Acknowledgements

The author of this book was born and raised in the villages on the bank of the sacred sea. Love and respect for his Motherland were brought up in him by the close to him people together with the Baikal nature. To mention most of them, one needs a tremendous amount of paper. But one can not forget those who have gone to "another world", leaving an indelible mark on our land, and especially in the heart of the author. Among them is his father, an invalid of the Great Patriotic War, a rural teacher, Karnyshev Dmitry Fedotovich who died at the age of 87; his relatives – the Karnyshevs: Vasily Fedotovich, Maria Kuzminichna, Konstantin Grigoryevich; friends, untimely deceased: brother Michael, Vladimir Sokolov, Alexander Vykhodtsev, Sergei Gyrgeshkinov, Alexander Shulgin… Peace be upon you and many thanks for everything you’ve done for me!

All my life I’ve been carrying in the idea of writing a book about Lake Baikal. But to bring it to life I needed help of close people who supported me by their participation and actions. My wife Irina, daughters Lena and Olga brought a great contribution to the creation of the book in the first and second editions. Great thanks to all of them for their assistance, compassion and understanding, due to which this book can be published.

In fact I should also to pay a tribute to all the decimals and hundreds of authors; the citations and facts from their books and other works are used in this book for illustration, generalizations and evidences. Doing this I acknowledge the value of their works, creativity, and respect for their intellectual property. And here I will digress to one small idea. People who don’t want to work are called truants – “loafers, idlers”. Nowadays there appeared “downloaders” – people who cannot and do not aspire to think; they download “their” thoughts from the Internet and flaunts them; and they do not comprehend that thus they humiliate others. Our generation did not get used to be like that. That’s why I want to praise and pay tribute to my colleagues and predecessors: their materials make the book a sort of result of collective creation; and this is our common present to the Baikal.

I also want to thank those artists and photographers, whose succinct and informative paintings and photos about people and nature of Lake Baikal are included as illustrations into the book. And I want to thank the Chairmen of the regional branches of the Union of Artists – A.M. Muravyev and G.G. Vasilyev for understanding the significance of such a way of reflecting the specificity and diversity of the world of the Baikal, and the ability to introduce the most outstanding creative people of the region to the world. In the edition of 2010, the number of paintings and artists markedly increased.

In 2007, the work on the book got the assistance of the Department of Social and Economic Psychology (BNUEL) project "Ethnic and Psychological Resources of Ecological and Tourist Activity in the Baikal Region", supported by the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation (RHSF). Together we were able to analyze those nature protection approaches which began to take root in the life of the region, country and the whole world under the motto “economy is to be ecological; and ecology is to be economical”. The investigations of the same kind continued in 2008 – 2010. In particular, in spring of 2010 with the expert administration of the Irkutsk region there was conducted a survey of Baikalsk inhabitants about their attitude to the reactivation of BPPM (Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill). I also want to express my gratitude to my colleagues, graduate students, students, everyone who participate
in this important and necessary research for the benefit of Lake Baikal, Nature and Man.

Alexander Karnyshev

See also

• The Many Faces of Multilingual and Mysterious Baikal. A.D.Karnyshev

Literature

1. A.D. Karnyshev "The Many Faces of Multilingual and Mysterious Baikal"© BSU Publishing House, 2011