We know almost nothing about the history of Siberia. In Russian history textbooks, the development of Siberia is described as if nothing had been there before. Meanwhile, there were states in Siberia before the arrival of the Russians. From the school of Soviet times, we believed in the myth of the voluntary annexation of Siberia, that the Russian colonizers brought civilization to the indigenous nations. It was in America that the Spaniards and the English oppressed the Indians and took their lands by force, but here there was nothing like that. In fact, the Russian conquest of Siberia took place in those years and by the same methods as the conquest of North and South America. There were slave markets in Siberia, Russian Cossacks cut down entire villages, burned women alive, and all this was in history. And it is high time to start talking about it.
Guests of the issue:
Pavlo Sulyandziga is the founder of the Batani International Foundation for the Development and Solidarity of Indigenous Peoples, a researcher at Dartmouth College and the University of Maine, recognized as a foreign agent in Russia;
Marjorie Mandelstam-Balzer is a professor at Georgetown University, a specialist in the history of Siberia;
Oleksandr Etkind is a professor and the author of the book “Internal colonization. Imperial experience of Russia”.
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