Elatusalade muutused Komimaa maapiirkondades 1990. aastatel

Abstract

Our aim is to analyse changes in livelihoods that took place among the Komi people during the 1990s. We concentrate primarily on hunting but touch upon fishing, agriculture, cattle breeding, and timber rafting as well. We employ primarily an autoethnographic perspective, presenting our study through Vladimir Lipin’s own reflections as well as stories told by his friends and their relatives. Furthermore, we contextualise Vladimir Lipin’s life experience by historical ethnographic studies to reveal similarities and differences in comparison with the situation at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries, as presented by earlier ethnographers. As a result of our analysis, we discovered that developments in Komi Republic, and primarily in Kulömdin District from where Vladimir Lipin is from, can be divided into three directions. Firstly, many old subsistence practices and subsequent attitudes were preserved. The second tendency was that economic and moral degradation in the society reach the grass-root level and the last trend was connected to initiating new techniques of subsistence (including re-introduction of some traditional practices). We conclude that collapse of the Soviet economic system had a rather severe impact on people’s lives and some negative tendencies are irreversible. However, most of the Komi people reacted to changes that took place during the transition period in economic environment of Komi countryside with diverse and creative means.