The Polar Urals’ religious landscape in the 1920’s Images in the photographic collections of the Urals State Archive (GASO)

Abstract

The Polar Urals is one of the more remote locations in the Russian North. The indigenous peoples of the region: Mansi, Khanty, and Nentsy, whose economy was based on hunting, fishing and reindeer herding, to a great degree have preserved their lifestyle and religious traditions despite several attempts of both Russian Imperial and Soviet state authorities to modernise them. That became possible due to the fact that northern religions are more a way of life than a religion in the European sense of the word. While the religious traditions of the Mansi, Khanty, and Nentsy have a rather developed historiography, this article aims to evaluate a new source of insight into native spirituality by examining a collection of the photographic materials and glass positives, which were recently located in the State archive of Sverdlovsk oblast’ (GASO) and digitized. The article argues that examination of the photographic materials, in conjunction with written documents and contemporary indigenous experts’ comments, can serve as a valuable approach to reconstructing the Polar Urals’ religious landscape in the 1920s. Here I shall analyse the history of photo collection, explore the main techniques for taking pictures in the Polar Urals in the 1920s, and examine some potential methods for analysing the photo materials as a historical record of the religiosity of the indigenous peoples in the Polar Urals.