Stroganov — a history of rule
Yesterday, the Kickstarter campaign for Stroganov, a new board game by respected designer Andreas Steding with art by Maciej Janik went live. It seems an unlikely target for the argument I am about to make, but I genuinely hope that, as I explain, it will become clear that Stroganov presents us with an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which culture reflexively inhabits the perspective of the ruling classes without interrogating their hold on history — without, seemingly, even being aware of what happens when this particular telling of history is normalized and becomes a commodity like any other. In short, Stroganov would not be remarkable if it would not be exemplary for a culture that courts revisionist history as a means to accumulate capital as reliably as possible.
You will find no criticism of the Stroganov family in the game that bears their name. To the contrary, their campaigns in Siberia are wrapped in the romance of a harsh, beautiful land of muted greens, oranges and reds. Quaint circles of yurts sit in the vast expanse along glittering rivers and lush forests. The few settlements in the distance accentuate the scale of the “untamed wilderness”. It, or so the game seems to claim, can be cultivated and managed together by a few simple but hardy people. Peacefully. This is the visual language of the board and its pieces at play.
But this could not be further from the truth: what would become the noble branch of the Stroganov family existed throughout centuries of Russian history, not in the harsh conditions of Siberia preoccupied with securing subsistence, song and community, but with commerce, trade and an absurd level of wealth and privilege.
But the family had been wealthy before moving into the region. They had been granted numerous estates at the outer reaches of Russian influence, along the border of Siberia. So, how did the Stroganovs deal with the local populations, the numerous tribes that lived to the East and to the North of their territories? They conquered them, of course. They paved over the local tribes to get Russian settlers moving in, pushing all “others” from their homes and hunting grounds — their means to secure an independent life.
Maciej Janik’s art seems much too warm to be used as an embellishment for a game about a family that has engaged in genocide, settler colonialism and the suppression of local revolts with their own private army. How does that fit together with a game that seeks to emphasize the majesty and beauty of the natural landscape?
The Stroganov family plundered the land, commercialized farming, fishing, iron and salt mining, and, as you might have guessed, hunting. And hunting is the primary activity in the game of Stroganov. The furs the family “acquired” in Siberia were luxuries in the Russian core, where they could be traded for favors with the Tsar and nobility, who granted them even more lands in return, to keep the goods coming. That is precisely what you’re doing in the game: acquiring as many diverse furs as possible and trading them for victory points.
It should be noted that hunting during feudal times was a leisure activity of great popularity: when the great lords wanted to indulge, with their large hunting parties and even larger feasts, their servants had to prep the hunting grounds for weeks in advance, herding animals towards the hunters, who took no care and rampaged across a farmer’s field or went rummaging through nature like demons possessed, disturbing the entire ecosystem. In the meantime, these young peasants were sorely needed at home, where the success of the time-sensitive harvest depended on their labor. After backbreaking work for their masters, they had to return home and do some more, often to give most of their gains away to the same lords and ladies that had made them run around the countryside at their every whim.
In Stroganov, the rulebook explicitly states that the family recruited “Cossacks to do the work” of hunting and trading furs, “to explore eastward across Siberia” and to “establish outposts”. Clearly this is written from the perspective of the family, without even the slightest mention of what “exploration” and “trading” would entail. These, too, are methods of conquest still in use today. So why not use this opportunity to tell a story about the consequences of such methods? Why remain silent on the Siberian campaign of the 16th century, or those that would still follow?
While it would be a formidable task, it would not be inconceivable for the Stroganovs to be the protagonists of a board game, but there is no hint of satire or caricature in this version’s attempt. There is no reckoning with the histories of a noble family that would predictably side with the Whites in the Russian civil war several centuries later, and emigrate to the U.S. There is no exploitation of the local populace or its people, no sign of destruction or death.
Theoretically, there are ways to make players assume the roles of antagonists, but they would require a willingness to make players experience the consequences of their actions through the mechanisms of play. It would, in other words, necessitate different narrative contextualization; gone would be the feeling of serenity and “untouched” nature. It would probably also require some semblance of conflict and friction present in the art and design, but the “taking” of the yurt tiles, and the “taking advantage of” the settlement tiles is too much of an abstraction to carry the weight of the theme, though it does unconsciously play into it. The competition on the level of the players merely amounts to a squabble among different rulers, sides or persons within the family.
There is, of course, a much more reasonable way to make a game about hunting in Siberia and retain all this beautiful art. But it would have required a radically different understanding of history, and a commitment to tell the histories of people on the margins — a true counter-history of sorts. Switch out the player boards.
What about the tribes that the Stroganovs ruthlessly devoured, displaced further into the harsh “wilderness” and/or disposed off. Why are they not the protagonists of a game about hunting in Siberia?
This is not to say that Stroganov needs to carry this burden alone. Assuming the perspective of the rich and powerful without any hint of irony has become so normalized in any media artifact that there is no opportunity to pause and exercise some introspection about why this perspective is so alluring.
“It is ancient history”, you might reply. But we are not trying to argue about the past. We are talking about how the present sees, writes and disseminates information about history.
When Andreas and Karen Seyfarth designed Thurn and Taxis (2006) with artwork by Michael Menzel, they not only themed a classic board game around the emergence of an organized postal system, but centered it around a family that, at every point in history, deliberately allied themselves with the most reactionary forces of their times to accrue wealth. They were one of the driving forces behind the hold of feudalism on what would become the German territories. The so-called Princely House of Thurn and Taxis has existed and flourished since the early 16th century and remains one of the wealthiest families in Germany today. If you believe Europe escaped the “dark ages” a long time ago, perhaps history is worth a second look?
Why glorify these people and bring them unto my table as quaint, harmless artifacts of the past, as if their stranglehold on our future did or does not exist? But perhaps I am expecting too much of historian Andreas Steding, the designer of Heart of Africa (2004), which describes itself as a “meaty trading game where the players each lead a trading company which tries to make profits in Africa.” But, to repeat myself, the prevalence of the ruling classes’ perspectives in media, and board games’ tendency to make players reenact their exploits is a regressive trend that has always had a place in the medium’s history. As much as the casual anti-blackness and colonialism of e.g. Reiner Knizia’s recent The Quest For El-Dorado (2017) might not resemble the more explicit anti-indigeneity of Santa Maria (2017), they are both treading similar ground. The emergence of European historians’ influence on modern board games should not be underestimated.
Of course, these historians, designers and artists are free to design whatever games they please. I hold no power over them. I will, however, play the broken record in kind:
“Peace to the huts! War on the palaces!”
— The Hessian Courier, 1834
Other games have shown us the way: Spirit Island (2017) is a cooperative “settler destruction” game that reversed the Catan (1995) formula and casts players in the roles of spirits allied with native tribes trying to ward off invaders. What I ask can even be done with minimal effort: In The Hall Of The Mountain King (2019) managed to narratively contextualize its fight over territory on the game board not as “exploration”, “discovery” or “conquest”, but a friendly contest among refugees returning to their home, excavating what has been lost, but is now theirs to reclaim.
Even Gùgōng (2018), an Andreas Steding design, was a good attempt to solve the problem of casting players in the role of an oppressive class. Though you are shuffling around servants on the board in service of a noble family, it is clear that the entire system is corrupt: the core action selection mechanism is the board game design interpretation of an actual process, namely these nobles houses bribing state officials to garner favors.
Whether braided into wood, cardboard or a few lines of crayon on asphalt, play is a ritual performed together with friends, acquaintances and/or strangers. This is true even if we might play alone in the moment; we live in a connected world and even seemingly dead artifacts fashioned for the purposes of entertainment have a life and history of their own. They move us.
But play not only shows us a reflection of history, it makes us reenact it. In doing so, it carries forward histories, reinforces or weakens particular approaches, and most certainly does not exist in isolation. The precise incantations we speak around the table to make all these components come to life should be the subject of thought and criticism. It should matter whose tongues they make us speak in. Unless we want to carry with us the mistakes of the past forever, we must learn to become better acquainted with different perspectives — ultimately, it is these perspectives that will allow us to see a revolutionary future.
If there is “freedom of expression”, how come everybody tells the same history, from the same perspective over and over again? Why must we defend the historians of the status quo? From what? These are the stenographers of power, already well protected and not lacking in success and capital. Where is your advocacy for the “freedom of expression” when it comes to the margins?
