As fast as the bird flies...': On the state administration of Siberian peoples in the 1920s to the 1930s.

The article examines the historical basis for and circumstances surrounding the dialogue between Soviet authorities and the indigenous population of the Soviet North in the 1920s to the 1930s. In essence, the sovietization meant complete re-appropriation of social and geographical spaces once occupied by the Russian Empire, including suppression (or radical renewal) of the former elite and re-orientation toward the new ideology in remote northern territories such as the Obdorsk region; despite class-based conflicts of interest, the Soviet state had to rely on local 'rulers' (representatives of the Taishin dynasty) and family elders, actively using the imperial system of administration of Siberian inorodtsy. The article draws on both unpublished and published illustrative materials and documents from the collections of Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera, Russian Academy of Sciences), Tobolsk Museum-Reserve for History and Architecture, the State Archive of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Region, the Museum of Nature and Man in the city of Khanty-Mansiisk, as well as on the author's own field materials. The study of documents along with visual materials enabled productive use of the 'close-up' method in ethno-historical reconstruction; it also allowed presenting the portrait of Vasiliy Taishin, the last representative of the Obdorsk ruling dynasty, one of the ethnic leaders during the rise of Soviet power in the Ob North.

Keywords

Authors

References