Suchergebnisse

Chapter 1. Introductory -- Chapter 2. Reindeer Husbandry Statistics -- Chapter 3. Actors and Tensions in the Reindeer Husbandry Part of Murmansk Region -- Chapter 4. 'Urban' ('commuting') reindeer husbandry in Murmansk Region -- Chapter 5. Summing up and conclusions -- Chapter 6. Epilogue: War and Lithium.

The book examines the way people talk with power – and power talks back to them – in the context of authoritarian state regimes, the Soviet/Russian one being the case in point. My claim is, in the first place, that there does exist such a conversation. I thus strongly resist the reading of recent Soviet history in terms of people's mute and passive subordination to crushing imposition of power, or at best – of forms of indirect resistance or escapism. Instead, my claim is that multi-layered communication between the pinnacle and the broad base of the social pyramid was part and parcel of the identity of the Soviet period all along. As it is argued in the book, grassroots-with-power communication in the Soviet and post-Soviet context reflects a will and corresponding practice for a continuously re-negotiated arrangement with power. Its principal thrust is the establishing of a grassroots-to-power tensed compromise over such fundamentally critical issues like existential security and a degree of well-being. I argue for the presence of effective grassroots' agentivity in the Soviet/post-Soviet context. To examine it I turn special attention to the period of enforced collectivisation of agriculture (1929-1934) in the context of the reindeer husbandry economy of what is today Murmansk Region of NW Russia. My specific ethnography takes a reindeer husbandry practice of mixing private and collective reindeer as a metaphorical expression of a risk-free socioeconomic arrangement I call 'sovkhoizm'. My general conclusion is that a socioeconomic and political environment that has sovkhoizm as a principal worldview presents serious communicative obstacles as regards a generalized 'western' attempt, over the last two decades, for constructive dialogue on, particularly, the Sami indgeneity issue. The ethnographic basis of the study comes from long-term fieldwork with Sami and Komi reindeer husbandry teams in Lovozero District, Murmansk Region.

Reforms in the Russian Federation have so far shown a significant degree of ambiguity. Taken as leading to a transition from a totalitarian state of command socialism to a democratic state with a market-oriented economy, the reforms tend to show only surface resemblances to such a process. Taken in an "oligarchic" sense, that is, as dispensing with social security and greatly expanding the sphere of the informal ("grey") economy, the process seems to be fully completed. Against this background we ask how specifically agrarian reforms reflect on reindeer herding in the Russian North. Field research based data indicates that while local administrations continue to rule in a Soviet manner, in a mix with high orbit "grey" economic practices, agricultural workers rely on lower level informalities to cope with a continuing economic and social crisis. Searching for reliance on traditional or neo-traditional land-use is pronouncedly absent and in this context the Murmansk Region seems to stand apart from developments in many other parts of the Russian North and Siberia. Reasons may be found in the longest history of colonisation of this region (since the 10th century), in a traditionally non nomadic herding, and in very strong local preferences for state socialist forms of management ("sovkhoism"). At the same time, there are signs of opposition to the current management practices of village cooperatives, fuelled by the appearance of new liberal agrarian legislation. This is the point at which agrarian reforms acquire real life significance locally. The article describes and discusses such a situation on the basis of recent material from six months of field work with reindeer herders and the administration of SKhPK "Tundra" in the settlement of Lovozero, Murmansk Region. The field work was carried out in three consecutive periods in 2001.