After the Kazym rebellion: on one report on the collection of operational information from the Sosva Mansi in 1934

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyze and publish a report on the collection of operational information by the Khanty-Mansiysk District Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) after the Kazym uprising of 1933–1934. The report is dated March 7, 1934, and it contains information about life, rights and customs of the indigenous inhabitants of the Sosva and Lyapin river basins located in the Berezovsky district of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug — Yugra (North-Western Siberia). In the history of the study of the Kazym rebellion, several main research lines are noted, including the identification and analysis of the factors of the uprising, their impact on life of the indigenous population, and also the analysis of the actions of the authorities to suppress the rebellion and to prevent similar protests. The events related to the Kazym rebellion and its consequences are preserved in historical and social memory. However, the documents still exist reflecting the actions of the authorities to prevent such events, which have not yet been introduced into scientific circulation. The prevention of protest movements was associated, first of all, with the identification of the “counter-revolutionary” sentiments locally, as well as of the religious and social status of local residents, and with the fight against shamanism and “kulaks”. A similar task was performed by an unknown author of the report. The report represents a logical narrative, with an emphasis on information related to the manifestation of religiosity by local residents and their attitudes towards the Kazym uprising; it contains the author's critical statements on his own observations and ends with recommendations for verifying the revealed facts. The author provides ethnographic description of the lifestyle, houses, dress, everyday features, home sanctuaries and cult attributes, bear celebration, maternity rites. In a number of cases, the document contains errors — in the name of the people living in the area, in the names of settlements. At the same time, noteworthy is the information on bear fangs, men's and women's hairstyles, the custom of “borrowing” from the sacrifices of the spirit, inter-ethnic relations, etc. Of particular value is the data on the rite of transition of a mother with a child back to the residential building after the childbirth, recorded in Verkhnenildino (Nildino), on the abandonment of a dwelling after the death of two children within it from illness (measles) in the village of Shomy (Shom). The information presented here largely complements the available materials on the social processes in the 1930s and represents a valuable source on the culture and life of the population of northern Sosva at the beginning of the 20th century.