Book Review: Western Europe: The Economic History of Modern Italy
| Date | 01 December 1964 |
| Author | E. A. Bayne |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206401900426 |
| Published date | 01 December 1964 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Northern
Affairs
in
the
Soviet
Union
Terence
Armstrong*
ANADA
and
the
Soviet
Union
are
the
two
major
Arctic
powers,
by
virtue
of
the
territory
they
possess.
Each
has
an
interest
in
developing
its
northlands,
which
constitute
a
considerable
fraction
of
the
whole
country.
The
methods
and
motives
may
be
different
in
each
case,
but
the
problems
to
be
overcome,
obviously,
are
broadly
similar.
It
may
be
of
interest
to
Canadian,
therefore, to
know
something
of Soviet
progress
in
this
direction, and
it
may
be
of
value
to
compare
some
of
the
methods
and
approaches
used
in
the
two
countries.
(The
facts
quoted
are
taken entirely
from
published sources.)
Russian
familiarity
with
the
north
goes
back
a
long
way.
The
chief
motive
of
those
who
went
there,
both
at
the
beginning
and
for centuries
afterwards,
was
to
obtain
fur-the
pelts
of
small
mammals
which
a
sub-Arctic
environment
had
endowed
more richly
than
those
of
fur-bearers
further
south.
The
White
Sea
was
reached
by'
Russians
possibly
in
the
10th
century,
cer-
tainly
in
the
11th,
the
Pechora
basin
in
the
12th
and
13th.
By
the
14th
the
Urals
had
been
crossed
at
their
northern
end,
and
parties
started
to reconnoitre
the
lower
Ob'
valley.
It
was
not
until
the
late
16th
century
that
the
Urals
were
crossed in
force,
but
from
that
date
(1581)
the
pace of
advance
was
so
rapid
that
the
Pacific
Ocean
was
reached
in
sixty
years.
Fur
was
still
the
lure,
and
this
was
partly
why
the
axis
of
advance
was
northerly
-some
hundreds
of miles
north
of
the
present
route
of
the
Trans-Siberian
railway.
By
the
time
the
Hudson's
Bay Company
was
chartered,
therefore,
there
were
small
settlements
of
fur
traders
and
cossacks
at
key
points
on
the
rivers
right
across
northern
Siberia,
from
the
Ob'
to
the
Anadyr'.
Furthermore,
these
settlements
persisted
even
when
the
hunting
returns
diminished,
as
they
always
did
after
a
decade
or
two,
and
there
was
in
many
of
them
a
slow
growth
of
population.
Thus
by,
*
Scott
Polar
Research
Institute,
Cambridge.
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