Free Sibir by Farley Mowat Page B

presence has been in constant conflict with the illusion we have been creating about ourselves. Out of this conflict came much of the agony that is the greatness of our music, of our best writers
.…
    Some people sneer at us. They think we are advocating a return to the idea of the Noble Savage! They are incapable of understanding! We do not want to “return” to anything; we only want to peel off the layers of paint and varnish, chrome and plastic behind which we human beings have hidden ourselves from ourselves, and so come to the true man buried underneath
.…
    One afternoon I went to meet a group of students at Irkutsk State University. It was a brilliant winter day and the air had a peculiar lucidity as if there was no atmospheric roof at all over this ancient city on its high plateau.
    We passed a great new hotel being built by Intourist, all glass and glitter and slab concrete in the sterile style of new hotels the world over. However, this one had apeculiar anomaly. The Moscow designers had planned a huge cantilevered aluminum and concrete canopy to project out from the façade to the very edge of the roadway.
    When construction began on this canopy it was found that an ancient tree stood in the way. In almost any other place in the world the tree would have been summarily condemned, for it stood in the path of progress. Not, however, in Irkutsk. With some considerable difficulty the canopy was modified and a gaping hole was left in it through which the old tree could continue to thrust its massive trunk toward the pale Siberian sky.
    As we walked past it one of my companions gave the tree a friendly pat. “Do you know who saved this tree? Not the planners, I can tell you! It was the workmen themselves. They refused to cut it down and the people of the city stood right behind them.”
    Perhaps this is only another example of incurable romanticism in the Russian psyche, but it may have a deeper meaning. Certainly some of my Irkutsk friends look upon the old tree as a kind of symbol of a new resistance movement – a peaceful movement directed at slowing the onrush of the mechanical colossus, Progress, so that men can at least try to regain meaningful control of it.
    I was still thinking about the tree when we climbed the broad stone steps of the main university building – a handsome white limestone palace built on the banks of the Angara about 1800, under the direction of an Italian architect. For a century it was the home of the Tsars’ governors and the seat of power for an immense part of Siberia. Now it remains as one of Irkutsk’s most famous and beloved buildings and the students who have inherited it are not immune to the effect of its pre-revolutionary grandeur.
    We had dawdled a bit during our walk and were twenty minutes late for the meeting; nevertheless the earnest young student who met us in the foyer delayed us severalminutes longer in order to point out some of the old building’s glories. He seemed as passionately proud of them as some of his engineer siblings are of the power dams and factories they have built. I warmed to him immediately although I had not really been looking forward to the visit because it had been rather too carefully arranged for my liking.
    Fourteen young men and women, mostly under twenty and all Siberian born, were gathered in a pleasant commonroom around a long table. They greeted me politely and I took a seat between a beautiful Buryat girl and an equally attractive Evenk damsel.
    These were the insatiable elephant children and I was soon swamped by waves of questions. Theirs was a specialized curiosity. They were not interested in Canadian living standards, politics or such trivia … they wanted to know about the Canadian north. I offered them generalities, acting on the assumption that they would know as little about my country as I knew about theirs. To my surprise and chagrin they demonstrated that they knew far more about the Canadian north than do most