When the North Was Red: Aboriginal Education in Soviet Siberia

Abstract

This short book is the culmination of a decade of work by two Canadian anthropologists who pioneered research into the lives of Siberian Aboriginal scholars and intellegentsia. In contrast to the recently growing list of ethnographic work by Western scholars of Siberia, their work is not based upon long-term, on-site, field research in an isolated rural setting nor an intimate familiarity with languages. However, with the exception of Humphrey (1983), it is one of the only accounts of Siberian indigenous identity and politics from the important period preceeding the crumbling of the Soviet Union.Bartels and Bartels conducted their field research in the early 1980s for the most part within the institutional environment of the Faculty of Northern Peoples of Hertzen State Pedagogical Institute. Located within the heart of urban Leningrad (St. Petersburg), this institution has been famous since the 1920s for its pivotal role in training Aboriginal cadres from all parts of the Siberian North in indigenous languages. The fact that on-site rural fieldwork was forbidden to the authors did not prevent them from meeting and interviewing representatives of some 20 Aboriginal nations; many of whom who have today become significant actors in Siberian Aboriginal-rights organizations.This work is rather special, some would say controversial, for the fact that Bartels and Bartels took seriously the loyalty and optimism of the students they encountered for Soviet socialist ideals. In the first chapter of the book, they rightly dismiss any discussion of assimilation or Russification as being inappropriate frames of analysis to account for the complexity of Soviet nationality policy. Instead, throughout the book, they explore two local concepts of national consolidation and Sovietization. The former concept refers to what may loosely be described as the Soviet state's affirmative action policy of encouraging representation and active participation from each of the officially recognized nations of this multinational state. The latter concept refers to this state's characteristic stress upon industrial and urban modes of life. Together the two policies combined in an attempt to provide modern housing, health care, education and occupations to all nations in a manner which did not threaten languages or costume (but impacted strongly upon other aspects of day-to-day life). This privileging of hegemonic discourse during a period of time when the Soviet state was at the apogee of its power may strike some readers as being either naive or uncritical. However, their ethnographic sensitivity to the goals of this subset of the Soviet intelligentsia has stood the test of time better than other works written in the sardonic genre of Sovietology. As members of the Siberian intelligentsia today look around at their native villages ravaged by the indifferent policies of market liberalization, they fondly recall the good times (rashee bylo luchshee) of the early 1980s documented in this work. …