David Anderson, Konstantin Klokov

Description
This research project investigates the unique way that identity claims are made in post-Soviet Siberia by combining anthropological research with the reading of a particularly important and evocative ethnographic archive. With the enactment of several key federal laws, as with the opening of Siberia to the interests of multi-national resource companies, Siberian peoples are now trying to refashion the ways they represent their identity. Of all the documents remembered by indigenous peoples today in Central Siberia, the 1926/27 Polar Census is widely cited as an important landmark in the construction of Soviet notions of citizenship, entitlement, and state surveillance. However, few scholars know that there was a parallel ‘polar census’ which aimed to give a comprehensive account of the demography, socio-economic conditions, land-use regimes, and worldview of Siberian rural peoples. This census was special in that a large percentage of its personnel were highly educated Populist geographers and ethnographers. The great value of the Polar Census today lies in the fact that the fieldnotes and primary documents give a picture of indigenous societies almost 10 years before they were restructured by the Soviet state.
This is an interdisciplinary project which lies at the cusp of modern history and anthropology. The result will be an intimate insight into sustainable reindeer and hunting societies at a date before which they were restructured by the Soviet state.
The project will work intensively with archival collections in Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Naryan-Mar, Salekhard, and Syktyvkar. Our goal is to digitize, and make available by internet, copies of the primary documents of the polar census for Western Siberia. Our fieldwork and analysis will concentrate upon Kola Saami, Komi and Khanty communities.