Editors' foreword

Abstract

Sibirica’s bibliogenesis lies in a gathering of a dozen or so British academics who shared a common interest in Siberia and the Russian Far East, at the University of Lancaster, UK, in September 1981. That was the first meeting of what came to be called the British Universities Siberian Studies Seminar (BUSSS). Over the next few years the Seminar met on a number of occasions (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge – 1983, 1984; School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London – 1986, 1993; University of Glasgow – 1988, 1989; and Kemerovo, Western Siberia – 1991). During that period, membership of BUSSS grew from the original handful to over two hundred individual and institutional subscribers to the Seminar’s journal Sibirica, in which were regularly published the proceedings of the various conferences, as well as other invited contributions. In all, nine issues appeared, the first five as samizdat publications financially subvented by the then Department of Russian and Soviet Studies at Lancaster University, the next two published under the title Siberica (sic) by the Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon, USA, and the last two by Ryburn Publishing, Keele University Press, UK.