THE BABR

Irkutsk’s ‘mascot,’ the animal on its coat of arms through the imperial period, is not a real animal at all. It is called a ‘Babr.’ Supposedly, the word originates from an archaic local word for tiger, and the original coat of arms depictions of the animal show a much more conventional feline. However, Imperial Officials from Saint Petersburg, at the end of the nineteenth century, were perplexed when they came upon this word. Determining that it was a misspelling of ‘Bobr,’ the Russian word for beaver, they attempted to create a hybrid image between the creature they saw depicted and the word they thought was being used for it. Thus, by the late imperial period, the iconic ‘Babr’ took its final form. A tiger-beaver mashup of sorts, its unique representative qualities have endured as a symbol of the city up to the present day.

1ST TRAIN*

The railway was unimaginably expensive to build, and hundreds of bureaucratic committees in dozens of cities along its route were set up with the goal of collectively deducing the best course of action to efficiently finish the project. The largest and most symbolic project in the Witte reforms, its connection with the ability to move labor and laborers to new industrial sites was not overlooked. If anything, all of the governmental eyes were trained on the railway broadly, and Irkutsk specifically, as it was from this location that the Minister of Railways spent the majority of his time. The first train to come to Irkutsk was thus incredibly significant.

The first empty train rolled into Irkutsk on 16 August 1918, to much fanfare and celebration. The image of this train was incredibly well-known and iconic at the time. It was followed a little over a month later by a train filled with passengers and goods on September 24th, the first of its kind to come to the city. A month later, the first train to travel past Irkutsk to Baikal took off, and the rest is history. Within the next two years, after a few fatalities and a series of rail-related hiccups and collisions, the train system would become fully operational. The promises that came with an extensive transportation network connecting all of vast Russia with the outside world buoyed the development of Irkutsk into the next century.

*Adapted from Sierra Nota’s senior thesis.