Russian History 101: Wait a second, aren't a few years missing?

What better way to understand the history of the Irkutsk Oblast than a trip to the history museum? The exhibits in the Irkutsk History were quite informative and there were plenty of interesting photos which were great for supplementing the limited amount of information I was able to obtain from their accompanying Russian language captions, but what was even more confusing than deciphering the language were the large gaps in covered history. History of early indigenous cultures? Check. Early colonial history? Check. Imperial Czarist era? Check. World War One? A little bit, revolution, somewhat. Russo-Japanese War - Completely missing - maybe it wasn't that important anyways. But did anything important happen from 1917-1939? Apparently not, because according to the exhibition material from these twenty or so years (maybe 3 photos) everyone was happy and living well in the young communist country. Regional history of Eastern Siberia of this era as a major gulag hub is curiously and surreptitiously missing.

Having researched the Soviet 1930s extensively last year in college I was more surprised than I probably should have been. Historical reconciliation, dealing with the dark, dark past is far from complete in Russia. During the 1990s, the Russian government and society at large made significant strides towards reopening painful memories of revolution, civil war, and the catastrophic effects of 1930s Stalinist revolution; today most of those progressive movements have been reversed by a more conservative government which has been far less inclined to openly discuss these emotionally difficult historical topics. The 1930s were the formative years of Soviet society, culture, and government, so for a museum to be missing an entire twenty years of crucial solidifying Soviet history sends a message about how open this country is to dealing with reconciliation. For more on this topic, here's an NYT article I used last year: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/world/europe/27archives.html

History is everywhere here, not just in the museum, and most of it is untold (and certainly most Russians are unaware). Perhaps the best example I know of is Olkhon Island - see my first blog post from 6 weeks ago - beautiful Lake Baikal, surreal skies, magnificent cliffs, and unique wildlife. Like many places in this country which could normally be considered uninhabitable, the 1930s was an era of enormous upheaval as people were exiled not just to Baikal (they would have been comparatively lucky) but to the furthest geographical reaches of the Soviet Union, places which were actually uninhabitable. For the people exiled to Olkhon, the island was very much a prison, and strangely enough, today it is an ecological tourism paradise.

I asked some of my students about the missing 20+ years in the museum and their response was that some years ago there was a fire so maybe that explains it. Fire seems to explain a lot of things in Siberia, after all, almost all structures are made of wood.