Adapting Christianity on the Siberian Edge during the Early Soviet Period

Abstract

The focus of this article is on different adaptations of Christianity by the northern indigenous peoples of Russia in the early Soviet period. We shall examine the community of Yup'ik Eskimo maritime hunters who experimented with Christian ritual forms in order to overcome the crisis caused by the intru- sion of the Soviets. Naukan Yup'ik developed a Christian-influenced ritualistic practice to fight back against growing pressure from the Soviets. We propose that the spiritual developments of this community on the edge of Siberia were tightly related to changing economic, social and political conditions. Early Soviet reforms had predominantly a secular and materialistic character. At the same time, these reforms produced unexpected outcomes in the reli- gious attitudes, ideas and behaviour of the state's population. The intensifica- tion of religious feelings as a reaction to the public secular ideology and admin- istrative measures was a common phenomenon from central Russia to the Siberian periphery. It spread amongst different ethnic and social groups from the very beginning of the Soviet period (A Collection 1919). Among others, the radical atheistic turn in Russia also provoked an upsurge of various Protestant groups who acted as conservative, anti-modernist and anti-Communist move- ments. Significantly, there was a period of mutual imitation between Commu- nists and Protestants that has some importance for our analysis below. At the beginning of the 1920s, the competition between secular and spir- itual worldviews was developing rapidly in Siberia like everywhere else in Soviet Russia. The main architect of the anti-religious policies, Emelyan Iaro- slavskii characterised these processes as a search for ideological forms. As Iaroslavskii insisted, the poorest were more empathetic towards the anti-reli- gious propaganda (Iaroslavskii 1922: 141-142). This statement is in accordance with the principle of the Communist ideology that envisions the urban and rural proletariat as a leading force in the socialist development. But besides this formal ideological correctness, Iaroslavskii described the real situation of the contemporary religious front in Siberia differing considerably from the ideological statements he himself made.