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Pavel Dmitriev

The cultural landscape of the rural areas of the Angara Basin (Eastern Siberia) is very complex. According to modern knowledge, the planned colonisation of this area was carried out by the Russian Empire from the 17th/18th centuries. The end of the functioning of rural landscapes (their almost total destruction) was connected with the construction of the Bratsk Dam and the complex of water reservoirs on the Angara and its tributaries in the 1960s. Initially, the rural spatial organisation, development and exploitation of the surrounding resources depended directly on the socio-economic model of colonisation developed in the Russian Empire. The "original" rural spatial organisation was characterised by such features as: location along the transport route (the Angara River), compactness and defensive capability of the buildings, dominance of private property (family farms).The introduction of the Bolshevik ideology in the first half of the 20th century and the associated collective farm system led to significant changes.An important element was the
emergence of facilities for joint management of assets and resources.

The main aim of this work is to answer the question whether and how remote sensing data can help identify the process of change in the rural landscape. I will present considerations on this problem using the example of a complex of villages in the area of the current Bratsk Dam (Matierikowaya, Moskowskaya, Antonowa, Burnino). In my research, I will use: 1) historical and contemporary cartographic data showing the spatial structure of the villages before the construction of the dam , 2) Corona and Hexagon satellite imagery from the 1960s and 1970s as the main source for the analysis of the destroyed villages, and 3) currently available satellite images allowing to determine the dynamics and nature of spatial changes. A special case in the considerations is the village of Burnino, which was situated on the high bank of the Angara and was the only one that was not flooded by the waters of the Bratsk Reservoir. In this case, modern satellite imagery plays a special role and opens up new perspectives for interpreting spatial systems of already destroyed villages. In the search for an answer to the question posed and in the interpretation of satellite imagery, ethnographic and historical sources are also important, allowing to trace the social changes that caused the physical transformation of the rural landscape.

The proposed study will contribute to the understanding of the impact of the socio-political processesof the Russian Empire and the USSR on the rural landscape.