This article was downloaded by: [UQ Library]On: 10 November 2014, At: 01:50Publisher: Taylor & FrancisInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Polar GeographyPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tpog20

The aboriginal peoples of the lowerYenisey valley: An ethnographicoverview of recent politicaldevelopments in North Central SiberiaDavid G. Anderson aa Department of Anthropology , University of Alberta ,Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H4, CanadaPublished online: 23 Dec 2008.

To cite this article: David G. Anderson (1995) The aboriginal peoples of the lower Yenisey valley:An ethnographic overview of recent political developments in North Central Siberia, PolarGeography, 19:3, 184-218

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10889379509377570

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms& Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

THE ABORIGINAL PEOPLES OF THE LOWERYENISEY VALLEY: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW

OF RECENT POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTSIN NORTH CENTRAL SIBERIA

David G. Anderson(Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta,

Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H4, Canada)

Abstract: The author, an anthropologist having special familiarity with theproblems and development of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North, surveysthe impacts of modernization and post-Soviet social, economic, and political changeon the native peoples of the lower Yenisey River valley. The survey combinesinsights gained from one and one-half years of field work on the Taymyr Peninsula,an extensive review of the literature, and ongoing research conducted under theauspices of the International Northern Sea Route Programme. The focus is onchanges in indigenous lifestyles in light of the privatization of resources, devolutionof political power, and curtailment of state subsidies in the northern economy.

INTRODUCTION

In the introduction to her classic ethnography of formal and informal ex-change in two Buryat communities in Soviet-era Siberia, Caroline Humphrey(1983, p. 1) described the collective farm as a massive socioeconomic "experi-ment." The pioneering social experimentation of the disintegrating Soviet redis-tributive regime was not limited to rural agricultural institutions. Hierarchicalregional economic networks also provided very important juridical, political, andsocial guarantees on a scale that at first is difficult to understand for the Euro-American reader. Although the fate and developmental trajectory of the numeri-cally small peoples of the Siberian North was most explicitly set by legislationdrafted in Moscow (Slezkine, 1994), regional developmental initiatives like theBaikal-Amur Railway (Anderson, 1991) or Dalstroy (Stephan, 1994) have had asubtle but strong effect on the identity and everyday practice of native peoplestoday. Just as Humphrey (1983) identified the collective farm as a "total socialinstitution," these large projects that encompassed many political districts as wellas successive generations of planners, engineers, and frontiersmen can be thoughtof as total social initiatives. The depth to which everyday practice has becomeembedded in regional commercial networks has only become apparent withrecent proposals to auction them as if they were firms floating freely in ananonymous market. The goal of this paper is to provide an ethnographic overviewof the aboriginal peoples of the lower Yenisey River valley—a distinct regionthat I argue has become imaginable through its 70-year legacy as the centralterminus of the Arctic shipping consortium known as the Northern Sea Route.

184

Polar Geography, 1995, 19, 3, pp. 184-218.Copyright © 1995 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 185

The research from which this paper was derived originated in response to arequest from the International Northern Sea Route Programme to identify thesocial impact of increased shipping on aboriginal communities bordering theArctic sea lanes of the Russian Federation. A multidisciplinary and internationalresearch team was assembled to provide a wide range of historical, technical, andethnographic information on the Northern Sea Route, as the Government of theRussian Federation considered opening up this transportation corridor to inter-national shipping (e.g., Anderson, 1995). The arguments developed and articu-lated as a result of that research focused upon the direct and indirect impacts ofshipping upon the lives of the indigenous peoples of the region, but also arerelevant to the broader debate on the social impact of privatization and deregula-tion within the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in general (Van Atta,1993; Verdery, 1996) and within Siberia specifically (Humphrey, 1991; Clarke,1993; Osherenko, 1995). This paper extends the original research findings to anexamination of how multiple vectors of aboriginal social practice and identitywithin one region of Siberia have become intertwined with the distributivenetworks of the Northern Sea Route. The history of the Northern Sea Route andits technical and ecological dimensions will not be addressed in any detail here.Recent work on these topics can be obtained directly from the Programme(Andersen et al., 1995; Buchan, 1995; Granberg, 1995; Larsen et al., 1995),1 orcan be found in earlier surveys on the topic (Armstrong, 1965; Belov, 1969). It ishoped, however, that this ethnographic overview will provide readers with anintroduction to the Lower Yenisey Valley and will give those interested in theanthropology of development a wider comparative context in which to evaluateother massive industrial initiatives in the circumpolar Arctic.

The research for this paper was conducted during one and one-half years of fieldwork in the Taymyr Autonomous District (Okrug) for the Department of SocialAnthropology, University of Cambridge, from September 1992 to December 1993and in October and November of 1995. Funding was provided through a doctoralfellowship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.Observations on social practice were taken from life histories and the experiencesof Evenk and Dolgan residents of Khantayskoye Ozero (Lake Khantayka) and themembers of the Number One Reindeer Brigade of the Khantayka state farm.Statistical data were recorded from working government registries and archivalmaterial in Dudinka and Krasnoyarsk. Most of the observations in this paper werederived from the author's interviews, observations, and personal experiences duringthe extended period of field work. Supplementary source material has been addedwhere appropriate, and the specific sources of statistical data have been cited.

THE LOWER YENISEY VALLEY

The territory of the Lower Yenisey Valley includes the tundra lands, forests,and foothills that extend outwards from the left and right banks of the Yeniseyriver (Fig. 1). The "Lower Yenisey Valley" as defined here includes that corridor

1 The Secretariat of the International Northern Sea Route Programme, The Fridtjof NansenInstitute, Fridtjof Nansens vei 17, PO Box 326, N-1324 Lysaker, Norway.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

186 DAVID G. ANDERSON

• Villages with state farms• Citieso Resource extracting settlementso Abandoned villages

• ^ ^ — Oblast or kray— — — Okrug boundary

Rayon boundary

Fig. 1. The Lower Yenisey Valley, showing villages, cities, settlements, and administrativeboundaries.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 187

of cultural and economic activity extending from the port of Dikson on the ArcticOcean southward along the Yenisey River to a point north of the village ofTurukhansk. On the right (east) bank of the Yenisey, the region encompasses thetundra portions of the Taymyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Autonomous District (Okrug)between the ports of Dikson and Dudinka, which extend inland (eastward) to theheadwaters of the Pyasina and Kheta rivers. This treeless, industrial zone includesthe territory of the Noril'sk Industrial Rayon. South of the Taymyr Peninsula, theLower Yenisey Valley extends to the hilly and forested sections of the IgarkaIndustrial Rayon and the northern portion of Turukhansk Rayon along theKureyka River valley. On the left (west) bank of the Yenisey, this region includesthe wetland tundra extending from the Gydan Peninsula southward to the firstforests emerging in the southwesternmost corner of the Taymyr Okrug and thenorthern portions of Turukhansk Rayon.

The designation "Lower Yenisey Valley" is somewhat arbitrary, but I wouldargue that it is socially significant. Although no point in this region is economi-cally or socially isolated, it is within this territory that one can identify aneconomic and cultural complex that has been historically and is currently beingaffected by the Northern Sea Route. These otherwise disparate areas are unitedby no other single parameter. Cultural boundaries extend significantly farther tothe east, west, and south. Jurisdictional boundaries cleave this imagined territoryalong different lines. Informal trade links and regular air routes unite villages inthe Lower Yenisey Valley with other regions. However, the locus of economicand social activity tends to be centered within the boundaries thus described andwould be severely disrupted should the role of the Northern Sea Route be changedin concert with other economic reforms.

The Lower Yenisey Valley forms the central terminus for the Northern SeaRoute. The ports of Dikson, Dudinka, and Igarka provide havens and servicingcenters for traffic rounding the Taymyr Peninsula—a dramatic projection of theAsian mainland that pushes well beyond 75 degrees N. Lat. The mouth of theYenisey, which forms afleuve 40 km wide, also is the source for a significantproportion of the current commercial traffic of the Sea Route. Russian andforeign clients receive hardwood from the mills of Igarka as well as shipments ofrefined nickel and copper ore from the factory city of Noril'sk. Noril'sk isremarkable for its high level of built infrastructure. Even the High Arctic port ofDikson boasts brick houses with central steam heating serviced by air strips andhospitals. The comforts of Dikson pale, however, before the marble theaters,colleges, and the Petersburg-inspired architecture that one may find in Noril'sk.Although the short period of summer navigation makes it possible for river bargesto bring grain and containers from the railway termina to the south, and daily jetflights unite Noril'sk with Moscow, this highly cultivated cluster of urban areasalong the Lower Yenisey Valley relies on the Northern Sea Route for its mainlines of sustenance in the form of food, commerce, and even fuel.

The Ecological Landscape

Other than the obvious geographical marker of the Yenisey River itself, theterritory of the Lower Yenisey Valley is characterized by the transition of three

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

188 DAVID G. ANDERSON

ecological zones. The majority of the Taymyr Peninsula is located in the tundrazone, where one can find the short shrubs and lichen-covered hummocks that inthe spring and summer support the Taymyr population of wild tundra reindeer(Rangifer tarandus sibircus) and a wide variety of waterfowl that migrate yearlyfrom as far away as Africa. Most permanent points of settlement, excludingscientific outposts, are located farther south within the Central Siberian taiga.Here, at the intersection of the tundra and taiga, there are expansive tracts ofrelatively dense larch and pine forests interspersed with large patches of tundraand marsh. This speckled distribution of differing micro-ecological areas alongthe treeline is an ideal haven for fur-bearing animals such as the Arctic fox, forestreindeer {Rangifer tarandus Murray), and other large mammals such as mooseand bear. The majority of the traditional native settlements are located here,popularly described as being "along the forest's edge" (v kraye lesa). The thirdzone begins suddenly along the right bank of the Kureyka River and to the northof the port of Igarka. Here one finds the start of the classic Siberian taiga of firtrees and pine, with luxurious fur-bearers such as the sable.

This varied biome is heavily influenced by the Putorana alpine plateau. Theplateau begins along the right bank of the Yenisey river as a series of isolated,box-like foothills and becomes more rugged and steep to the east. The PutoranaUpland has had the ecological effect of pushing the treeline unusually far past theArctic Circle. This geographical factor has made the region along the edge of thePutorana Upland—the region corresponding the headwaters of the Pyasina andKheta rivers—a very rich and productive hunting ground and place in which toraise domestic reindeer. Not only does the far northerly presence of forest andfur-bearing animals make life on the land possible, the varied terrain created bythe flat-topped mountains of the Putorana Upland allows one to change ecologi-cal zones quickly by simply changing altitude as well as by moving laterally.Therefore, despite the commonly encountered myth in the Russian-languageliterature that the Lower Yenisey Valley is harsh and uninhabitable, for indige-nous peoples the great biodiversity and variety created by the rapid succession ofecological types makes this area a quite rich and secure one.

Extensive and Intensive Land Use

Both extensive and intensive types of land use can be found within the LowerYenisey Valley. The extensive system of land use of the native peoples of theTaymyr is an old land use regime, perhaps first appearing several thousands ofyears ago (Gracheva and Khlobystyn, 1994). Although it is an oversimplificationto group all the native peoples of Taymyr under one category (since their cultures,languages, and attitudes toward one another are not at all uniform), all of thesegroups practice a similar type of economy based on harvesting what the landgives to them for their own use or for trade. Their economies are culturallyinflected with a practical technology designed to quickly produce tools, andshelter on the spot, with available materials, and also the disinclination to rely onfinished goods or commodities that have to be carted about. It is useful to thinkof this land-use strategy as extensive, since it relies on a number of different typesof environments at differing times of the year and (in contrast to the other) does

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 189

not attach itself to one particular commodity to be exploited to exhaustion. Thereindeer herder, who manages a transportation system that works without petrolor machine-made parts, visits a number of different pastures often hundreds ofkilometers apart to find the best feed or best weather for the deer. Other peoplewho live on the land prefer to fish at certain times and place traps at other times.Those that use mechanized snowmobiles or all-terrain vehicles also are aware ofa number of different sites across the landscape where they can be sure the windkeeps the snow hard enough for travel or where the ice is not sufficiently thick.People who practice extensive land use have an intimate knowledge concerninga large number of places and conditions encompassing very great distances.

The second type of land use—intensive—is based on an industrial economythat produces the means for people to keep their immediate environment as stableand uniform as possible on the basis of the sale of single-commodity exports onworld markets. Within Russia, this type of civilization appeared as early as the17th Century in small confined areas, but became common across the countryonly in Soviet times after the Second World War. The factories, roads, andbuildings that physically represent this land-use regime in the Lower YeniseyValley were built on the backs of deported Latvians and Ukrainians, not tomention the Sakha and Dolgan sled drivers who carted supplies with theirreindeer until the late 1950s (Bond, 1984). Intensive land-use structures can befound in the cities of Noril'sk and Kayerkan, where miners and metal workerswork with bulldozers and trucks to harvest layers of copper and nickel ore refinedin huge smelters. The pellets produced after smelting are shipped by railway tothe port of Dudinka where a small number of people load them onto ships forexport to other parts of Russia or overseas. Surrounding these primary activities(which occupy about 30% of the population) are large numbers of administratorsand service staff who build and maintain dwellings, theatres, and stores. A largenumber of people on old-age or disability pensions (perhaps also 30% of thepopulation) remain in the cities with their families. This land-use regime also isassociated with a number of cells of activity, from meteorological stations andgeological camps scattered throughout the mountains and tundras and connectedto the center by helicopter, to the energy outposts of Snezhnogorsk, Svetlogorsk,and Messoyakha connected to NoriPsk through long energy corridors of hydro-electric transmission lines and gas pipelines. Most people do not habitually usemore than a few square kilometers of space around their immediate dwellings (ifone excludes the paid vacation leave to resorts on the Black Sea). It is useful tothink of this lifestyle as intensive, since it is centered on a number of stationaryand dense populated points that are economically and culturally organized toexploit very small territories (and indeed horizons of metal ore under theseterritories) and tend to classify the enormous distances between its outposts aseither barren or as raw material for further expansion.

The intensive land-use system also can be distinguished by its unique knowl-edge system. Instead of using knowledge to adapt flexibly to a number ofdifferent environments and to process goods for use from materials found on thespot, this system orients itself toward trade for materials to build dwellings, tools,and entertainments that shelter its citizens from the inconveniences of having toremain for many decades on a single, frigid, windswept location. In addition to

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

190 DAVID G. ANDERSON

producing a large number of non-portable goods, it is not a knowledge that everyindividual can carry around in his or her head—it requires a large division oflabor and many years of training. In order to support a large number of people,much energy, both natural (especially hydroelectric and petrochemical) andhuman, is expended on linking these isolated points on the map with all parts ofthe globe in order to feed, clothe, and house its citizens with materials not foundwithin the Valley. Overall, it is a type of knowledge that is not flexible. Asuccessful miner or manager follows strict performance criteria in a predictablefashion. Sudden changes in the environment, such as the severe freeze of 1976that burst the gas pipeline, or the current depressed world prices for nickel, causedistress and social dislocation. Perhaps most characteristic, its social organiza-tion is regulated in time horizons of no longer than five years, creating a psychol-ogy of impermanence that allows the formulation of economic and ecologicaldecisions that endanger the system's reproduction. The citizens of Noril'sk sufferfrom that city's own pollution. The residents from all of the outposts suffer fromshort-term political decisions, such as the flooding of the world metal marketswith cheap nickel at the start of the 1990s.

The number of people subsisting under the umbrella of intensive land use inthe Lower Yenisey Valley is about six hundred thousand. That may seem likemany, but most were born in cities and villages all over the former Soviet Unionand intend to return there. There are a few fourth-generation residents of Noril'sk,but they number in the hundreds. The number of people practicing extensive landuse is approximately four thousand. This may seem small, but their biographiesand demographics are such that the cumulative number of souls passing throughthe landscape in one five-year period is far greater than that suggested by yearlystatistics, due to high rates of accidental death and infant mortality (cf. Pika1993).

On the map of the Lower Yenisey Valley, intensive and extensive types ofland use are best distinguished by their associated populated points (Fig. 1,Table 1). The intensive settlements are those resource outposts that excavate andprocess minerals for export to what is popularly called the "mainland" {materik).They are surrounded by their resource satellites, such as the camps along theMessoyakha-Noril'sk gas pipeline or the hydroelectric cities of Svetlogorsk andSnezhnogorsk. The intensive settlements serve as entrepots for production to themainland and for the receipt of goods from the mainland. They generally are quitewell built, with the same services, architecture, and entertainment of citieselsewhere in the Russian Federation. As the popular geographic terminologysuggests, they exist like islands, earning their value and identity by their negoti-ated relationship to the mainland and not as living communities in their own right.It is the intensive settlements that are connected directly to the Northern SeaRoute. Other than their very well-established working relationships with eco-nomic activities "outside," they exist as isolated settlements with little contactwith the natural environment surrounding them.

The extensive settlements are those points on the map that serve as theadministrative headquarters for state farms. On the map they seem to be isolatedpopulated points, since they are rarely connected with the intensive networks ofshipping, ice-roads, or electric transmission lines like the larger cities. It is

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 191

TABLE 1

Intensive and Extensive Settlements and Their Population Size, Ratio ofNatives to Non-Natives, and Administrative Districts

SettlementPercentage

Population nativea Administrative district

Extensive settlements

VorontsovoBaikalovskNosokKaraulUst'-PortUst'-AvamVolochankaKhantayskoye

OzeroPotapovoLevinskiye PeskiSovetskaya RechkaYanov StanMaduikaGoroshikha

449195

1,3851,040

740

701

942

540

509

467

148

12

84

212

69.271.872.612.644.390.680.388.1

49.549.999.841.695.239.2

(311)(140)

(1,005)(131)(328)(635)(756)(476)

(252)(233)(146)

(5)(80)(83)

Ust'-Yenisey Rayon, Taymyr AOUst'-Yenisey Rayon, Taymyr AOUst'-Yenisey Rayon, Taymyr AOUst'-Yenisey Rayon, Taymyr AOUst'-Yenisey Rayon, Taymyr AODudinka City Council, Taymyr AODudinka City Council, Taymyr AODudinka City Council, Taymyr AO

Dudinka City Council, Taymyr AODudinka City Council, Taymyr AOTurkhansk Rayon, Krasnoyarsk KrayTurkhansk Rayon, Krasnoyarsk KrayTurkhansk Rayon, Krasnoyarsk KrayTurkhansk Rayon, Krasnoyarsk Kray

Intensive settlements

DiksonMessoyakhaDudinkaNoril'sk

Snezhnogorsk

Svetlogorsk

Igarka

Turukhansk

4,3411,035

32,180179,757

n.a.

n.a.

26,506

n.a.

51.51.9

0.0

0.0

n.a.(533)(606)(146)

n.a.

n.a.

(66)

n.a.

Ust'-Yenisey Rayon, Taymyr AODudinka City Council, Taymyr AODudinka City Council, Taymyr AONoril'sk Industrial Rayon,

Krasnoyarsk KrayNoril'sk Industrial Rayon,

Krasnoyarsk KrayNoril'sk Industrial Rayon,

Krasnoyarsk KrayIgarka Industrial Rayon, Krasnoyarsk

KrayTurukhansk Rayon, Krasnoyarsk Kray

aAbsolute native population in parentheses.Sources: Data for Taymyr are for January 1, 1990 from the Administration of the TaymyrAO. Data for Turukhansk Rayon are January 1, 1988 from the Department of the North ofthe Administration of Krasnoyarsk Kray. Data for all intensive settlements exceptingthose of Ust'-Yeniseyskiy Rayon are 1989, from the Provincial Statistical Committee ofKrasnoyarsk Kray. A. A. Petrushin is gratefully acknowledged for assistance in assemblingthe figures.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

192 DAVID G. ANDERSON

instructive to think of them as "points," inasmuch as in association with thesesettlements there are dozens of small groups of people who move in orbit aroundthem, utilizing the natural resources of the land. Within the extensive settlements,a sizable number of people—perhaps as many as two-thirds of their popula-tion—do not follow a semi-nomadic existence, but nevertheless are fed andsupported by those who do. Although these populated points appear to be separateand isolated, if one were to produce a map recording the instances of humaninteraction with the land, they would appear as centers of large, extensive net-works that would encompass most of the spaces between the isolated urbansettlements.

The vast majority of native peoples live in extensive settlements and maintaina direct or indirect connection to harvesting activities on the land. The distribu-tion of native communities is not random, but can be associated with the majoroverland historical trading routes of the region (Fig. 2). The Yenisey River itselfprovides a major transportation artery. The treeline along the edge of the PutoranaUpland not only defines the boundary for a large range of harvesting practices,but it also marks an historically major overland transportation corridor intoEastern Siberia. Those communities located within the environs of the PutoranaUpland also are located along routes of easy overland travel by means of thedistinctively long, lake-filled valleys of the region. The left-bank communitiessimilarly provide convenient staging points for overland travel to the Ob' Riversystem. Although these transportation arteries are mainly historic, in the rareinstances when ice-roads are built or tractor trains assembled, these remain thepreferred routes. If the accessibility of air freight services were to disappear,these overland transport routes would reappear in contemporary activity.

This historical account of the distribution of native villages, however, doesnot explain the nature of contemporary land use in the area. Since the 1960s,intensive industrial activity has created a number of new physical features thataffect the extensive use of land as fundamentally as does the natural environment.Most directly related to the activity of the Northern Sea Route are the continu-ously open seaways at the mouth of the Yenisey River, which have formed a new,natural boundary between the left and right banks. This continuously openwaterway is blamed for stopping the migratory crossings of groups of wildreindeer from the right to left banks. Indirectly related to the Sea Route are themassive physical changes induced by the Noril'sk Mining and MetallurgicalCombine (now a part of the larger conglomerate, Noril'sk Nickel). In conjunctionwith this major smelting enterprise, one can associate the natural gas pipelinefrom the left-bank interior to the city of Noril'sk, the recent construction of twohydroelectric reservoirs (at Svetlogorsk and Snezhnogorsk), and the rings ofheavy-metal and sulfur dioxide pollution emanating from the plant (Fig. 3). Theobstructions of the pipeline and two reservoirs have changed the mobility ofpeople and of the wild and domestic animals that they manage. The effects of theexpanding rings of air pollution from Noril'sk have, in turn, made large portionsof land unusable for hunting or herding.2

2For more on the destruction of reindeer pasture as a result of the activities of the Noril'sk Nickeljoint-stock company, see Shchelkunova (1993)--Ed., PG.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 193

Summer Pastures& Calving Grounds

ToTura Evenkiia

Wild Deer Migration Routes

Trading RoutQ

Provincial Boundary

District Boundary

Fig. 2. Historical overland trading routes and fall migration routes of wild deer.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

194 DAVID G. ANDERSON

EVENKIAUTONOMOUS

OKRUG

CitiesResource extracting settlementsOblast or kray boundaryRayon boundary

Heavy metal pollutionZ 2 Copperr~1 Nickel

Pipeline—-—- Railway

High-voltage power line

Fig. 3. Contemporary impacts of industry: approximate areas of heavy-metal pollution andenergy corridors.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 195

The effects of industrial development are complex and could be best ex-plained by describing the history of traditional subsistence economic activities ineach micro-region. This is a task more detailed than this overview can provide.In general terms, the changes exerted on human geography by industry might beseen as an expanding ring that leaves the land barren of human activity within itscompass. The results of pollution and obstructions have forced native hunters andherders (as well as Russian hunters) to search out new lands along the peripheriesof their former territories. Thus, since the 1960s, one can sketch out a changefrom a network of small, evenly spaced communities arranged along traditionaltransportation routes to a pattern of peripheral villages serving as centers forsemi-nomadic hunting and trapping.

Among the unique problems created by this expanding ring of adverse envi-ronmental impacts are the growing dependence of aboriginal communities ontransfer payments and subsidies and the problem of a land shortages. As subsis-tence activity is forced to relocate along the ever-receding edge of the ring, thecosts of bringing meat, fish, and furs become increasingly high. As shall bediscussed in the next section, this process of displacement has the paradoxicaleffect of removing producers from the lands in the immediate vicinity of indus-trial sites but placing them in economic and jurisdictional dependence upon thecivil institutions associated with the Northern Sea Route. The expansion ofproducers into new lands also creates problems of space, since displaced produc-ers encounter other displaced hunters along the peripheries of their territories.The problem of a land shortage is becoming exacerbated by the new politics ofland privatization, which forces people to establish private land title in areaswhere considerable overlap of activity is occurring.3

There is an additional social problem created by the expanding reach ofintensive settlements over the rural areas of Taymyr. There is considerableevidence that the depopulation of the tundras and taigas associated with resettle-ment and the expanding ring of pollution from the extensive settlements hasdisrupted the population dynamics and migration routes of the Taymyr popula-tion of wild reindeer. This population, which officials in the Department ofAgriculture of Taymyr informally estimate to be approaching 700,000 animals(November 1995), has since the late 1960s responded chaotically to the changingconditions by over-wintering in unpredictable new areas. Over the past 10 yearsthe former north-south migration route has changed to a west-east orientation.Biologists feel that the chaotic movement of the deer is a learned response toincreased pollution and intensive, organized hunts of the herd with automaticweapons in order produce fresh meat for the intensive settlements (Klein, 1979;Klein and Kuzakin, 1982; Novikov, 1983; Geller and Vostryakov, 1984; Shideleret al., 1986). While the exploding population of deer and their chaotic migrationroutes remain a biological mystery, it has become a serious social problem. Thosecommunities nearest to the urban centers of the Noril'sk industrial node have losttheir domestic herds of reindeer because of the unpredictable movements of thewild herd (which steals away the domestic deer during the fall breeding season).Year by year there are reports of the loss of deer extending farther and farther

3See, for example, Fondahl (1995)--Ed., PG.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

196 DAVID G. ANDERSON

along the Khatanga River valley. Within the Lower Yenisey Valley, domesticreindeer herding survives only across the left bank of the Yenisey (where the wildherd can no longer cross) and in the right-bank communities of Potapovo andKhantayskoye Ozero. The latent impacts of this ecological problem are serious,for as social welfare payments become limited in this time of austerity, thecapacity for local aboriginal hunters to subsist on meat from the land also islimited by the lack of reindeer for transport or predictable points at which to huntthe wild deer.

The Political Landscape

In a state that possesses a highly structured redistributive economy, theboundaries of administrative units are a very important fact of the geography.Although the current policy of privatization may dilute the allocative powers ofthese administrative units, they will remain the main political actors in theplanning and construction of settlements and transportation corridors. It isthrough the agency of administrative units that capital associated with develop-ment initiatives like the Northern Sea Route is channeled in the form ofservices to aboriginal peoples. In assessing the impact of these institutions onnative peoples, it is important to distinguish between regional units and localunits.

The territory of the Lower Yenisey Valley is divided into four regionaladministrative units, which mark the limits of the redistributive authority ofregional governments. The main regional authority is that of the Taymyr Autono-mous Okrug in which the ports of Dudinka and Dikson are located, as well asthe majority of the aboriginal extensive settlements. Within the Taymyr Okrug,the mining/metallurgical city of Noril'sk is set within an independent jurisdic-tional unit known as the Noril'sk Industrial Rayon. South of the Taymyr Okrug,along the Kureyka River, is the territory of Turukhansk Rayon. Extending upfrom the port city of Igarka into the foothills and forests of the right bank ofYenisey is a second independent jurisdictional unit, known as the Igarka Indus-trial Rayon (Fig. 1).

These administrative units do not reflect pre-existing cultural or historicboundaries, but instead the convenience or whims of regional administrators. Themajority of the population in the Taymyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Autonomous Okrugis immigrant European (despite the name of the unit). Of the native peoples, whoform the majority in the rural areas of the Taymyr, there are two who essentiallyare wholly circumscribed by these regional boundaries: Entsy and Ngos(Nganasany). All others have political and cultural links outside of these territo-ries. The Evenki are associated with territories that straddle the boundaries of allthe aforementioned regional units. Dolgans share kinship and trade links withSakhas (Yakuts) living within the Evenki Autonomous Okrug and in the SakhaRepublic. The Taymyr Nentsy are linked to other Nenets groups inTyumen' Oblast.Since the 1960s, the extra-territorial cultural contacts for each nation have be-come increasingly limited. These ties, actively expressed today in stories and mutelyin dialectal differences, represent the former history of exchange of marriagepartners, reindeer, and manufactured goods. The contemporary corridors of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 197

inter-regional trade and social interaction to a great degree flow within the newboundaries of regional units and their component local units. Encapsulatedgroups such as the Taymyr Evenki or even those who still consider themselves tobe Taymyr Yakuty often speak of themselves as "isolated" or "alone." Evenmodern means of communication such as Evenki radio or newspapers from theneighboring Evenki Autonomous Okrug generally do not extend beyond theterritorial orbits of their native administrative units.

Somewhat unique to the Lower Yenisey Valley, in comparison to other partsof Siberia, is a variety of local administrative units. Here, as elsewhere, there arerayon governments that form an intermediary redistributive unit between regionalunits and the local village authorities. However, in addition to the rayony there isthe federated city council government (gorsovet) of Dudinka, which includes alarge rural area and several villages. The independent industrial rayony surround-ing Noril'sk and Igarka are a third type of administrative unit. While all of theselocal administrative units in some form redistribute income or regulate activityassociated with the activities of the Northern Sea Route, they are all subservientto different federal and provincial bureaucracies.

Within that portion of the Taymyr Okrug that concerns this report, there aretwo rayony, one industrialized rayon, and one city council government. The vast,sparsely inhabited, High Arctic tundras within Dikson Rayon can practically beexcluded from the analysis.4 Ust'-Yenisey Rayon administers the tundra areasdownriver from the city of Dudinka, encompassing five native settlements. It isa primary actor in the relationship between the state and the Nenets and Dolganfishermen, reindeer herders, and hunters. The city council government ofDudinka administers five native settlements in addition to the city itself and theMessoyakha pipeline station. It channels services to Dolgan, Ngos, Entsy,Nentsy, and Evenki citizens. The Ust'-Yenisey Rayon and Dudinka city councilgovernments are the primary administrators of the aboriginal population in theLower Yenisey Valley. Both local administrative units are subservient to theregional Taymyr Autonomous Okrug government in Dudinka. The regional gov-ernment in Dudinka is formally subservient to the provincial government inKrasnoyarsk. The Noril'sk Industrial Rayon is the local administrative unittending to the urban, immigrant populations within its city as well as the energyoutposts of Snezhnogorsk and Svetlogorsk located outside of its boundaries. In1954, the city of Noril'sk was declared a "City of Kray Subordination" {gorodkrayevoy podchineniyd) and thus answers directly to the administrators ofKrasnoyarsk Kray and not Dudinka (despite the fact that NoriPsk is geographi-cally surrounded by the Taymyr Okrug).

This complex jurisdictional picture is in the process of change. In 1992 and1993, although the okrug government in Dudinka was formally subservient toKrasnoyarsk, in practice it preferred to negotiate directly with Moscow for itsbudget. In 1992, it declared its intent to separate from the patronage of Krasnoyarskand become an equal member of the Russian Federation. The Noril'sk Industrial

4Although there are hunters working along the banks of the Yenisey around Dikson and undoubt-edly Nganaan and Dolgan hunters that wander into the rayon occasionally, this rayon primarilyadministers the port city of Dikson and the navigational settlement surrounding it.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

198 DAVID G. ANDERSON

Rayon had been jurisdictionally subservient to Krasnoyarsk for its civil services(such as health and education) but its dominant enterprise—the Noril'sk Miningand Metallurgical Combine—was subservient to its Moscow ministry for itsbudgets and plans. In 1993 this powerful corporation began acting like a sover-eign entity by assuming control of retail distribution and freight transportation inDudinka and in the extensive settlements of western Taymyr. In 1995, over theobjections of the government of the Noril'sk Industrial Rayon, the Plantofficially registered itself as a corporation within Taymyr, pointing to a compli-cated anomaly in Soviet-era law that suggested that the postage-stamp territoryof the Noril'sk Industrial Rayon had not been properly ceded. For legitimacy, thePlant gained the support of the Taymyr Association of Peoples of the North andthe local newspaper (which dutifully changed its title from Northern Truth toNorthern News to signal its allegiance to the Combine). As of February 1996, theexact legal status of the Noril'sk Industrial Rayon is still under debate in theRussian Parliament and in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.What is interesting about this conflict is that it has all of the same elements of aland-claim conflict in the Canadian or Alaskan Arctic, with the one exception thatthis conflict has been spearheaded by the corporation and not by an aboriginalgroup.

The remaining rayony and city council government in the Yenisey Valleyadminister only a small fraction of the aboriginal population. This fractionshould be mentioned, however, since it is culturally linked to the Taymyraboriginal people but often is overlooked in descriptions of the politics of theregion. The Evenki and Ket populations in the Northern portion of TurukhanskRayon occasionally overlap in land use with the Entsy, Nentsy, and Evenki ofthe Taymyr. Turukhansk Rayon is subordinated to the provincial government inKrasnoyarsk. The Igarka city council government administers territory that isinhabited by a small number of Evenki who may share territory with the TaymyrEvenki. The rural areas of the Igarka city council government are in practiceused by the "Khantayka" state farm in the Taymyr Okrug, which employsmany Evenki born in Igarka. This city council government is subordinated toKrasnoyarsk.

Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the inconveniences created byarbitrarily drawn boundaries were resolved by the jurisdictionally superior statetrading organizations, state transport agencies, and state economic ventures. Itwould be commonplace for Evenki in Turukhansk Rayon, in Taymyr, and in theIgarka city council government jurisdiction to fish for the same fish factory, or toreceive their store-bought goods from the same retail agency. In another exampleof cross-jurisdictional cooperation, the agencies responsible for the procurementof food in the Noril'sk Industrial Rayon would purchase fish and meat from thevillages in the Igarka city council government and in the Taymyr. Much of thiscooperation was guided by administrators in Krasnoyarsk. With the crumbling ofthe constitutional system of Soviet times, however, the institutional picture of theLower Yenisey Valley has become unclear and sensitive to the political ambitionsof each region.

The jurisdictional controversies that began in 1992 suggest that the Noril'skMining and Metallurgical Combine—now a part of the corporate conglomerate

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 199

known as NoriFsk Nickel5—is striving to restructure itself into a "corporatecity-state" that will exercise hegemony over all economic and social activity inthe city of NoriFsk as well as in many of the surrounding intensive and extensivesettlements of Taymyr and the Igarka city council government. The tradition ofintrajurisdictional trading that evolved during Soviet times might becomelegally ratified into a direct economic relationship between the aboriginal exten-sive settlements and the Noril'sk plant. In exchange for freedom of movement,the Plant seems prepared to assume responsibility for the economic well-being ofmost—but not all—outlying native areas. Dudinka may remain the seat of civilpower, but it would be dependent on the economic well-being and transferpayments from the Noril'sk plant. This hypothetically new jurisdictionalcontract would be very similar to that existing during the state-controlled Sovietsystem—only it would represent a replica modeled after a much larger, integratedwhole.

Whether or not the hegemonic ambitions of the Noril'sk Nickel joint-stockcompany are legally codified, field research in 1993 already revealed a bifurca-tion of living conditions within the Lower Yenisey Valley. This was confirmedthrough anecdotal accounts and conversations in 1995. Although the economiclifeline of all four regional administrative units is the Northern Sea Route, thesuccessful attempts at independence in Noril'sk and Dudinka made living easierfor both urban residents and aboriginal peoples. Subsidized prices on retailgoods, which have been sustained within this economic zone, were one-thirdlower than those in Igarka or in Turukhansk Rayon. The supply of goods withinthe territory of the Dudinka city council was reputed to be much better. In 1993intra-regional trading organizations, such as the Igarka fish packing plant, or theNoril'sk fish packing plant, began to consolidate their operations. The Noril'skcompany took over the former's territory, as the Igarka plant experienced aserious financial crisis. The Noril'sk plant also took over the geological surveyorganization in Igarka, transforming it into a sub-department of its own planningand exploration division.

The Ethnographic Landscape

The Lower Yenisey Valley frames a very complex ethnographic mosaic. Ifone excludes the intensive urban settlements, where there are reputed to beworkers representing over 100 nationalities, there are in the rural areas eight mainaboriginal nations, corresponding to four language families.

Nationality in Siberia is an ascriptive phenomenon. The national label ischosen by an individual at adulthood from a list of officially recognized groups.At the recommendation of the Institute of Ethnography in Moscow, the Russianstate maintains an official list of northern minorities—a list that has importantimplications for federal social welfare payments and special programs. Althoughfor all practical purposes an individual's choice of a nationality is a free one, the

5 Noril'sk Nickel is a joint-stock company, in which 38% of the authorized capital and 51% of thevoting stock is held by Russia's ONEKSIMBank (United Export-Import Bank), headquartered inMoscow (Izvestiya, January 16, 1996, p. 5)--Ed., PG.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

200 DAVID G. ANDERSON

fact that a person must chose only one identity for herself or himself from aformal list tends to hide some of the real complexity of national identities in thisregion. Although it is not important to explain all the subtleties of this issue here,one must bear in mind that young people may choose an aboriginal identity overa Russian identity and vice-versa, depending on the advantages of central statesubsidies. Furthermore, if the statistics of the area are consulted over a longperiod of time, one can stumble across the appearance and disappearance ofgroups of people according to the range of choices that statisticians and ethnog-raphers offered the people (Table 2). Thus, until the 1960s the contemporaryDolgans and some Evenki were recorded as "Sakha." Until 1966 the Entsy andNgos were statistically invisible. To this day there is some uncertainty as to theproper ascription of Entsy, Ngos, and Dolgans. This phenomena is not due somuch to a faulty methodology, but to a very rich ethnographic overlap betweenindigenous groups.

By far the most numerous aboriginal ethnic group in the area are Nentsy(Vasil'yev and Simchenko, 1963; Khomich, 1974). Traditionally, Nentsy aretundra reindeer herders occupying a vast expanse of land from the mouth of theYenisey to the mouth of the Ob' River. Their language is a Samoyedic one.Although it is said that all Nentsy are able to understand one another, there arestrong differences in dialect even within the Lower Yenisey Valley, not tomention the much broader territory that this group occupies. Nenets families to agreat degree use their language in day-to-day life. They are conspicuous withinthe regional capital of Dudinka by their speech. The local newspaper and radiobroadcast in their language. In terms of economy, their large herds of reindeerenable some families to live independently of the state economy, although theirherds probably are the most impacted by gas development on the left bank of theYenisey and by winter shipping traffic.

Entsy, who live to the south in the treeline village of Potapovo and on the rightbank of the Yenisey at Vorontsovo, are an ethnic group closely related to Nentsy(Prokop'yev, 1928; Dolgikh, 1962; Vasil'yev, 1963). Until 1966 they were officiallynot distinguished from Nentsy. Because of a high degree of bilingualism, manyEntsy speak the Nenets language, although the former differs significantly inlexicon and grammar. The interrelationship of the two groups has a long history,since certain exogamous clans with both nations have a long tradition of inter-marriage with one another. The economy of the Entsy has long been adapted to thepresence of Russian traders; it is best described as a flexible economy combiningfishing, hunting, and reindeer herding. The reindeer-herding technology of Entsyis similar to that of their sister nation, although the herds that they keep aresmaller by one order of magnitude. Entsy have suffered quite directly from thepollution of the Noril'sk plant. The Potapovo group, working in the PotapovoResearch Farm, has been forced to abandon their lands on the right bank of theYenisey because of high levels of heavy-metal poisoning and acid rain (Fig. 3).They are now competing for land on the left bank with the Evenki of SovetskayaRechka and the Khantayka state farm and the Nentsy of the Turukhard State Farm(Fig. 4).

Perhaps the most politically powerful and articulate of the aboriginal groupsare the Dolgans (Popov, 1935; Dolgikh, 1963). This group, with a population

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 201

ZARYATAYMYRA M 3 & OKTYABR'SKIY

1Oblast or kray boundary

' Rayon boundary

State farm boundary

Urban territories

Parks

Urban territories1 - Dudinka Reserve land2 - Norilsk Industrial Rayon3 - Norilsk Reserve land4 - Fish processing plant

Fig. 4. State farms and nature reserves of the lower Yenisey River.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

202 DAVID G. ANDERSON

TABLE 2

Aboriginal Nationalities of the Lower Yenisey Valley, Including OfficialEthnonyms, Vernacular Ethnonyms, and Populations

Officialethnonym

Dolgan (total)Taymyr

Sakha (total)Taymyr

Nenets (total)Taymyr

Evenki (total)TaymyrTurukhansk

RayonNganasany

(total)Taymyr

Entsy (total)Taymyr

Kets (total)TaymyrTurukhansk

RayonSel'kup

TaymyrTurukhansk

Rayon

Vernacularethnonym(plural)

Sakha (Sakhalar)

Sakha (Sakhalar)

Nenets (Nenets")

Evenki (Evenkil)

Ngo (Nia)

Enneche

Ket (Deng)

Shol'kup(Shol'kupmyt)

1990

4,8584,858n.a.n.a.

IMS2,445

474328146

812

8128585

1181

117C

342

32C

1979

4,3384,338

5353

2,3452,345

444338106c

746

746n.a.n.a.

780

78

45+n.a.

45

Population

1970

4,3444,344

6464

2,2472,247

413+413

n.a.

765

765179179d

n.a.0

n.a.

n.a.n.a.n.a.

1959

3,8713,871

6363

1,7891,789

413+n.a.413

711

7111818

n.a.2

n.a.

n.a.n.a.n.a.

1940

2,7852,7851,1831,183l,704b

l,704b

1,121563558

822

822b

—

n.a.0

n.a.

n.a.n.a.n.a.

1926a

1,231

1,826

2,730b

832

[867]1

[378]1

{751}29

183

{1,662}1859

aAll 1926 data are from Materially Pripolyarnogo perepisa 1926-27 (Novosibirsk, 1929).The totals are for the Turukhansk Kray—an administrative unit that encompassed thecontemporary territories of Taymyr, Turukhansk, and Taz rayony (Taz Rayon today is inTomsk Oblast). Although the inclusion of Taz Rayon in these totals does not affect thetotals for Dolgans, Yakuts, Evenki, and Nentsy, it does inflate the numbers of Kets andShol'kups. Working from the original source, I estimated new totals for Kets andShol'kups {shown here in brackets} excluding the census tracts of the former Taz Volost.The regional totals (albeled here as Taymyr and Turukhansk Rayon) represent Dudinka andMonastir Volost. In this census, Entsy and Nganasany were poorly distinguished fromNentsy. Their totals [shown here in square brackets] are from Levin and Potapov's NarodySibiri (Moscow, 1956).bThe total for Nentsy for the year 1926 most likely includes those people who now wouldbe classified as Nganasany or Entsy. In 1940 the total for Nentsy most likely included theEntsy.C1988.d1966.Sources: Data for the years 1939, 1959, 1970, 1979, and 1989 from the federal censusesare of questionable validity. All data userd here are from working files of the followingagencies unless otherwise marked—Taymyr 1990: The Statistical Administration of theTaymyr Okrug; Taymyr 1959-1979: The Department of the North of the Administration ofKrasnoyarsk Kray; Taymyr 1940: The Administration of the Taymyr Okrug; TurukhanskRayon 1959, 1979, and 1990: The Department of the North of the Administration ofKrasnoyarsk Kray.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 203

approaching that of the Nentsy (Table 2), is one of the two titular official nationsof the Taymyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Okrug. In practice, many of the senior officialsof the Taymyr Okrug are drawn from the ranks of the Dolgans (although manyare from those Dolgan settlements in distant Khatanga Rayon). The Dolgannation is officially understood to be a composite of Sakha, Evenk, Entsy, Russian,and Ngos origin. Almost any single Dolgan individual can find predecessorsamong these groups—although almost universally every Dolgan individualspeaks both the Dolgan language and the Russian language very well (but will notknow the others). The Dolgan language is very closely related to Sakha, which isa member of the Turkic family. Dolgans of the Lower Yenisey Valley, as is thecase with Ngo and Evenki, have experienced very serious changes to theirtraditional lifestyle because of the loss of their domestic reindeer through thechaotic migrations of the Taymyr wild reindeer population. Unlike their neigh-bors, there are a high number of Dolgan doctors, teachers, and other profession-als, who are quite vocal in lobbying for their rights and for the rights of otheraboriginal groups. Because of the affinity between the Dolgan language and theSakha language, there continue to be strong links between Dolgans of the LowerYenisey Valley and those Sakhas living in the Evenki Autonomous Okrug and theindependent Sakha Republic.

The Russian order of "Tundra Peasants" still is an ethnographically distin-guishable group, which has settled along the major waterways of the region(Popov, 1934). They trace their origin to the 17th century, when Russian traderssettled in the area to become aboriginal hunters and trappers. For the most partthey intermarried with Dolgan individuals and came to incorporate many aspectsof Dolgan lifestyle, including reindeer husbandry and this Turkic language.Presently, it is difficult to distinguish a "Tundra Peasant" from a Dolgan, unlessone asks about the ethnic origin of the person. This group has ceased to functionas a self-conscious unit of identity, and its members essentially are invisiblestatistically.

Ngos are a small but fiercely distinct Samoyedic-speaking nation living in thevillages of Ust'-Avam and Volochanka. They were one of the last groups to beexposed to the Soviet system and collectivized (Popov, 1948, 1984; Gracheva,1983). Their traditional profession as hunters of wild reindeer took them to thehigh tundra pastures of the interior of the Taymyr Peninsula. Although thecontemporary Ngos have lost their herds of domestic reindeer, and suffer from ademographic crisis, they still preserve their language and support shamanistictraditions. In terms of ethnographic research, this is one of the best-documentedgroups, for it is commonly thought to be an aboriginal group of great antiquityin the region. This makes their present economic crisis a particularly greattragedy.

The Evenki are perhaps the most widely dispersed nation across the territoryof the Lower Yenisey Valley (Rychkov, 1917; Vasil'yevich and Tugolukov,1960; Vasil'yevich, 1970, 1972; Tugolukov, 1985). Although their modest popu-lation is concentrated along the banks of the Yenisey River south of Potapovo(including Lake Khantayka), isolated Evenki families can be found living withinUst'-Avam, Volochanka, and Karaul. Their language belongs to the Tungus-Manchurian family. In the Lower Yenisey Valley they speak the Northern dialect

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

204 DAVID G. ANDERSON

of this widely distributed language family. Characteristically, Evenki individualsof the older generation are multilingual, speaking Russian as well as several otheraboriginal tongues. Contemporary Evenki populations tend to be highly assimi-lated into the majority populations around them, be it Dolgan or Russian. TheEvenkis of the Lower Yenisey Valley maintain extensive kinship ties throughoutthe Taymyr Peninsula, as well as in the Evenki Autonomous Okrug, the SakhaRepublic, and Turukhansk Rayon. Evenkis of the region have preserved theirtraditional areas of land use and their traditional skills of herding or fishing, butthey are becoming increasingly troubled by pollution from the Noril'sk miningand metallurgical complex.

To the south of the Evenkis along the Yenisey Valley in the villages ofMaduika and Goroshikha, are the Kets (Alekseyenko, 1978). This small huntingand fishing group is one of the most marginal to the economy of the LowerYenisey Valley. Their lands are being encroached upon by forest and mineralexploration interests moving south from Igarka, and as well as activities associ-ated with the Kureyka hydroelectric dam. The Ket language, a language uniqueto Siberia, is in danger of disappearing as a result of assimilatory pressure fromthe Russian language, and because of the small size of the population. It isremembered by older Evenkis that the territory the Kets occupied once was muchlarger, extending well up to Sovetskaya Rechka and the Kureyka valley. Al-though individuals still live in these areas, the majority of the Ket population isto be found in Turukhansk Rayon above Turukhansk and in the Evenki Autono-mous Okrug along the Podkamennaya Tunguska River.

COMMUNITY POLITICS

Up to this point, this report has focused on the overall structural trendsprevailing across the Lower Yenisey Valley. This level of analysis is misleading,however, to the extent that it gives the impression that the various institutionaland collective actors are conscious of one another's actions and that politics isconducted directly. The level at which face-to-face politics is carried out, espe-cially with respect to the indigenous peoples of the area, is in the extensivesettlements. Each extensive settlement in the Lower Yenisey Valley serves as thefocal point for the interaction of various communities. Within villages there maybe one or two aboriginal groups that function as integrated communities. In mostvillages, there also are loosely knit groups of immigrant producers who often alsoimagine themselves as communities. These various communities continue to beunited through the structure of the collectivized farm system.

The Collectivized Farm System

The network of collectivized farms that encompasses the rural areas of theLower Yenisey Valley (Fig. 4) is a relic of a rural development initiative under-taken within the Russian Federation during the late 1960s. The logic of thesystem was such that all productive activity occurring in tundra and taiga areaswas to be coordinated by the administration of one locally based authority,which would allocate production quotas, tools and equipment, and salaries and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 205

health benefits. The system was highly centralized and rationalized accordingcriteria of efficiency specified by the regional administrative units and the federalministries that were responsible for the farms. To achieve rationalization, manysmall populated places were eliminated and their residents resettled in largersettlements. The systematic resettlement and grouping of aboriginal producers inthe late 1960s and early 1970s marked the end of the finely dispersed pattern ofsettlements traditionally located for their access to transportation corridors orhunting or fishing resources and the beginning of the formation of the extensivesettlements described above. In order to support this newly rationalized agricul-tural system, central fiscal subsidies were introduced to support production incertain fields—reindeer herding, fishing, and trapping. The effect of the agricul-tural reforms of this era was to eliminate the distinction between " subsistenceproduction" and "market production" common in the North American Arctic.Although all aboriginal producers still eat food from the land and clothe them-selves in skins from the land, these are products that were accounted for within alarger formalized system of exchange. It is important in this context to emphasizethat activities such as reindeer herding are understood and structured as profes-sions and not as "traditional" activities in the Russian North. The organizationalqualities and the professional profiles built within the collective farm system, andin many cases the system of subsidies, remain as important today in under-standing the economy as they had been during Soviet times.

Since 1993 all state farms and collective farms have been made legallyindependent economic entities. This legal move meant that the coordination ofproduction within each farm by central authorities has ended, but the structuralintegrity of the farms has remained unchanged. In practice, each farm continuesto direct production and distribute money in the same manner as during Soviettimes. In order to fully understand how aboriginal producers are remunerated, itwould be necessary to summarize the history of each collective—something thatis beyond the scope of this report.

There is one general structural feature of the newly privatized collectivesthat does have a direct impact on the politics of the region. Unlike in the NorthAmerican Arctic, services in the former Soviet Union—such as the supply ofwater, electricity, and heat for homes and schools—were paid for and distributedby each local farm. Farms, in return, received subsidies to support these veryexpensive services from the regional administrative units on the basis of theproduction that they had achieved. Although various groups within farms arestriving for the status of private entrepreneurs, the fact remains that they cannotlight their homes, heat the village school, or receive spare parts and shellsother than through the institution of the collective farm. Thus, all communi-ties, be they of Evenki reindeer herders or Russian fishermen, continue tomarket production through collective farm organizations even though formallythese structures have lost their dominant role over the local economy. Althoughit may seem that the Northern Sea Route only affects aboriginal producersnegatively through pollution or positively through employment, the subtle factthat social and municipal services are subsidized by enterprises means that achange in the organization of the Sea Route will have an impact in these areas aswell.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

206 DAVID G. ANDERSON

TABLE 3

Selected 1989 Production Indicators for State Farms and City Fish ProcessingFactories of the Taymyr Autonomous Okrug

EnterpriseFish

(tons)

Arctic fox(rubles)

[estimatednumber]a

Blue fox(rubles)

[estimatednumber]a

Householdswith ownreindeer[numberof deer]

Statereindeer

Severnyy 127.4Zar'ya Taymyr 287.3Turukhard 18.2Ust'-Yeniseyskiy 136.2Pyasina 41.7Volochanka 90.2Khantayka 296.8Potapovo 40.5Yenisey 160.7Dikson Factory 251.2Dudinka Factory 1,144.0Noril'sk Factory 782.4

43,196 [1,079]46,642 [1,166]

n.a.24,689 [617]92,287 [2,307]34,528 [863]

0n.a.n.a.

218,400 [5,460]00

035,273

n.a.0

45,04240,08710,620

268,829 [3,840]n.a.

000

[504]

[643]

[354]

4152n.a.n.a.

00

22160000

[175][11,049]

[297][188]

1,14612,40618,544

000

4,2695,000

0000

aAll State prices for fur were stable until 1989 and therefore provide useful comparisons.The number of animals caught were estimated from a price of 40 rubles for an arctic foxand 70 rubles for a blue fox.Source: Taymyr Autonomous Okrug.

The Regional Division of Labor

The primary products that originate from the rural areas of the Lower YeniseyValley are fish, fur, and reindeer meat (Table 3), the same staples that dominatedoutput during the height of the collectivized farming system. There is no reasonto expect that these products will lose their importance in the future. Althoughthese are the same products that were "traditionally" produced before the con-struction of the urban intensive settlements, it must be realized that they are not"traditionally" consumed. Instead of being the objects of subsistence production,they are sold in order to feed settled populations within the villages and urbancenters of the Lower Yenisey Valley.

The most valuable commodity in the decentralized economy is that of fish.Until the summer of 1995, fresh fish was actively sought and processed by theNoriFsk Fish Factory for sale within the urban supermarkets in fresh and incanned form. This was a popular commodity among the immigrant communitieswho primarily populate the intensive settlements. The sale offish as a staple untilrecently has provided a great savings for these centers, even if one factored in theSoviet-era practice of flying the fish by helicopter from a number of the outlyingproduction points. Fish was produced for the Noril'sk Fish Factory by Evenki andDolgan producers in the Khantayka State Farm using the resources of LakeKhantayka and the Khantayka Reservoir. Nenets and Enets fishermen along the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 207

banks of the Yenisey working for the Potapovo Experimental Farm and theTurukhard State Farm provided fresh saltwater and river fish. The Ngo andDolgan fisherman of the Volochanka State Farm also supplied the Noril'sk FishFactory, but to a lesser degree. This regional economy was disrupted in 1995when the Noril'sk Fish Factory announced that it could no longer afford tosubsidize the cost of flying fish to its warehouses by air.

In terms of the balance sheets of the collectivized farms, the sale of fish hasbeen the single most profitable item. In terms of money profit, the activity waslucrative (earning the average fisherman up to 100,000 1993 rubles for twomonths work). More importantly, since the transport costs were paid for by thebuyer, there was a continuous flow of transport into the villages that allowedpeople to move between the city and the extensive settlements, and also allowedsupplies and perishable food to be transported quickly and cheaply. The strongregional market in fish was a good replacement for the crumbling of the central-ized retail network. Since the collapse of regional transportation subsidies, localofficials are investigating sources of capital in order to build several village-based canning factories to permit the export of fish to Noril'sk by summer rivertransport.

Reindeer husbandry still provides an important source of employment andfood, but has lost its lucrative position as the breadwinning activity on thecollectivized farms. In Soviet times, the bulk weight of reindeer meat producedfor sale for the state formed the basis upon which subsidies were distributed tothe extensive settlements. The delivery price established would be unique foreach collective farm, in order to reflect the amount of capital that had to betransferred. Much domestic reindeer meat still is distributed through collectivefarms, but it now is sold to provide village residents with a cheap source of meat,rather than to collect subsidies. Wild deer meat, when it can be harvested frommigrating groups of wild deer, also is harvested for this purpose. The harvestingof reindeer meat in the extensive settlements is now assuming a function thatmight be identified as "subsistence," with the exception that the weapons,vehicles, and fuel used to hunt and transport reindeer meat still are provided freeof charge by state farms from funds collected from the sale of fish or furs to theurban centers. It is important to realize that even activities such as hunting forfood still rely upon certain types of central state subsidies that ultimately arebased on the health of industrial activity in the region.

Reindeer husbandry is most highly developed in Ust'-Yenisey Rayon, whereNenets herding families keep up to ten thousand head of reindeer. These herds arekept in the High Arctic expanses of the Gydan peninsula in the summer and arebrought south, closer to the villages of Ust'-Port and Karaul, in the winters.Reindeer husbandry in this area probably is the least affected by industrialpollution, but the movement of herds is strongly affected by gas pipelines and thetraffic of the Northern Sea Route. The structure of everyday life within the Nenetsherding brigades is the least reliant on the trade for industrial products and theservices of the welfare state. It is not odd to hear stories of Nenets families withno state documents nor affiliation with collective farms who, in anticipation ofchance meetings with airborne geologists, keep furs and meat to trade for metalutensils and shells. The clearest threat in this area is the privatization initiative

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

208 DAVID G. ANDERSON

that seeks to break up common pastures into individual tenure.6 Although landprivatization may end up formalizing a type of ownership and land use that theNentsy had practiced covertly, the ratio of people to animals is so large that therewould not be enough land to allow each herder a pasture for a domestic herdnumbering in the thousands. In an extensive landscape such as the tundra zone ofthe Lower Yenisey Valley, there now looms the paradoxical threat of a landshortage.

In all other areas of the Lower Yenisey Valley, the impact of industrialdevelopment upon reindeer herding has been more pronounced. In most of theextensive settlements in the territory of the Dudinka city council, domesticreindeer herding has been eliminated through the loss of stock to wild groups ofdeer. Within the Potapovo and Khantayka state farms, and the collective farm inSovetskaya Rechka, the expanding land use of reindeer herders in reaction topollution has created a problem whereby the outlying pastures of adjacentfarms now overlap with one another and with the ranges utilized by Nenetsreindeer herders. The yearly hunts of wild deer, which are an important aspectof the economy of the Ngos and Dolgans in Volochanka and Ust'-Avam,increasingly are hindered by the shifting migration routes of the wild deer andthe lack of readily available spare parts and fuel for mechanized transport. Inthese two communities, hunters no longer have domesticated reindeer to use astransport.

The final area of economic activity is fur trapping. This modest but lucrativeprofession has been a consistent source of income in hard currency. The classicfurbearing animal of the Lower Yenisey Valley is the arctic fox. Not only are thetundra foxes of great size and quality, but many collective farms raise domesticsilver foxes. Along the southern reaches of the Valley, in the taiga areas, therealso are populations of muskrat, sable, and wolverine, but in densities that do notapproach those of areas in Central Siberia.

The sale of fur used to be a strictly controlled state monopoly, but has longbeen a source of black market income even in Soviet times. The tendency in thecurrent period is for furs to be bartered between individuals in order to secureaccess to fuel, shells, or transport. A bear skin or wolverine fur might be tradedwith a helicopter pilot in order to coax him to siphon out a portion of his petroltank so that a hunter may be able to fuel a snowmobile or portable generator. Atrapper having good connections with military or commercial pilots may arrange,in exchange for furs, to have food and supplies brought to him via an aircraft enroute to some other destination for other purposes. Some furs, perhaps one-thirdof those hunted, may be traded through collective farms in order to affirm therelationship of the trapper to the director and secure another avenue for theacquisition of spare parts or shells. In communities where the collective farmstructure is weak, such as Sovetskaya Rechka or Ust'-Avam, individual barter infurs may well represent the primary strategy for obtaining retail goods.

The barter trade in furs that is widespread throughout the Lower YeniseyValley should not be viewed purely as a form of entrepreneurship. It is sympto-matic of the collapse of the retail trading system. Although it might be argued by

6 See Osherenko (1995)--Ed., PG.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 209

some that trade should be self-supporting, it is a common perception amongaboriginal people and administrators that fair and equitable trade is a significantelement of the social contract between the state and the aboriginal peoples. Thusbarter in furs, although not immediately appearing to be a problem linked to thecommerce generated by the Northern Sea Route, is in fact a sign that the fruits ofinternational commerce are not reaching local, rural peoples. It should be expectedthat in the future there will be attempts to rebuild a retail distribution system onthe basis of income earned from the Northern Sea Route directly or indirectly toensure that outlying extensive settlements are supplied with the necessities oflife.

Privatization

According to official political rhetoric, the economic system of the LowerYenisey Valley is undergoing a fundamental change as a result of the ongoingeconomic reforms within the Russian Federation. Legislation enacted in 1992 and1993 has made it legally possible for producers to lease agricultural lands forlifelong private tenure. In 1994, the long-awaited privatization of state companiessuch as the Noril'sk Mining and Metallurgical Combine and certain shippingcompanies of the Northern Sea Route was completed. However, it is difficult todetect much evidence of a major change in daily activities within collective farmsor in the Noril'sk plant.7

There are a number of important reasons that explain the paradoxically slowpace of privatization. Most important are the high costs of transport and heatingin the Arctic—costs that make the state the only economic actor capable oforganizing such crucial activities. The second concerns the conservatism of manyadministrators in the regional capitals, who are strongly sceptical of the advan-tages of a privately administered economy and place great faith in the virtues ofcentralized institutions. Finally, there are certain objective "network" problemsin breaking apart centralized chains of supply and systems of land use that havecreated dynamics of their own (Prior, 1991).

Although all state and collective farms were dissolved officially in 1993,these institutions continue to exist as the social groupings and legal entities thatare able to provide collective goods. Within Taymyr in 1993, all of the state farmswere the primary recipients of emergency grants for operation of the powerstation and heating plants that serviced the villages. With the exceptions ofLevinskiye Peski and Volochanka—where village residents sat in the dark formost of the winter of 1993—the farms perform this traditional role admirably.The farms remain nodal points in communication and transportation to such adegree that their directors can discourage individuals from privatizing theirtraplines or reindeer pastures merely through the threat of withdrawing theseessential services. In the Khantyaka State Farm in 1993, three private farmerswere officially noted on the map, but none dared actually to work outside of the

7However, see the current debate over operating procedures in the Noril'sk Nickel Joint-StockCompany as a result of ONEKSIMBank's acquisition of a controlling block of voting shares (CurrentDigest of the Post-Soviet Press, March 6, 1996, pp. 4-7)--Ed., PG.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

210 DAVID G. ANDERSON

authority of the farm. Without massive investment by private entrepreneurs inretail distribution networks and communication systems (which is unlikely),these fragments of the state economy will continue to play a central role in rurallife within the Lower Yenisey Valley.

The scepticism of local officials regarding the virtues of privatization does notstem solely from their provincial values but also from many years of experienceof being at the center of a redistributive economy. Their hesitancy thus might beinterpreted both as a reluctance to relinquish their power and as a conservativehesitancy to ensure that any new system of trade and distribution will be effectivein securing the needs of the people. Additionally, since many of the senioradministrators are of aboriginal ancestry, there is a reluctance to give immigrantRussians property in land until the question of the rights of native people areclearly settled. This policy has forced many non-native trappers to leave theircabins to return to the their homes in the European parts of Russia.

Finally, there are serious problems in dividing up assets (for individualtenure) that have been used collectively for many years. The best example is land.Because of the increasing circumference of the rings of pollution emanating fromthe intensive settlement of Noril'sk, there is a growing shortage of lands that canbe divided up and allocated (Shchelkunova, 1993). The poisoning of great ex-panses of pasture and traplines has clouded the issue of aboriginal land tenure. Indistricts like the Evenki Autonomous Okrug, lands were given to descendants ofthe original clan-based extended families that managed them before the 1960s(Popkov, 1994). In the Lower Yenisey Valley, the high number of village reset-tlements in combination with the fact that lands have been removed from produc-tion because of pollution, makes it impossible to identify old aboriginal areas.Almost all aboriginal producers have been forced by circumstance to move tonew areas.8 The one exception is in the area of Nenets pasture on the Left Bankof the Yenisey. Here most lands are still in clan-controlled stewardship. Thechallenge to privatizers here is the problem of supporting such large numbers ofdomestic reindeer within an enclosed space. If the number of production unitswere to increase twenty-fold, as population figures might suggest, there wouldnot be enough territory to divide between smaller herds without the appearanceof conflict-ridden overlaps.

It is clear that the politics of privatization will continue. In the Lower YeniseyValley, as opposed to regions in southern Siberia, it is most likely that institutionsof monopoly and corporate management will persevere in creating an economicclimate very similar to that common during the Soviet period. It should beexpected that aboriginal producers will retain collective institutions to managetheir civic services and for negotiating access to land. It would not be unreason-able to expect the industrial firms, such as the mining and exploration interestsaround Noril'sk, to retain their concentrated, corporate form (Anderson, 1994).It also would be reasonable to expect the ambiguity over ownership and jurisdic-tion of lands to continue for some time in the future.

8See also Fondahl (1995) for a description of the situation of Evenk herders in the BuryatRepublic and Chita Oblast--Ed., PG.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 2 1 1

Social Welfare Payments

At the height of the Soviet state economy, there was no clear distinction betweenregional development subsidies, the sale and distribution of consumer goods, thesupply of civic services such as heat and light, and social welfare payments. In aregulated, redistributive economy, the prices of goods and services reflected thepolitical priorities of regional and federal units of administration in developingrural areas. With the collapse of the central redistributive system and the privati-zation of the retail trade network, the need to use direct payments in the North inorder to avoid social tragedies has become clearer. It now is possible to discernthe initial signs of the emergence of a social welfare net in a sense that is similarto that of a European economy. The budgetary sources for the social welfarenetwork are premised upon transfer payments from federal levels of administra-tion and to a great degree upon industrial firms within the Lower Yenisey Valley,as in Soviet times. The economic health of these firms, and hence the socialwelfare system, depends upon the commerce of the Northern Sea Route.

The main form of social welfare expenditure is that of pensions for old ageand physical disability. These pensions, guaranteed by administrative units of thefederal state, are indexed and regularly supplied. Disruptions in the payment ofpensions usually only occur as a result of shortages of paper money in theregional capitals or to inclement weather, which may delay the flights of welfareofficials by one or two months. The regular payment of cash to older people orthose suffering from physical disabilities (such as tuberculosis or physical injury)supports a certain kind of social structure within the extensive communities.Since mortality rates for men are very high, the centers of families tend to beolder women, who mobilize their kinship networks to obtain meat or furs inexchange for cash.

The burden of pensions rests on local enterprises, such as the collective farmsor the urban factories. This has created a heavy drain on resources even forrelatively wealthy corporations like the Noril'sk Nickel Joint-Stock Company. Itis said that in the city of Noril'sk the rapidly aging population is presenting thePlant with a fiscal crisis over fulfilling its role as pension supplier.

The second major source of social welfare is through child support payments.In most of the extensive settlements of the Lower Yenisey Valley, there is a highnumber of single-parent families. Often the fathers of the children in thesefamilies have died from hunting accidents or as a result of accidents occurringunder the influence of alcohol. In other cases, the fathers were transient immi-grants who arrived in the villages to work for a short period of time. In either ofthese two cases, which are not that different in terms of the practical logic thatgoverns the daily lives of women in the villages, the children remain assources of income for the mothers and grandmothers and as helpful producers asthey grow older. It has long been a policy of regional administrative units tochannel direct welfare payments to single mothers, since it is a demographic factof these villages that such payments strategically reach the largest numbers ofpeople.

The last category of social welfare expenditures for individuals are paymentsfor unemployment and for poverty. These payments are quite small and are only

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

212 DAVID G. ANDERSON

rarely issued. There is little tradition among administrators for classifying peopleas "poor" or "unemployed," since such categories did not exist under the oldsystem, which redistributed wealth through places of employment. It is possiblethat the growing experience with direct payments will make them a growing areaof support for families.

The cash that is allocated to individuals more often than not ends up in thehands of senior women within households. After cash is exchanged for servicesor for meat it is more often than not spent on vodka. Profits from the provision ofgoods and social welfare services usually are realized by a tightly linked groupof immigrant traders who are able to control the transportation links into and outof a community. The heavy drinking in most of the aboriginal communities canbe correlated with the decline of reliable supplies of equipment that allow peopleto engage in their work. The level of alcoholism, which has reached epidemicproportions, is endangering the future reproduction of communities. It is possibleto speculate that if a reliable retail network is established, perhaps though theagency of institutions associated with the Northern Sea Route, the social causesof alcoholism may disappear.

A final form of social welfare expenditure is not paid to individuals but tocommunities. This is the unorthodox practice of making administrative grants inorder to pay for the transport of fuel for heating and to operate diesel-poweredelectric stations. Under the former system of allocation, electricity and heat wereprovided within settlements by collective farms as part of their civic responsibili-ties. Since the end of direct subsidies to collective farms in 1992, the money forthe operation of these costly and necessary services has come on a crisis basisfrom the budgets of regional administrative units. In 1993 there were greatexpectations that a new law that would transfer the responsibility for the fundingof these services to the federal level, but as of December 1994 no such law hasbeen adopted. Reliance on aid from regional administrators during crisis periodsmakes for an unstable and dangerous system of providing heat and light. This areaof civic social welfare undoubtedly will be one of the first areas to be renegoti-ated, as the constitutional status of the new rayony and the privatizing institutionsof the Northern Sea Route become clear.

There is a clear difference between people who live exclusively within theextensive settlements and those producers who live for large portions of time onthe land. The village residents are highly dependent upon social welfare expendi-tures, so that their houses may be heated and that they may be able to buy or barterfor food to feed their families. This section has argued that the networks estab-lished by individuals receiving guaranteed incomes also extend out to those wholive on the land through barter. In a highly indirect fashion, the networks of barterand mutual aid between village residents and between villagers and hunters andherders on the land are underwritten by a social welfare system that, in turn,depends upon the commerce of the Northern Sea Route.

Aboriginal Rights

Since 1989 in the Lower Yenisey Valley, as in other parts of Siberia, there hasbeen a growing movement for the respect of the rights of the native peoples. This

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 213

movement is only formally represented within Taymyr Okrug. Within Dudinkathere are two associations—the Taymyr Association of the Peoples of the North(funded by the Taymyr Okrug Administration) and the Association of the Peoplesof the North of the Dudinka City Council. Although the Taymyr Association ofthe Peoples of the North has a broader jurisdiction, it is considered to be the morepassive association, perhaps because of its government funding. The DudinkaAssociation works through the volunteer efforts of many groups and is quiteactive in organizing meetings and making statements to the press.

The focus of most initiatives of both associations has been to collect informa-tion about injustices done to native residents of the area. This information isreported to the Main Congress of Northern Peoples, which is held once a year inMoscow. The tenor of these observations is to remind the federal and regionalstates of their responsibilities to continue to supply special programs and subsi-dies to native people. The Associations report upon pollution associated with theNoril'sk mining complex, but, with considerable sophistication, refrain fromdirectly criticizing the plant. Through their activities, the organizers of theseassociations hope to draw attention to the problems of native peoples at thecurrent juncture of rapid institutional change. By raising the issue of aboriginalpoverty, alcoholism, and rights to territory, they hope that the newly privatizedmonopolies will maintain policies favorable to the aboriginal communities.

The cautious policies of the aboriginal associations have had some success.The Noril'sk plant in general has been sympathetic to native communities. Itexpresses its sympathy through the distribution of gifts, such as foreign-madesnowmobiles or imported clothing, free of charge to communities—or its willing-ness to provide free transportation to native residents in association with itsexploration activities. In addition, during the recent privatization of the gaspipeline firm, native peoples were given preferential share options. However, itwould be unreasonable to expect that native activists will be satisfied with theseovertures in the long run. The larger question of aboriginal equity and rights toland no doubt will have to be addressed in a more fundamental manner. Thetrajectory of the aboriginal rights movement in terms of its ability to pose andnegotiate these larger questions still is at an early stage.

CONCLUSION

The Lower Yenisey Valley is a rich region in terms of ethnology, geography,and various developmental models. Not only have the aboriginal peoples of thisregion devised rather sophisticated and robust techniques for managing theirextensive territories, but newcomers from European Russia have transformed thepolitical and social landscapes with various total social initiatives during theSoviet period. This paper has argued that the implications of these developmentalinitiatives on everyday social practice are so profound that one is forced toimagine the disparate intensive and extensive settlements of this portion ofCentral Siberia as forming a coherent region. Although the history of extensiveland use on the part of the aboriginal peoples of the Lower Yenisey Valley allowsus to identify ethnographic and linguistic links beyond the compass of this region,70 years of institutionalized commerce and interaction in association with the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

214 DAVID G. ANDERSON

Northern Sea Route have set local identities within a particular regional frame.The social dynamics of the Lower Yenisey Valley for many generations havebeen guided by the political landscape of the region and in particular by thedynamics of the collectivized farming system and the regional division of labor.Since 1991 the total social initiative that has congealed within the institutions ofthe Northern Sea Route has been under renegotiation. Attempts to privatizeportions of this social and legal network have brought forth the prospect ofvarious crises in the distribution of land and the access of aboriginal citizens tothe fruits of an industrialized division of labor. Although it can be argued thatsubsistence production has been absent in this sector of the circumpolar Arcticfor three generations, it would seem that the innovation of a privatized marketeconomy will create different social segments—some nested within some versionof the Soviet corporate economy writ within the economic orbit of Noril'sk andsome turned inwards upon their own resources for survival.

In a report for the International Northern Sea Route Programme, I identifiedseveral direct and indirect effects of changes in the Northern Sea Route on theaboriginal societies of the Lower Yenisey Valley, effects that included the inter-ference with the migration routes of wild deer, intense pollution, and the removalof access to extensive areas by hydroelectric reservoirs and other energy corridors(Anderson, 1995). Here I have focused upon the structural effects of change onthe total social initiative represented by the Northern Sea Route. The proposedcommercialization of the Northern Sea Route threatens to further erode the socialguarantees that have provided the social and legal context for land use andcultural practice within the valley. The creation of localized "city-states" threat-ens to relegate some communities of the Lower Yenisey Valley to a complete,inward-looking self-reliance. However, one can imagine several institutionalinnovations that could work within a future privatized institutional context.These innovations include:

(1) The establishment of a trust fund, such as that in the Khanty-Mansiy Autonomous Okrug, which would reserve 15 to 20% of allproceeds from commerce on the Sea Route for the supply of trans-portation, heating, and electricity to native communities. Such afund also would have the flexibility to provide for those villagesthat happen to fall outside of the boundaries of the Taymyr Okrugand the subsidies of the Noril'sk factory.

(2) The foundation of a transportation consortium under the direc-tion of the Sea Route authority, which would oversee the transportof cargo destined to native villages at a subsidized cost.

(3) The foundation of a retail trade organization that woulddistribute essential consumer goods to native villages at a subsi-dized cost.

(4) The provisions of equity shares in the Sea Route for nativecommunities.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 215

Although the political consciousness of the associations that represent nativepeoples still is at a relatively early stage of development, it is not unreasonableto expect that these associations will " gain momentum" and make increasinglyvociferous demands that challenge the present structure of economic and politicalpower. Current proposals for aboriginal rights include those advocating theestablishment of a "city-state" in which rural native peoples are directly incor-porated into the fabric of the Noril'sk metallurgical plant or the Igarka forestryenterprise. If native communities do not receive equity in future industrial devel-opment, it will be reasonable to anticipate "land claims" by local communities onthe state. Such proposals, which have only been casually discussed by activists,would bear many similarities to the struggles of aboriginal groups in theCanadian and American Arctic. It could be assumed that under a potentialland-claim agreement, native groups would seek direct compensation for thepollution and flooding of their lands by industry. The only alternative to a renewedinstitutional framework, or a land-claim settlement, would be the fragmentationand isolation of native communities—an alternative that would only lead to thefurther impoverishment of groups already in cultural and demographic crisis.

LITERATURE

Alekseyenko, E. A. "Ethnic interaction of the native population of the TurukhanskNorth and the Upper Taz," in: M. A. Borodina, ed., Narody i yazyki Sibiri:Areal'nyye issledovaniya [Peoples and Languages of Siberia: Areal Stud-ies]. Moscow: Nauka, 1978, pp. 32-36.

Anderson, D. G. "Turning hunters into herders: A critical examination of Sovietdevelopment policy among the Evenki of southeastern Siberia." Arctic,Vol. 44, No. 1, 1991, pp. 12-22.

Anderson, D. G. "The Novosibirsk stock market boom: Privatization and accu-mulation in Russia," Anthropology Today, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1994, pp. 10-16.

Anderson, D. G. Northern Sea Route Social Impact Assessment: Indigenous Peoplesand Development in the Lower Yenisey Valley. Lysaker, Norway: Report forThe International Northern Sea Route Programme, No. 18-1995, IV.4.1, 1995.

Andersen, O., J. Heggeli, and T. Wergeland. Assessment of Potential Cargofrom and to Europe via the NSR. Lysaker, Norway: Report for The Inter-national Northern Sea Route Programme, No. 11-1995, III.10.1, 1995.

Armstrong, T. E. Russian Settlement in the North. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1965.

Belov, M. I. Nauchnoye i khozyaystvennoye osvoyeniye sovetskogo Severa 1933-1945 gg. Istoriya okrytiya i osvoeniya severnogo morskogo puti, tom 4[Scientific and Economic Development of the Soviet North, 1933-1945,History and Development of the Northern Sea Route, Vol. 4]. Leningrad:Gidrometeorologicheskoye izdatel'stvo, 1969.

Bond, A. R. "Transport development at Noril'sk," Soviet Geography, Vol. 25,No. 2, 1984, pp. 103-121.

Buchan, B. The Potential of the Northern Sea Route for a Regular Cargo Service.Lysaker, Norway: Report for The International Northern Sea Route Pro-gramme, Lysaker, Norway, No. 15-1995, III.07.2, 1995.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

216 DAVID G. ANDERSON

Clarke, S. What about the Workers? Workers and the Transition to CapitalismIn Russia. London: Verso, 1993.

Dolgikh, B. O. Bytovyye rasskazy entsev [Everyday Stories of the Entsy].Moscow: Trudy instituta etnografii AN SSSR (novaya seriya), Vol. 67,1962.

Dolgikh, B. O. "Origin of the Dolgans," in: V. O. Dolgikh, ed., Sibirskiyetnograficheskiy sbornik, tom 5 [Siberian Ethnographic Handbook. Vol. 5].Moscow: Trudy instituta etnografii AN SSSR (novaya seriya), Vol. 84,pp. 92-141.

Fondahl, Gail A. "Legacies of territorial reorganization for indigenous landclaims in Northern Russia," Polar Geography and Geology, Vol. 18, No. 1,January-March 1995, pp. 1-21.

Geller, M. K., and P. N. Vostryakov. "Migrations and seasonal distribution ofreindeer populations of Taymyr," in: E. E. Syroyechkovskiy, ed., Wild Rein-deer of the Soviet Union (Proceedings of the First Interdepartmental Confer-ence on the Preservation and Rational Utilization of Wild ReindeerResources). New Delhi: Amerind Publishing Co., 1984, pp. 71-79.

Gracheva, G. N. Traditsionnoye mirovozzreniye okhotnikov Taymyra [Tradi-tional World View of the Hunters of the Taymyr]. Leningrad: Nauka, 1983.

Gracheva, G. P., and L. P. Khlobystin. "Economic exploitation of wild rein-deer by the Taymyr People," in: E. E. Syroyechkovskiy, ed., Wild Reindeerof the Soviet Union (Proceedings of the First Interdepartmental Conferenceon the Preservation and Rational Utilization of Wild Reindeer Resources).New Delhi: Amerind Publishing Co., 1984, pp. 243-245.

Granberg, A. The Significance of the NSR for Regional Development in ArcticAreas of Russia. Lysaker, Norway: Report for The International NorthernSea Route Programme, Lysaker, Norway, No. 19-1995, III. 01.1, 1995.

Humphrey, C. Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society and Religion in aSiberian Collective Farm. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,1983.

Humphrey, C. "Icebergs, barter and the mafia in provincial Russia." Anthropol-ogy Today, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1991, pp. 8-13.

Khomich, L. V. "Material on the folk knowledge of the Nentsy," in: Sotsial'-naya organizatsiya i kul'tura narodov severa [Social Organization and Cul-ture of the Peoples of the North]. Moscow: Nauka.

Klein, D. R. "Reactions of caribou and reindeer to obstructions--a reassess-ment," in: E. Reimers, E. Gaare, and S. Skjenneberg, eds., Proceedings ofthe Second International Caribou and Reindeer Symposium, Roros, Norway.Trondheim: Direktoratet for vilt og ferskvannsfisk, 1979, pp. 519-527.

Klein, D. R., and V. Kuzyakin. "Distribution and status of wild reindeer in theSoviet Union," Journal of Wildlife Managment, Vol. 46, No. 3, 1982,pp. 728-733.

Larsen, L.-H., A. Evenset, and B. Sirenko. Linkages and Impact HypothesisConcerning Valued Ecosystem Components--Invertebrates, Fish, theCoastal Zone and Large River Estuaries and Deltas. Lysaker, Norway:Report for The International Northern Sea Route Programme, Lysaker, Nor-way, No. 12, 1995, II.4.1, II.4.4 and II.4.5, 1995.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

POLAR GEOGRAPHY 217

Novikov, B. "Problems of reindeer husbandry," Okhota i okhotnich'yekhozyaystvo, No. 2, 1983, pp. 3-5.

Osherenko, G. "Property rights and the transformation of Russia: InstitutionalChange in the Far North," Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 47, No. 7, 1995,pp. 1077-1108.

Pika, A. "The Spatial-temporal dynamic of violent death among the NativePeoples of Northern Russia," Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 2, 1993,pp. 61-76.

Popkov, Y. V. Etnosotsial'nyye i pravovyye protsessy v Evenkii [Ethnosocial andLegal Processes in Evenkia]. Novosibirsk: Siberian Section, Russian Acad-emy of Sciences, 1994.

Popov, A. A. "Tundra peasants," Sovetskaya etnografiya, 1934, pp. 77-86.Popov, A. A. "Reindeer husbandry among the Dolgans," Sovetskaya etnografiya

Nos. 4-5, 1935.Popov, A. A. Nganasany: material'nay a kul'tura, vyp. 1 [Nganasany: Material

Culture, Vol. 1]. Moscow: Trudy instituta etnografii AN SSSR (novayaseriya), Vol. 3, 1948.

Popov, A. A. Nganasany: sotsial'noye ustroistvo i verovaniya [Nganasany: SocialStructure and Beliefs]. Leningrad: Nauka.

Prior, F. "When is collectivization reversible?" Studies in Comparative Commu-nism, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1991, pp. 3-24.

Prokopyev, G. N. "Ostyak-Samoyeds of the Turukhansk region," Etnografiya,1928, No. 2.

Rychkov, K. M. "A trip to the northeastern tundra of the Turukhansk region fromthe village of Dudinka," Zemlevedeniye, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1914, pp. 97-123.

Rychkov, K. M. "Yenisey Tungus," Zemlevedeniye, Vols. 24, 25, Nos. 1-4,1922-1923.

Shchelkunova, R. P. "The impact of industry and transport on reindeer pastures:The example of Taymyr," Polar Geography and Geology, Vol. 17, No. 4,October-December 1993, pp. 251-258.

Shideler, R. T., M. H. Robus et al. Impacts of Human Developments and LandUse on Caribou: A Literature Review (2 vols.). Juneau, AK: Alaska Depart-ment of Fish and Game, Division of Habitat Technical Report, 86-2, 1986.

Slezkine, Y. Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North. Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Stephan, J. J. The Russian Far East: A History. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-sity Press, 1994.

Syroyechkovskiy, E. E. "Biologic-economic regionalization of the YeniseyNorth as a geographical basis for the location and organization of the north-ern economy," Problemy Severa, Vol. 11, 1967, pp. 38-62.

Syroyechkovskiy, E. E. "Reindeer in the USSR: Problems of protection andrational use," in: Proceedings of the Sixth International Caribou and Rein-deer Symposium, Rangifer Special Issue 3, 1990, pp. 423-432.

Tugolukov, V. A. Tungusy (Evenki i Eveny) Sredney i Zapadnoy Sibiri [Tungus(Evenki and Eveny) of Central and Western Siberia]. Moscow: Nauka, 1985.

Van Atta, D. The Farmer Threat: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform inPost-Soviet Russia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

218 DAVID G. ANDERSON

Vasil'yev, V. I. "Forest Entsy (Essays on history, economy, and culture)," in:B. O. Dolgikh, ed., Sibirskiy etnograflcheskiy sbornik, tom 5 [Siberian Ethno-graphic Handbook, Vol. 5]. Moscow: Trudy instituta etnografii AN SSSR(novaya seriya), Vol. 84, 1963, pp. 33-70.

Vasil'yev, V. I., and Y. B. Simchenko. "The contemporary Samoyedic peoplesof the Taymyr," Sovetskaya etnografiya, No. 3, 1963, pp. 9-20.

Vasil'yevich, G. M." Questions of the tribe and clan with respect to the Tungus,"Trudy sedmogo mezhdunarodnogo kongressa antropologicheskikh i etno-graficheskikh nauk, Vol. 10, 1970, pp. 460-474.

Vasil'yevich, G. M. "Tungus settlement of the taiga and forest-tundra betweenthe Lena and Yenisey," in: Voporosy yazyka i folklora narodnostey Severa[Issues of Language and Folklore of the Peoples of the North]. Irkutsk, 1972,pp. 183-238.

Vasil'yevich, G. M., and Tugolukov, V. A. "Ethnographic research on theTaymyr in 1959," Sovetskaya etnografiya, No. 5, 1960, pp. 128-141.

Verdery, K. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Prince-ton University Press, 1996.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

UQ

Lib

rary

] at

01:

50 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014