Babr: What beast is the symbol of Irkutsk?

According to the modern official description of the coat of arms, “in a silver field there is a babr running through the green grass to the left side of the shield and having a sable in its jaws”. What?

Irkutsk coat of arms with a tiger.

Public domain

Originally, Irkutsk's coat of arms featured a running tiger with a sable in its teeth. Although Amur tigers live further east, they could technically reach these places. And, in the old days, the inhabitants of Siberia called any such dangerous wildcats ‘babrs’: tigers, panthers and leopards. The sable in its teeth, meanwhile, symbolized the city’s fur trade.

Irkutsk coat of arms, 1878.

Public domain

Irkutsk was founded in 1661 and it is noted that the coat of arms with a tiger-babr was approved by Empress Catherine the Great in 1790. However, a century later, under Alexander II, when the coats of arms of the Russian Empire were being re-approved, unknown officials in St. Petersburg decided that there was a typo in the description. Not ‘babr’, but ‘bobr’ (beaver in Russian)! The two words differ just in one letter. True, it was not clear why it needed a sable in its mouth, because beavers do not hunt them. At that time, however, more than 40 provinces' coats of arms were being re-approved at once, so, in a hurry, no one specified what the ‘babr’ was.

Modern Irkutsk coat of arms.

Public domain

The artists, in turn, tried to correct the coat of arms: they removed the tiger's stripes, added webbing to its paws and a "beaver" tail, but left the sable. And the description now mentioned ‘bobr’ (‘beaver’).

The ‘babr’ name only returned in the mid-1990s, but the former fantastic beast remained on the coat of arms. And they even put a monument to it in the city center.

A monument to babr in Irkutsk.

Pavel Kuzmichev

Dear readers,

Our website and social media accounts are under threat of being restricted or banned, due to the current circumstances. So, to keep up with our latest content, simply do the following:

• Subscribe to our Telegram channel
• Subscribe to our weekly email newsletter
• Enable push notifications on our website
• Install a VPN service on your computer and/or phone to have access to our website, even if it is blocked in your country

If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.