Tomsk
Tomsk
Etymology
The town’s name is derived from the River Tom (Russian: Tom’), a right-bank tributary of the River Ob (Russian: Ob’), into which the Tom flows approximately 60 km downstream from the town. Scholarly opinions differ regarding the origin of the river’s name. It is most commonly associated with the semantic field of ‘body of water’, occasionally with the Selkup word for ‘lake’ and with the Ket term for ‘river with dark water’.
Location
Tomsk lies on the south-eastern edge of the West Siberian Plain and extends to the foothills of the Kuznetsk-Alatau Mountains; the distance to Moscow/Moscow is just under 2,900 km as the crow flies, whilst the distance to Vladivostok is approximately 3,600 km. The city’s coordinates are 56˚ 30ʹ north latitude and 84˚ 56ʹ east longitude; the city centre lies 80 m above mean sea level.
Topography
The historic districts are situated on the right bank of the River Tom, which flows through a set of rapids on the outskirts of the city. The navigable section of the river begins downstream of the city centre. A tributary of the Tom, the Ushayka (Russian: Ušayka), flows round much of the city centre, which slopes gently down towards the north. Several hills characterise the cityscape. On a hill north of the Ushayka, known as Resurrection Hill (Russian: Voskresenskaya gora), stands the Tomsk Fortress, the historic cradle of the city. The neighbourhoods along the Tom are partly at risk of flooding; however, the majority of the built-up area lies on erosion terraces up to 70 metres above river level and is therefore safe from flooding.
Political and administrative affiliation
Tomsk is part of the Russian Federation and has been the administrative centre of the district of the same name (Russian: Tomskaya oblast’) since 1944; together with nine other federal subjects, this district forms the Siberian Federal District (Russian: Sibirskij federal’nyj okrug). Historically, Tomsk’s administrative affiliation has shifted several times between Tobolsk/Tobol’sk, periods of autonomy, and administration by Novonikolaevsk/Novonikolaevsk or Novosibirsk/Novosibirsk.[1] The city itself is now divided into four urban districts (raions): Kirovsky Raion, Leninsky Raion, Oktyabrsky Raion and Sovetsky Raion. Approximately 12 km north of the city centre lies the town of Seversk, which is closed to non-residents and was also known as ‘Tomsk-7’ during the Soviet era.
Common symbolism
The coat of arms of Tomsk depicts a white horse on a green background, poised to leap to the left. Above it is a golden crown in the shape of a tower capital with five battlements; below it is a scroll bearing the motto ‘Through labour and knowledge’ (Trudom i znaniem). The coat of arms was last officially confirmed in 2019.
Common or historical nicknames
Tomsk is also known as the ‘Siberian Athens’ (Russian: Sibirskie Afiny). This epithet, which dates from the late 19th century and is most commonly associated with the travel writer Konstantin Alexandrovich Vyazemsky (Konstantin Aleksandrovič Vjazemskij, 1853–1909), initially referred to the city’s hilly terrain. However, this phrase also gained popularity due to the fact that Tomsk remained the centre of education and cultural development in Siberia well into the 20th century. Consequently, also in the 19th century, the city was given the epithet ‘intellectual capital of Siberia’ (Russian: umstvennaja stolica Sibiri). To this day, Tomsk is characterised by the numerous universities and educational institutions based here. There is also evidence of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt, during the final phase of the Second World War, to bestow upon the city the nickname ‘the Oxford of Siberia’.[2] In reference to Rome – and taking its topography into account – Tomsk is occasionally referred to as the ‘city on the seven hills’. In 1991, Tomsk was granted the status of a ‘historic city of Russia’ (Russian: Istoričeskij gorod Rossii).
Prehistory and Early History
The earliest evidence of human presence in what is now the city area was discovered at the end of the 19th century on the site of Lagernyj sad. These were stone tools used by hunters from the Late Palaeolithic period, which prove that a group of mammoth hunters stayed here for a short time around 18,000 years ago.
Middle Ages
In the absence of written records, very little is known about the settlement of what is now the city area prior to the construction of the Russian fortress. According to current research, it is assumed that, prior to its incorporation into the Muscovite Empire, various Turkic tribes, Tatars and Selkups were settled more or less permanently in the area of what is now the Tomsk district, but not the Mongols.
Modern times
The development of Tomsk began with a wooden fortress built in 1604 on a hill north of what is now the city centre. Prior to this, the Tatar prince Tojan had appealed to Tsar Boris Godunov (1552–1605, reigned 1598–1605) for protection against raids by South Siberian nomadic tribes. With the construction of the fortress, the Tsar’s deputies, known as voivodes, assumed power in the region. These officials, who were usually appointed for only a few years, were responsible for defending the fortress, conquering and subjugating further territories, and collecting taxes.
Shortly after the fortress was built, the wooden Church of the Holy Trinity (Russian: Troitskaya Tserkov’) was erected within the walled enclosure. Furthermore, in 1605, north of Tomsk at the confluence of the Bolshaya Kirgizka stream (Russian: Bol’shaya Kirgizka) and the River Tom, a monastery for monks was founded, which was named the Monastery of the Mother of God. To protect it from attacks by nomads and from flooding, it was relocated to the city limits in 1656 and, in the years that followed, renamed the Monastery of the Holy Mother of God and Saint Alexei (Russian: Bogorodice-Alekseevskij monastyr’). The surviving stone buildings date only from the late 18th century, whilst extensions were added in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
As a fortified frontier town, Tomsk served as the starting point in the 17th century for the further expansion of the Tsarist Empire’s borders to the east and south. Gradually, Tomsk lost its significance as a frontier town and became a centre for trade and transport.
Two expeditions to the Kamchatka Peninsula, led by Vitus Bering (1681–1741), were significant for the exploration of Siberia . The second of these, in which the German explorers Johann Georg Gmelin (1709–1755) and Gerhard Friedrich Müller (Russian: Miller; 1705–1783) also took part, passed through Tomsk on two occasions. The city owes, amongst other things, the first panoramic view of the left bank of the Tom River to the sketches and notes made during these journeys. Gmelin and Müller stayed in Tomsk in 1734 and 1740/41, at a time when the city still consisted almost exclusively of wooden houses. Gmelin’s travelogue records the customs and traditions of the city as well as those of some of the surrounding rural areas. Müller’s notes contain the first mention of the city’s coat of arms.
Less well known is the earlier expedition led by Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt (1685–1735). The Danzig-born physician and naturalist had been commissioned by Tsar Peter the Great (1672–1725) in 1718 to explore Siberia and also reached Tomsk in 1721. His travel accounts are of particular interest with regard to the language of the Siberian Tatars. From the beginning of the 18th century, Tomsk became a key centre for the administration of the Tsarist Empire : from 1708, Tomsk was the seat of a district of the same name (Russian: Tomskij uezd), and in 1804 the Tomsk Governorate (Russian: Tomskaya guberniya) was established. With the founding of the Diocese of Tomsk in 1834, the city also became an important centre of theRussian Orthodox Church.
In the second half of the 19th century, Tomsk was developed into a key centre of the modernising tsarist administrative apparatus, whilst at the same time the city experienced rapid economic growth. However, conditions changed with the advent of the railway.
Politically, Tomsk saw phases of liberalisation alternating with periods of state repression. The issue of exile was a constant feature of the city’s history throughout the 19th century. State repressive measures intensified in the wake of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Saint Petersburg/Saint-Pétersbourg/Leningrad (9/22 January 1905), when demonstrations and strikes against tsarist violence and arbitrary rule also took place in Tomsk. State reprisals and subsequent pogroms resulted in numerous deaths and injuries.[3]
The political situation remained unstable in the years that followed, whilst economic conditions stabilised. To avoid being completely left behind by the industrialisation and economic boom in Siberia under Interior Minister Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin (Petr Arkad’evič Stolypin, 1862–1911), Tomsk’s main focus remained on establishing itself as a centre of education. This path had been successfully pursued since the late 19th century, but its continuity was interrupted by the two revolutions of 1917 and the subsequent civil war.
Contemporary History
Following the October Revolution, a Council of Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (Russian: Komitet sovetov rabočich, krest’janskich i soldatskich deputatov) initially took power in the city. In May 1918, an anti-Soviet uprising took place in Tomsk, coordinated with the Czechoslovak Legions; however, the ‘Red’ authorities were able to suppress it. Nevertheless, they were driven out shortly afterwards, in June 1918, by anti-Soviet forces led by Admiral Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak (Aleksandr Vasil’evič Kolčak, 1874–1920). At the end of 1919, the Soviets recaptured the city, before martial law was lifted in August 1921. In the wake of the turmoil of war and economic and political uncertainties, the population fell from 101,100 (1917) to 92,500 (1926).[4]
The new political situation resulted in a painful loss of significance for Tomsk, as the city was supplanted as the central hub of Western Siberia by the rapidly growing new settlement of Novosibirsk ( known as Novonikolaevsk until 1926) on the Trans-Siberian Railway. From 1937 to 1944, Tomsk was merely the centre of a raion within the Novosibirsk Oblast, until the Tomsk Oblast was established, which has existed ever since; with an area of 314,391 km², it is, after all, larger than Poland.
Whilst Tomsk was largely cut off from contact with Western countries during the Soviet era due to its importance to the military-industrial complex and nuclear research, the situation changed with the end of the Soviet Union. International links were forged in science and research, as well as in the economic sphere. A visible sign of this new direction was also the fact that Viktor Mel’chiorovič Kress (born 1948), who came from a Russian-German family, became the first governor of the Tomsk Oblast from 1995 to 2012. During his term of office, a summit meeting took place in Tomsk in 2006 between Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Economy and Transport
Its favourable location at the junction of the Siberian Trade Route (Russian: Sibirskij torgovyj trakt) and the north-south waterway via the Tom and Ob rivers provided Tomsk with ideal conditions for trade in Siberia during the 18th and 19th centuries, a fact recognised as early as 1734 by Johann Gmelin. A post station was established in Tomsk as early as 1738, whilst the second Kamchatka expedition was still underway. The preferred times of travel were midsummer for horse-drawn carriages and winter for sleighs, whilst road conditions were sometimes difficult in spring and autumn. Although use of the waterway via the Tom, Ob and Irtysh (Russian: Irtyš) towards Tobolsk was limited to just a few months of the year, inland waterway transport in particular was expanded during the 19th century (the first regular steamboat service was established in 1854).
The city’s strategic advantage as a transport hub was lost with the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. As the railway line runs some 200 km south of Tomsk (the Ob River was reached in 1896 in what is now Novosibirsk), the city lay from then on outside the main axis of development in Siberia. Although Tomsk was connected to the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1896 via a branch line—which was later extended northwards—this did not compensate for the loss of east-west transit traffic. The construction in the 1880s of a canal linking the Ob and Yenisei (Russian: Enisey) river systems failed to divert the flow of goods via Tomsk. The canal is no longer in operation.
During the Second World War, Tomsk benefited from the relocation of war-critical industries and state cultural institutions from more westerly parts of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, several waves of deportations in the wake of the Stalinist ‘purges’, as well as the resettlement of ethnic groups deemed unreliable (including the Black Sea and Volga Germans), brought a massive influx of people to the Tomsk region. These forced labourers, officially designated as ‘special settlers’ (Russian: specpereselentsy), were deployed in the timber industry along the Ob and its tributaries, in fishing and in agriculture. Of course, many of those affected did not survive the hardships of the journeys – mostly in goods wagons to Tomsk – or the subsequent imprisonment and forced labour. Following the rehabilitation of most of the forced resettlers in the 1950s, some of the ‘special settlements’ were abandoned, and the inhabitants moved on to Tomsk and other towns.
From 1966 onwards, the development of oil and natural gas fields in the north of the Tomsk region provided the impetus for the city’s economic development following the Second World War. The establishment of the closed city of Seversk in 1949, in connection with the construction of a nuclear power station, also brought additional economic potential to the region. Following an accident in 1993, an area of approximately 28 km around the reactor was contaminated with radioactivity.
With the end of the Soviet Union, air transport became increasingly important for trade and the establishment of international companies. The airport built in 1967 at Bogashovo/Bogašëvo, south-east of Tomsk, was expanded and became an international airport in 2010.
Architecture
With the exception of a few religious buildings erected from the 1770s onwards and the New Town Hall (1799), stone construction did not really take off until gold was discovered in the Tomsk region from the 1830s onwards. As a testament to his newly acquired wealth, the mining entrepreneur Ivan Dmitrievich Astashev (Ivan Dmitrievič Astašev, 1796–1869) had a stately private residence built between 1838 and 1842. Alongside a number of other churches – such as a Roman Catholic church built in 1833 near the former fortress – the buildings of the state administration and the newly founded educational institutions were among the city’s first stone structures, until, at the turn of the 20th century, merchants and entrepreneurs commissioned their own residences.
Nevertheless, some magnificent timber-framed buildings remain a defining feature of the cityscape to this day. A city guide lists no fewer than fifty timber-framed buildings worth seeing in the centre and on the northern edge of the city, including the Russian-German House (ul. Krasnoarmeyskaya 71).
Population
Tomsk’s growth into a modern city with a population of around 570,000 (2021) is rooted in nearly four centuries of immigration from various parts of the Russian Empire and from abroad. The Tatars living in the area at the time the city was founded soon found themselves surrounded by new neighbours who settled in the city as transport and trade routes were developed. Not all of the new residents came of their own free will. Indeed, for a good three centuries, political exile was a major reason for settlement. Whilst initially it was individual persons who had fallen out of favour with the Tsar or Tsarina, following the Decembrist Uprising of 1825 and the Polish uprisings of 1831 and 1863, entire families and population groups were increasingly forcibly resettled to Siberia .
The first ethnic group affected were the Poles, who had been exiled to the Tomsk region since the suppression of Polish-Lithuanian expansionist ambitions in the early 17th century. Since 1990, a Polish House (Polish: Dom Polski) in Tomsk has commemorated these involuntary migrations.
German immigrants initially came to Tomsk of their own accord, though their numbers were small. Nevertheless, there were well-known entrepreneurs among the residents of German descent – for example, the brewer Karl Krüger (1843–1896), who came to Tomsk from Prussia in 1876 to open a brewery there that still operates today. This influx led to a growth in the Evangelical Lutheran congregation from the mid-19th century onwards. From 1858, a German pastor looked after the congregation; in 1864, the construction of a church was completed. Towards the end of the 19th century, an Evangelical Lutheran primary school (1896) and a denominational orphanage (1897) were established in Tomsk. Until the outbreak of the First World War, the coexistence of Germans and Russians in Tomsk appeared to be without incident.
This was to change under Stalin. Firstly, in 1929, the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran congregation was removed from office; the church was converted into a metalworking workshop and demolished in 1936. Tensions between Russians and Germans arose following the Wehrmacht’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 , as a result of which the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Volga Germans was dissolved and a large proportion of the inhabitants were resettled – including to the Tomsk region, where they were often forced to perform hard labour in the so-called ‘Labour Army’ (Russian: Trudarmija).[5]
Towards the end of the Soviet era, the forcibly resettled Russian Germans were granted their full civil rights. Their number in the Tomsk district at that time is given as 16,000 (1989), which corresponds to approximately 1.5 per cent of the total population.[6] With the opening of the Russian-German House in Tomsk in 1995 and the consecration of a Lutheran church , built in a very short space of time -Lutheran church – built in a very short space of time – as part of the summit meeting between Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel in 2006, a line was drawn under the conflicts of the past. Due to the small number of worshippers, the church serves as a place of worship not only for the German minority.
As a result of increased emigration to Germany, the number of people of German descent in the Tomsk region has fallen since the end of the Soviet Union . Contrary to what is occasionally suggested in mass media discourse, the return migration of ‘patriotic’ German-Russians in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 does not appear to have led to a reversal of this trend.[7 Germans therefore continue to represent merely one of several national minorities, accounting for less than two per cent of the population.[8] Other ethnic groups have long since become more significant for demographic developments in Tomsk – not least immigrants from China, who often came to the city initially to study and then stayed.
The presence of other ethnic and religious groups in Tomsk is reflected in several mosques and two synagogues, among which the so-called ‘Soldiers’ Synagogue’ (Russian: Soldatskaya sinagoga) is today regarded as the world’s only wooden synagogue. Since the end of the Soviet Union, there has also been a revival of religious institutions in Tomsk.
Education and Science
Tomsk’s development as the ‘Athen of Siberia’ began in 1746 with the establishment of a school at the Monastery of the Holy Mother of God and Saint Alexei. Well into the 19th century, the monastery, situated on the outskirts of what is now the city centre, housed the city’s most extensive library. It was only gradually that the effects of the reforms following the lost Crimean War were felt in Tomsk too, but with the economic boom of the 1870s, the shortage of educated skilled workers became apparent. To remedy this, Tsar Alexander II (1818–1881, reigned 1855–1881) ordered the establishment in 1878 of a university with four planned Schools (History and Philology, Physics and Mathematics, Law, Medicine), which was finally inaugurated in 1888 – as the first Russian university east of the Urals. However, the planned expansion was not completed until after the October Revolution.
Since the early 1920s, the institution has been known as Tomsk State University (Russian: Tomskij Gosudarstvennyj Universitet, TGU). With fourteen Schools, six Institutes and approximately 14,600 students, TGU is a university of national standing. Its academic library, founded as early as 1878, is one of the most significant libraries in Siberia, housing more than eight million printed works and electronic documents. A key sign of the reorientation of higher education policy following the end of the Soviet Union was, not least, the election of the physicist of German descent, Georgij Vladimirovich Majer (born 1948), as Rector of TGU (1995–2013).
Just a few years after it opened, Tomsk University faced a strong rival for resources and public recognition: Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU). It has undergone several expansions and name changes and currently comprises nine Schools, ten Institutes and around 11,500 students[9] one of Russia’s leading technical universities.
An Institute dedicated specifically to teacher training was founded in Tomsk in 1902, from which the present-day Tomsk Pedagogical University emerged. Among the university’s distinguished professors was the linguist of German descent , Andrei Petrovich Dulzon (Andrei Petrovich Dul’zon, 1900–1973), who rendered outstanding services to the study of Siberian toponymy and the Ket language, amongst other fields.
In 1930, the School of Medicine at TGU became the independent Tomsk Medical Institute (TMI), which continued to expand and was granted university status in 1992 as the Siberian State Medical University (SibGMU) ; another higher education institution worth mentioning is Tomsk State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering (TGASU). In the 1920s, there was a German primary school in the Tomsk region, although this was offset by no fewer than 63 Tatar primary schools and, notably, four Polish primary schools as well.[10]
Bibliography
Among the writers associated with Tomsk who are also well known in Germany is the poet, prose writer and philosopher Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev (Aleksandr Nikolaevič Radiščev, 1749–1802), who spent a few days in the city in both 1791 and 1797 whilst on his way to and from exile respectively. In the 1850s, the journalist, poet and ethnographer Nikolai Mikhailovich Yadrintsev (Nikolai Mikhailovich Yadrintsev, 1842–1894), a journalist, poet and ethnographer, whose descriptions of the Siberian exile system and the folk customs and traditions of Siberia remain well known to this day. Like other proponents of Siberian regionalism (Russian: oblastničestvo), he had a tense relationship with the state authorities.
The connection between the city on the Tom River and the system of exile and penal labour camps has frequently been the subject of literary works. The most internationally renowned Russian author is the prose writer and playwright Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Anton Pavlovič Čechov, 1860–1904), who stopped off in Tomsk for a week in May 1890 whilst travelling to the Far East. His travelogue *Ostrov Sakhalin* ( *The Island of Sakhalin*, 1893–94) was also translated into German. Since 2004, a monument – a popular meeting place – has commemorated this stay in the city, about which the author, however, spoke rather negatively.
Even before that, the Tomsk transit prison, where exiles stopped en route to their destinations, had ‘housed’, amongst others, the writer Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (1853–1921). In 1864, the Social Revolutionary Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (Nikolaj Gavrilovič Černyševskij, 1828–1889) spent merely a few hours in Tomsk’s transit prison, having published his novel *Čto delat’? ( What Is to Be Done?, 1863). The NKVD remand centre, in which a museum was established in 1989, is named after the poet Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev (Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev, 1884–1937), who was shot in Tomsk during the Stalinist purges. As an exile, the playwright and screenwriter Nikolai Robertovich Erdman (Nikolai Robertovich Erdman, 1900–1970) held a senior position at the Tomsk City Theatre in 1935 and 1936; he came from a Baltic German family.
Not all writers associated with Tomsk suffered exile and repression. For example, the Soviet geologist and science fiction author Vladimir Afanas’evič Obručev (Vladimir Afanas’evič Obručev, 1863–1956) taught at the Tomsk Technological Institute from 1901 to 1912. In 1932, the journalist and writer Ilya Grigoryevich Girshevich (Il’ja Grigor’evič Girševič, pseudonym Ilya Ehrenburg, 1891–1967), lived in Tomsk for a time. In his novel *Den’ vtoroj* (*The Second Day*), he paints a literary portrait of Tomsk in the 1920s. Numerous other prose works and, above all, his extensive body of poetry associated with Tomsk are scarcely known outside Russia due to the lack of suitable translations.
By contrast, a text originally written in French in which Tomsk plays a role is comparatively well known: the fantastical adventure novel *Michel Strogoff* ( usually translated as *The Tsar’s Courier*, 1876) by Jules Verne (1828–1905). In this work, which is scarcely based on historical facts, Tomsk is the centre of Tatar rebels who are attempting to establish an Islamic emirate and, from there, to fight the tsarist rule in St Petersburg. The scene that is pivotal to the plot – the staged blinding of the title character, Mikhail Strogov – takes place in Tomsk.
Culture of memory and remembrance
The year in which the wooden fortress was built (1604) is now widely recognised as the city’s founding year, both in the cityscape and in the literature on Tomsk. With the advent of modern historiography – to which the aforementioned Gerhard Friedrich Müller made a significant contribution – a culture of remembrance also developed, keeping this date alive in the minds of the inhabitants. It was no coincidence, then, that the official establishment of the Tomsk Governorate in 1804 coincided with the 200th anniversary of the Tomsk fortress. From then on, these milestone anniversaries served as occasions for special celebrations and increased publishing activity, as was most recently observed in 2004.
In Tomsk, too, the memory of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ (1941–1945) is kept alive through parades on 9 May, veterans’ associations and history lessons. In 2020, Tomsk was awarded the honorary title ‘City of Labour Valour’ (Russian: Gorod trudovoj doblesti) in recognition of its role in the Second World War.
Since the 1870s, the City Duma has been appointing deserving residents as honorary citizens. This instrument of urban remembrance is frequently used today: 28 of the 45 appointments to date have been made since 1991.[11]
Alongside the ‘positive’, officially promoted historiography, there exists an unofficial culture of remembrance centred on the historiography of exile, resettlement and state tyranny. For a long time, this tradition of remembrance was upheld not only by families but also by literature, religious associations and, from the final phase of the Soviet Union onwards, by civil society institutions such as the Tomsk branch of the Memorial Society, founded in 1988. Some three decades after the political reorientation, this civic engagement has increasingly come into conflict with the state’s culture of remembrance – particularly as the Tomsk region, too, cannot remain unaffected by the consequences of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, which contravenes international law.
4. Discourses / Controversies
Although Tomsk occupies a central position on the map within the Russian Federation, the feeling that the interests of the city and its surrounding district are often not given sufficient consideration in a country governed by Moscow is frequently evident in conversations with local residents. Aware that the district’s rich oil and natural gas reserves, as well as its universities, provide an important bargaining chip in the struggle amongst Russia’s regions for power and influence in Moscow, calls for a fairer allocation of state funds have repeatedly been voiced from Tomsk. So far, however, the central government has managed to keep in check the aspirations for Siberian separatism that originated in Tomsk as early as the 19th century by striking a balance between regionalism and centralism. For the vast majority of the population, the city’s affiliation with Russia is beyond question.
Bibliography
- Galina Nikolaevna Alishina: The Germans of Tomsk in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ‘The German Trace’ in the Cityscape [The Germans of Tomsk at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. ‘The German Trace’ in the cityscape]. In: Bulletin of Tomsk State University. History 37/5 (2015), pp. 86–90.
- Dittmar Dahlmann: Siberia from the 16th Century to the Present Day. Paderborn 2009.
- György Dalos: History of the Russian Germans. From Catherine the Great to the Present Day. German edition edited by Elsbeth Zylla. Munich 2014.
- Nadezhda Mikhailovna Dmitrienko et al. (eds.): State Archive of the Tomsk Region. A Guide]. Moscow 2001.
- Nadežda Mikhailovna Dmitrienko (ed.): Tomsk from A to Z. A Brief Encyclopaedia of the City. Tomsk 2004.
- Encyclopaedia of the Tomsk Region. 2 vols. Tomsk 2008–2009.
- Roland Götz, Uwe Halbach: Political Lexicon of Russia. The National Republics and Administrative Units of the Russian Federation. Munich 1994 (= Beck’sche Reihe Länder 856).
- Jörn Happel: Among Vermin and ‘Savages’. Travellers to Siberia in the 18th Century. In: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe 64/1 (2013), pp. 1–25.
- Galina Isaakovna Kan: Centre for Documentation of the Recent History of the Tomsk Region. Putevoditel’ [Documentation Centre for the Recent History of the Tomsk Region. A Guide]. Moscow 2000.
- Oleg Nikolaevič Kationov: The Moscow–Siberia Route as the Main Overland Communication Route in Siberia in the 18th–19th Centuries. [The Moscow–Siberia Route as the Main Land Transport Route in Siberia in the 18th–19th Centuries]. Novosibirsk 2008.
- Aleksandr Petrovič Kazarkin (ed.): The Siberian Text in Russian Culture. A collection of essays. Marking the 400th anniversary of Tomsk and the 125th anniversary of the first university in Siberia [The Siberian Text in Russian Culture. A collection of essays. Marking the 400th anniversary of Tomsk and the 125th anniversary of the first university in Siberia]. Tomsk 2002.
- Viktor Krieger: Colonists, Soviet Germans, Resettlers. A History of the Russian Germans. Bonn 2015 (= Series 1631).
- Vladimir Andreevich Nikonov: A Brief Toponymic Dictionary. Moscow 1966.
- A. Pilevin (ed.): Illustrated Guide and Digest. Tomsk [Illustrated Guide and Digest. Tomsk]. Tomsk 2010.
- Mikhail Viktorovich Shilovsky: The Tomsk Pogrom of 20–22 October 1905. Chronicle, commentary, interpretation [The Tomsk pogrom of 20–22 October 1905. Chronicle, commentary, interpretation]. 2nd ed. Novosibirsk 2019.
- Vyacheslav Alekseevich Sukhanov, Aleksey Ignatyevich Shcherbinin: The Life and Death of the ‘Siberian Athens’. The Problem of the Life Cycle of a Metaphorical Toponym in Various Discourses of the 20th and Early 21st Centuries [The Life and Death of ‘Siberian Athens’. The problem of the life cycle of a metaphorical toponym in various discourses of the 20th and early 21st In: *Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filologija* 47 (2017), pp. 139–170.
Web links
- admin.tomsk.ru (Tomsk City Council website – information in Russian)
- lib.tsu.ru/ru (Tomsk University Library website – access to the catalogue in Russian and English)
- tomskbeer.ru/about/history (Website of the ‘Tomskoe pivo’ brewery – information in Russian on the history of the Krüger brewery in Tomsk)
- www.tomdeutsche.ru (Russian-German House in Tomsk – information in German and Russian)
- https://towiki.ru/ (Initiative to compile knowledge resources on the city and district of Tomsk under the auspices of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia – information in Russian)
- https://70.rosstat.gov.ru/ (Statistical Service of the Russian Federation, which reports to the Ministry of Economic Development – information in Russian)
Notes
[1] See Nadezhda Mikhailovna Dmitrienko et al. (eds.): State Archive of the Tomsk Region. Guide. [State Archive of the Tomsk Region. A Guide]. Moscow 2001, pp. 777ff.
[2] See Vyacheslav Alekseevich Sukhanov, Aleksey Ignatyevich Shcherbinin: Life and Death of the ‘Siberian Athens’. The Problem of the Life Cycle of a Metaphorical Toponym in Various Discourses of the 20th and Early 21st Centuries [The Life and Death of ‘Siberian Athens’. The problem of the life cycle of a metaphorical toponym in various discourses of the 20th and early 21st centuries]. In: Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filologija 47 (2017), pp. 157ff.
[3] What the violence on the streets was directed at – or against – was apparently – as is usually the case in such situations – unclear. In any case, the victims of the pogroms included not only Jews but also Poles and the students – most of whom were in uniform at the time – who fell prey to the uneducated mob, many of whom had flocked in from the countryside. See Mikhail Viktorovich Shilovsky: *The Tomsk Pogrom of 20–22 October 1905: Chronicle, Commentary, Interpretation*. 2nd ed. Novosibirsk 2019, p. 92.
[4] Figures according to Nadezhda Mikhailovna Dmitrienko in *Encyclopaedia of the Tomsk Region*. Vol. 2. Tomsk 2009, p. 790.
[5] See Dalos on the Trudarmija, op. cit., pp. 207ff.
[6] See Roland Götz / Uwe Halbach: *Political Encyclopaedia of Russia. The National Republics and Administrative Units of the Russian Federation*. Munich 1994, p. 326.
[7] At least for the year 2022, the net migration balance between Germany and Russia for the Tomsk Region was once again negative: 14 people moved in from Germany, whilst 23 moved out to Germany. See https://70.rosstat.gov.ru/search?q=%D0%A0%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9+%D1%81%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B2+%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F+%D0%A2%D0%BE%D0%BC%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9+%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8&date_from=&content=on&date_to=&search_by=all&sort=relevance, 27 April 2024.
[8] See towiki.ru/view/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%A2%D0%BE%D0%BC%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8, 20 April 2024.
[9] For student numbers, see tpu.ru/university/meet-tpu/facts, 27 December 2021.
[10] See Natal’ja Ivanovna Naumova, Irina Vladimirovna Nam in Ënciklopedija Tomskoj oblasti, vol. 2, op. cit., p. 494.
[11] See admin.tomsk.ru/pgs/1b0, 31 December 2021.
Citation
Daniel Schümann: Tomsk. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2024. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/32267.html (accessed 3 July 2024).
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