Lithuanian labor migrants and the construction of the western Siberian oil-gas complex in the late USSR

ABSTRACT

This article presents an analysis of Baltic (particularly, Lithuanian) labor migration into the interior of the USSR during the late Soviet period. The authors discuss how these Baltic labor migrants participated in the creation of infrastructure for the northern oil-gas complex in western Siberia’s Tyumen region. The data collected and subsequent research suggest that the Lithuanian road and construction industry workers, and their accompanying organizational structures, managed to establish a kind of autonomy that allowed them to maintain close links with their homelands, while also creating a role for themselves in the eyes of the local population as representatives of ‘European’ culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Baltic region
• lithuanians
• the late ussr
• labor migration
• urbanization
• oil-cities
• siberia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Similar urban names can also be found in many cities in the northern part of the area. In Nyagan’, for example, one can find of Tashkent, Kiev, and Moldavia streets; in Lyantor, there is a street named after ‘Estonian road builders^{,’ etc.}

2. Actually, sources mention an even earlier case of Lithuanian familiarity with Siberia – the exiles of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Nam 2009, 43). Meanwhile, the increase in the intensity of the Russian empire’s peasant migration to Siberia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was caused by the construction of the Trans-Siberian railroad, and especially the agricultural reform initiated by Stolypin. During the reform, peasants were incentivized to move from the central guberniyas (governorates) to Siberia and Central Asia; they were given plots of land, monetary benefits, and tax exemptions for several years. Around 270,000 peasants from Belarus and Lithuania settled in Siberia and the Far East (52).

3. ‘O rezul’tatah proverki vypolneniya zadanij CK KPSS i Soveta Ministrov SSSR po stroitel’stvu avtomobil’nyh dorog Zapadnoy Sibiri,’ Lietuvos centrinis valstybės archyvas (hereafter LCVA), f. R.-342, ap. 1, b. 1668, l. 155–61. In the context of ‘Lithuanians’ working at RCB-12 and SPI-1, the term refers not to being ethnically Lithuanian but the contemporary residents of the Lithuanian SSR, who may have been ethnically diverse.

4. The term of ‘pribalty’ is generally applied to Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians, and most likely emerged in the Gulag camps, being used to refer to the deported or imprisoned inhabitants of the occupied Baltic countries, mostly used after World War II. The term has some negative connotations.

5. Decision of the RSFSR Council of Ministers, 4 January 1970, ‘O merakh po uskoreniyu razvitiya neftyanoi promyshlennosti v Zapadnoi Sibiri.’ Accessed 26 February 2020. http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?doc_itself=&empire=1&nd=196015868&page=1&rdk=0&link_id=0#I0.

6. Decision of the RSFSR Council of Ministers, 16 June 1977. ‘O razvitii neftyanoi i gazovoi promyshlennosti v Zapadnoi Sibiri v 1977–1980 godakh.’ Accessed 26 February 2020. http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?doc_itself=&empire=1&nd=196012298&page=1&rdk=0&link_id=0#I0.

7. ‘O rezul’tatah proverki,’ LCVA, f. R.-342, ap. 1, b. 1668, l. 155.

8. Decision of the USSR Council of Ministers, 20 March 1980. ‘O neotlozhnykh merakh po usileniyu stroitel’stva v rayone Zapadno-Sibirskogo neftegazovogo kompleksa.’ Accessed 26 February 2020. http://www.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online.cgi?req=doc&base=ESU&n=31873#014075817469250906.

9. ‘O rezul’tatah proverki,’ LCVA, f. R.-342, ap. 1, b. 1668, l. 155.

10. “Lithuanian central state archives. Coll. R.-342, aids. 1, foll. 1827, pp. 9–10. ‘O predostavlenii l’got za raboty na Severe.’

11. ‘O nachal’noi shkole DSU-12,’ LCVA, f. R.-342, ap. 1, b. 1868, p. 37.

12. The Alytus (a Lithuanian city after which this style of houses were named) panel modular house, also called alytnamis, represented mass rural architecture, which rapidly spread throughout Lithuania toward the end of the Soviet period. The Alytus house was meant to bring the concept of a modern stand-alone house into rural areas, yet, at the same time not stray from the strict requirements for the industrialization of construction. The construction of these houses was not unique – it had been adopted from other Western countries, following a trend in the 1950s and ’60s of prefabricated houses. The pioneers of this idea were the Finns, whose quick-to-assemble houses were just as popular in the Soviet Union (Bielinis 2009, 5). The Alytus panel houses started being manufactured at the Alytus Experimental House Construction Manufactory in 1976, and cost around 14,000 rubles. They also found their way to other republics, such as villages outside of Moscow, into Smolensk Oblast, Armenia, Belarus, Kaliningrad Oblast, and elsewhere. It is difficult to estimate the number of Alytus houses that were built in the territory of the Lithuanian republic and beyond its borders. The alytnamis that were so characteristic of the Lithuanian landscape at the time did not suit the harsh Siberian climatic conditions. Local Kogalym residents refer to them as ‘prefabricated Finnish houses’ to this day (L.V., female, Kogalym).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vera Kliueva

Rasa Čepaitienė is a senior research fellow at the Lithuanian Institute of History. She is the author and editor of seven monographs and studies including Cultural Heritage in the Global World (2010, in Russian and Lithuanian) and about 100 research papers published in Lithuania and abroad. Her research interests include cultural heritage and collective memory theories, urban studies, Soviet culture, and post-Soviet transformation.

Address: Lithuanian Institute of History, Department of 20th Century History, Kražių g. 5, LT-01108 Vilnius, Lithuania

E-mail: [email protected]

Vera Kliueva is a Senior Scientific Researcher at the Institute of the problems of Northern development at the Tyumen Scientific Centre. She is the author, coauthor, and editor of six monographs including Pentecostals in Yugra (2013) and about 90 research papers published in Russia and abroad. Her research interests include Northern studies, Soviet everyday life, and oral history.

Address: Institute of the problems of Northern development at the Tyumen Scientific Centre SB RAS (Russia, Tyumen), ul. Maligina 86, 625003, Tyumen, Russia

E-mail: [email protected]