“Modernization,” Sedentarization, and Sovietization
Evenk lives within Russia today have significantly changed from how they were lived even fifty years ago. Forced sedentarization began in the 1930s when Soviet cadres fundamentally reorganized production among indigenous Siberian groups. As among other indigenous Siberian groups like the Nivkhi (Grant 1995a: 91), Soviet cadres introduced what were called “simplest hunting units” arteli for short, and convinced Evenki to combine their reindeer herds into larger collective groups for “production.” This new organization of herding was meant to create joint use of herding equipment and techniques, but it was also meant to diminish the ties of clan-based social organization. One source claims that by 1937 through the “voluntary socialization” of reindeer herding there were thirty-two of these arteli in the Evenk District and eighty-six percent of the entire Evenk population was involved (Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964: 652). My interview material suggests that this wide scale collectivization was not particularly voluntary and probably did not encompass as much of the reindeer as officially recorded. One woman said that when Soviet officials targeted her father’s herd of 600 reindeer in the early 1930s he first attempted to hide them in another area of the taiga before he finally gave in and relinquished them during the state’s wholesale collectivization of reindeer a few years later (see Chapter 3). David Anderson points out that, with their specialized knowledge of the environment of the region and its rugged valleys, herders were able to hide portions of their herds while offering up some for the official count (2000: 47).
Soviet agencies charged with the task of collectivization intensified their efforts in the late 1930s in converting former arteli into kolkhozy (kollektivnye khoziaistva), or collective herding enterprises, in which many of the original Evenk herders remained primarily in charge of their former herds with minimal direction from the state. With the changes in organization, reindeer herding units came to be called “brigades.” As discussed further in Chapter 3, by the late 1930s and in a reorganization in the late 1950s to the 1960s, indigenous Siberian men were consolidated in state cooperatives where they continued to herd reindeer, hunt, or fish and turn over the end products to the state. This pattern officially continued until 1992 with the breakup of the Soviet system of state-organized production. In the post-Soviet era, Evenk clans vied for decollectivized land and control over herding and hunting territories, and by 1998 most of these had been predominantly claimed. As David Anderson notes (2000: 160–70), however, in some areas the decollectivization or privatization of state cooperatives has not taken hold because of local circumstances where territory bounded by the earlier Soviet state designations has continued to be politically beneficial for many.
In some cases in the Evenk District, clans have recently established claims to territory that formerly included Soviet villages. In conjunction with collectivization of herding and the restructuring of social relations, in the early 1930s these villages began to be targeted as “lacking prospects” or “inefficient” (neperspektivnye); they were gradually shut off from the broader network of Soviet bureaucracy by the 1950s. By the end of World War II, one half of the former settlements established in the Evenk District in the early twentieth century no longer existed. In the Illimpei region alone the small enclaves of Vivi, Amovsk, Agata, and Kochumdeisk were officially closed and lost their doctor’s assistants, veterinarians, and trading posts, all frequented by Evenki. In the 1990s, however, many families continued to return seasonally to these areas to fish and hunt.
In restructuring and consolidating the settlements, the Soviets not only streamlined production (and the supply of “producers” with foodstuffs) but also forced indigenous peoples into closer interaction with the central bureaucracies. This effort to consolidate villages and towns and resettle populations was part of a broader trend repeated throughout Russia in the 1960s as sovkhozy (sovetskie khoziaistva), or state agricultural cooperatives, replaced the kolkhozy (Pallot 1989). In the sovkhozy, reindeer herds were fully collectivized and became the property of the state, entirely supervised by government-appointed specialists; this contrasted to the former kolkhozy, where there was minimal direction from the state.23 The 1960s resettlement policy, repeated in the 1970s and 1980s in some regions of Siberia, displaced Evenki from traditional areas of herding, hunting, and fishing. It also led to a loss of skilled and administrative positions that Evenki had held in the small enclaves because newcomers occupied many of these jobs in the consolidated towns.24 While in 1932 Evenki comprised 81.9 percent of the Evenk District population, by the late 1990s they comprised just under 15 percent of the population.25 The influx of newcomers into the Evenk District followed a trajectory similar to that in other regions of Siberia (Grant 1995a: 120–30; Bogoslovskaia 1993; Habeck 1997).
Identities, Education, and the Politics of Language
The policies noted above led to radical shifts in Evenk social organization and cultural practices from the 1920s to 1990s. A particularly strong reminder of this legacy is the decreasing number of Evenk language speakers at the onset of the twenty-first century. Many Evenk intellectuals argue that language is critical to the revitalization of Evenk cultural knowledge (Monakhova 1999: 44). Recent statistics indicate, however, that today knowledge of Evenk language is not a primary signifier of Evenk identity. For instance, according to the 1989 Soviet census, of the 29,901 people who recognized themselves as Evenki, only 9,075 said they considered Evenk as their native language (Gos. kom. RSFSR po stat. 1991: 141). In the mid-1990s in Tura, it was extremely rare for Evenki under thirty-five to speak Evenk fluently. As inmigration from outlying villages intensified, however, this situation shifted somewhat in the late 1990s.26 Aside from language, there is a wide range of factors that continues to shape Evenk identities. The line between “Russian” and “Evenk,” for instance, is delineated in part as a strategy for pursuing resources available to members of each group. In everyday life, however, there are myriad ways in which these spheres are fused and intertwined, and language is one of these.
As Humphrey notes in her insightful work on ethnic identity and “chat” among the Buriat (1994b), everyday speech reflects borrowings between spheres; this is certainly the case with Russian and Evenk language usage. The Soviet era especially left its imprint in terms of technical and bureaucratic vocabulary borrowed from Russian. For example, in the Evenk sentence “Sobraniela upakt sagdyl kolkhoznikil eimeicheityn” (“All the adult kolkhoz members came to the meeting” or “Na sobranie prishli vse vzroslye kolkhozniki” in Russian), the word for “kolkhoz members” would be expressed in Evenk using a Russian root kolkhoznik, with an Evenk suffix, -il. There is also borrowing in the other direction, from Evenk into Russian, and this is most common for terms specifically associated with traditional Evenk subsistence practices or clothing. For instance, the Evenk word for tall boots sewn out of reindeer hide and sinew, untal, is used by Russian speakers and supplemented with Russian suffixes to produce, for example, unty.27 These small, but illustrative linguistic examples reflect the widespread cultural hybridity that continues in many forms in the North.
While it did not necessarily preclude affiliation with a range of identities, knowledge of Evenk language was a definite indicator of Evenk identity in the 1990s; it was quite unusual for those without at least one Evenk parent to take an interest in Evenk language.28 While those who knew Evenk were viewed as “true” (nastoiashchie) Evenki, many younger Evenki considered themselves to be Evenki but did not know the language. As discussed in Chapter 2, while some households had a type of primordial perspective on their alliance with either Russian or Evenk spheres of symbolic capital, many had complex kinship and social ties rooting them in both spheres. The Evenki in Tura employed a sort of “prospiospect,” to borrow a phrase from Ward Goodenough (see Wolcott 1989), a stance of shifting identities in the context of multiple influences.29 Each person had a prospiospect that was not just “Evenk” or “Russian” but an amalgamation of a range of experience. Particularly in instances