Siberia, protest, and politics (original) (raw)

Shamans Emerging From Repression in Siberia: Lightning Rods of Fear and Hope

Horizons of Shamanism: A Triangular Approach to the History and Anthropology of Ecstatic Techniques, 2016

To honor the broad ranging legacy of Åke Hultkranz, this article focuses on the changing social and political ramifications of indigenous people's spiritual revitalization in Siberia. My approach balances Hultkrantz's sensitivity to commonalities of shamanism throughout the circumpolar North with attention to more specific aspects of shamanistic practices and beliefs in Far Eastern Siberia, especially the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), over time. Shamans and shamanic prophets can be found in many kinds of communities, from rural Siberia to Native North America to urban Korea. Over-generalizations behind standard or "ideal type" distinctions among "shamans," "priests," and "prophets" limit our understanding of the richness of shamanic cultural traditions. Research featured here is based on long-term fieldwork, many return trips to Siberia over the past thirty-five years, and work with the Sakha diaspora. It analyses the resurgence of post-Soviet shamanic healing practices, the organization of an Association of Folk Medicine, and shamanic leadership in an ecology activist movement. Shamans explain that their crucial imperative to heal and protect their clients and communities survived the Soviet period. Shamans and others, by adapting shamanic belief systems, can engage, if not soothe, the legacies of social as well as personal suffering. Yet many shamans were killed or repressed in the Soviet period, rituals were suppressed, and the reputations of shamans have long been ambiguous, depending on whom they protect and how. In socially fraught, crisis-ridden contexts, the personal becomes political. Shamans' How to cite this book chapter:

[Alter]Native Russia: Indigenous Histories, Cultures, and Politics in Siberia and the North

2025

Can we imagine Russia beyond Russian culture and the Russian-dominated history of the country? This course provides a unique opportunity to familiarize yourselves with the histories, cultures, and politics of often neglected Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Arctic, and to put them in a comparative perspective with North America and the global context. By choosing the compound term “alter/native,” we aim to integrate the voices of Siberian Indigenous communities into the conversation about the fluid diversity of identities, cultural and social practices, and reveal their role in Russia’s past and present. Throughout the course, we explore those dynamics from the pre-contact times in Siberia and the North through the latest challenges of the Indigenous movement evoked by the Russian war in Ukraine. The course is divided into four parts. The first part deals with theoretical questions regarding the notion of Indigeneity and the way it has been constructed and maintained. Here, we pay particular attention to the intersected vocabularies of Indigeneity, race, ethnicity, and gender in Russia, and how they impact both human experiences and political collaborations nationally and transnationally. The second part is historical. It surveys the encounters between colonial and local communities in the region, their dialogues, conflicts, and mutual “invisibility.” We delve into the complex cultural, social, and political processes that have shaped these interactions and their lasting effects. The third part is focused on a few hotly debated topics from the anthropology of Indigenous communities in Siberia and the Circumpolar North. They include relations with non-human beings, the diversity of gender practices and ideologies, permafrost and the problem of animal extinction and de-extinction, as well as the relations between Indigeneity, media, and digital technologies. The concluding fourth part explores the current predicaments of decolonization, emphasizing post-Soviet identity politics and the way Indigenous administrative institutions have been built and continue operating today. The assigned materials include not only classic and recent academic texts but also fiction, news reports, films, and documentaries produced by Indigenous, Russian, and Western authors and directors.

Local Legacies of the GULag in Siberia: Anthropological Reflections

This essay, based on field notes from 1976-2013, explores resonances of the GULag and exile system in Siberia, focusing on often ignored indigenous peoples in villages and towns. Interethnic relations, diverse community relationships with prison camps, and dynamics of Russian Orthodox and pre-Christian spirituality are discussed. Debates about how to understand, teach and memorialize the significance of the Stalinist system are analyzed, as are issues of shame, moral debilitation and cultural revitalization. Featured cases include the Khanty of West Siberia, Sibiriaki of West and East Siberia, plus Éveny, Évenki, Yukagir and Sakha of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia). The author argues that what local people have chosen to emphasize as they reflect on and process the GULag varies greatly with their and their ancestors’ specific experiences of the camps, of exiles, as well as with their degrees of indigeneity. [Key words: Gulag; Siberia; interethnic relations; indigeneity]

The Indigenous Political in the Post Soviet Sakha Republic

2022

This research analyzes the socioeconomic and political structures, social and cultural networks, and forms of Indigenous mobilizations in a region where Indigenous political representation in the traditional sense is heavily circumscribed. Indigenous groups throughout the Russian Arctic are immensely affected by the state's prioritization of extractive activities. This privileging of business interests often de-politicizes Indigenous mobilization by delegitimizing claims-making, undermining Indigenous territorial rights, and increasing economic disempowerment. Yet, I consider the de-politicization process as not only an important strategy for exercising state power, reinforcing dominant ideologies, and restricting politics, but also as a force that inspires countering efforts that can shape alternative political opportunities, expressions, and mechanisms. The research inquiry reveals that even though local Indigenous groups distance themselves from the overt politicization of Indigeneity, they still produce alternative narratives and employ strategies adequate to certain de-politicized contexts. In this sense, the Indigenous activists reformulate the pre-existing cultural, economic, and political meanings, values, and practices, challenging and subverting the bureaucratic forms of domination and discipline. Thus, the dissertation project focuses on local unpredictable and at times contradictory narratives and articulations of Indigeneity at the intersection of regional, national, and global histories. This research engages with the growing literature on post-Soviet theorizations of Indigeneity and of Indigenous subjects, and with Indigenous activisms, contributing to ethnography focused on Indigenous communities of Sakha Republic and their ambivalent position within the post-Soviet Russian state. The analysis is built on intensive academic and grey literature synthesis, on the yearlong ethnographic fieldwork in Yakutsk (a capital city) and the Olenyek district of Sakha Republic, integrating anthropological and Indigenous research methods, including participant observation in three villages and a collection of semi-structured interviews and life histories, and finally, on ongoing Internet facilitated communication proving feedback on the analysis, when possible, with selected Sakha Republic-based individuals from a variety of interest groups. This dissertation would not have been completed without the help and support of numerous friends, colleagues, and family in Sakha Republic and Canada. My academic and research advisor, Dr. Kathleen Buddle, has been an inspiration and was incredibly helpful, intellectually supportive, and endlessly encouraging throughout my graduate studies at the Department of Anthropology, the University of Manitoba. I am also deeply grateful to the dissertation defense committee members, Dr. Fabiana Li and Dr. Peter Kulchyski, for their invaluable input, feedback, and suggestions that shaped this work. Through my fieldwork in the Olenyek district, I have made new friends, and I would like to extend my appreciation and deep gratitude to them for their warm welcome to their communities and families. This work would not have been possible without their invaluable contribution. My family in Nyurba (Sakha Republic), especially, my parents, Margarita Nikolaevna and Nikolay Dmitrievich, who were always supportive of my academic adventures. I extend my heartfelt thanks to them for all the love and support.

Anderson and Arzyutov 2016 The Construction of Soviet Ethnography and “The Peoples of Siberia”

History and Anthropology, 2016

This article traces how a multi-generation book project on ‘the Peoples of Siberia’ enabled a group of Leningrad-based scholars to reshape their museum into a Soviet ethnographic community. It analyses the face-to-face performances, the legalistic stenographic documentation, the collective crafting of a single authoritative style, and a unique temporal frame as an important background to understanding a hallmark volume in Siberian studies. It further examines how a set of nested gatherings (zasedanii͡a, soveshchanii͡a) were key in authorizing knowledge. The authors argue that the published volume indexes nearly thirty years of scholarly debates as much as it indexes the peoples it represents. The gradual recalibration of Tsarist ethnography from 1929 to 1956 is illustrated with examples taken from debates held during the consolidation of Soviet power, the Stalinist period and during official ethnographic engagement during the Second World War. The article concludes with a critical discussion of how this volume was translated and received by a Euro-American readership influencing the perception of Siberian peoples internationally, and with an overview of contemporary post-Soviet publication projects which seem to recapitulate the path of building scientific communities through collective publishing projects. The authors argue that this early Soviet example demonstrate a collective and community interest in how ethnographic facts are generated. The article is based on extensive archival work and references collections recently discovered and which are presented for publication here for the first time.

The Construction of Soviet Ethnography and “The Peoples of Siberia”

History and Anthropology, 2016

The multi-generation book project "The Peoples of Siberia" enabled a group of Leningradbased scholars to reshape their museum into a Soviet ethnographic community. This article analyses the face-to-face performances, the legalistic stenographic documentation, the collective crafting of a single authoritative style, and a unique temporal frame as an important background to understand a hallmark volume in Siberian studies. The authors argue that the published volume indexes nearly thirty years of scholarly debates as much as it indexes the peoples it represents. The article concludes with a critical discussion of how this volume was translated and received by a Euro-American readership influencing the perception of Siberian peoples internationally. It also links the volume to contemporary post-Soviet publication projects which seem to retrace the same path. The article is based on extensive archival work and references collections recently discovered and which are presented for publication here for the first time.