“Barrage Fire”: Pyrotechnics in the Traditional Economy of Western Siberia and the Transformation of the Environment

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2020.5.556

Keywords:

Western Siberia, traditional agro-industrial structure, forest fires, environmental administration

Abstract

This article carries out a comprehensive study of the use of open fire in the traditional economy of Western Siberia between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For this purpose, the author studies the use of fire in the Russian peasant economy and by the native population of the region. The region’s environment was affected by the use of open fire while the effect of the pyrogenically altered agro-industrial structure of the region. In the article, special attention is paid to the traditional and administrative regulation of the use of fire in economic activities. The ecological-historical method considers landscape and climate zoning in the study of local economic structures. The author uses historical and ethnographic methods, handling data from field ethnography and agricultural history. Documents from the Forest Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property have the greatest potential for the subject explored. Open fire was widely used by Russian peasant farms. Fields and their boundaries were singed in order to destroy stubble and weeds. Last season’s grass was burnt in the spring on pastures and meadows. In the north of the region, Russians and indigenous peoples “renewed” the forest areas where they grew berries with the help of fire. The indigenous peoples of the taiga and tundra (Khanty, Mansi, Nenets) set the taiga on fire in order to attract fur-bearing animals and renew areas grown over with reindeer moss. In order to get rid of blood-sucking insects, both Russian cattle breeders and indigenous reindeer herders could not do without smudges. Russian peasants set forests on fire in order to create spacious insect-free pastures. All the aforementioned economic methods, as well as forest industries, often led to disastrous forest fires. They were especially destructive for the agro-industrial structure of northern floodwater cultivation, plunging the economy into a prolonged depression (impoverishment of hunting, fishing, and cedar production). Forest fires in the southern taiga and forest-steppe zones not only led to forest destruction but to soil degradation, marsh drainage, and the shallowing of rivers. The Russian and indigenous communities tried to regulate fire setting and singeing. However, the restrictions quite often existed on paper only. In the mid-nineteenth century, the administration started paying attention to the problem. As a result, singeing of meadows and fields was limited to a certain spring period. At the beginning of the twentieth century, because of mass migration, anthropogenic forest fires occurred more often and, consequently, resulted in a regional catastrophe. The pyrogenic changes in the environment had an adverse effect on the region’s agro-industrial structure. The administration tightened control of the use of open fire in order to achieve economic aims.

Author Biography

Sergei Turov

PhD (History), Associate Professor, Tyumen State University.

23, Lenin Str., 625003, Tyumen, Russia.

ORCID 0000-0002-6985-8799

svtur57@mail.ru

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Published

2020-12-30

How to Cite

Turov, S. (2020). “Barrage Fire”: Pyrotechnics in the Traditional Economy of Western Siberia and the Transformation of the Environment. Quaestio Rossica, 8(5), 1753–1766. https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2020.5.556

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Section

Disputatio