Red Ties and Residential Schools
Red Ties and Residential Schools
Indigenous Siberians in a Post-Soviet State
Alexia Bloch
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 2004 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved
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Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bloch, Alexia.
Red ties and residential schools : indigenous Siberians in a post-Soviet state / Alexia Bloch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8122-3759-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Evenki (Asian people)—Education—Russia (Federation)—çvenkiæskiæ avtonomnyæ okrug—History. 2. Ethnology—Russia (Federation)—çvenkiæskiæ avtonomnyæ okrug. I. Title.
| LA1394.E84B56 2003 | |
| 371.829941—dc21 | 2003056123 |
To those who continue to dream of utopia
… and for Mira Rubina
Contents
Note on Transliteration and Translation
Introduction: Fieldwork, Socialism in Crisis, and Identities in the Making
1. Central Peripheries and Peripheral Centers: Evenki Crafting Identities over Time
2. A Siberian Town in the 1990s: Balancing Privatization and Collectivist Values
3. Red Ties and Residential School: Evenk Women’s Narratives and Reconsidering Resistance
4. Young Women Between the Market and the Collective
5. Inside the Residential School: Cultural Revitalization and the Leninist Program
6. Taiga Kids, Incubator Kids, and Intellectuals
7. Representing Culture: Museums, Material Culture, and Doing the Lambada
8. Revitalizing the Collective in a Market Era
Illustrations
1. Russian Federation, Evenk Autonomous District inset
2. The Udygir family in an Evenk District Village
3. Father and children herding, circa 1901
4. Berrypicking along the Nizhniaia Tunguska River
5. Conducting 1926 Household Census of the Arctic North
6. “The Evenk woman actively fights to fill the seven-year plan”
7. Students at Leningrad State University, circa 1931
8. Residential school entrance with “Welcome” sign
9. “Papa Maks” graffiti and students
10. After school by the Nizhniaia Tunguska River
11. Residential school mural of happy proletarians
12. Beadwork image of Lenin
13. Doing the Lambada
Note on Transliteration and Translation
The Library of Congress system is used in transliterating Russian and Evenk terms except when there is a commonly used English version. Thus Moscow and not Moskva is used in the text.
When terms in Russian and Evenk are used in the text, they are explained with the first usage. All translations are my own. For the reader’s reference, with the exception of ethnonyms, terms indicated as Russian in origin are in italics, while those Evenk in origin are in italics and underlined.
Unless noted otherwise, ethnonyms are transliterations of the Russian terms and appear in roman typeface; for instance, throughout the text the term “Evenki” is used instead of “Evenkil,” the Evenk term. The Russian term “Evenki” in the plural form refers to the people, while “Evenk” is used as an adjective (such as “Evenk language,” “Evenk children,” or “Evenk surnames”).
Preface
For many indigenous Siberians, the collapse of the Soviet Union (USSR) has brought about hardships resulting from the breakdown of government infrastructure such as state farms, medical units, and rural schooling. At the same time, the new era has also presented possibilities for self-representation and self-determination that were absent during Soviet times, and now people are immersed in reconfiguring relationships to local and translocal identities. This book focuses on the experiences of a community of Evenki, an indigenous Siberian group concentrated in central Siberia, to consider how the institution of residential schooling has influenced lives in the Soviet and post-Soviet era. Residential schools established in the 1920s brought indigenous Siberians under the purview of the state, and more than any other institution, came to define the identities of the Evenki. In the post-Soviet period, the relations of power in this central Siberian community, and by extension in broader Russia, are vividly refracted through the lens of the schooling system.
This is an ethnography that weaves together portraits of several layers of community in a central Siberian town to provide insight into a time of jarring social change. I take the residential school as the central axis for considering a range of ways Evenki are redefining their relationships with the post-Soviet state. I consider the place of the residential school from a contemporary as well as historical perspective, because the school continues to be an important