“We have forgotten the taste of bread”: provisioning in a Chukotkan Village after state socialism

This article ethnographically explores changes in food consumption in Chukotka in the 1990s, and how these changes affected social relations in one tundra village. In the process, it highlights ways that postsocialist consumption patterns in the Russian Far North defied common expectations about the food preferences of indigenous people. The article focuses on reindeer herders, indigenous inhabitants who were commonly associated with “traditional” subsistence foods. During the Soviet period, they had become accustomed to foods that were readily available under state socialism and supplied by the sovkhoz; under free market capitalism, such foods became scarce. This matter forced reindeer herders to search in their tundra environment for those classic subsistence foods that they supposedly relished; in many cases, they did not consume them, but rather sold them or traded them for staple foods supplied by the sovkhoz. While some outside observers heralded a “return to traditional subsistence” in the tundra, these reindeer herders complained of a complete breakdown of the moral economy they had taken for granted. Thus, their own expectations became frustrated by changes favoring market relations and the global food market.

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