquian languages. In addition to the Algonquian Anishinaabeg, many other tribes believed in Gitche Manitou. References to the Great Manitou by the Cheyenne and the Oglala Sioux (notably in the recollections of Black Elk), indicate that belief in this deity extended into the Great Plains, fully across the wider group of Algonquian peoples.” ref, ref

So “Gitche Manitou” is a Sky God/Sky Father

So the Ojibwe people have something similar to a Sky Father and Earth Mother

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

“These ideas are my speculations from the evidence.”

I am still researching the “god‘s origins” all over the world. So you know, it is very complicated but I am smart and willing to look, DEEP, if necessary, which going very deep does seem to be needed here, when trying to actually understand the evolution of gods and goddesses. I am sure of a few things and less sure of others, but even in stuff I am not fully grasping I still am slowly figuring it out, to explain it to others. But as I research more I am understanding things a little better, though I am still working on understanding it all or something close and thus always figuring out more. 

Sky Father/Sky God?

“Egyptian: (Nut) Sky Mother and (Geb) Earth Father” (Egypt is different but similar)

Turkic/Mongolic: (Tengri/Tenger Etseg) Sky Father and (Eje/Gazar Eej) Earth Mother *Transeurasian*

Hawaiian: (Wākea) Sky Father and (Papahānaumoku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*

New Zealand/ Māori: (Ranginui) Sky Father and (Papatūānuku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*

Proto-Indo-European: (Dyḗus/Dyḗus ph₂tḗr) Sky Father and (Dʰéǵʰōm/Pleth₂wih₁) Earth Mother

Indo-Aryan: (Dyaus Pita) Sky Father and (Prithvi Mata) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Italic: (Jupiter) Sky Father and (Juno) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Etruscan: (Tinia) Sky Father and (Uni) Sky Mother *Tyrsenian/Italy Pre–Indo-European*

Hellenic/Greek: (Zeus) Sky Father and (Hera) Sky Mother who started as an “Earth Goddess” *Indo-European*

Nordic: (Dagr) Sky Father and (Nótt) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Slavic: (Perun) Sky Father and (Mokosh) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Illyrian: (Deipaturos) Sky Father and (Messapic Damatura’s “earth-mother” maybe) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Albanian: (Zojz) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*

Baltic: (Perkūnas) Sky Father and (Saulė) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Germanic: (Týr) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*

Colombian-Muisca: (Bochica) Sky Father and (Huythaca) Sky Mother *Chibchan*

Aztec: (Quetzalcoatl) Sky Father and (Xochiquetzal) Sky Mother *Uto-Aztecan*

Incan: (Viracocha) Sky Father and (Mama Runtucaya) Sky Mother *Quechuan*

China: (Tian/Shangdi) Sky Father and (Dì) Earth Mother *Sino-Tibetan*

Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian: (An/Anu) Sky Father and (Ki) Earth Mother

Finnish: (Ukko) Sky Father and (Akka) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*

Sami: (Horagalles) Sky Father and (Ravdna) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*

Puebloan-Zuni: (Ápoyan Ta’chu) Sky Father and (Áwitelin Tsíta) Earth Mother

Puebloan-Hopi: (Tawa) Sky Father and (Kokyangwuti/Spider Woman/Grandmother) Earth Mother *Uto-Aztecan*

Puebloan-Navajo: (Tsohanoai) Sky Father and (Estsanatlehi) Earth Mother *Na-Dene*

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref 

Sky Father/Sky Mother “High Gods” or similar gods/goddesses of the sky more loosely connected, seeming arcane mythology across the earth seen in Siberia, China, Europe, Native Americans/First Nations People and Mesopotamia, etc.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

“Following World War II, nomadic indigenous groups in Siberia were forced to settle into one place. This practice is called involuntary sedentism. From age 2, indigenous children had to attend boarding schools where they could not speak their indigenous language. Students could be taken from their families if their parents refused to send them to boarding school. Students learned Russian language and Russian culture far away from their families and were not able to talk with them during the school year. By the mid-1980s, children were allowed to return to their home communities thanks to the new openness or glasnost policies of the USSR. For the first time, people were able to openly talk about the problems of boarding schools and of children not being able to live with their families.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

• My Thoughts on the Mal’ta–Buret’ culture‘s  Ancient North Eurasian “R” (Y-DNA) Migrations and its Possible relations/influence on Afroasiatic and Proto-Indo-European languages
• My Thoughts on Possible Migrations of “R” DNA and Proto-Indo-European?
• Proto-Indo-European (PIE), ancestor of Indo-European languages: DNA, Society, Language, and Mythology
• Yamnaya culture or at least Proto-Indo-European Languages/Religions may actually relate back to North Asia?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

• Indo-European language Trees fit an Agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8,000 – 9,500 years ago?
• 7,020 to 6,020-year-old Proto-Indo-European Homeland of Urheimat or proposed home of their Language and Religion
• Understanding Proto-Indo-Europeans and Paganism Religions
• Hell and Underworld mythologies starting maybe as far back as 7,000 to 5,000 years ago with the Proto-Indo-Europeans?

ref

“Dené–Caucasian is a discredited language family proposal that includes widely-separated language groups spoken in the Northern Hemisphere: Sino-Tibetan languages, Yeniseian languages, Burushaski and North Caucasian languages in Asia; Na-Dené languages in North America; and the Vasconic languages from Europe (including Basque). A narrower connection specifically between North American Na-Dené and Siberian Yeniseian (the Dené–Yeniseian languages hypothesis) was proposed by Edward Vajda in 2008, and has met with some acceptance within the community of professional linguists. The validity of the rest of the family, however, is viewed as doubtful or rejected by nearly all historical linguists.” ref

“The Dené–Caucasian family tree and approximate divergence dates (estimated by modified glottochronology) proposed by S. A. Starostin and his colleagues from the Tower of Babel project:

“John D. Bengtson groups Basque, Caucasian and Burushaski together in a Macro-Caucasian (earlier Vasco-Caucasian) family (see the section on Macro-Caucasian below). According to him, it is as yet premature to propose other nodes or subgroupings, but he notes that Sumerian seems to share the same number of isoglosses with the (geographically) western branches as with the eastern ones:

“It has been conjectured that the North-West Caucasian languages may be genetically related to the Indo-European family, at a time depth of perhaps 12,000 years before the present. This hypothesized proto-language is called Proto-Pontic, but is not widely accepted. There does at least appear to have been extensive contact between the two proto-languages, and the resemblances may be due to this influence. A few linguists have proposed even broader relationships, of which the Dene–Caucasian hypothesis is perhaps the most popular. Dene–Caucasian links the North Caucasian (including Northwest Caucasian), Basque, Burushaski, Yeniseian, Sino-Tibetan, and Na–Dene families. However, this is an even more tentative hypothesis than Nostratic, which attempts to relate Kartvelian, Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic, etc., and which is widely considered to be undemonstrated.” ref

“Nostratic is a hypothetical language macrofamily including many of the language families of northern Eurasia. Though a historically important proposal, in a contemporary context it is typically considered a fringe theory. Although the exact composition varies based on proponent, it typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European and Uralic languages; some languages from the similarly controversial Altaic family; the Afroasiatic languages; as well as the Dravidian languages (sometimes also Elamo-Dravidian).” ref

“Iran Neolithic (Iran_N) individuals dated ~8,500 years ago carried 50% Ancient North Eurasian-derived admixture and 50% Dzudzuana-related admixture, marking them as different from other Near-Eastern and Anatolian Neolithics who didn’t have Ancient North Eurasian admixture. Iran Neolithics were later replaced by Iran Chalcolithics, who were a mixture of Iran Neolithic and Near Eastern Levant Neolithic.” ref

I speculate that possibly this “Iran Neolithic” difference is a later migration relating to Ancient North Eurasian admixture, with the source languages from Siberia (pre-proto-indo-europeain, like some kind of pre/proto-Yeniseian, or Dené–Yeniseian languages/or Dené–Caucasian) that then merged into proto-indo-European languages seen just west of Iran in the Caucasus and East Turkey areas. Also, I speculate that the idea of pottery was likewise brought by these peoples and they, to me could have influenced the creation of the earliest pottery in Tell Hassuna and Jarmo (Iraq). 

“Proto-Yeniseian or Proto-Yeniseic is the unattested reconstructed proto-language from which all Yeniseian languages are thought to descend from. It is uncertain whether Proto-Yeniseian had a similar tone/pitch accent system as Ket people, who practiced Shamanism and connected to Tengrism. Many studies about Proto-Yeniseian phonology have been done, however there are still many things unclear about Proto-Yeniseian. The probable location of the Yeniseian homeland is proposed on the basis of geographic names and genetic studies, which suggests a homeland in Southern Siberia.” ref

“Tengri (Old Turkic: 𐰚𐰇𐰚:𐱅𐰭𐰼𐰃, romanized: Kök Teŋri/Teŋiri, lit. ’Blue Heaven’; Old Uyghur:  tängri; Middle Turkic: تآنغرِ; Ottoman Turkish: تڭری; Kyrgyz: Теңир; Kazakh: Тәңір; Turkish: Tanrı; Azerbaijani: Tanrı; Bulgarian: Тангра; Proto-Turkic *teŋri / *taŋrɨ; Mongolian script: ᠲᠩᠷᠢ, T’ngri; Mongolian: Тэнгэр, Tenger; Uyghur: تەڭرى tengri ) is the all-encompassing God of Heaven in the traditional Turkic, Yeniseian, Mongolic, and various other nomadic Altaic religious beliefs. Tengri is not considered a deity in the usual sense, but a personification of the universe. However, some qualities associated with Tengri as the judge and source of life, and being eternal and supreme, led European and Muslim writers to identify Tengri as a deity of Turkic and Mongolic peoples. According to Mongolian belief, Tengri’s will (jayayan) may break its own usual laws and intervene by sending a chosen person to earth. It is also one of the terms used for the primary chief deity of the early Turkic and Mongolic peoples. Worship surrounding Tengri is called Tengrism. The core beings in Tengrism are the Sky Father (Tenger Etseg) and the Earth Mother (Umay Ana). It involves ancestor worship, as Tengri was thought to have been the ancestral progenitor of mankind in Turkic regions and Mongolia, shamanism, animism, and totemism.” ref

“Tengrism (also known as Tengriism, Tengerism, or Tengrianism) is a religion originating in the Eurasian steppes, based on shamanism and animism. It generally involves the titular sky god Tengri, who is not considered a deity in the usual sense but a personification of the universe. According to some scholars, adherents of Tengrism view the purpose of life to be in harmony with the universe. It was the prevailing religion of the Göktürks, Xianbei, Bulgars, Xiongnu, Yeniseian, and Mongolic peoples and Huns, as well as the state religion of several medieval states: the First Turkic Khaganate, the Western Turkic Khaganate, the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, Old Great Bulgaria, the First Bulgarian Empire, Volga Bulgaria, Khazaria, and the Mongol Empire. In the Irk Bitig, a ninth century manuscript on divination, Tengri is mentioned as Türük Tängrisi (God of Turks). According to many academics, Tengrism was, and to some extent still is, a predominantly polytheistic religion based on the shamanistic concept of animism, and was first influenced by monotheism during the imperial period, especially by the 12th–13th centuries. Abdulkadir Inan argues that Yakut and Altai shamanism are not entirely equal to the ancient Turkic religion.” ref

“The term also describes several contemporary Turkic and Mongolic native religious movements and teachings. All modern adherents of “political” Tengrism are monotheists. Tengrism has been advocated for in intellectual circles of the Turkic nations of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan with Kazakhstan) and Russia (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan) since the dissolution of the Soviet Union during the 1990s. Still practiced, it is undergoing an organized revival in Buryatia, Sakha (Yakutia), Khakassia, Tuva and other Turkic nations in Siberia. Altaian Burkhanism and Chuvash Vattisen Yaly are contemporary movements similar to Tengrism. The term tengri (compare with Kami) can refer to the sky deity Tenger Etseg – also Gök Tengri; Sky father, Blue sky – or to other deities. While Tengrism includes the worship of personified gods (tngri) such as Ülgen and Kaira,Tengri is considered an “abstract phenomenon”. In Mongolian folk religion, Genghis Khan is considered one of the embodiments, if not the main embodiment, of Tengri’s will. The forms of the name Tengri (Old Turkic: Täŋri) among the ancient and modern Turkic and Mongolic are Tengeri, Tangara, Tangri, Tanri, Tangre, Tegri, Tingir, Tenkri, Tangra, Teri, Ter, and Ture. The name Tengri (“the Sky”) is derived from Old Turkic: Tenk (“daybreak”) or Tan (“dawn”). Meanwhile, Stefan Georg proposed that the Turkic Tengri ultimately originates as a loanword from Proto-Yeniseian *tɨŋgɨr- “high”. Mongolia is sometimes poetically called the “Land of Eternal Blue Sky” (Mönkh Khökh Tengeriin Oron) by its inhabitants. According to some scholars, the name of the important deity Dangun (also Tangol) (God of the Mountains) of the Korean folk religion is related to the Siberian Tengri (“Heaven”), while the bear is a symbol of the Big Dipper (Ursa Major).” ref

“Tiān (天) is one of the oldest Chinese terms for heaven and a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. During the Shang dynasty (17th―11th century BCE), the Chinese referred to their highest god as Shàngdì (上帝, “Lord Above”) or Dì (帝, “Lord”). During the following Zhou dynasty, Tiān became synonymous with this figure. Before the 20th century, worship of Tiān was an orthodox state religion of China. In Chinese culture, heaven tends to be “synonymous with order”, “containing the blueprints for creation”, “the mandate by which earthly rulers govern, and the standards by which to measure beauty, goodness, and truth.” Zhou dynasty nobles made the worship of heaven a major part of their political philosophy and viewed it as “many gods” who embodied order and kingship, as well as the mandate of heaven. For the etymology of tiān, Schuessler links it with the Mongolian word tengri “sky, heaven, heavenly deity” or the Tibeto-Burman words taleŋ (Adi) and tǎ-lyaŋ (Lepcha), both meaning “sky”. He also suggests a likely connection between Chinese tiān 天, diān 巔 “summit, mountaintop”, and diān 顛 “summit, top of the head, forehead”, which have cognates such as Zemeic Naga tiŋ “sky”. However, other reconstructions of 天’s OC pronunciation *qʰl’iːn  or *l̥ˤi[n]  reconstructed a voiceless lateral onset, either a cluster or a single consonant, respectively. Baxter & Sagart pointed to attested dialectal differences in Eastern Han Chinese, the use of 天 as a phonetic component in phono-semantic compound Chinese characters, and the choice of 天 to transcribe foreign syllables, all of which prompted them to conclude that, around 200 CE, 天’s onset had two pronunciations: coronal *tʰ & dorsal *x, both of which likely originated from an earlier voiceless lateral *l̥ˤ.” ref

“In Taoism and Confucianism, Tiān (the celestial aspect of the cosmos, often translated as “Heaven“) is mentioned in relationship to its complementary aspect of Dì (地, often translated as “Earth“). They are thought to maintain the two poles of the Three Realms (三界) of reality, with the middle realm occupied by Humanity (人, rén), and the lower world occupied by demons (魔, mó) and “ghosts”, the damned, (鬼, guǐ). Tiān was variously thought as a “supreme power reigning over lesser gods and human beings” that brought “order and calm…or catastrophe and punishment”, a god, destiny, an “impersonal” natural force that controlled various events, a holy world or afterlife containing other worlds or afterlives, or one or more of these. “Confucianism has a religious side with a deep reverence for Heaven and Earth (Di), whose powers regulate the flow of nature and influence human events.” Yin and yang are also thought to be integral to this relationship and permeate both, as well as humans and man-made constructs. This “cosmos” and its “principles” is something that “[t]he ways of man should conform to, or else” frustration will result. Many Confucianists, both historically and in current times, use the I Ching to divine events through the changes of Tiān and other “natural forces”. Historical and current Confucianists were/are often environmentalists out of their respect for Heaven and the other aspects of nature and the “Principle” that comes from their unity and, more generally, harmony as a whole, which is “the basis for a sincere mind.” The Emperor of China as Tianzi was formerly vital to Confucianism. Mount Tai is seen as a sacred place in Confucianism and was traditionally the most revered place where Chinese emperors offered sacrifices to heaven and earth. Some tiān in Chinese folk religion were thought to be many different or a hierarchy of multiple, sphere-like realms that contained morally ambiguous creatures and spirits such as huli jing and fire-breathing dragons. ” ref

“Paleo-Siberian languages, languages spoken in Asian Russia (Siberia) that belong to four genetically unrelated groups—Yeniseian, Luorawetlan, Yukaghir, and Nivkh.” ref

Proto-Indo-European mythology

“Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, speakers of the hypothesized Proto-Indo-European language. Although the mythological motifs are not directly attested – since Proto-Indo-European speakers lived in preliterate societies – scholars of comparative mythology have reconstructed details from inherited similarities found among Indo-European languages, based on the assumption that parts of the Proto-Indo-Europeans’ original belief systems survived in the daughter traditions. The Proto-Indo-European pantheon includes a number of securely reconstructed deities, since they are both cognates – linguistic siblings from a common origin – and associated with similar attributes and body of myths: such as *Dyḗws Ph₂tḗr, the daylight-sky god; his consort *Dʰéǵʰōm, the earth mother; his daughter *H₂éwsōs, the dawn goddess; his sons the Divine Twins; and *Seh₂ul and *Meh₁not, a solar goddess and moon god, respectively. Some deities, like the weather god *Perkʷunos or the herding-god *Péh₂usōn, are only attested in a limited number of traditions – Western (i.e. European) and Graeco-Aryan, respectively – and could therefore represent late additions that did not spread throughout the various Indo-European dialects.” ref

“Some myths are also securely dated to Proto-Indo-European times, since they feature both linguistic and thematic evidence of an inherited motif: a story portraying a mythical figure associated with thunder and slaying a multi-headed serpent to release torrents of water that had previously been pent up; a creation myth involving two brothers, one of whom sacrifices the other in order to create the world; and probably the belief that the Otherworld was guarded by a watchdog and could only be reached by crossing a river. Various schools of thought exist regarding possible interpretations of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European mythology. The main mythologies used in comparative reconstruction are Indo-Iranian, Baltic, Roman, and Norse, often supported with evidence from the Celtic, Greek, Slavic, Hittite, Armenian, Illyrian, and Albanian traditions as well.” ref

“Early agricultural communities such as Chogha Golan in 10,000 BCE or around 12,000 years ago, along with settlements such as Chogha Bonut (the earliest village in Elam) in 8000 BCE or around 10,000 years ago, began to flourish in and around the Zagros Mountains region in western Iran. Around about the same time, the earliest-known clay vessels and modeled human and animal terracotta figurines were produced at Ganj Dareh, also in western Iran. There are also 10,000-year-old human and animal figurines from Tepe Sarab in Kermanshah Province among many other ancient artifacts.” ref

I also speculate that there may be a connection with this to the earliest pottery in Turkey from Boncuklu Höyük as well.

“12 fired clay samples and an unfired marl sample from the late 9th and early 8th-millennium BCE site of Boncuklu Höyük (8300–7800 cal BCE or around 10,300 to 9,800 years ago) in the Konya Plain, Turkey. The clay vessels from Boncuklu Höyük, an early Neolithic site in central Anatolia, are much earlier than the accepted date for the introduction of pottery in Anatolia, c. 7000 cal BCE or around 9,000 years ago.” ref 

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family:

“Western Iran was inhabited by a population genetically most similar to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus, but distinct from the Neolithic Anatolian people who later brought food production into Europe. While some degree of cultural diffusion between Anatolia, Western Iran, and other neighboring regions is possible, the genetic dissimilarity between early Anatolian farmers and the inhabitants of Ganj Dareh supports a model in which Neolithic societies in these areas were distinct. The genome of an early Neolithic female from Ganj Dareh, GD13a, from the Central Zagros (Western Iran), dated to 10000-9700 cal years ago, a region located at the eastern edge of the Near East. Ganj Dareh is well known for providing the earliest evidence of herd management of goats beginning at 9,900 years ago. The mitochondrion of GD13a (91.74X) was assigned to haplogroup X, most likely to the subhaplogroup X2, which has been associated with an early expansion from the Near East and has been found in early Neolithic samples from Anatolia, Hungary, and Germany. GD13a did not cluster with any other early Neolithic individual from Eurasia in any of the analyses. Also genetically close to GD13a were ancient samples from Steppe populations (Yamanya & Afanasievo) that were part of one or more Bronze age migrations into Europe, as well as early Bronze age cultures in that continent (Corded Ware), in line with previous relationships observed for the Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers.” ref

“Subclade X2 appears to have undergone extensive population expansion and dispersal around or soon after the Last Glacial Maximum, roughly 20,000 years ago. It is more strongly represented in the Near East, the Caucasus, and southern Europe, and somewhat less strongly present in the rest of Europe. The highest concentrations are found in the Ojibwe (25%), Sioux (15%), Nuu-Chah-Nulth (12%), Georgia (8%), Orkney (7%), and amongst the Druze Assyrian community in Israel (27%). Subclades of X2 are not present in South Americans Amerindian populations. The oldest known human associated with X2 is Kennewick Man, whose c. 9000-year old remains were discovered in Washington State. The lineage of haplogroup X in the Americas is not derived from a European subclade, but rather represents an independent subclade, labeled X2a. The X2a subclade has not been found in Eurasia, and has most likely arisen within the early Paleo-Indian population, at roughly 13,000 years ago. A basal variant of X2a was found in the Kennewick Man fossil (ca. 9,000 years ago). No presence of mt-DNA ancestral to X2a has been found in Europe or the Near East. New World lineages X2a and X2g are not derived from the Old World lineages X2b, X2c, X2d, X2e, and X2f, indicating an early origin of the New World lineages “likely at the very beginning of their expansion and spread from the Near East.” ref

“Although it occurs only at a frequency of about 3% for the total current indigenous population of the Americas, it is a bigger haplogroup in northern North America, where among the Algonquian peoples it comprises up to 25% of mtDNA types. It is also present in lesser percentages to the west and south of this area—among the Sioux (15%), the Nuu-chah-nulth (11%–13%), the Navajo (7%), and the Yakama (5%). In Latin America, Haplotype X6 was present in the Tarahumara 1.8% (1/53) and Huichol 20% (3/15) X6 and X7 was also found in 12% in Yanomani people. Unlike the four main Native American mtDNA haplogroups (A, B, C, D), X is not strongly associated with East Asia. The main occurrence of X in Asia discovered so far is in the Altai people in Siberia. One theory of how the X Haplogroup ended up in North America is that the people carrying it migrated from central Asia along with haplogroups A, B, C, and D, from an ancestor from the Altai Region of Central Asia. Two sequences of haplogroup X2 were sampled further east of Altai among the Evenks of Central Siberia. These two sequences belong to X2* and X2b. It is uncertain if they represent a remnant of the migration of X2 through Siberia or a more recent input.” ref

“Haplogroup X has been found in various other bone specimens that were analysed for ancient DNA, including specimens associated with the Alföld Linear Pottery (X2b-T226C, Garadna-Elkerülő út site 2, 1/1 or 100%), Linearbandkeramik (X2d1, Halberstadt-Sonntagsfeld, 1/22 or ~5%), and Iberia Chalcolithic (X2b, La Chabola de la Hechicera, 1/3 or 33%; X2b, El Sotillo, 1/3 or 33%; X2b, El Mirador Cave, 1/12 or ~8%) cultures. Abel-beth-maachah 2201 was a man who lived between 1014 and 836 BCE during the Levant Iron Age and was found in the region now known as Abel Beth Maacah, Metula, Israel. He was associated with the Galilean cultural group. His direct maternal line belonged to mtDNA haplogroup X2b. Haplogroup X has been found in ancient Assyria and ancient Egyptian mummies excavated at the Abusir el-Meleq archaeological site in Middle Egypt, which date from the late New Kingdom and Roman periods. Fossils excavated at the Late Neolithic site of Kelif el Boroud in Morocco, which have been dated to around 5,000 years old, have also been found to carry the X2 subclade.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref 

Pre-Pottery Neolithic (10000 – 6500 BCE) and Pottery Neolithic (7000–5000 BCE)

ref

“The new study appears to align with the spread of Indo-European languages and was closely tied to the diffusion of agriculture from Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) around 8,000 to 9,500 years ago.” ref

World’s oldest known fort was constructed by hunter-gatherers 8,000 years ago in Siberia

“The fact that this Stone Age fort was built by hunter-gatherers is transforming our understanding of ancient human societies. Hunter-gatherers built the oldest known fort in the world about 8,000 years ago in Siberia, a new study finds. Archaeologists have long associated fortresses with permanent agricultural settlements. However, this cluster of fortified structures reveals that prehistoric groups were constructing protective edifices much earlier than originally thought.” ref

“These hunter-gatherers “defy conventional stereotypes that depict such societies as basic and nomadic, unveiling their capacity to construct intricate structures,” study co-author Tanja Schreiber, an archaeologist at Free University of Berlin, told Live Science in an email. Located along the Amnya River in western Siberia, remains of the Amnya fort include roughly 20 pit-house depressions scattered across the site, which is divided into two sections: Amnya I and Amnya II. Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the settlement was first inhabited during the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age, according to the study. When constructed, each pit house would have been protected by earthen walls and wooden palisades — two construction elements that suggest “advanced agricultural and defensive capabilities” by the inhabitants, the archaeologists said in a statement.” ref

“One of the Amnya fort’s most astonishing aspects is the discovery that approximately 8,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers in the Siberian Taiga built intricate defense structures,” Schreiber said. “This challenges traditional assumptions that monumental constructions were solely the work of agricultural communities.” It’s unknown what triggered the need for these fortified structures in the first place, but the strategic location overlooking the river would have not only been an ideal lookout point for potential threats but also allowed hunter-gatherers to keep tabs on their fishing and hunting grounds, the researchers noted.” ref

ref

“Countries with significant Slavic populations. 50%+ in dark green, and 10%+ in light green. Present-day Slavs are classified into East Slavs (Belarusians, Russians, Rusyns, and Ukrainians), West Slavs (Czechs, Kashubians, Poles, Slovaks, and Sorbs), and South Slavs (Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs, and Slovenes).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs

ref

(The spread of R1a associated with the migration of the Slavs and Corded Ware culture) the spread of R1a (M458) was associated with the migration of Early Bronze Age Corded Ware culture and much later Early Middle Age Slavs. *The spread of R1a associated with the migration of the Slavs and Corded Ware culture* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJmWbmcpTGI

“R1a-M458, primarily a Slavic subclade, with maximum frequencies in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, but is also fairly common in southeast Ukraine and northwest Russia. Its subclade R1a-L260 is clearly West Slavic, with a peak of frequency in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, and radiating at lower frequencies into East Germany, East Austria, Slovenia, and Hungary. And R1a-Z280 is also a Balto-Slavic marker, found all over central and Eastern Europe (except in the Balkans), with a western limit running from East Germany to Switzerland and Northeast Italy. It can be divided in many clusters: East Slavic, Baltic, Pomeranian, Polish, Carpathian, East-Alpine, Czechoslovak, and so on. Likewise, its subclade R1a-L365 is a Pomeranian cluster found also in southern Poland.” ref

ref

“The formation of Proto-Slavic, according to Sorin Paliga. From Sorin Paliga, “Albanians, Romanians, Slavs: Ethnicity, change, and politics in the second half of the first millennium CE,” in New Perspectives on the Early Slavs and the Rise of Slavic: Contact and Migrations, edited by Tomáš Klír, Vít Boček, and Nicolas Jansens (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 2020), p. 331, figure 1.” ref

ref

“The origin and migration of Slavs in Europe in the 5th to the 10th centuries CE (Early Middle Ages): Original Slavic homeland (modern-day southeastern Poland, northwestern Ukraine, and southern Belarus). Early Slavs were a diverse group of tribal societies.” ref

ref

“Kievan Rus’ after the Council of Liubech in 1097.” ref

ref, ref

“Kievan Rus’, also known as Kyivan Rus’ was a state and later an amalgam of principalities in Eastern and Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century. Encompassing a variety of polities and peoples, including East Slavic, Norse, and Finnic, it was ruled by the Rurik dynasty, founded by the Varangian prince Rurik. The modern nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine all claim Kievan Rus’ as their cultural ancestor, with Belarus and Russia deriving their names from it. At its greatest extent in the mid-11th century, Kievan Rus’ stretched from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south and from the headwaters of the Vistula in the west to the Taman Peninsula in the east, uniting the East Slavic tribes.” ref

ref

“Exposing #russiancolonialism” ref

ref

“The Russian colonization of Siberia and conquest of its indigenous peoples has been compared to the European colonization of the Americas and its natives, with similar negative impacts on the natives and the appropriation of their land.” ref

ref

Expansion of Russia in Eurasia (1300–1945)

“The history of Russia is the history of a country being colonized….migration and colonization of the country have been fundamental facts of our history..” Vasily Klyuchevsky, Kurs russkoy istorii, I, 20–21 ref

“How Western scholars overlooked Russian imperialism: For far too long, Western academia has ignored the legacies of the Russian Empire and colonisation.” ref

“When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, discussions emerged about the imperial nature of the war. Scholars who spoke up about it were quickly dismissed in certain Western academic and political circles. Some, especially the self-professed “anti-imperialists”, claimed Russia was “provoked” and portrayed Ukraine’s resistance as a “Western imperial” plot. Others considered analyses of Russian imperialism as having a pro-war, hawkish agenda or being a reflection of narrow ethno-nationalist sentiments.” ref

“But for scholars from the post-Soviet space – from places that have suffered from Russian aggression and imperialism – these reactions were hardly a surprise. They had been ignored and dismissed before. Discussions of Russian imperialism have long been overlooked while American, British, and French imperialisms have been studied closely and thoroughly. This has much to do with how Western academia and to a certain extent political elites have chosen to approach the Soviet Union and its eventual dissolution.” ref

“Russian imperial ambitions date back to the 16th century when the Grand Principality of Moscow, or Muscovy, proclaimed itself the third Rome, the successor of the Byzantine Empire and protector of all Orthodox Christians. The Russian imperial army fought numerous wars in the east, west, and south, and by the mid-19th century, Russia had become the largest land empire. Along with the British, Austro-Hungarian, and French empires, it understood and presented itself as a European colonial power.” ref

“Following the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the end of the Russian monarchy and Russian imperialism, but they fought brutally to preserve the Russian imperial borders. They reconquered newly formed independent states, such as Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, which emerged after the collapse of the Russian Empire. In the early 1930s, Joseph Stalin embraced Russian nationalism based on the old imperial myth of the greatness of the Russian people. Bolshevik Moscow made ethnic Russians the most privileged group in the Soviet Union and sent Russian settlers to populate and control non-Russian regions.” ref

“Purging native leaders, forcefully resettling entire ethnic groups, and creating conditions that led to mass deaths were all part of Soviet colonisation. Non-Russian people’s cultures, languages, and histories were disparaged while Russification was presented as enlightenment. At the same time, the Soviet Union adopted a progressive narrative of enfranchising nations conquered by the Russian Empire and giving them national rights within the Soviet Union. Many in Western academia bought into the anti-colonial narrative Moscow was trying to sell because they took official proclamations at face value and wanted to believe in the story of communist anti-imperialism.” ref

“For many Western scholars, that apparently meant that he was leading a post-colonial state. By focusing on individuals and official proclamations, Western academia too often overlooked the fact that Stalin was obsessed with maintaining Russian imperial borders and had adopted the same toolkit – ethnic cleansing, crushing dissent, destroying national movements, privileging Russian ethnicity and culture – that tsarist Russia used to maintain them. Soviet coloniality was dismissed also because knowledge about the Soviet Union in the West was Russo-centric. The Soviet Union was often referred to simply as Russia. There was little knowledge about non-Russian people. Non-Russian émigrés who fled to the West and wrote about Soviet coloniality with firsthand experience of Soviet imperialism were dismissed as anti-Soviet conservative ideologues.” ref

“Importantly, the Soviet Union also became a space of projections for those who looked for ways to criticize capitalism and Western imperialism. Those who blamed capitalism for oppression believed that eliminating capitalism would end all forms of oppression. For them, the Soviet Union was an internationalist project that brought equality and freedom to formerly subjugated peoples. Violence against various nations and ethnic groups was either ignored or treated as a necessary evil of the transition to communism. Western scholarship also overwhelmingly focused on the Soviet metropoles – Moscow and Leningrad. They knew very little, if at all, about the Soviet peripheries, which meant that nobody really understood the uprisings in Central Asia, the Caucasus, or the Baltics from the late 1980s onwards or the bloodshed in Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and later Chechnya.” ref

Russian Imperialism/Colonialism

“Russian imperialism includes the policy and ideology of power exerted by Russia, as well as its antecedent states, over other countries and external territories. This includes the conquests of the Russian Empire, the imperial actions of the Soviet Union (as Russia is considered its main successor state), as well as those of the modern Russian Federation. Some postcolonial scholars have noted the lack of attention given to Russian and Soviet imperialism in the discipline.” ref

“Montesquieu wrote that “The Moscovites cannot leave the empire” and they “are all slaves”. Historian Alexander Etkind describes a phenomenon of “reversed gradient”, where people living near the center of the Russian Empire experienced greater oppression than the ones on the edges. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in turn argued that Poland was not free because of Russian imperialism. In 1836, Nikolai Gogol said that Saint Petersburg was “something similar to a European colony in America”, remarking that there were as many foreigners as people of the native ethnicity. According to Aleksey Khomyakov, the Russian elite was “a colony of eclectic Europeans, thrown into a country of savages” with a “colonial relationship” between the two. A similar colonial aspect was identified by Konstantin Kavelin.” ref

“Russian imperialism has been argued to be different from other European colonial empires due to its empire being overland rather than overseas, which meant that rebellions could be more easily put down, with some lands being reconquered soon after they were lost. The terrestrial basis of the empire has also been seen as a factor which made it more divided than sea-based ones due to the difficulties of communication and transport over land at the time. Russian imperialism has been linked to the labor-intensive and low-productivity economic system based on serfdom and despotic rule, which required constant increases in the amount of land under cultivation to legitimize the rule and provide satisfaction to the subjects. The political system in turn depended on land as a resource to reward officeholder. The political elite made territorial expansion an intentional project.” ref

“According to Vasily Klyuchevsky, Russia has the “history of a country that colonizes itself”. Vladimir Lenin saw Russia’s underdeveloped territories as internal colonialism. This concept had first been introduced in the context of Russia by August von Haxthausen in 1843. Sergey Solovyov argued that this was because Russia “was not a colony that was separated from the metropolitan land by oceans”. For Afanasy Shchapov, this process was primarily driven by ecological imperialism, whereby the fur trade and fishing were driving the conquest of Siberia and Alaska. Other followers of Klyuchevsky identified the forms of colonization driven by military or monastic expansion, among others. Pavel Milyukov meanwhile noted the violence of this self-colonizing process. A similarity was later noted between Russian self-colonialism and the American frontier by Mark Bassin.” ref

“The territorial expansion of the empire gave the autocratic rulers of Russia additional legitimacy, while also giving the subjugated population a source of national pride. The legitimation of the empire was later done through different ideologies. After the Fall of Constantinople, Moscow named itself the third Rome, following the Roman and Byzantine Empires. In a panegyric letter to Grand Duke Vasili III composed in 1510, Russian monk Philotheus (Filofey) of Pskov proclaimed, “Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth. No one shall replace your Christian Tsardom!”. This led to the concept of a messianic Orthodox Russian nation as the Holy Rus. Russia claimed to be the protector of Orthodox Christians as it expanded into the territories of the Ottoman Empire during wars such as the Crimean War.” ref

“After the victory of monarchist Coalition in 1815, Russia promulgated the Holy Alliance with Prussia and Austria to reinstate the divine right of kings and Christian values in European political life, as pursued by Alexander I under the influence of his spiritual adviser Baroness Barbara von Krüdener. It was written by the Tsar and edited by Ioannis Kapodistrias and Alexandru Sturdza. In the first draft Tsar Alexander I made appeals to mysticism through a proposed unified Christian empire, with a unified imperial army, that was seen as disconcerting by the other monarchies. Following revision, a more pragmatic version of the alliance was adopted by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The document was called “an apocalypse of diplomacy” by French diplomat Dominique-Georges-Frédéric Dufour de Pradt. The Holy Alliance was largely used to suppress internal dissent, censoring the press and shutting down parliaments as part of “The Reaction.” ref

“Under Nicholas I of Russia, Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality became the official state ideology. It required the Orthodox Church to take an essential role in politics and life, required the central rule of a single autocrat or absolute ruler, and proclaimed that the Russian people were uniquely capable of unifying a large empire due to special characteristics. Similar to the broader “divine right of kings”, the emperor’s power would be seen as resolving any contradictions in the world and creating an ideal “celestial” order. Hosking argued that the trio of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” had key flaws in two of its main pillars, as the church was entirely dependent and submissive to the state, and the concept of nationality was underdeveloped because many officials were Baltic German and the revolutionary ideas of nation states were a “muffled echo” in a system that relied on serfdom. In practice, this left autocracy as the only viable pillar.” ref

“In the 19th century, pan-Slavism became a new legitimation theory for the empire. The idea of the Russian world became a key concept and the imperial nation-building of “All-Russian” nationality was embraced by many imperial subjects (including Jews and Germans) and served as the foundation of the Empire. It had first gained in political importance near the end of the 18th century as a means of legitimizing Russian imperial claims to the eastern territories of the partitioned Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Following the January Uprising in 1863 the Russian government became extremely determined to eliminate all manifestations of separatism. By the second half of the 19th century, Russian publicists adopted, and transformed, the ideology of Pan-Slavism; “convinced of their own political superiority [they] argued that all Slavs might as well merge with the Great Russians.” ref

“The “Russian geography” poem by a notable 19th century Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev was considered by philologist Roman Leibov to express ideology of the worldwide Slavic empire:

Moscow and Peter’s grad, the city of Constantine,
these are the capitals of Russian kingdom.
But where is their limit? And where are their frontiers
to the north, the east, the south and the setting sun?
The Fate will reveal this to future generations.
Seven inland seas and seven great rivers
from the Nile to the Neva, from the Elbe to China,
from the Volga to the Euphrates, from Ganges to the Danube.
That’s the Russian Kingdom, and let it be forever,
just as the Spirit foretold and Daniel prophesied.” ref

“Russian expansionism has largely benefited from the proximity of the mostly uninhabited Siberia, which has been incrementally conquered by Russia since the reign of Ivan the Terrible (1530–1584). The Russian colonization of Siberia and conquest of its indigenous peoples has been compared to European colonization of the Americas and its natives, with similar negative impacts on the natives and the appropriation of their land. Other researchers, however, consider that settlement of Siberia differed from European colonization in not resulting in native depopulation, as well as providing gainful employment and integrating indigenous population into settlers’ society. The North Pacific also became the target of similar expansion establishing the Russian Far East.” ref

“In 1858, during the Second Opium War, Russia strengthened and eventually annexed the north bank of the Amur River and the coast down to the Korean border from China in the “Unequal Treaties” of Treaty of Aigun (1858) and the Convention of Peking (1860). During the Boxer Rebellion, the Russian Empire invaded Manchuria in 1900, and the Blagoveshchensk massacre occurred against Chinese residents on the Russian side of the border. Furthermore, the empire at times controlled concession territories in China, notably the Chinese Eastern Railway and concessions in Tianjin and Russian Dalian.” ref

“The Russian conquest of Central Asia took place over several decades. In 1847–64 they crossed the eastern Kazakh Steppe and built a line of forts along the northern border of Kyrgyzstan. In 1864–68 they moved south from Kyrgyzstan, captured Tashkent and Samarkand and dominated the Khanates of Kokand and Bokhara. The next step was to turn this triangle into a rectangle by crossing the Caspian Sea. In 1873 the Russians conquered Khiva, and in 1881 they took western Turkmenistan. In 1884 they took the Merv oasis and eastern Turkmenistan. In 1885 further expansion south toward Afghanistan was blocked by the British. In 1893–95 the Russians occupied the high Pamir Mountains in the southeast. According to historian Alexander Morrison, “Russia’s expansion southwards across the Kazakh steppe into the riverine oases of Turkestan was one of the nineteenth century’s most rapid and dramatic examples of imperial conquest.” ref

“In the south, the Great Game was a political and diplomatic confrontation that existed for most of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century between the British Empire and the Russian Empire over Central and South Asia. Britain feared that Russia planned to invade India and that this was the goal of Russia’s expansion in Central Asia, while Russia continued its conquest of Central Asia. Indeed, multiple 19th-century Russian invasion plans of India are attested, including the Duhamel and Khrulev plans of the Crimean War (1853–1856), among later plans that never materialized.” ref

“Historian A. I. Andreyev stated that, “in the days of the Great Game, Mongolia was an object of imperialist encroachment by Russia, as Tibet was for the British.” In the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, the Russian Empire and British Empire officially ended their Great Game rivalry to focus on opposing the German Empire, dividing Iran into British and Russian portions. In 1908, the Persian Constitutional Revolution sought to establish a democratic civil society in Iran, with an elected Majilis, a relatively free press and other reforms. The Russian Empire intervened in the Persian Constitutional Revolution to support the Shah and reactionary factions. The Cossacks bombarded the Majilis, Russia had earlier established the Persian Cossack Brigade in 1879, a force which was led by Russian officers and served as a vehicle for Russian influence in Iran.” ref

“Eastwards expansion was followed by the Russian colonization of North America across the Pacific Ocean. Russian promyshlenniki (trappers and hunters) quickly developed the maritime fur trade, which instigated several conflicts between the Aleuts and Russians in the 1760s. By the late 1780s, trade relations had opened with the Tlingits, and in 1799 the Russian-American Company (RAC) was formed in order to monopolize the fur trade, also serving as an imperialist vehicle for the Russification of Alaska Natives.” ref

“The Russian Empire also acquired the island of Sakhalin which was turned into one of history’s largest prison colonies. Initially, Russian maritime incursions into the waters surrounding Hokkaido began in the late eighteenth century, spurring Japan to map and explore its northern island surroundings. Sakhalin had been inhabited by indigenous peoples including Ainu, Uilta, and Nivkh, despite the island nominally paying tribute to the Qing Dynasty. After Russia acquired Manchuria from the Qing in the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, they also acquired from the Qing, a nominal claim to Sakhalin across the strait. With the earlier 1855 Treaty of Shimoda, a joint settler colony of both Russian and Japanese was temporarily created, despite conflicts. However, with the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg the Russian Empire was granted Sakhalin in exchange for Japan gaining the Kuril Islands.” ref

“The furthest Russian colonies were in Fort Elizavety and Fort Alexander, Russian forts on the Hawaiian islands, built in the early 19th century by the Russian-American Company as the result of an alliance with High Chief Kaumualiʻi, as well as in Sagallo, a short-lived Russian settlement established in 1889 on the Gulf of Tadjoura in French Somaliland (modern-day Djibouti). The southernmost settlement established in North America was at Fort Ross, California.” ref

North America/Alaska Russian Colonization

“The Russian colonization of Alaska lasted less than a century but in that time produced a rich history of enduring importance. As in the American West, Russian Alaska attracted the full range of humanity: adventurers and explorers, merchants and plunderers, enlightened and not-so-enlightened administrators, scoundrels, and saints. Although the original impetus for colonizing Alaska was the fur trade, the Russian Orthodox Church had probably the greatest lasting impact on the people of Alaska, helping to create a multicultural Orthodox community that exists to this day.” ref

“Following the early period of Russian exploration of North America, the imperial government was initially content to leave further development of Alaska in the hands of private traders or promyshlenniki. Attracted by the fur-bearing animals of the Aleutian Islands, the promyshlenniki did not settle in the new territory but only hunted seasonally. In 1784, however, Grigorii Shelikhov established the first permanent Russian outpost on Kodiak Island at Three Saints Bay. Eager to eliminate rival Russian companies and gain control of the entire North Pacific fur trade, Shelikhov expanded the sphere of Russian influence along the Alaskan coast and petitioned Empress Catherine the Great to grant him a monopoly. Shelikhov did not live to see his plans implemented, but in December 1799 Catherine’s successor, Paul I, decided to issue a charter creating the Russian-American Company. Although its board of directors met in St. Petersburg, the company’s business was conducted from the capital of Russian America, New Archangel (founded on Sitka Island in 1804). Despite falling revenues and a changing world order in the Pacific, the Russian-American Company provided Alaska and the Aleutians with a commercial and civil administration until 1867.” ref

Russian conquest of Siberia

“The Russian conquest of Siberia took place during 1580–1778, when the Khanate of Sibir became a loose political structure of vassalages that were being undermined by the activities of Russian explorers. Although outnumbered, the Russians pressured the various family-based tribes into changing their loyalties and establishing distant forts from which they conducted raids. It is traditionally considered that Yermak Timofeyevich‘s campaign against the Siberian Khanate began in 1580. The annexation of Siberia and the Far East to Russia was resisted by local residents and took place against the backdrop of fierce battles between the indigenous peoples and the Russian Cossacks, who often committed atrocities against the indigenous peoples.” ref

“The Russian conquest of Siberia began in July 1580 when some 540 Cossacks under Yermak Timofeyevich invaded the territory of the Voguls, subjects to Kuchum Khan, ruler of the Sibir Khanate. They were accompanied by some Lithuanian and German mercenaries and prisoners of war. Throughout 1581, this force traversed the territory known as Yugra and subdued Vogul and Ostyaks towns. At this time, they also captured a tax collector of Kuchum Khan. Following a series of Tatar raids in retaliation against the Russian advance, Yermak’s forces prepared for a campaign to take Qashliq, the Siberian capital. The force embarked in May 1582. After a three-day battle on the banks of the Irtysh River, Yermak was victorious against a combined force of Kuchum Khan and six allied Tatar princes. On 29 June, the Cossack forces were attacked by the Tatars but again repelled them.” ref

“Throughout September 1582, the Khan gathered his forces for a defense of Qashliq. A horde of Siberian Tatars, Voguls, and Ostyaks massed at Mount Chyuvash to defend against invading Cossacks. On 1 October, a Cossack attempt to storm the Tatar fort at Mount Chyuvash was held off. On 23 October, the Cossacks attempted to storm the Tatar fort at Mount Chyuvash for a fourth time when the Tatars counterattacked. More than a hundred Cossacks were killed, but their gunfire forced a Tatar retreat and allowed the capture of two Tatar cannons. The forces of the Khan retreated, and Yermak entered Qashliq on 26 October. Kuchum Khan retreated into the steppes and over the next few years regrouped his forces. He suddenly attacked Yermak on 6 August 1584 in the dead of night and defeated most of his army. The details are disputed with Russian sources claiming Yermak was wounded and tried to escape by swimming across the Wagay River which is a tributary of the Irtysh River, but drowned under the weight of his own chain mail. The remains of Yermak’s forces under the command of Mescheryak retreated from Qashliq, destroying the city as they left.” ref

“In 1586, the Russians returned, and after subduing the Khanty and Mansi people through the use of their artillery they established a fortress at Tyumen close to the ruins of Qashliq. The Tatar tribes that were submissive to Kuchum Khan suffered from several attacks by the Russians between 1584–1595; however, Kuchum Khan would not be caught. Finally, in August 1598, Kuchum Khan was defeated at the Battle of Irmen [ru] near the Ob River. In the course of the fight, the Siberian royal family was captured by the Russians. However, Kuchum Khan escaped yet again. The Russians took the family members of Kuchum Khan to Moscow and there they remained as hostages. The descendants of the khan’s family became known as the Princes Sibirsky and the family is known to have survived until at least the late 19th century.” ref

“Despite his personal escape, the capture of his family ended the political and military activities of Kuchum Khan and he retreated to the territories of the Nogai Horde in southern Siberia. He had been in contact with the tsar and had requested that a small region on the banks of the Irtysh River would be granted as his dominion. This was rejected by the tsar who proposed to Küçüm Khan that he come to Moscow and “comfort himself” in the service of the tsar. However, the old khan did not want to suffer from such contempt and preferred staying in his own lands to “comforting himself” in Moscow. Kuchum Khan then went to Bukhara and as an old man became blind, dying in exile with distant relatives sometime around 1605.” ref

“In order to subjugate the natives and collect yasak (fur tribute), a series of winter outposts (zimovie) and forts (ostrogs) were built at the confluences of major rivers and streams and important portages. The first among these were Tyumen and Tobolsk—the former built in 1586 by Vasilii Sukin and Ivan Miasnoi, and the latter the following year by Danilo Chulkov. Tobolsk would become the nerve center of the conquest. To the north Beryozovo (1593) and Mangazeya (1600–01) were built to bring the Nenets under tribute, while to the east Surgut (1594) and Tara (1594) were established to protect Tobolsk and subdue the ruler of the Narym Ostiaks. Of these, Mangazeya was the most prominent, becoming a base for further exploration eastward.” ref

“Advancing up the Ob and its tributaries, the ostrogs of Ketsk (1602) and Tomsk (1604) were built. Ketsk sluzhilye liudi (“servicemen”) reached the Yenisei in 1605, descending it to the Sym; two years later Mangazeyan promyshlenniks and traders descended the Turukhan to its confluence with the Yenisei, where they established the zimovie Turukhansk. By 1610, men from Turukhansk had reached the mouth of the Yenisei and ascended it as far as the Sym, where they met rival tribute collectors from Ketsk. To ensure subjugation of the natives, the ostrogs of Yeniseysk (1619) and Krasnoyarsk (1628) were established.” ref

“Following the khan’s death and the dissolution of any organised Siberian resistance, the Russians advanced first towards Lake Baikal and then the Sea of Okhotsk and the Amur River. However, when they first reached the Chinese border they encountered people that were equipped with artillery pieces and here they halted. The Russians reached the Pacific Ocean in 1639. After the conquest of the Siberian Khanate (1598), the whole of North Asia – an area much larger than the old khanate – became known as Siberia and, by 1640, the eastern borders of Russia had expanded more than several million square kilometres. In a sense, the khanate lived on in the subsidiary title “Tsar of Siberia” which became part of the full imperial style of the Russian autocrats.” ref

“The conquest of Siberia also resulted in the spread of diseases. Historian John F. Richards wrote: “… it is doubtful that the total early modern Siberian population exceeded 300,000 persons. … New diseases weakened and demoralized the indigenous peoples of Siberia. The worst of these was smallpox “because of its swift spread, the high death rates, and the permanent disfigurement of survivors.” … In the 1650s, it moved east of the Yenisey, where it carried away up to 80 percent of the Tungus and Yakut populations. In the 1690s, smallpox epidemics reduced Yukagir numbers by an estimated 44 percent. The disease moved rapidly from group to group across Siberia.” ref

“The core ideological justification for Russian expansion into Siberia stemmed from the interpretation that the legal incorporation of the Khanate of Sibir into the Russian realm gave Russia legal sovereignty over the entirety of the territory stretching from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean to the east. The actual boundaries of Siberia thus became very vaguely defined and open to interpretation; effectively, Russian dominion over the land ended only whenever Russia’s claims to land conflicted with those of centralised states capable of opposing Russian expansion and consistently asserting their own sovereignty over a given territory, such as China and Mongolia. A second ideological pillar justifying Russian colonialism was the spread of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, although this pretext originated largely from explorers and settlers themselves as an ad hoc justification rather than being put forward by the Russian Orthodox Church itself.” ref

Effects on the indigenous peoples of Siberia?

“When the Cossacks’ entreaties were rejected, they chose to respond with force. Under the leadershp of Vasilii Poyarkov in 1645 and Yerofei Khabarov in 1650 many people, including members of the Daur tribe, were killed by the Cossacks. 8,000 out of a previous population of 20,000 in Kamchatka remained after the first half century of the Russian conquest. The Daurs initially deserted their villages fearing the reported cruelty of the Russians the first time Khabarov came. The second time he came, the Daurs fought back against the Russians, but were slaughtered. In the 17th century, indigenous peoples of the Amur region were attacked by Russians who came to be known as “red-beards.” ref

“In the 1640s, the Yakuts were subjected to violent expeditions during the Russian advance into the land near the Lena River, and on Kamchatka in the 1690s the Koryaks, Kamchadals, and Chukchi were also subjected to this by the Russians according to Western historian Stephen Shenfield. When the Russians did not obtain the demanded amount of yasak from the natives, the governor of Yakutsk, Piotr Golovin, who was a Cossack, used meat hooks to hang the native men. In the Lena basin, 70% of the Yakut population declined within 40 years, native women were raped and, along with children, were often enslaved in order to force the natives to pay the Yasak.” ref

“According to John F. Richards:

Smallpox first reached western Siberia in 1630. In the 1650s, it moved east of the Yenisey, where it carried away up to 80 percent of the Tungus and Yakut populations. In the 1690s, smallpox epidemics reduced Yukagir numbers by an estimated 44 percent. The disease moved rapidly from group to group across Siberia. Death rates in epidemics reached 50 percent of the population. The scourge returned at twenty- to thirty-year intervals, with dreadful results among the young.” ref

“In Kamchatka, the Russians crushed the Itelmen uprisings against their rule in 1706, 1731, and 1741. The first time, the Itelmens were armed with stone weapons and were badly unprepared and equipped but they used gunpowder weapons the second time. The Russians faced tougher resistance when from 1745–1756 they tried to subjugate the gun and bow equipped Koryaks until their victory. The Russian Cossacks also faced fierce resistance and were forced to give up when trying unsuccessfully to wipe out the Chukchi in 1729, 1730–1731, and 1744–1747. After the Russian defeat in 1729 at Chukchi hands, the Russian commander Major Pavlutskiy was responsible for the Russian war against the Chukchi and the mass slaughters and enslavement of Chukchi women and children in 1730–1731, but his cruelty only made the Chukchis fight more fiercely.” ref 

“Cleansing of the Chukchis and Koryaks was ordered by Empress Elizabeth in 1742 to totally expel them from their native lands and erase their culture through war. The command was that the natives be “totally extirpated” with Pavlutskiy leading again in this war from 1744–1747 in which he led to the Cossacks “with the help of Almighty God and to the good fortune of Her Imperial Highness”, to slaughter the Chukchi men and enslave their women and children as booty. However, the Chukchi ended this campaign and forced them to give up by decapitating and killing Pavlutskiy.” ref

“The Russians were also launching wars and slaughters against the Koryaks in 1744 and 1753–1754. After the Russians tried to force the natives to convert to Christianity, the different native peoples like the Koryaks, Chukchis, Itelmens, and Yukaghirs all united to drive the Russians out of their land in the 1740s, culminating in the assault on Nizhnekamchatsk fort in 1746. Kamchatka today is European in demographics and culture with only 5% of it being native, around 10,000 from a previous number of 150,000, due to the mass slaughters by the Cossacks after its annexation in 1697 of the Itelmens and Koryaks throughout the first decades of Russian rule. The killings by the Russian Cossacks devastated the native peoples of Kamchatka.” ref 

“In addition to committing massacres, the Cossacks also devastated the wildlife by slaughtering massive numbers of animals for fur. 90% of the Kamchadals and half of the Vogules were killed from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries and the rapid slaughter of the indigenous population led to entire ethnic groups being entirely wiped out, with around 12 exterminated groups which could be named by Nikolai Yadrintsev as of 1882. Much of the slaughter was brought on by the Siberian fur trade.” ref

“The oblastniki in the 19th century among the Russians in Siberia acknowledged that the natives were subjected to immense violent exploitation, and claimed that they would rectify the situation with their proposed regionalist policies. The Aleuts in the Aleutians were subjected to genocide and slavery by the Russians for the first 20 years of Russian rule, with the Aleut women and children captured by the Russians and Aleut men slaughtered.” ref

“The Russian colonization of Siberia and conquest of its indigenous peoples has been compared to the European colonization of the Americas and its natives, with similar negative impacts on the natives and the appropriation of their land. The Slavic Russians outnumber all of the native peoples in Siberia and its cities except in the Republics of Tuva and Sakha, with the Slavic Russians making up the majority in the Buryat and Altai Republics, outnumbering the Buriat, and Altai natives.” ref

“The Buryats make up only 33.5% of their own Republic, the Altai 37%, and the Chukchi only 28%; the Evenk, Khanty, Mansi, and Nenets are outnumbered by non-natives by 90% of the population. The natives were targeted by the tsars and Soviet policies to change their way of life, and ethnic Russians were given the natives’ reindeer herds and wild game which were confiscated by the tsars and Soviets. The reindeer herds have been mismanaged to the point of extinction. The Ainu have emphasized that they were the natives of the Kuril Islands and that the Japanese and Russians were both invaders.” ref

Russian Oppression of Shamanism, Common Throughout Siberia

“Russian ethnologists Waldemar and Dina Brodsky Jochelson were in the Siberian village of Kamenskoye during the winter of 1900–1901 when a native Koryak trader and his assistant came to the village. The assistant was “a bashful youth. His features . . . were flexible and pleasant, and his eyes were bright.” Jochelson had heard that the young assistant was a practicing shaman—a ritual adept who could divine the future and heal sick people. “I asked him to show me proof of his shamanistic art,” Jochelson tells us.” ref

“What is a shaman? The word comes from the Tungus language of Central Siberia, where it designates religious leaders, men and women who serve their communities by using hand-held drums to call spirit allies. Saman in Tungus incorporates the root word sa, “to know,” hence an especially knowledgable person. The techniques Jochelson observed in Kamenskoye were, and to a lesser degree still are, practiced throughout the far north of Eurasia and America, particularly by peoples who depend upon the reindeer for food and clothing.” ref

“From the Saami (Lapps) in Scandinavia, all across northern Russia and Siberia and across the northern half of North America into Greenland, communities relying on hunting reindeer (or caribou in America) expected certain individuals to
be approached by spirits who promised to assist the practitioner if he or she studied how to invoke them. Usually, these adepts had been born into families of such practitioners. To be a shaman is a priestly calling. The young Koryak man met by the Jochelsons performed the ritual typical of these northern shamans.” ref

“Waldemar and Dina Jochelson went on to record the culture of the Yukaghir, neighbors to the Koryak. They stayed in the earth-lodge of an elderly man named Nelbosh. Questioned about who served the local people as shaman, Nelbosh told the Jochelsons that no one still alive had that function; several years later, the Jochelsons learned that Nelbosh
himself was the shaman: “he had kept that fact from me, fearing that I might tell about it to the [Russian Orthodox] priest at Verchne-Kolymsk, of whom he stood in mortal fear.” ref

“Russian authorities demanded that the Siberians become Christian, and after the 1917 Revolution, the Soviets forbade shamans to practice their religion. Many were executed as “enemies of the state.” Nelbosh volunteered to demonstrate to the Jochelsons how shamans practiced. His performance, more real than the Jochelsons realized at the time, illustrates another mode of Siberian shamanism, the belief that instead of calling spirits into the house, the shaman’s soul may go
out of the house in company with his or her spirits.” ref

“Nelbosh’s son-in-law, a Tungus1 named Mashka, also was a shaman. Jochelson described Mashka as large and physically very strong, unafraid of his spirits or anyone else, and so “furious and stormy” as he performed his ritual that his jumps, yells, and wild drumming left Jochelson, observing, too exhausted to write up his notes (Jochelson 1926:200)!
Siberian shamans performed rituals for success in hunting as well as to heal the sick, divine the future, and conduct offerings to local, family, and higher spirits.” ref

“Waldemar and Dina Jochelson and their friends and colleagues Waldemar and Sofya Bogoras, spent years in the field in Siberia, living with the indigenous communities and learning their languages. This was tough work, in the summer beset with millions of biting flies and mosquitoes, in winter holed up in dark, smoky, sooty, sod-roofed pit-houses along with lice and smelly blubber (Freed, Freed and Williamson 1988:20).” ref

“The couples traveled by dog sled in winter, by raft, rowboat, horseback, or on foot in summer, carrying the bulky cameras of the time and buying, and somehow shipping, thousands of items of everyday life for the collections of the great museums of New York and St. Petersburg. These scientifically trained ethnographers scrupulously recorded their
direct observations, identified what was recounted to them but not directly observed, and took down the exact words of utterances, obtaining translations from local people who could speak Russian. Nelbosh, living on the Korkodon River, was a real man serving a real 1890s Yukaghir community; his son-in-law was real, so was the “bashful youth” who
worked for the Koryak trader.” ref

“Shamans were described by several seventeenth-century scientific travelers in Siberia and Lapland. Nicolas Witsen, a Dutch explorer whose knowledge of Russia’s remote provinces impressed Czar Peter the Great, published observations of Tungus shamans that sound much like those by the Jochelsons two centuries later. The English geographer Samuel Purchas included a vivid account of a shaman reported from 1557: “He singeth, as wee use here in England to hollow [halloo], whoope, or shout at Hounds, and the rest of the Company answered him with this Outes Igha, Igha, Igha, to which the Priest with his voice replieth” (quoted in Flaherty 1992:35).” ref

“Anthropology as a field of study developed in the late nineteenth century. Some anthropologists aimed to discover laws of human behavior comparable to the laws of physics and chemistry, using observations of “primitive” (i.e., non-European) communities as if they were basic elements and arranging them in a kind of periodic table not unlike that for chemistry. In these Law of Progress schemes, the fur-clad shaman was listed as the most ancient and primitive religious element, “hollowing and whooping” as civilized people do to spur on hunting dogs. Lacking formal schooling and written texts, shamans were supposed to act spontaneously and their beliefs assumed to be irrational and deluded.” ref

“Because it was presumed that all nations that did not raise crops through plow agriculture were simple and not evolved much from animal ancestors, the religious practitioners of Siberia, Lapland, the Himalayas, Australia, and most of the Americas were lumped together as “shamans” or “medicine men.” Animism (belief that there are many invisible spirits in the world) was equated with “shamanism” and labeled the earliest, most primitive religion, superseded among civilized people by the true faith in monothesm. Some nineteenth-century anthropologists suggested that scientific knowledge would supersede monotheism, freeing the most “advanced” nations from all “superstition.” ref

Soviet Imperialism?

“The Soviet Union declared itself anti-imperialist and contributed significantly to various efforts to liberate countries from colonialism in the 20th century. Some historians argue that aspects of Soviet foreign policy exhibited tendencies common to historic empires, a view which is not universally shared and has mainly been articulated by analysts from the West as well as from China during the Sino-Soviet split. This argument is traditionally held to have originated in Richard Pipes‘s book The Formation of the Soviet Union (1954). Several scholars, such as Seweryn Bialer hold that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and nation states. It has also been argued that the Soviet Union practiced colonialism similar to conventional imperial powers. Maoists argued that the Soviet Union had itself become an imperialist power while maintaining a socialist façade, or social imperialism.” ref

“The Soviet ideology continued the messianism of Pan-Slavism which placed Russia as a special nation. While proletarian internationalism was originally embraced by the Bolshevik Party during its seizure of power in the Russian Revolution, after the formation of the Soviet Union, Marxist proponents of internationalism suggested that the country could be used as a “homeland of communism” from which revolution could be spread around the globe. Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin encouraged this turn towards national communism in 1924, away from the classical Marxism position of global socialism. According to Alexander Wendt, this “evolved into an ideology of control rather than revolution under the rubric of socialist internationalism” within the Soviet Union.” ref

“Under Leonid Brezhnev, the policy of “Developed Socialism” declared the Soviet Union to be the most complete socialist country—other countries were “socialist”, but the USSR was “developed socialist”—explaining its dominant role and hegemony over the other socialist countries. Brezhnev also formulated and implemented the interventionist Brezhnev doctrine, permitting the invasion of other socialist countries, which was characterized as imperial. Alongside this Brezhnev also implemented a policy of cultural Russification as part of Developed Socialism, which sought to assert more central control. This was a dimension of Soviet cultural imperialism, which involved the Sovietization of culture and education at the expense of local traditions.” ref

“The Soviets pursued internal colonialism in Central Asia. From the 1930s through the 1950s, Joseph Stalin ordered population transfers in the Soviet Union, deporting people (often entire nationalities) to underpopulated remote areas. Transfers from the Caucasus to Central Asia included the Deportation of the Balkars, Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush, Deportation of the Crimean Tatars, the Deportation of the Karachays, and the Deportation of the Meskhetian Turks. Many European Soviet citizens and much of Russia’s industry were relocated to Kazakhstan during World War II, when Nazi armies threatened to capture all the European industrial centers of the Soviet Union.” ref

“These migrants founded mining towns which quickly grew to become major industrial centers such as Karaganda (1934), Zhezkazgan (1938), Temirtau (1945), and Ekibastuz (1948). In 1955, the town of Baikonur was built to support the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Many more Russians arrived in the years 1953–1965, during the so-called Virgin Lands Campaign of Soviet general secretary Nikita Khrushchev. Still, more settlers came in the late 1960s and 70s, when the government paid bonuses to workers participating in a program to relocate Soviet industry close to the extensive coal, gas, and oil deposits of Central Asia. By 1979 ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan numbered about 5,500,000, almost 40% of the total population.” ref

“Despite early support for self-determination, the Bolsheviks reconquered most of the Russian Empire during the Russian Civil War. The early Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic annexed by force the following states:

• Crimean People’s Republic, 1918
• Republic of Aras, 1919
• Alash Autonomy, 1920
• Ukrainian People’s Republic, Ukrainian State, 1921
• First Republic of Armenia, 1920
• Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, 1920
• Belarusian Democratic Republic, 1919
• North Caucasian Emirate, 1920
• Centrocaspian Dictatorship, 1918
• Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1921
• Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus, 1920
• North Ingria, 1920
• Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, 1918” ref

“From the 1919 Karakhan Manifesto to 1927, diplomats of the Soviet Union would promise to revoke concessions in China, but the Soviets kept tsarist concessions such as the Chinese Eastern Railway as part of secret negotiations 1924-1925. This played a role in leading to the 1929 Sino-Soviet conflict, which the Soviets won and reaffirmed their control over the railway, the railway was returned in 1952.” ref

In 1939, the USSR entered into the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany that contained a secret protocol that divided Romania, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Bessarabia in northern Romania were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence. Lithuania was added in a second secret protocol in September 1939.” ref

“The Soviet Union had invaded the portions of eastern Poland assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact two weeks after the German invasion of western Poland, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. During the Occupation of East Poland by the Soviet Union, the Soviets liquidated the Polish state, and a German-Soviet meeting addressed the future structure of the “Polish region”. Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization of the newly Soviet-annexed areas.” ref

“In 1939, the Soviet Union unsuccessfully attempted an invasion of Finland, subsequent to which the parties entered into an interim peace treaty granting the Soviet Union the eastern region of Karelia (10% of Finnish territory), and the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was established by merging the ceded territories with the KASSR. After a June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum demanding Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the Hertsa region from Romania, the Soviets entered these areas, Romania caved to Soviet demands and the Soviets occupied the territories.” ref

“In September and October 1939 the Soviet government compelled the much smaller Baltic states to conclude mutual assistance pacts which gave the Soviets the right to establish military bases there. Following invasion by the Red Army in the summer of 1940, Soviet authorities compelled the Baltic governments to resign. Under Soviet supervision, new puppet communist governments and fellow travelers arranged rigged elections with falsified results. Shortly thereafter, the newly elected “people’s assemblies” passed resolutions requesting admission into the Soviet Union. After the invasion in 1940 the repressions followed with the mass deportations carried out by the Soviets.” ref

“By the end of World War II the Soviet Union had also annexed:

• Carpathian Ruthenia, formerly in Czechoslovakia and occupied in 1944
• Tuva (independent 1921–1944; previously governed by Mongolia and by the Manchu Empire (Tannu Uriankhai))
• East Prussia (now Kaliningrad Oblast) from Germany, in 1945
• The Klaipėda Region, annexed to Lithuania in 1945
• The Kuril Islands and southern Sakhalin from Japan, occupied in 1945
• Snake Island in the Black Sea and several Danubian islands from Romania, occupied in 1944 and annexed in 1948” ref

“At the end of World War II, most eastern and central European countries were occupied by the Soviet Union, known as “European colonies”, while remaining independent though their politics, military, foreign and domestic policies were dominated by the Soviet Union.” ref

Contemporary Russian Imperialism?

“The Russian Federation is the primary recognized successor state to the Soviet Union and it has been accused of trying to bring back post-Soviet states under its rule. Almost all the states initially formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and most later also joined the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The Union State with Belarus was an even stronger form of integration with Russia. Other forms of integration included the economic initiatives of the Eurasian Economic Union and Eurasian Customs Union.” ref

“In the political language of Russia and some other post-Soviet states, the term near abroad refers to the independent republics that emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Increasing usage of the term in English is connected to assertions of Russia’s right to maintain significant influence in the region. Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared the region to be a component of Russia’s “sphere of influence“, and strategically vital to Russian interests. The concept has been compared to the Monroe Doctrine.” ref

“The annexation of Crimea led to a new wave of Russian nationalism, with large parts of the Russian far right movement aspiring to annex even more land from Ukraine, including the unrecognized Novorossiya. Analyst Vladimir Socor proposed that Russian president Vladimir Putin‘s speech after the annexation of Crimea was a de facto “manifesto of Greater-Russia Irredentism“. After the event in Crimea, the Transnistrian authorities requested Russia to annex Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova.” ref

“The contemporary Eurasianist ideology was influenced by political theorist Aleksandr Dugin’s 1997 Foundations of Geopolitics and the Eurasia Party he later founded on the Russian political scene. Political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov defines Dugin’s version of Neo-Eurasianism as “a form of a fascist ideology centered on the idea of revolutionizing the Russian society and building a totalitarian, Russia-dominated Eurasian Empire that would challenge and eventually defeat its eternal adversary represented by the United States and its Atlanticist allies, thus bringing about a new ‘golden age’ of global political and cultural illiberalism“. This ideology was used to justify Russian imperialist aggression against Ukraine.” ref

“Contemporary Russian-occupied territories include Transnistria (taken from Moldova); Abkhazia and South Ossetia (taken from Georgia); and some part of the territory of Ukraine. Additionally, the four southernmost Kuril Islands are considered by Japan and several other countries to be occupied by Russia. These occupations are treated as colonies by Russia according to experts.” ref

“On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine on a much greater scale than in 2014, which is seen as a continuation of Russia’s irredentism at the expense of Ukraine. On 27 March 2022, Leonid Pasechnik leader of the LPR said that the Luhansk People’s Republic might hold a referendum to join Russia. On 29 March, Denis Pushilin leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic talked about a similar possibility. On 30 March 2022, South Ossetian President Anatoly Bibilov announced his intention to begin legal proceedings for the territory to accede to the Russian Federation. South Ossetia is a self-proclaimed republic that is recognized by the majority of United Nations member countries as part of Georgia.” ref

Russian Imperialism/Colonialism of Indigenous Groups Continues but NO one Seems to Care?

ref

Arctic Indigenous Groups

Skolt Sami (red ), Kola Sami (blue), European Nenets (green), Yamal Nenets (gray)

“Nenets Autnomous Okrug, North West Russia, 6 400 Nenets people, of which around 1 500 live in the tundra. A nomadic and semi-nomadic life herding reindeer, fishing, and hunting. Language: Nenets, spoken mostly by elders. They manage around 180 000 reindeer, the majority in collective farms, but increasingly in family-based communities (obshina). Herding is done with close herd supervision for most of the year, including work 24 hours a day. Other than among full-time nomads, the rest of herding is done by village based men, for whom the tundra is a working place. Northern Finnish Lapland, Inari municipality, 700 Skolt Sami, villages of Sevettijärvi, Nellim, and Keväjärvi, a few in Neiden (Norway), and Tuloma, Verkhnetulomsk, Jona villages in Northwesternmost Russia. Original territories were in the Petsämö region until WW II. When their territory had to be ceded back to the Soviet Union, most were resettled to Finland where they live now. Skolt Sámi language is spoken by approximately 350 speakers. Their earlier livelihood was based on reindeer herding, hunting, fishing, and gathering. Nowadays only reindeer herding and fishing have retained some economic relevance. They are practiced in an extensive form in the two Skolt herding districts of Näätämö and Vätsäri in which they manage about 6500 reindeer.” ref

“Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, east of Ural Mountains, 28 000 Nenets people, of which roughly 10 000 lead a nomadic way of live on the tundra herding reindeer, fishing and hunting. Language: Tundra Nenets, widely spoken among herders. They manage around 500 000 reindeer, the world’s largest number in one region, mostly in private ownership. Herding is done in close herd supervision for most of the year, including work 24 hours a day. Yamal-Nenets herding is considered the best-preserved reindeer nomadism on our planet. Murmansk Oblast, North West Russia. 2000 Sami, a third of whom live in Lovozero village. Language: mostly Kildin Saami, 67 000 reindeer, of which 7 000 are in private ownership. Most reindeer herding is done in the successors of state farms. Herding is done in work shifts of men out on the tundra, in loose herding. Reindeer are released for the summer after the closely monitored calving campaign, and rounded up in the fall before slaughtering. Fishing and hunting in spring and autumn are of equal importance. Sami on the Kola Peninsula live together with the Komi and Nenets, and their material culture, clothing, and religion are incorporated into this mixture.” ref 

Russia Gives Away Free Arctic Land to Citizens

“Russian citizens can now claim one free hectare of land in its Arctic zone as the government seeks to expand its development of the fast-warming region, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper reported Feb. 2022. The Arctic Hectare program will extend to Russians nationwide from Tuesday after a six-month period in which only residents of the Arctic were eligible. Citizens can apply through an official portal for a plot of land in the Murmansk region, the Nenets autonomous district, the Arctic Indigenous Groups’ Yamal-Nenets autonomous district, the republic of Karelia, the republic of Komi, or the Arkhangelsk region.” ref  

“The largest number of available plots can be found in the Murmansk region (more than 700,000 hectares) and the republic of Karelia (337,000 hectares). Initially, land plots are issued for a five-year period. Afterwards, citizens can choose to rent, sell or give away the land if they no longer wish to own it. Land plots are also available to participants in the state program for repatriating ethnic Russians living abroad. Russia has offered citizens a free hectare of land from “Indigenous Group Areas” in its sparsely populated Far East regions since 2017.” ref  

“The Far East and Arctic Hectare programs’ online portal boasts of success stories including an eco-glamping resort in Chukotka, a strawberry plantation in the Khabarovsk region, and an Arctic poultry farm. The Arctic Hectare program comes as Russia races to take advantage of the region’s economic and strategic potential as it warms at a record pace. Moscow has been heavily investing in the development of the Northern Sea Route, which it touts as a cheaper, faster alternative to the Suez Canal for shipping between Europe and Asia. But scientists say that Russia is losing growing amounts of Arctic coast due to climate change, and the region is heating more than twice as fast as the planet as a whole — risking a feedback loop of accelerated warming.” ref

Read More on Indigenous peoples of Siberia

“The Russian Far East (Russian: Дальний Восток России) is a region in Northeast Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asian continent; and is administered as part of the Far Eastern Federal District, which is located between Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean. The area’s largest city is Khabarovsk, followed by Vladivostok. The region shares land borders with the countries of Mongolia, China, and North Korea to its south, as well as maritime boundaries with Japan to its southeast, and with the United States along the Bering Strait to its northeast. Although the Russian Far East is often considered as a part of Siberia abroad, it has been historically categorized separately from Siberia in Russian regional schemes (and previously during the Soviet era when it was called the Soviet Far East).” ref

“Russians reached the Pacific coast in 1647 with the establishment of Okhotsk, and the Russian Empire consolidated its control over the Russian Far East in the 19th century, after the annexation of part of Chinese Manchuria (1858-1860). Primorskaya Oblast was established as a separate administrative division of the Russian Empire in 1856, with its administrative center at Khabarovsk. Until 2000 the Russian Far East lacked officially-defined boundaries. A single term “Siberia and the Far East” (Сибирь и Дальний Восток) often referred to Russia’s regions east of the Urals without drawing a clear distinction between “Siberia” and “the Far East.” ref

“In 2000 Russia’s federal subjects were grouped into larger federal districts, one of which, the Far Eastern Federal District, comprised Amur Oblast, the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Kamchatka Oblast with the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, Khabarovsk Krai, Magadan Oblast, Primorsky Krai, the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, and Sakhalin Oblast. In November 2018 Zabaykalsky Krai and the Republic of Buryatia were added they had previously formed part of the Siberian Federal District.^[16] Since 2000, Russians have increasingly used the term “Far East” to refer to the federal district, though the term is often also used more loosely. Defined by the boundaries of the federal district, the Far East has an area of 6.2 million square kilometres (2,400,000 sq mi)—over one-third of Russia’s total area.” ref

“Between 1937 and 1939, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin deported over 200,000 Koreans to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, fearing that the Koreans might act as spies for Japan. Many Koreans died on the way in cattle trains due to starvation, illness, or freezing conditions. Soviet authorities purged and executed many community leaders; Koryo-saram were not allowed to travel outside of Central Asia for the next 15 years. Koreans were also not allowed to use the Korean language and its use began to become lost with the involvement of the Koryo-mar dialect and the use of Russian.” ref

“Development of numerous remote locations in the Soviet Far East relied on Gulag labor camps during Stalin’s rule, especially in the region’s northern half. After the death of Stalin in 1953 the large-scale use of forced labor waned and was superseded by volunteer employees attracted by relatively high wages. During the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Soviets occupied Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island, Yinlong Island, and several adjacent islets to separate the city of Khabarovsk from the territory controlled by a possibly hostile power.” ref

“Indeed, Japan turned its military attention to Soviet territories. Conflicts between the Japanese and the Soviets frequently happened on the border of Manchuria between 1938 and 1945. The first confrontation occurred in Primorsky Krai, the Battle of Lake Khasan (July–August 1938) involved an attempted military incursion of Japanese-controlled Manchukuo into territory claimed by the Soviet Union. This incursion was founded in the beliefs of the Japanese side that the Soviet Union had misinterpreted the demarcation of the boundary based on the 1860 Treaty of Peking between Imperial Russia and Manchu China. Primorsky Krai was always threatened by a Japanese invasion despite the fact that most of the remaining clashes occurred in Manchukuo.” ref

“The clashes ended shortly before and after the conclusion of World War II (see Soviet–Japanese War) when a war-weakened Japan found its territories of Manchukuo, Mengjiang, Korea, and South Sakhalin invaded by Soviet and Mongolian troops (August 1945). Both the Soviet Union and Japan regarded the Primorsky Krai as a strategic location in World War II, and clashes over the territory were common. The Soviets and the other Allies considered it a key location for the planned invasion of Japan through Korea; Japan viewed it as a key location to begin a mass invasion of Eastern Russia. The Primorsky Krai served as the Soviet Union’s Pacific headquarters in the war to plan an invasion for allied troops of Korea in order to reach Japan.” ref

“After the Soviet invasion, the USSR returned Manchukuo and Mengjiang to China; Korea became liberated. The Soviet Union also occupied and annexed Japan’s Kuril Islands and southern Sakhalin. The planned Soviet invasion of Japan proper never happened. During the Korean War, Primorsky Krai became the site of extreme security concern for the Soviet Union. Vladivostok became the site of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1974. At the time, the Soviet Union and the United States decided quantitative limits on various nuclear weapons systems and banned the construction of new land-based ICBM launchers. Vladivostok and other cities in Primorsky Krai soon became closed cities because of the bases of the Soviet Pacific Fleet.” ref

“Incursions of American reconnaissance aircraft from Alaska sometimes happened. Concerns of the Soviet military caused the infamous Korean Air Lines Flight 007 incident in 1983. In 2016, President Vladimir Putin proposed the Russian Homestead Act to populate the Russian Far East.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Do you truly think “Religious Belief” is only a matter of some personal choice?

Do you not see how coercive one’s world of choice is limited to the obvious hereditary belief, in most religious choices available to the child of religious parents or caregivers? Religion is more commonly like a family, culture, society, etc. available belief that limits the belief choices of the child and that is when “Religious Belief” is not only a matter of some personal choice and when it becomes hereditary faith, not because of the quality of its alleged facts or proposed truths but because everyone else important to the child believes similarly so they do as well simply mimicking authority beliefs handed to them. Because children are raised in religion rather than being presented all possible choices but rather one limited dogmatic brand of “Religious Belief” where children only have a choice of following the belief as instructed, and then personally claim the faith hereditary belief seen in the confirming to the belief they have held themselves all their lives. This is obvious in statements asked and answered by children claiming a faith they barely understand but they do understand that their family believes “this or that” faith, so they feel obligated to believe it too. While I do agree that “Religious Belief” should only be a matter of some personal choice, it rarely is… End Hereditary Religion!

Opposition to Imposed Hereditary Religion

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref 

Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref

Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref

 Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref

Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)

“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref

“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref

“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref

Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref

Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref

Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref

Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref

Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref

Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref

Sikhism around 548–478 years old. ref

Bahá’í around 200–125 years old. ref