Bukachacha

Bukachacha lies in the Transbaikal interior of eastern Siberia, where woodland, hills and long continental winters surround a small valley settlement. This thinly populated country is hard to cross: snow, freezing temperatures and distance between settlements shaped the practical work of moving goods and people through the district.

The surrounding country was home to Evenki hunters and herders and Mongol-speaking pastoralists, and part of the old Mongol world. Russian Cossacks reached the Transbaikal in the 1640s and founded Nerchinsk in 1653; the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk fixed the frontier with Qing China to the east and south. From 1704 the silver and lead mines of the Nerchinsk region drew convict and peasant labour to the district, tying even remote valleys to a wider system of forced labour.