Sibir; my discovery of Siberia

by Farley Mowat

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Mowat's passion for the North knows no bounds

One of his lesser known books, Sibir chronicles the author's experiences during two trips to the Soviet Union during the late 1960s. A lover of the North, Mowat had written passionately and extensively about it from the Canadian perspective, and had now been given the opportunity to see how the peoples of the North faired under Communist rule. Naturally, he found things to be somewhat different, most notably in the manner in which these peoples were (evidently) treated. In general, he observed that the native peoples of Siberia--under the rule of a totalitarian regime--were better treated than those in Canada. But the fact still remains, however, that to a greater degree than in Canada, the Russians had settled Siberia and hence conquered it in the typical western fashion. While critical of such encroachments in a North American context, Mowat is quite clearly impressed by the manner in which it was accomplished in Siberia, and was equally impressed by the resiliant spirit of the newer Siberians. Still, the author is not so easily enamoured by the workings of any authoritarian governmental system, and his contempt for the Soviet politicians does not go unmentioned. Despite this, the book may have played a part in putting him in the bad books of another authoritarian regime, the results of which he chronicles in the slim volume entitled My Discovery of America.