The Finno-Ugric republics and the Russian state 0415919770

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REIN TAAGEPERA

The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

ROUTLEDGE New York

Published in the United States of America in 1999 by ROUTLEDGE 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © Rein Taagepera, 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced of utilized in any fom1 or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying or recording, cir in any infom1ation storage or retrieval system without pem1ission in writing from the publishers. Printed in India ISBN 0-415-91977-0 Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library of Congress

CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgements

page vii

Chapters 1. The Finno-Ugric Republics in the World Context

2. Historical Overview 3. Western Finno-Ugric Nations: Hungary, Finland, Estonia 4. Karelia: Orthodox Finland (by Ott Kurs and Rein Taagepera)

5. Moksherzia (Mordovia): The Siamese Twins

6. Mariel: Europe's Last Animists 7. Udmurtia: The Redhead Children of the Sun 8. Komimu: The Northernmost Alphabet 9. Hanti-Mansia and Nenetsia: The Curse of Arctic Oil 10. Finno-Ugric Republics and the Future of Russian Democracy Appendix Geographical and Ethnographic. Name Equivalents

1 30 82 100 147 197 253 294 337 388 413 415

Bibliography

435

Index

ill

FIGURES 1.1 Four groups of ethnically distinct republics ·and autonomous regions in the Russian Federation 2.1 Differentiation of Uralic languages over time 2.2 Finno-Ugric areas in northern Europe 4.1 Karelia and surroundings 4.2 Karelian birch-bark thunder spell of the 13th century 5.1 Finno-Ugric and Bolgar areas near the Volga 5.2 Moksherzia and surroundings 6.1 Mariel and surroundings 7.1 Udmurtia and surroundings 8.1 The Kami alphabet in the 14th century 8.2 Komimu and surroundings 9.1 Hanti-Mansia and lamal-Nenetsia

lV

7 33 44 104 110 148 156 200 256 296 298 341

TABLES

2.1. Some basic numerals and nouns in vanous Uralic languages 2.2. Percentages of basic words common to various Uralic languages 2.3. The development of written literature in Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic .languages 2.4. Literacy of the Finno-Ugrians and their Neighbours 2.5. Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic autonomous territories in the Soviet Union 4.1. Population growth in Karelia, 1926-89 4.2. Karelian, Finnish and Vepsian population in the Soviet Union, 1989 4.3. Karelian age structure, 1989 4.4. Education in Karelia 5.1. Moksherzian population growth, 1000-1917 5.2. Moksherzian population changes, 1897-1989 5.3. Change in the number ofMokshans and Erzians within Mordovia 5.4. Population changes in Mordovia and the Moksherzian diaspora, 1926-94 5.5. Moksherzian population, 1989 5.6. Moksherzian age structure, 1989 Education in Mordovia 6.1. Mari population changes, 1719-1917. .2. Mari population changes, 1914-89 Population changes in Mariel, 1926-89 6.4. Mari population, 1989 6.5." Mari age structure, 1989 6.6. Education in Mariel V

39 42 64 67 73 118 119 .120 121 168 174 175 183 184 185 186 216 222 235 236 237 238

vr 6.7. 6.8. 6.9. 7.1. 7.2. 7.3. 7.4. 7.5. 7.6. 7.7. 8.1. 8.2. 8.3. 8.4. 8.5. 8.6. 8.7. 9.1. 9.2. 10.1. 10.2. 10.3. 10.4.

Tables

Ethnic distribution in Mariel, 1989 Elections in Mariel, 1993 Ethnic distribution of assembly seats, 1993 Udmurt population growth, 1719-1917 Changes in the number of Udmurts in the Soviet Union and within Udmurtia, 1897-1989 Population changes in Udmurtia, 1926-89 Udmurt population, 1989 Udmurt age structure, 1989 Education in Udmurtia Schools with Udmurt as an option Changes in the number of Komis, 1700-1917 Changes in the number of Komis, 1897-1989 Population changes in the Kom.i Republic, 1926-89 Population changes in the Pemrian Konri AO, 1925-92 Konri population, 1989 Konri age structure, 1989 Education in Kom.imu Population changes of the indigenous peoples of North-west Asia, 1926-89 Some basic words in five Samoyedic languages Some worldwide comparisons: Greenlanders, Nenets, Maris and Maoris Resistance of eastern Finno-Ugrians to tsarist Russian colonialism Assimilation and de-assimilation of Pernrian Komis Core population and press of eastern Finno-Ugrians

238\ 245 245 270 276 284 285 286 287 292 304 308 321 323 324 326 327 343 369 390 397 399 401

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book surveys the peoples who speak Finno-Ugric or Samo­ yedic languages and have titular republics or autonomous regions within the post-Soviet Russian Federation: Karelians, Moksher­ zians, Maris, Udmurts, Komis, Hantis, Mansis and Nenets. Sollie peoples without titular territory (such as Ingrians, Kola Sarnis and Selkups) are also briefly presented. Three countries west of Russia have Finno-Ugric languages: Hungary, Finland and Estonia, but I survey them here only fleetingly, stressing that part of their experience which is relevant to the eastern Finno-Ugric peoples. The languages of the eastern Finno-Ugrians have set them apart from their Turkic and Russian neighbours and preserved their identity. Long submerged politically, they may affect the course of East European history in the turbulent years to come, and for this reason it is time to make their portraits available to the English-speaking world. The likelihood of the eastern Finno-Ugric peoples making the front pages of Western newspapers seems remote - but the same could have been said in 1986 of the Baltic states, which none the less became familiar to the Western public only a few years later. Although most nations subjected to the Russian-dominated Soviet Union won independence by 1991, the post-Soviet Russian Federation still includes 25 million people ethnically distinct from the Russians. Moreover, in face of Moscow's habit of lording it over all outlying areas, autonomy strivings have spread to ethnic Russian areas of the Federation. Up till now, little has been available in English on the con­ temporary society and politics of the eastern Finno-Ugric republics and peoples. Toivo Vuorela's The Finno-Ugric Peoples (1964) and Peter Hajdu's Ancient Cultures of the Uralian Peoples (1976) have an ethnographic emphasis; The Uralic Languages, edited by Denis Sinor (1988), is linguistic; and Seppa Lallukka's The East Finnie Minorities in the Soviet Union (1990) focuses on demography. All were written before the demise of the USSR and perforce do not consider the new post-Soviet vistas. Information on the ea5tem Finno-Ugric republics was severely screened by Soviet censorship, Vil

Vlll

Preface and Acknowledgements

direct and indirect. People have since become much· more open, and I have profited from it. Even Finno-Ugric history, this major prerequisite for under­ standing the present and looking into the future, lacks a presentation in English, except as part of works with a different regional emphasis, such as A History of the Peoples of Siberia (1992) by James Forsyth. This thorough study, which includes the Hantis, Mansis and Nenets, dares to call 'tribute seekers' what they were: marauders and booty hunters. Two other major works have been available only in German: Andreas Kappeler's Russ/and als Vielvolkmeich (1992), a broad overview, and Russ/ands erste Nationalitiiten (1982), which covers the Middle Volga peoples, including the Moksherzians, Maris and Udmurts, in excellent detail. The 1992 book is being translated into English. Two valuable overviews of Finno-Ugric peoples, Valev Uibopuu's Meie ja meie hoimua (We and Our Kin, 1984) in Estonian and aFinnish volume by Johanna Laakso, Uralilaiset kansat (The Uralic Peoples, 1991), are relatively heavy on language and skimpy on history. I owe an enormous debt to the authors of all these books and many others, and this book could not have been written without them. I have tried to bring out the history of the peoples in question, as a starting point for investigating their present. For the con­ temporary scene I depended on various press reports, first- and second-hand informants, and some direct observations. I have tried to cover the basics of the languages but could fit in little ethno­ graphy, except for folksongs at chapter and section headings. They represent samples of the various languages and are borrowed (at times with slightly modified spelling) from The Great Bear, a superb anthology ofFinno-Ugric oral poetry edited by Lauri Hanko, Senni Timonen, Michael Branch and Keith Bosley (1993). I thank the Finnish Literature Society in Helsinki for permission to use them. Though engrossed in demographic analysis, I decided to omit most of it because on rereading my draft I got bored. Such analysis is important, but it is better left to more specialised books and articles. Here I wanted to give a feel of what the Maris, the Udmurts and the others are like and how they differ from each other as vibrant nations rather than as rows of statistical data. I was more intent on cultural history and contemporary literature as a background for explaining current sociopolitical activities. However, my main challenge was how to envision history from

Preface and Acknowledgements

IX

the viewpoint of the peoples involved, and this aspect needs longer elaboration.

From records by conquerors to a history cif the conquered History is recorded by victors - by conquerors, oppressors and executioners rather than their victims. When the victims are eth­ nically distinct their records remain unwritten or vanish. I write these words at the top of the Clifford Tower in York at the entrance of which is a memorial plaque commemorating 'some 150 Jews and Jewesses' who perished at this site in 1190 rather than give up their religion. They were hounded, the plaque says, by 'a mob incited by [name deleted by autho'r] and others'. The supreme irony is that the only person to which the plaque gives immortality is the scoundrel who least deserves it. The victims remain anonymous - unless they are rebel members of the ruling group. This was the case of Clifford who was executed in 1322 in the tower that now bears his name. I do my best �o avoid this trap, yet often fail. Omitting the names of Russian rulers and rebels leaves us an eastern Finno­ Ugric history with few names, because the conquering peoples tend to pay attention to their own kind even among their opponents; the recalcitrant natives remain nameless. More broadly, when his­ torical records are overwhelmingly one-sided it is almost impossible to write balanced history. Hence my writing inevitably preserves a pro-Russian bias. Some Russians may think otherwise, because they expect the habitual self-congratulatory temlinology of the conquerors, which I try to avoid. Here are some examples. 'Legal' acquisition was all too often based on one-sided dec­ larations of ownership by the aggressive side or on a 'treaty' with some indigenous person who did not own the land, or who could not .read or understand the text, or who yielded under threat of death. 'Pacification' might suggest the image of Russian soldiers going around sticking dummies into mouths of Mari crybabies in the late 16th century; they actually used sharper objects. As for activities of Kulturtrager (culture carriers, in Gem1an colonialist vocabulary) for the benefit of the indigenous. peoples, they all too often boiled down to taxes, booze and learning one's place at the bottom of the conquerors' social ladder. The fact that a given population did not have electricity before subjection is no

X

Preface and Acknowledgements

proof that without colonialism they would never have acquired it (arguments of this type still occur). My focus is on the Russian subjection of eastern Finno-Ugrians, but the self-justifications by conquerors are quite universal. Russian practices and arguments are no worse - but also no better - than those of the French, who called their rule in Morocco a 'protecto­ rate' or the British, for whom Indian uprisings were 'mutiny' and 'rebellion', or the United States which agreed to annex Hawaii despite recognising that the settlers who were offering it had no legal title to the islands. I do not go along with such charades. I shall not call the equivalent of street-comer mugging 'tribute taking', nor call freedom struggles 'rebellion' or 'treason'. And I shall specify who did what in the active voice rather than the passive that implies a natural impersonal calamity. When Hanti villages 'were bombed' when they refused to give their children to denationalising boarding schools, it really meant that 'Soviet Russian pilots bombed Hanti villages'. Give credit where it's due, in Siberia no less than in Tasmania. There are three comparative aspects I would have liked to investigate much more thoroughly. Worldwide comparisons with indigenous populations whose characteristics are somewhat similar to the eastern Finno-Ugric are no more than touched upon in the last chapter. The Finno-Ugrians also should be placed in the context of general Russian, especially Soviet, practices toward subject peoples, as analysed by Kolarz (1953), Pipes (1964), Con­ quest (1970), Rywkin (1989), Simon (1991) and Carrere d'Encausse (1992), among others. The third reference point is internal colon­ ialism in Western Europe (Hechter 1975; Rokkan and Urwin 1983). However, none of these topics can be disposed of in just a few pages. Given the length of this book . such comparisons have to be left for another time.

Where I come from There is no such thing as objective, unbiased presentation. There can 0nly be uncritical pretence at objectivity or humble admission that one's background affects one's views -which in tum can lead to some attempt to control one's biases. I am a mixed bag. At the age of seven I witnessed Soviet Russian occupation and terror in a previously independent Estonia. At the end of a subsequent

Preface and Acknowledgements

XI

Gem1an occupation my family left for the West rather than face renewed Soviet misrule. I did my high school in French-ruled Morocco where, despite my abstract sympathy for Moroccan in­ dependence, my best friend was the son of a French colonel. For forty years I lived in North America, building a career as a professor of social sciences on top of a Ph.D. in physics. It culminated in a well-received book on electoral systems (Taagepera and Shugart 1989). Refused entry to Soviet-occupied Estonia till 1987, I suddenly found myself in the midst of liberation politics. In the 1992 presiden­ tial elections I garnered 23 per cent of the popular vote in a four-candidate field, 6 percentage points behind Lennart Meri, who was elected in a parliamentary run-off. The only region I carried by majority was Narva, where many citizens were Russian or mixed-family. It may be that one reason why I lost was that I was considered 'soft on the Russians' over issues like citizenship. Since then I have continued to teach, partly at the University of California, Irvine, and partly in Estonia. My record in 1992 should be taken into account when the inevitable accus.ations roll in that the present book is 'anti-Russian'. I do not try to break up the multinational Russian Federation, but I foresee that ethnic Russia_n nationalism may have precisely such a counter-productive effect. Preservation of the Federation requires a genuine acceptance of its multinational character. This, in tum, requires a m.erciless re-examination of how the ethnic Russian dominance was established and maintained over the last millennium, all too often by brute force and deceit. An honest and fruitful future cannot be based on a falsely self-congratulatory perception of the past. By exploding some myths I am contributing my own share. If this is called 'anti-Russian' by some, then so be it. I am definitely pro-diversity. I became fascinated with Finno-Ugric languages aged seven, the moment I learned of the existence of this language family. In a way, the present book is one I would have liked to read, and because no one else has written it I have had to do so myself However, the availability of source material, new activism by eastern Finno-Ugrians and the resulting interest shown by the world in general did not make it possible till now. My sympathy for the eastern Finno-Ugric peoples has been made more concrete by contacts in their republics and with their students in Estonia. They look for autonomy within the multi-

Xll

Preface and Acknowledgements

national Russian Federation, but it m.ay be blown apart by ill­ conceived efforts by ethnic Russian nationalists to tum a multi­ national 'Rossiian' Federation into a narrowly mono-ethnic 'Russki' state. Those people lost the Soviet 'union republics' by trying to keep them on a short rein and assimilate them through purposeful colonisation by Russians. Will they learn from such debacles? Moscow's aggression in Chechnia makes one doubt.

Geographical names and spelling Geographical names are an issue that extends from the past into the present. Conquerors try to conquer the map, too, by imposing their place names. This book uses the indigenous names for rivers and cities, when known, with Russian equivalents in parentheses, e.g., 'Ezhva' (Vychegda in Russian). One may object that the indigenous names are not official and the reader cannot locate them in a standard atlas. This is why the Russian versions are also given. But there is no good reason why the indigenous names should be prohibited. Most often, after all, they came first. Even the cities 'founded' ·by conquerors usually took off from existing indigenous settlements. And the indigenou·s place names have re-emerged in print. Thus a glossy trilingual (Udmurt-Russian-English) tourist folder (Udmurt, 1996) includes a map where Russian place names are followed by Udmurt: 'Izhevsk-Izhkar', 'Glazov-Glazkar' etc. Country nan1es in everyday speech do not usually include 'Republic' or 'Kingdom'. One says Finland, although the official name is Republic of Finland. The Dominican Republic and the United Kingdom are exceptions. Accordingly, this book mostly uses 'Udmurtia' rather than 'the Udmurt Republic' and 'Iamal­ Nenetsia' rather than the 'Iamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug'. The national self-designations Mari El (the land of the Mari) and Komi Mu (the land of the Komi) are contracted to Mariel and Komimu, in analogy with Bangla Desh, whieh the world press quickly contracted to Bangladesh. I foresee that these contractions will eventually come into general use and prefer seeming out of step now rather than obsolete by the year 2005. The most problematic is ·Moksherzia, a name that has been considered for adoption (Salo 1993) by two related peoples, Erzians and Mokshans, whose 'titular' republic's Russian nan1e, Mordovia, does not express their self-

Preface and Acknowledgements

xiii

designations. I use Mc,rdovia for the republic but Moksherzia for the general living area of Mokshans and Erzians. In names transcribed from Cyrillic, I reserve y for the back vowel corresponding to front vowel, i, or something close. Hence it is laransk and Enisei rather than Yaransk and Yenisey. Exception is made for strongly established names like Yeltsin and Samoyed (rather than Eltsin and Samoed). In 'Finno-Ugric' I include Samoyedic. The linguistic joint tern1. for the two is 'Uralic', but I did not call this book 'The Uralic Republics', because to non-linguists this might have suggested that it deals with republics close to the Ural Mountains.

Acknowledgements My greatest thanks go to Ott Kurs, without whom I would never have dared to begin writing this book. He is the first author of the Karelian chapter and has contributed to others. For post-Soviet developments I am heavily indebted to Jaak Prozes -his written articles, unpublished reports and drafts, and personal communica­ tions. Toivo Raun offered a detailed critique of most chapters. I also thank Niina Aasmae, Daniel Abondolo, Anzori Barkalaja, James Forsyth, Sergei I. Godov, Paul Hagu, Andres Heinapuu, Kauksi Ulle, Aleksei G. Krasilnikov, Ago Kiinnap, Olga I. Kuzivanova, Seppa Lallukka, Victorina D. and Vladimir A. Lefebvre, Ilmars Mezs, Tatiana G. Minniiakhmetova, Harri Miirk, Rif Sh. Nasibullin, Pertti Pyhtila, Liubov Riabchikova, Heno Sarv, Henn Sepp, Laid Shemiar (Vladimir Kozlov), Julia Toi-Kuprina, Veiko Tonts, Nadezhda Utkina, Nikolai Vakhtin, Lidiia Vasikova and Seppa Zetterberg for various kinds of help. Among organisations thanks go to Fenno-Ugria, the Finnish Literature Society and Minority Rights Group (International). I thank the University of California, Irvine, for congenial work conditions. Special mention should be made of Mari, Udmurt and Kami students in Estonia and the students in my course on eastern Finno-Ugric nations at Tartu University. Maps were finalised by Kadi Pae. I apologise to many others who also deserve mention. Errors and mistakes remain mine.

May 1998

REIN TAAGEPERA

1 .THE FINNO-UGRIC REPUBLICS IN THE WORLD CONTEXT God of the Plough Festival, you gods of the earth, of the world, of the sun, of the moon, of the stars, of the thunder! Join forces with the god ofthe Plough Feast /in tidy kots'shy-d'ushym ioratyza, to look kindly on this food and drink to accept them. towylza! (Meadow Mari prayer, recorded in 1906, from The Great Bear, 1993) Aga-wariam iumy, mylandy-iumy, mer-iumy, kets'y-iumy, tylyzy-iumy, shudyr-iumy, kudyrts'y-iumy! Aga-wariam iumydeny ik wurtakan

·The eastern Finno-Ugric peoples enter world awareness as part of what_ is considered 'Russia', it is therefore their position within the multinational Russian Federation and its present turmoil which will be outlined first. These distant linguistic cousins ofHungarians, Finns and Estonians are part of the worldwide category of in­ digenous peoples whose habitats and cultures have been, and con­ tinue to be, destroyed by the forces of 'progress' -that modem god who has displaced not only Jehovah but the various animist iumy addressed in the prayer above. Up till now, if they were noticed at all, they appeared passive recipients of whatever the surrounding forces thought fit to hand out to them. However, under more democratic conditions some ofthe eastern Finno-Ugric nations will become active players. They will acquire a small but significant role in determining the future shape ofEastern Europe. At the very least, they will provide a litmus test for Russia's evolution towards tolerance and the rule of law. This is so precisely because, of all the non-Russian peoples of the Federation, they have been the most tightly bound to Russia, and cannot pose any threat to the Federation's survival. If the Russians were to suppress their cultural strivings, it would signal an extremely narrow1

2

The Finno- Ugric Republics and the Russian State

minded ethnic nationalism. To the extent Moscow falls short of tolerating genuine cultural autonomy in the Finno-Ugric republics, Russian democracy remains shallow and untrustworthy. To the extent that it succeeds in acknowledging past iniquity and develop­ ing a magnanimous attitude toward these frail partners it can be trusted to have more generally turned a fresh page. REPUBLICS WITHIN RUSSIA

The Russian Federation occupies more than 17 million square kilometres, almost twice the area of the United States. Yet these vast spaces have minimal sociopolitical infrastructure, and even minor decisions have been made in Moscow. If the central govern­ ment refuses meaningful autonomy to the outlying or ethnically distinct regions, then the only alternatives left are either break-up of the Federation or the reassertion of centralised rule by violent means, as in Chechnia. In the mid-1990s the most intense drive for autonomy (or independence, in the face of Moscow's refusal of autonomy) by­ passed the Finno-Ugric areas, manifesting itself in more populous republics (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan) or the more marginal ones . (Chechnia, Sakha/Iakutia, Tyva). There were also rumblings in some ethnically Russian areas that were either remote (Primore on the Pacific) or non-contiguous (Kaliningrad on the Baltic). The groundswell that began in Poland eventually reached Albania, and the Soviet leaders' stubborn refusal to let the Baltic states go arguably cost them Ukraine. Similarly, the autonomy struggles in Tatarstan and the Far East have likewise had an impact on the Finno-Ugric republics. Documenting this change is a major purpose of this book.

The imperial onion The onion-shaped Russian Orthodox chm:ch steeples provide an analogy for the Russian-dominated Soviet empire, whose several layers could be peeled off one by one - as indeed, some were. The outer layer consisted of formally independent satellites, ranging from pliant Bulgaria to restive Poland. They shook off Russian control in 1989 The next maj.or layer consisted of 'union republics' (Soviet Socialist Republics or SSRs) within the Soviet Union,

The Finno- Ugric Republics in the World Context

3

such as Ukraine and Turkmenia, They were 'sovereign' and entitled in theory to leave the union; in practice, however, they lacked the slightest political autonomy. In between the satellites and the SSRs, the Baltic states fom1ed a distinct sublayer, because they were reduced from independen·t non-communist states to SSRs by Soviet occupation and annexation rather late in 1940. Mikhail Gorbachev's refusal to recognise their special situation and let them go in 1990 slowed down their emancipation but probably speeded up that of the pre-1940 SSRs. Gorbachev forced the Baltic nations to stay in the Soviet Union and thus to fight in a very visible way against his various limited decentralisation schemes. In so doing, they gave an example to the pre-1940 SSRs who otherwise might have accepted Gorbachev's proposals (Taagepera 1993: 188). In late 1991, not only the Baltic states but all the union republics chose independence. By 1992 the Russian-dominated empire was peeled down to what used to be the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR) of the Soviet Union, containing half of the former Soviet population. This became Boris Yeltsin's Russian Federation. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that formally rejoined the former non-Baltic union republics to the Russian Federation was a stillborn entity. Most of its member states continued the slow process of shedding their commonalty of rockets and rubles. The next layer, within the Russian SFSR, consisted of Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics (ASSRs) for smaller or landlock­ ed nations. The ASSRs lacked even the limited cultural autonomy of the SSRs, and the Russian language was imposed in schools from the early grades on. A few national groups had lower-ranking autonomous provinces (Autonomous Oblasts). Some peoples of the north, often spread thinly over huge empty stretches, had special national regions (National Okrugs, or NOs), which in 1977 were renamed autonomous regions (Autonomous Okrugs, or AOs). While the union republics were situated around the outer edges of the Soviet Union many of the ASSRs were in­ terspersed with ethnically Russian provinces within the RSFSR. In their speeches Soviet leaders, including Gorbachev, spoke of 'provinces and republics' (oblasti i respubliki) as equivalent units. Around 1991 most ASSRs dropped the words 'Soviet Socialist' from their names and upgraded themselves unilaterally from 'Auto­ nomous Republic' to plain 'Republic', the meaning of which,

4

The Finno- Ugric Republics and the Russian State

however, remained fluid. The Russian Federation accepted the tem1 'Republic' for the fom1er ASSRs but denied any claims to sovereignty. The Finno-Ugric national territories are a subset of this layer of ASSRs, plus several Autonomous Okrugs. In 1993 Yeltsin began attempts to equalise the status of ethnically Russian provinces (oblasts) and the ethnically distinct republics, hoping thereby to effectively abolish any autonomy and tum the Federation into a unitary state. The attempts continued in the mid-1990s, with mixed results. Moscow's lack of commitment to autonomy strengthened the hands of those nationalists who argued that full independence was the only safeguard for national cultures. The innem1ost layer of the Russian onion consists of the various ethnically Russian provinces around the central core of Moscow. Are these provinces an integral part of the core itself, or are they another layer that might be peeled off? The former seemed true �n the 1980s, in view of ethnic homogeneity, but by 1993 several Russian areas declared themselves republics, claiming parity with those that were ethnically distinct: the Primore and Sakhalin in the Far East, most of the west Siberian and north Caucasian oblasts, and even the city of St Petersburg (Gubarev 1993; Hut­ tenbach 1993a). Russia was historically formed by Moscow conquering various other Russian states, to which it never accorded the least local autonomy. Initially, an alternative existed in the fom1 of the mer­ chant republic of Novgorod which could have evolved towards parliamentarism and democracy. Its crushing by authoritarian Mos­ cow (1478) was a major tragedy for world democracy, the con­ sequences of which are still with us. Over-centralisation continued after the shift of the capital city to St Petersburg on the newly­ conquered Finnie-inhabited sea coast (early 1700s). The Bolshevik counter-evolution against the fledgling Russian democracy in 1917 returned the command centre to Moscow and established a federal fa�ade, but in reality was a further tum of the totalitarian screw. Moscow's exploitation of its empire hit the Russian core differently but no less severely than the ethnically distinct areas. A circle of economic blight and depopulation bulged around Moscow, a zone with low birth and high death rates from which younger adults fled either inward to the capital, or outward to areas of Russian colonisation. The Yeltsin crew still did not seem to know the

The Finno- Ugric Republics in the World Context

5

meaning of autonomy or local control. It abolished it even for the city of Moscow even before sinking into the Chechen quagmire. A common language is no guarantee of political concord: witness the secession of the Thirteen Colonies from Britain (and secession it was, by any non-parochial definition of the term). Vladivostok in the Russian Far East is slightly more distant from Moscow than New York is from London, and yet it has never enjoyed even the degree of autonomy against which the Americans revolted. Throughout Siberia, Moscow is too far away to be in a position to address local issues; yet in the early 1990s Yeltsin insisted on running the show in fine detail, by appointing the provincial governors, rather than allowing them to be elected, as had happened previously. St Petersburg is closer to Moscow but resents its loss of capital status and also remembers the flourishing Novgorod merchant republic near by. At the time of Yeltsin's referendum on parliament and presidency (April 1993), St Petersburg added a question on republic status for the city. Further west the Kaliningrad oblast on the Baltic Sea is a Russian enclave in the former German East Prussia, separated from Russia by Lithuania and Belarus. Kaliningrad's postwar Russian inhabitants are aware of their favourable trade location, if only they could become a 'fourth Baltic state' and not be dragged down by Moscow's dead weight. At a time of Russian-Lithuanian tensions, Moscow News claimed that 'Kaliningrad's relations with Vilnius [Lithuania] are better than with Moscow' (Gubarev 1993). In the early 1990s various ethnically Russian areas visibly aimed at broader self-government, each for somewhat different reasons. The common denominator was the central government's attitude. If Moscow refuses autonomy (or grants it and then tries to cheat, as Yeltsin did in the mid-1990s), the immediate effect might be a strengthening of the centre, but in the long term independence movements could gather steam as the only means for autonomy. The same applies even more strongly to the ethnically distinct republics, where the need for cultural autonomy in matters of language and education adds to socio-economic concerns (Dobrizheva 1994). Four groups of ethnically distinct republics The German defeat of 1918 left millions of Germans stranded outside the German-dominated states. Many, such as the 3 million

6

The Finno- Ugric Republics and the Russian State

Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, found adjustment difficult and contributed to instability in Central Europe. The USSR's debacle left 25 million Russians outside the Russian Federation. These 'Sudeten Russians' also find their new, non-dominant posi­ tion hard to accept and this fact should be of concern to the whole world (see Shlapentokh et al. 1994). At the same time it should be realised that the Russian Federation itself has 27 million non-Russian inhabitants. 1 Most of them (about 18 million) are not newcomers Oike most Russians outside the Russian Federation) but live on their ancestral territory. The various ethnically distinct republics, oblasts and okrugs within the Russian Federation can be divided into four groups (see Fig. 1.1) .. They are in various geopolitical locations and thus have clivergent domestic interests -the West's interest in them is also quite variable. 1. The Siberian nations (total indigenous population about 2.6 mil­ lion) face the Pacific. Their countries include the republics of Sakha (formerly Iakutia), Buriatia and Tyva, as well as former autonomous oblasts (Altai, Khakass) and autonomous okrugs (Evenki, Dolgano-Nenets, Chukchi, Koriak). Located in central and eastern Siberia, these areas are mainly closer to Tokyo than Moscow. Culturally, some of these peoples (especially Buriats) look toward Mongolia. They are interspersed with Russian-speaking areas that share the same geopolitical location: the Far East. Because they constitute north-east Asia, their economic future lies with east Asia. 2. The North Caucasian nations (about 3.5 million) are close to the Black Sea. Their countries include the republics of Ingushetia, Kabardinia-Balkaria, Daghestan, Kalmykia and, from Moscow's viewpoint, Chechnia, as well as two former autonomous oblasts (North Ossetia, Adyge). This region is interlinked with the South Caucasian countries (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia). Both parts of Caucasia have a similar location between the Black and Caspian Seas, a mosaic oflanguages and religions, and a tradition ofshooting 1

In 1979 the RSFSR had 23.9 million non-Russians (17.4% of the total population). The 1989 census showed 27.2 million, 18.5% of the population. The other Soviet republics had 23.9 million Russians in 1979 and 25.2 million in 1989. Henry H uttenbach (1993b) has called �e ethnically distinct republics within the Russian Federation its 'Nearer Abroad', in reaction to Moscow using the revanchist tenn 'Near Abroad' for the fonner SSRs.

m

f?Zl E=l

�

Dageatan

North caucas1an

Flnno-Ugric

Siberian

Bolgar

Fig. 1.1. Four groups of ethnically distinct republics and autonomous regions in the Russian Federation: Siberian, North Caucasian, Finno-Ugric and Bolgar.

\>

KallnlnQrad

--..J

The Finno- Ugric Republics and the Russian State

8

The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

first and negotiating later. The Abkhazian and South Ossetian struggles for autonomy in Georgia are supported by the Chechens and North Ossetians, illustrating the interconnection. The closest open sea is the Black Sea - which applies also to the Russian­ inhabited patts of northern Caucasia. Economically, the future of the areas lies with the other Black Sea nations - if politics does not interfere. 3. The Finno-Ugric nations (about 3.2 million) tend to be closer to the Arctic Ocean and the Baltic than to the Black Sea. Their languages belong to the Finno-Ugric or related Samoyedic language families. Their countries include the republics of Karelia, Komimu (Kami), Mariel (Mari), Moksherzia (Mordovia) and Udmurtia, as well as four autonomous okmgs (Permian Kom.i, Hanti-Man�i, Nenets, Iamal-Nenets), all contiguous to the Kami republic. Only Mordovia is marginally closer to the Black Sea than fo the Baltic. Com.pared to the Siberian and Caucasian nations, the Finno-Ugric ones are more tightly interwoven with Russia; they are closer to Moscow and were conquered earlier. They receive some cultural impulses from the linguistically related Estonians, Finns and Hungarians. 4. The Bolgar nations (about 8.6 million) speak Turkic languages and are landlocked around the great bend of the Volga River. Their countries are the republics ofTatarstan, Bashkortostan (Bash­ kiria) and Chuvashia. On the map they are interwoven with the southernmost Finno-Ugric nations, with which they have much history in common. The Finno-Ugric peoples are the age,old inhabitants of the area, while the Bolgar peoples hark back to the invasion of Turkic Bolgars, who established a powerful state on the Volga eleven centuries ago.The Tatars, Bashkorts and Chuvash have a dim awareness of·a common Bolgar substratum, and the language establishes a tie to Central Asia, from which they are cut off by a somewhat artificial corridor. MostTatars and Bashkorts are Muslim, building a farther tie toward the southeast. The Chuvash tradition, like the Finno-Ugric, is animist and Christian. Looking at the map, one might well feel that the Finno-Ugric and Bolgar nations should be joined - or regrouped on a non­ linguistic basis. However, these nations have different world views and group themselves by language (see section on Finno-Ugric cooperation, p. 21). In the words of the president of Mariel, the Islamic nations set their sights east (or rather south), while the path of the Finno-Ugrians takes them west (Salo 1993).

The Finno- Ugric Republics in the World Context

9

Admittedly, this mixed ethno-religious classification leaves out the Chuvash, who are neither Islamic nor Finno-Ugric. The Rus­ sian attitudes toward the Bolgar nations are coloured by the well­ nurtured memory of the 'Tatar yoke', and the Volga Tatars have played a leading role among the Muslims of the Russian empire. Historical role and present orientation, as well as language and in most cases also religion, set the Bolgar and Finno-Ugric nations apart, despite the contiguity of some of their republics. I have therefore chosen to go by the linguistic criterion. This leaves us with five Finno-Ugric republics and four autonomous okrugs - a sufficiently small number, so that one can go beyond mere enumera­ tion and establish a portrait for each of them. The issues of in­ digenous peoples, to be considered next, arise much more readily regarding the Finno-Ugric nations than the Bolgar nations who have their own history of empire-building. Some confusion is English texts would be avoided if a distinction were made between the Russian terms russkii (ethnically Russian) and rossiiskii (territory or politically Russian), the way one dis­ tingu ishes between English and British. The Federation in question is officially Rossiiskaia Federatsiia, not a mono-ethnic russkii entity. The preamble of its 1993 Constitution begins: 'We, the multi­ national people of the Rossiiskaia Federatsiia, joined by a common fate, . . . adopt the constitution of the Rossiiskaia Federatsiia.' A citizen of the Federation is a rossiianin, while an ethnically Russian citizen of any country is russkii (Taklaja 1995). The term 'Russian Federation' muddles many issues. Indeed, it prepares the semantic ground for 'ethnic cleansing' of the Federation of its non- Russian indigenous population. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES: NUISANCE OR RESOURCE?

Let us begin with a specific case. The indigenous peoples of the tropical Amazonas basin might find it sadly familiar, although the events took place in subarctic taiga.

Prokopi Sopacliin Prokopi Antonovich Sopachin was one of the most successful of the 23,000 Hantis, an indigenous people of the oil-rich Ob basin in north-western Siberia. Assistant director in charge of indigenous

10

The Finno- Ugric Republics and the Russian State

affairs at Noiabrsk-Neftegas, a Russian state-owned oil production outfit, he was elected to the local parliament of the Iamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug where he was an outspoken advocate of indigenous, and closely related ecological interests. He saw that reckless and wasteful oil and gas exploitation in the Ob basin threatened to produce a massive eco-disaster (see Chapter 9). In the neighbouring Hanti-Mansi Autonomous Okrug Prokopi was supported in his work by his brother lpsif, vice-chair of the village council of Ruskinskie (some 55 miles north of Surgut), and by his sister-in-law Agrafena S. Pesikova-Sopachina, who kept up a campaign in the press, at times even outside the Federation. The family had long been a source of annoyance for the local Russian authorities, who were allied with oil interests. Agrafena had received death threats against her children. Most Hantis are forest people, dependent on hunting and fishing; they feel helpless in face of Russian colonists and regulations. The settlers saw the Sopachins as dangerous uppity exceptions to Hanti meekness. On 28 March 1993 Hantis from outlying settlements gathered in Ruskinskie for a traditional zliat: an exchange of furs for food items, accompanied by general merriment. Prokopi Sopachin ar­ rived too. At 1645 hours Senior Lieutenant Aleksei Grigorievich Rudiashko of the local Russian militia arrested him, in violation of his status as elected representative. The next morning at 0800 he was found dead near the village council building, not far from the militia station; next to him was an empty vodka bottle and a fur cap that was not his. 2 He had been killed in a brutal way. His passport, money and the keys to his flat were missing. Senior Lieutenant Rudiashko did not organise the required watch at the location of the murder and sharp ly refused to invite an investigation group from the city of Surgut. The administration head of the Ruskinskie village coun­ cil, Anatoli Vladimirovich Prasolov, vanished from Ruskinskie 2

Iosif and Agrafena Sopachin were not home that night, but their house was full of relatives and other overnight guests, including a student from Tartu University, Estonia. Anzori Barkalaja, 25, had spent three years among the Hantis, collecting their legends and songs. He was sleeping in Iosifs room when five or six men entered around 2 a.m. One of them tore the receiver off the telephone. The student was hit but defended himself until the intruders realised he was not Sopachin but a foreign citizen. They argued whether to cover their tracks by killing him, then left (Barkalaja 1993; Tali 1993).

The Finno-Ugric Republics in the World Context

11

at that time and, therefore, did not take any measures or fom1al steps regarding this murder. (Handwritten statement by A.S. Sopachina, 30 March 1995; photocopy of theRussian original is in the author's possession.) The head physician ofRuskinskie clinic, P.S. Mironova carried out an immediate medical examination (29 March, 1045 hours). The handwritten report carried the seal of 'physician Alikova, Raisa Stepanovna', and made the following findings: a corpse of male sex, good build, satisfactory nutrition; oedema of soft tissues of hairy part of the head, black-and-blue spots of various sizes, multiple bone fractures of the skull, bone fracture at the right shoulder; both palms, am1s, feet and shins frozen; on the back, in the chest area - multiple black-and-blue marks of club beating, haemorrhage on the back; on the feet and on the buttocks - linear club marks, In view of the gravity of injuries, death resulted from a cerebral haemorrhage. The police claimed to have released Prokopi during the night, although somehow they still had his wallet and internal passport. No official investigation was conducted. Later, in a crude cover-up, the police produced a purported confession by Tania Sopachina, a niece of the victim, stating that she killed her uncle in self-defence, after he attempted to rape her. Of course, the very idea of a teenage girl inflicting, in self­ defence, the injuries described in the physician's report -club marks on feet, buttocks and back, culminating in a skull fracture� is absurd. In a talk with the Canadian linguist Harri Miirk (1993a), Agrafena Sopachina said that the girl had been coerced by force to sign the confession. Other documents and reports pertaining to the case were suppressed. In a press release of 12 July 1993, Andres Heinapuu, an Estonian MP and Estonian coordinator of the Finno-Ugric Peoples' Consultation Committee, reported: In the course of the investigation only statements from the militia have been taken into consideration; all other statements have disappeared. Aleksey Vasilyevich Bashkircev, the prosecutor in the Surgut area, has refused to meet with Agrafena Sopachina .... Investigator Yevgeni AleksandrovichReutov treats the relatives of the deceased very crudely.

12

The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

This tragedy is reminiscent of the murders of Amazonas Indian activists, as occasionally reported in the Western press. How typical was it of Russian treatment of indigenous peoples and other minorities? Was it unusual for an activist to die in this way? Or was it only atypical that a foreign citizen happened to be at hand to report the murder? Given theRussian officials' Soviet past and the dearth of foreign witnesses in ethnically distinct republics and okrugs, one dare not be optimistic. It was not a single incident involving a single policeman. There was also a whitewash at Surgut district level and above. The Russian-dominated council of the neigh­ bouring Iamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug apparently did not protest at the murder of one of its members. There was a history of police brutality, resulting not in punishment but in promotion. A.S. Sopachina wrote: Mr Rudiashko, an inhabitant of our village who has been committing illegal actions against Hantis (Ostiaks) of Trom­ Agan, has remained not only unpunished but has quickly as­ cended the career ladder. When he arrived at our village he did not have officer's rank, but within three years he has become Senior Lieutenant. In this period he has beaten the following people ofRuskinskie close to death: Viktor Iakovlevich, whose lungs were seriously damaged and who remained in hospital for three months; Sergei Vasilievich Kechimov, a bus driver working for the ethnic minorities; and Oleg Iemiakov, whomRudiashko threatened with a pistol, robbed and threw out of his flat wearing only trousers and boots. ...Regional and district authorities have been infom1ed of Rudiashko's actions, but no measures have been taken. (30 March 1993) Indigenous peoples as nuisance The further away indigenous people live, the more romantic they look. When closer to home (or business), however, they are felt to be an impediment to 'progress' - a tem1 which numerically and technologically expanding populations use to mean anything that favours them. Defence of indigenous peoples comes most naturally to those Westerners critical of the market economy. Some of them used to take a neutral to favourable stand on Soviet-type command economies, because at least they were not capitalist (although they were equally hell-bent on 'progress').

The Pinna- Ugric Republics in the World Context

13

Neglected both by supporters and critics of the market economy, the indigenous peoples of the Russian north were left with few advocates in the fomm of world opinion. If propping up the Russian economy is now seen as a major goal ofWestern assistance, then concerns about western Siberia focus on reviving its oil and gas production. Worldwide ecological consequences come a poor second. The survival of indigenous peoples in this polluted and socially dismpted environment is often not even mentioned in the rare press articles on the area (e.g. Goldberg 1993c and 1993d). When it comes to those eastern Finno-Ugric nations numerous enough to have their 'own' (though Russian-dominated) republics, the very applicability of the recently glamorous term 'indigenous peoples' might be disputed. This term is used mainly for peoples with pre-agricultural technologies: gathering, hunting, fishing, herding and horticulture. Populations that have proceeded to traditional agriculture may seem simply backward, without the saving grace of tme primitiveness. Preserving horse-and-plough cultures may be left to future times when those cultures will be as rare as hunters-gatherers are today. Only the urgency of impending ex­ tinction mobilises effort. Those who try save the world's variety, be it biological or cultural, tend to focus on the nearly doomed, neglecting those that could still be preserved without major effort. In this spirit, the autonomy expressed by ethnically distinct republics within the Russian Federation tends to be viewed by theWestern press merely as an impediment to the refom1s emanat­ ing from Moscow rather than as a necessary part of genuine refom1. Deep-set cultural yearnings by ethnically distinct nations are interpreted as crass economic greed: 'The Russian [sic] republic of Tatarstan appeared driven mainly by the desire to control its own oil when it came close to seceding in 1991' (Los Angeles Times, 20 July 1993). Indigenous peoples as a resource Linguistic and cultural variety is good, and probably even indis­ pensable, for humankind, rather as biologists have come to ap­ preciate wild grain stocks as a hedge against failure by the few \videly cultivated varieties. The current threatened extinction of many languages is 'a process whereby the world is killing its linguistic potential and diversity, just as it is killing its biological

14

The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

potential and diversity when hundred� of species of plants, insects and other living organisms are killed or allowed to die every year' (Skutnabb-Kangas 1990: 6). The anthropologist Frances Popovich has said (as quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 3 April 1993), that when losing a language, 'We lose something of what it means to be human - all the vast variety of ways of expressing the san1e ideas, the creativity.' These considerations call for protection for the indigenous peoples and their languages or at least alleviation of the pressures on them. This protection should apply not only to terminal cases but also those peoples who still have sufficient numbers to develop a modem culture, one that preserves their language and other cultural features compatible with modern technology. 'Linguicism' should be as unacceptable as racism, but it still thrives. In a new social Darwinist twist the argument is that the ethnoses [ethnic groups], cultures and languages which are going to survive and expand will do so because they are more adapted to modern life, more developed or have more potential for development than others. Subsequently, the ruling groups ensure that the other ethnoses, cultures and languages get a lesser or no chance to survive. This is done through institutionally controllable measures such as education. Majority languages and cultures always some­ how turn out to be the strongest survivors. And this can then be used as proof for the original thesis that they were the fittest. (Skutnab b-Kangas 1990: 11) The proponents of linguistic homogenisation (russification in easternmost Europe, anglicisation in many other places) have made much of the fairly few cases of arn1ed conflict where language is the cause or pretext, oblivious of the vastly more numerous cases of peaceful linguistic coexistence. The most intractable ethnic conflict of the mid-1990s, the Serb-Croat-Bosnian, involves people who all speak the same language (Serbo-Croatian) but who differ in religion. However, the argument can be extended beyond language-based nationalisms to those based on religion and any other non-racial feature. People have a need to join together on some basis, and their nationalism should be encouraged to become tolerant cultural nationalism rather than declared an inherent evil. Most of all to be avoided is the double standard of accepting the nationalism of larger nations , as legitimate while condemning

The Finno-Ugric Republics in the World Context

15

that of small nations. In the East European context, 'Russian national interests' are all too often presented as somehow justified by the large number of Russians and not as a manifestation of negative political-military nationalism; 'Ukrainian national interests' are nationalism in a pejorative sense; and 'Mari national interests' are simply unthinkable in Western political discourse. When the real or potential misdeeds of nationalism are castigated, the Nazi Gern1an precedent is likely to be trotted out and yet Germany was one of the largest nations in pre-war Europe. General peace in Europe may justifiably be placed in jeopardy for the sake of German, Russian or French nationalisms ('national interests'), but not for those of Slovaks, Udmurts, Armenians or the Serbs. Equal treatment or treatment with equal results? There is a perennial tension between individual and group rights. Classical liberalism views people as culturally homogeneous in­ dividuals in a field of cross-cutting interests. In this context minority rights are those of people who share a minority opinion on one particular issue, but who on another issue may well be part of the majority. The reality is that people often belong to more pemunent minority groups. 'Equal protection' for individuals can mean unequal protection for a permanent group, particularly where group sizes are vastly unequal. Full citizenship and voting rights are empty words for indigenous peoples who are continuously outvoted by an immigrant majority and see their most basic needs ignored. In face of unequal group sizes and resulting opportunities, truly equal treatment often requires differentiated legislation and approaches that go beyond the usual methods of classical liberalism. An important inequality of opportunity suffered by members of minority language groups is their inability to look for greener pastures without having to change their language. If dissatisfied with conditions in Mariel, a Russian resident can move elsewhere in Russia and still speak Russian. A Mari in the same situation would have to give up using the language outside the home. A Mari-language university in Mariel would be a Mari's sole op­ portunity to acquire higher education in the native language, whereas the Russian residents of Mariel would have opportunities elsewhere. The example of such countries as Estonia and Iceland shows that a language group with one million or even a quarter

16

The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

of a million speakers can develop fairly efficient native-language college education, if it is not prevented from doing so. Human cultural variety can only gain from it. Variety is especially important in our contemporary world with its widespread tendencies toward cultural homogenisation through mass conmmnication technologies. An inequality of opportunity to move and maintain one's lan­ guage has consequences for people's ecological attitudes. Russian industrial workers and managers frequently justify their notorious disregard for environmental safeguards in tem1s of Russia's vastness: If one fouls one's nest here, one can always move somewhere else. Soviet-induced population displacement reinforced this at­ titude, producing tens of millions of rootless people of various origins who lacked any sense of belonging or home. In contrast, indigenous peoples tend to be more respectful of the environment. Landscape features hold cultural significance for them; they cannot leave their ancestral grounds without subjecting themselves to cultural dislocation; they are ' guardians of the land' (Durning 1992). Of course, group rights can be pushed too far and abused at the cost of the individuals rights. Under the Soviet system both suffered, but in the post-Soviet Russian Federation there is a strong risk that the restoration of individual rights may be used as a cover for advancing the interests of the dominant ethnic group. The 'right' of Moscow businessmen to compete on 'equal' tenm with impoverished peasants for the purchase of indigenous lands confiscated sixty years before during state collectivisation is only the most blatant exan1ple of this. The dearth of group rights for smaller nations within the Russian Federation has been hidden from world opinion by the simultaneous dearth of individual rights in Russia itself and the merely symbolic recognition of national group rights through the existence of na­ tional republics and okrugs. However, it has been the deplorable conflicts that followed the removal of the communist straitjacket in the Balkans, Caucasia and Central Asia which have provided the most effective smokescreen. These conflicts are a delayed consequence of the communist regimes' practice of setting up formal ethnic territories while at the same time gutting them through immigration and developing an extremely intolerant politi­ cal culture of'who is not with us is against us'. Once the communist ideology had gone, this habit of intolerance attached itself to the only bond that remained, namely nationalism. For many decades,

The Finno- Ugric Republics in the World Context

l7

communist regimes simply froze national antagonisms by not al­ lowing them to be talked out and defused.· Now there is a thaw, and a flood ofunfinished business threatens. The lesson ofKarabakh/ Artsakh and Bosnia should not be to avoid meaningful ethnic autonomy -this only delays explosions - but rather to strive for con­ gruence between content (ethnic culture and education) ;md form. In representative assemblies individual and group rights are some­ times balanced by the presence of a second chamber, where smaller groups have a disproportionately large representation. For out­ numbered indigenous populations such representation gives them a voice in the only territory in the world that is unquestionably theirs. Two-chamber parliaments in ethnically distinct republics were suggested at a congress of Finno-Ugric nations that met in Izhkar (Udmurtia) in 1992 (Patrushev 1995). 3 THE EASTERN F INNO-UGRIC NATIONS AS ACTIVE PLAYERS

From pawn to actor The eastern Finno-Ugric peoples have not been by any means passive pawns, accepting the world's valuation of them. They have also begun to exert some influence on their own fate and the general politics of easternmost Europe. In 1990-1 four of the five Finno-Ugric republics proclaimed sovereignty, claiming predominance for their laws over those of the Federation. At least seven other republics did likewise. In all the Finno-Ugric republics the titular nationalities were a small minority, but their existence made a difference.4 All Finno-Ugric republics except Mariel have a Russian majority in their population and leadership, and the actions described may largely have bypassed the titular nationalities. There were, however, significant implications. First, 3

4

Not surprisingly, various groups favour the format most favourable to them. During the emancipation of Estonia some Russian colonists argued for a second chamber where the. Russians (30% of the population) would have half of the seats, but othei: minorities would have none. Such a dispropor­ tionately large institutionalised representation for a colonist minority is, of course, highly questionable, although Zimbabwe, to take one example, had to accept it as price of independence. Among the Finno-Ugric republics Komi proclaimed sovereignty on 29 August 1990, Udmurtia in September 1990, Mariel on 22 October 1990, and Karelia on 13 November 1991; Mordovia desisted. (Moscow News, 4 February 1993).

18

The Finno- Ugric Republics and the Russian State

the leaders of the republics could not play the games they did if they did not have the indigenous peoples at least as a fig-lea£ The very existence of the republics (instead of oblasts) depended on them. Hence the leaders were more motivated than before to reinforce the manifestations of indigenous culture and language in their republics. They also need the indigenous votes in elections, even if all major parties were led by Russians. Secondly, the new actions and visibility of the republics were bound to boost the self-awareness and confidence of the indigenous peoples, possibly more than the republic leaders bargained for. 5 Indeed, since the late 1980s the Finno-Ugric languages have undergone a revival, and among the people there has been a general trend toward greater cultural awareness of their past and of the world beyond Russia, which no longer appears the foun­ tainhead of all human achievement. National organisations were founded: Karyalan Rahvahan Liitto (Karelians), Mastorava (Mok­ sherzians), Mari Ushem (Maris), Kenesh (Udmurts), Kami Kotyr (northern Komis), Iugor (Permian Komis), Spasenie Iugry (Hantis and Mansis), and Iasavei (Nenets). Specialised youth, culture, ecol­ ogy and religious organisations were also founded - these are dis­ cussed in the chapters dealing with individual countries. Under the Soviet regime suc_h initiatives would have been instantly sup­ pressed, but in Yeltsin's Russia they were uneasily tolerated. These organisations struggled for the rights of the respective nations and for the revival of native-language education and press. The starting level was pitiful. The Soviet regime, while paying lip-service to the rights of indigenous minorities, actually choked them by encouraging Russian-speaking outsiders to move into the Finno-Ugric territories. Traditional lifestyles were disrupted and suppressed, and many people were deported or induced to 5

The slippage here between 'people', 'nationality', 'nation' and 'republic' is regrettable but unavoidable: such ambiguity is built into the nature of the ethnically distinct republics in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. They were conceived on the pattern of nation-states (albeit subject to a wider federation); hence their top officials are called presidents rather than governors. The nations in question were meant to be the indigenous peoples of the territory. However, Soviet colonisation has reduced the Finno-Ugric peoples to minorities in their 'own' republics. The Western usage of the tem1s in question has its own vagueness. 'Nation' most often implies the body of citizens of a state, regardless of their ethnicity, but one also talks of various Indian nations within the United States.

The Finno-Ugric Republics in the World Context

19

leave their historic homelands. Indigenous-language schooling was phased out, at times using totalitarian methods such the destructio� of textbooks, as in Udmurtia in the 1970s. The Soviet regime made Russian the key for education and careers. Because it purposefully prevented indigenous language development, many Finno-Ugrians came to view their own languages as primitive. The resulting assimilation has reduced the number of speakers of almost all the eastern Finno-Ugric languages since 1970, despite a birth-rate generally higher than the Russian. In the post-Soviet Russian Federation the worst denationalising and assimilationist practices were alleviated, but the Soviet decades left the eastern Finno-Ugrian nations seriously weakened in face of the double task of preserving traditions and building modern cultures. Their languages lacked socio-economic, political and tech­ nological terminologies. Nonetheless, the number of schools grew where the indigenous languages were taught as optional courses. Schools with indigenous-language instruction came more slowly, for lack of teachers and especially of textbooks, which were still being written. In Mariel, which generally led the way, the first Mari-language secondary school was set up and the number of Mari newspapers and magazines grew, although circulations were down owing to the economic depression. The 1989 census suggested an enhanced self-esteem among indigenous populations. The number of Komis, Maris, Udmurts and Vepsians showed a market spurt. Presumably some of those who had previously been ashamed of their background or were forced by nationalistic Russian census-takers to declare themselves Russians were now proud to register as Finno-Ugrians. Given that emancipation had barely begun in 1989, the census of 1999 will be an interesting test. However, in the mid-1990s the dearth of political representation in the parliaments of 'their' republics and okrugs remained a problem. Only the Maris (and to some extent the Moksherzians) achieved representation proportional to their share of the population. The Maris also made a dent in the republic's government and won the presidency. In other republics the parliaments were dominated by Russian settlers, many of whom did not understand, or wish to understand, the needs of the original inhabitants. Many Russian technocrats were forn1er · communist hardliners and were opposed to any democracy whatsoever, let alone indigenous rights.

20

The Finno- Ugric Republics and the Russian State

One major focus of indigenous endeavours was the drafting of language laws that would give the indigenous languages an equal status with Russian and facilitate their use in schools, public places and signs. Article 68.2 of the Federal Constitution explicitly states: 'The republics have the right to introduce their republic languages ... on a par with the ... Federation language [Russian]'. On paper, all the Finno-Ugric republics except Karelia passed such laws, but only Komimu and Mariel passed laws with any bite.6 An ethnic Russian backlash in the mid-1990s made the passage offurther language laws difficult. The Finno-Ugric activists were hampered by a negative press because the media, including some indigenous-language periodicals, were overwhelmingly in Russian hands. The privatisation of land represented both promise and threat to the indigenous peoples. They feared that lack of political rep­ resentation could lead to laws and regulations that discriminated against them, allowing Russian newcomers to win legal claims to lands that had belonged to indigenous owners before the Soviet enforced collectivisation. Some Finno-Ugric organisations have argued that the indigenous peoples of a given republic should have preferred status, and that the lands should be returned to them on the basis of pre-collectivisation ownership.7 Another issue was the presence of Russian penal institutions. Major Soviet slave-labour camps were located in Mordovia, Komimu, Hanti-Mansia and Udmurtia. The Finno-Ugric organisations ar­ gued that the republic authorities should have the final decision on maintaining or abolishing penal colonies.

6 The Komi republic passed a hard-hitting language Jaw in spring 1992, as did Mariel in January 1995. Udmurtia's proclamation (September 1990) was ineffective while Mordovia's (1990 and September 1995) is purely symbolic. 7 A specific example was Ingria, the area around St Petersburg. The Soviet regime deported most Ingrian Finns from their historic homeland in the 1930s and '40s and forbade their return thereafte,r. Thdr lands and houses were often given to relocated Russian military and to··R.ussian civilians. The Russian authorities tended to view the present occupants as n:sidents and the deportees, especially when non-Russian, as outsiders. Inkerin Liitto (the Ingrian Union) campaigned for their right to return home. For a world perspective, see Plant (1994), whi"ch also deals directly with Russia's minorities (1994: 28-30).

The Finno-Ugric Republics in the World Context

21

Finno-Ugric cooperation and international contacts Cooperation between the eastern Finno-Ugrians developed early in the 1990s, with some cultural input from the western Finno­ Ugric nations. The focus here is on the seminal period (1989-93), of which Igor Sadovin (1994) has compiled a chronology. While the foundation of national organisations began in 1987 and was largely completed by 1990, supranational ones tended to form after a delay of some two years. The writers came first. The First Congress of Finno-Ugric Writers was organised by the Mari Writers' Union as early as May 1989 in Ioshkar-Ola. 'Through this conference the Russian Federation sought to channel and appease the dissatisfaction that had long smouldered among the minority nations' (Laulajainen 1995b). However, there was to be no appeasement. Writer after writer stood up and expressed the long-accumulated frustration of his or her people with the ethnic situation in the Soviet Union: Russian represe�tatives at the congress were shocked to hear, many probably for the first time, how the small indigenous native populations felt about their 'big brother', Russia. Later the chief concern of the Russian representatives was not how to redress the wrongs done to the Finno-Ugric peoples over the course of the Soviet period, but rather how to salvage the ' great friendship of nations', i.e. the Soviet Union. (Miirk 1992) An international Finno-Ugric Writers' Union was initiated, but became bogged down when the Finns pulled out and formed a separate Castren Society (1990) to handle their contacts with eastern Finno-Ugrians (Laulajainen 1995b). Writers' Congresses continued: August 1991 in Espoo, Finland; and August 1993 in Eger, Hungary (where the main theme was 'The Role of Native Languages and National Cultures in the Rebirth of Finno-Ugric Nations'). The International Union was dissolved in January 1992 and replaced by a Committee of Finno-Ugric Writers, a loose forum which the Finns could join. Another initiative was taken by youth representatives, who met in July 1990, also in loshkar-Ola, to discuss the topic 'Youth and Culture' and found the Youth Association of Finno-Ugric Nations (MAFUN by its Russian initials). Shift of leadership from Mariel to Udmurtia may have slowed down subsequent

22

The Finno- Ugric Republics and the Russian State

development, but by 28-31 October 1993 a second session of MAFUN took place in conjunction with an International Con­ ference of Youth Organisations ('Finno-Ugric World: Perspectives and Problems') in Izhkar (Izhevsk), Udmurtia. In October 1994, another international conference ('Youth and the Finno-U gric World') was held near Izhkar, organised by MAFUN. It included a balanced speech by N.D. Egorov, Federal Minister for Nationality Affairs, whose involvement in the invasion of Chechnia later made him notorious. The First International Finno-Ugric Folklore Festival took place in conjunction with the first youth meeting CTuly 1990, Ioshkar­ Ola) and subsequently became a yearly event. The 1993 Festival, held in Hanti-Mansiisk, included a conference 'The Search for. Forms oflndigenous Self-Government' - indicative of how folklore interests enhanced ethnic self-respect and spilled over into politics. However, the most significant step towards Finno-Ugric coopera­ tion came with the founding conference of the Finno-Ugric Peoples' Cultural Development Fund on 6 October 1990 in Ioshkar-Ola. Delegates came from all five Finno-Ugric republics in the Russian Federation, Pennian Korni and Hanti-Mansi AOs, and Soviet­ occupied Estonia. A follow-up conference (15 to 20 October 1991, Tallinn, Estonia) focused on working out realistic programmes for the Fund. Based in Ioshkar-Ola, the Fund banked too heavily on subsidies from the federal government. When Moscow withdrew its financial support in 1993 the Fund collapsed. It was two years before it could be re-established, once again in Ioshkar-Ola and headed by Nikolai Gavrilov, fom1er Culture Minister of Mariel. Power seemed to be in the hands of the former local Soviet nomenklatura who had come to espouse cultural nationalism (Ritson 1995). A meeting of journalists of the Finno-Ugric territories in April 1991, Ioshkar-Ola, was a logical move towards breaking Moscow's media monopoly - and that of the local Russian press - by estab­ lishing direct channels between the republics and the outside world (through Hungary and Finland). Moscow seemed more concerned about journalism than anything cultural or even political. When journalists were to meet visitors from the western Finno-Ugric countries, the latter at times had visa difficulties. There were no regular follow-ups to the first meeting, but on the other hand international festivals of Finno-Ugric TV films and programmes

The Finno- Ugric Republics in the World Context

23

became annual events (October 1991 in Ioshkar-Ola, October 1992 in Syktyvkar, and September 1993 in Izhkar). To promote joint mutual awareness at an early age, Finno-Ugric children's can1ps were started. The first (August 1991, in Mariel) underlined an inherent difficulty: namely that children with different home languages but a common school instruction language (Rus­ sian) inevitably resulted in a summer camp operating in Russian. The adult Finno-Ugric events also used Russian as the lingua franca (to the dismay of some Western participants not fluent in it), but somehow the activists expected the children to behave differently. Efforts continued, however, in 1993: an international creative arts can1p in Udmurtia and an ecology camp for Finno­ Ugric children in Mariel (August). After 1993, worsening economic conditions in Russia seem to have put a damper on any enthusiasm for such joint events.8 Scholarly conferences on such Finno-Ugric themes as archaeol­ ogy and linguistics, which had been permitted under the Soviet regime subject to tight supervision, multiplied and expanded in scope in the 1990s. The World Congresses of Finno-Ugristics had avoided topics awkward to the Soviet authorities, even when held outside Soviet Union (for example in Hungary and Finland). The Sixth Congress Ouly 1985, Syktyvkar) still followed this pattern (see Saveleva 1989 and Fediuneva 1990). By the Seventh Congress (August-September 1990, Debrecen, Hungary) there was some movement. The Eighth Congress (August 1995,Jyvaskyla, Finland) explicitly took contemporary problems as the main theme, and many awkward issues, past and present, were discussed (see Con­ gressus Octavus 1995 a and b). Meanwhile, a number of smaller international conferences also took place, some genuinely scholarly, while others had an applied bent (termed 'scientific and practical' in Russian parlance).9

J

Also noteworthy are festivals of Finno-Ugric fairytales (March 1991, Narva, Estonia) and dance (April 1991, Izhkar) and a Finno-Ugric Library Day (October 1991, Tallinn). The year 1992 brought a Finno-Ugric theatre festival arch-April, Izhkar), a meeting of creative artists 0une, Leningrad), a youth sports congress (June, Tallinn) and even an International Conference ofFinno­ Ugric Folk Healers (September, Kaustinen, Finland). The first of them ('Ethnoculture and Society ofFinno-Ugric Peoples', Novem­ ber 1991, Ioshkar-Ola) was of semi-practical character, as was 'Cultures, Languages and Beliefs of Finno-Ugric Peoples: Problems and Perspectives'

24

The Pinna- Ugric Republics and the Russian State

Such mitiatives provided the background for the forn1ation of two overarching Finno-Ugric organisations to complement the Development Fund. On 15 May 1992 the founding me.eting took place (in Izhkar) for a Federation-wide Association ofFinno-Ugric Nations, and it was followed by a work session in St Petersburg (November 1992). The Association did not forn1ally include the independent western Finno-Ugric nations (Hungary, Finland, Es­ tonia), although in practice their input was welcomed. The cul­ mination was the First World Congress of Finno-Ugric Nations (December 1992, Syktyvkar), attended by over 800 delegates, including some from the western Finno-Ugric countries. Federal and regional officials were also present, and the congress received financial support from the Federal and the Russian-dominated Komi governments, a welcome positive gesture (Miirk 1992). A pern1anent International Consultative Committee of the Finno­ Ugric Nations (ICCFUN) was established, with its headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, and coordinators in Estonia, Hungary and most eastern Finno-Ugric republics. The founding of the Federation-wide Association and the ICC completed the formal framework needed for cooperation. 10 In 1993 there were further conferences and symposia. 11 An interna­ tional seminar on Problems of Statehood, Constitutions and Lan­ guage Practices in Finno-Ugric Regions (October 1993, Izhkar) met at a critical juncture. Yeltsin and the framers of the federal (September 1992, Ioshkar-Ola). The need for socio-political support for cul­ tural development became explicit in the theme_ of the next conference: 'Routes towards Political, Cultural and Linguistic Self-Detem1ination for the Uralic Peoples' (October 1992, Szombathely, Hungary).

10 Regional cooperation expressed itself in 'Life Tree', a festival of those Finno­ Ugric peoples without their own titular territories (20 June 1992, Leningrad oblast); the First National Congress ofKarelians, Finns and Vepsians (November 1992, Petroskoi,Karelia); and the adoption of a 'Programme for Finno-Ugrians of the Volga and Pre-Urals' (30 June 1993, Ioshkar-Ola). 11 Topics in 1993 included 'Problems of Developing Literary Languages of Finno-Ugric Peoples' (April, Izhkar), 'Ethnogenesis pfFinnic Peoples' (May, Ioshkar�Ola), Finno-Ugric history Qune, Oulu, Finland), prehistory (October, Szombathely, Hungary), and problems of keeping pace with a changing world (October, Tartu, Estonia). The First All-Russian Scientific Conference of Finno-Ugrian Scholars met in 1994, in Ioshkar-Ola. Finno-Ugric theatre festivals took place in Num1es, Finland in 1993 and again in 1994 (Vaittinen 1995).

The Finno- Ugric Republics in the World Context

25

constitution toyed with the idea of equalising the status of Russian oblast� and ethnically distinct republics, thus abolishing the framework for satisfying ethnic special needs. The seminar participants sent Yeltsin a protest, joining a flood of similar challenges. In the end, the 1993 Constitution did recognise ethnic differences, but Rywkin (1994: 193) points out that it grants as much (or as little) autonomy to oblasts as to republics. Of course, conferences and organisational labels do not make nations, and it might be argued that these are merely surface froth stirred up by a few intellectuals. However, nations are not built without organised interaction. Such activity was utterly forbidde� and harshly repressed during decades of Soviet rule, and burst out within a few years of it first being allowed. The range of such activities involves a large number of'firsts'; some are impressive and others almost humorous, but all indicate activity across a broad spectrum of people. These events also enable us to determine geographical centres of activity. Mariel has thus had a leading role, in both the number and the nature of the events; 12 while U dmurtia came a respectable second. Hungary, Estonia and Finland played supportive roles as important outsiders, as did the St Petersburg region as a communication hub. There was some action in Komimu, Karelia and even the remote Hanti-Mansia, but none in Mordovia. This rough analysis deals, of course, with Finno-Ugric interactions and not with local activities, but it reflects the energy levels of various eastern Finno-Ugric nations. On the international scene, the eastern Finno-Ugric nations have an outlet through the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO), founded in The Hague in 1990 to support the efforts of indigenous peoples worldwide to gain autonomy or independence. As of 1995 its forty-three members ranged from Tibetans and Hawaiians to Kurds and Skanians in southern Sweden (Mall 1995). Four former members (Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) have achieved United Nations membership and the last three have become supporting members of UNPO. Tatarstan, Ingushetia and Sakha (Iakutia) seemed to be the only nations within the 12 Sadovin (1994), in his chronology for 1989-3, gives the following geographical distribution for forty-five events: Mariel (13); Udmurtia (8); Hungary (6); Estonia (S); Finland (4); St Petersburg (4); Komimu (3); Hanti-Mansia (1); Kardia (l); Mordovia (0).

26

The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

Russian Federation represented in UNPO by their republic govern­ ments; Chechnia was also represented. A number of others wer1t represented by national congresses or unions: Komis, Maris, Ud­ murts and Ingrians among the Finno-Ugrians; and Chuvash, Cherk­ ess and Crimean Tatars elsewhere. International attention on eastern Finno-Ugric affairs reached a high point when the Hungarian president Arp.id Gonez visited Mariel, Kami.mu, Udmurtia, Mordovia and Hanti-Mansia inJune­ July 1993. The president of Mariel, Vladislav Zotin, was accorded full honour as head of state during a May 1992 visit to Estonia (which had recently recovered its independence) but in Finland was treated as a private person. The indigenous peoples are likely to become increasingly active and visible in the domestic politics of th� Finno-Ugric republics and okrugs. These republics, in turn, may follow the lead of Tatarstan and Chuvashia, and become more vocal in Federation politics. The demands of realpolitik alone suggest that the West should keep an eye on the Finno-Ugric nations as potential actors in the post-Soviet situation. TOUCHSTONE OF RUSSIAN EVOLUTION TOWARDS TOLERANCE AND THE RULE OF LAW

Russia remains the major player in Eastern Europe. Even if the ethnically Russian areas were to break up into several successor­ states, many of them would be more powerful than the other post-Soviet states. In some ethnically distinct republics the Russians outweigh the indigenous component. In the oil- and gas-rich Hanti-Mansi and Iamal-NenetsAOs, the colonists completely over­ whelm the indigenous population. Will the preponderant attitude among such Russians be that of Lieutenant Rudiashko who sealed the fate of Prokopi Sopachin? Or will tolerance and the rule of law prevail? In other words: will the Russians develop a democratic civic culture? World history offers instances of a dominant group building democracy for itself but not for subject peoples. If the repressed groups are strong, such 'democracy' remains unstable until it is either extended or breaks down; however, if the repressed groups are powerless, selective democracy can last. The dominant group's share in the population may increase through immigration or

The Finno-Ugric Republics in the World Context

27

assimilation, and the subject populations may finally be given full individual rights when they no longer matter as a group. In the Russian Federation, ethnic minorities have formal voting rights, but Sopachin's death is a sh arp reminder of the limitations of a democratic fayade not backed by tolerance and the rule of law. If an elected representative can be murdered with impunity what can be expected for the rank-and-file indigenous? But demo­ cracy in Russia is fragile; in the rnid-1990s President Yeltsin was actually engaged in rolling back the rule of law in favour of rule by presidential fiat. Under these conditions, repression of ethnically distinct peoples might rapidly spread to those Russians who oppose repression, and the democratic experiment would end. Unless the minorities are given a fair deal, democracy and the rule of law will elude the Russians too. Each of the four geographical groupings in the Federation (see p.6) presents a different challenge to the Russians. The northern Caucasian republics and national oblasts, whose conquest by an imperial Russia is comparatively recent (200 years ago at most), may be hard to hold or reconquer -witness the Chechen quag­ mire. Moscow might prefer to accept their independence rather than wrangle about their degree of autonomy and arbitrate in their disputes. Imperialist diehards would then certainly lose face, but such a loss would involve few ethnic Russians being separated from Russia. Moscow would lose direct control of some resources, but under market conditions political control is no prerequisite for access. Borrowing a leaf from French neo-colonialist methods in Africa, Moscow in the mid-1990s was remarkably successful in reestablishing an economic and even military presence in the southern Caucasian states (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia). Such an indirect grip was far less costly than the demolition of Grozny. Siberia was seized by the Russians much earlier than Caucasia, mostly between three and four centuries ago, and the indigenous territories are interspersed with Russian-inhabited provinces. Never­ theless, eastern Siberia and the Far East are among those ethnically Russian areas most prone to separate from Moscow. The major confrontation would be between Moscow and the Russian-speaking Siberians, for whom the indigenous republics could be welcome allies. Whether the outcome is Siberian autonomy or (if Moscow tries to block it) independence, a symbiotic relationship may well develop with the indigenous territories - in the rnid-1990s there

28

The finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

was already extensive cooperation between indigenous Sakhans and Sakhan Russians. Ethnic differences were overshadowed by common territorial interests, such as control of natural resources. Rather than feeling like members of an important colonial outpost, many Russians in Sakha felt neglected and abandoned by Moscow, and the republic began to compete with the empire as object of patriotic pride. The Bolgar republics are a more difficult case. They are geographi­ cally much closer to Moscow, and their independence would cut offthe Russian-inhabited western Siberia, where the Atlantic orien­ tation still outweighs the Pacific. Emotionally, and for historical reasons the stakes are high. After the Mongol conquest of Eastern Europe in the thirteenth century a Mongol-Tatar state, the Golden Horde, subjected the Russian principalities to tribute, in what Russian historiography preserves as the 'Tatar Yoke'. The Golden Horde was followed by the Kazan Khanate, centred on present-day Tatarstan, and which in the fifteenth century was Moscow's main competitor. The Russian conquest of Kazan in 1552 meant the destruction of a powerful rival - by comparison, later conquests in Caucasia and Siberia were minor colonial operations against peoples that never threatened Moscow itself The contest between Moscow and Kazan was not only political, as between Moscow and Novgorod. It was a question of whether easternmost Europe would be Slavic and Christian or Turkic and Islamic. Meaningful autonomy for Tatarstan might seem to reopen an issue that the Russians thought settled four and a half centuries ago. Like in Sakha, one-half of the population in Tatarstan is Russian, but the geographical and emotional milieu is quite dif­ ferent. The Tatars, too, are aware of their historical greatness and chafe under the 'Russian Yoke'. Their idea of autonomy is therefore rather close to independence. They are the most numerous eth­ nically distinct nation in the Federation (5 million). Russia might well find it hard to hold on to Tatarstan by democratic means, yet it would also find it difficult to let it go because of the emotional groundswell in both Russia and among the Tatarstan Russians. The eastern Finno-Ugric areas are Russia's oldest colonies, subjected 700 to 400 years ago to the Russian yoke. The Russians harbour no historical animosity towards the Finno-Ugrians, given that they never threatened Russia the way the Tatars did. But there is a conviction that the Finno-Ugric areas are part of an age-old

The Finno-U,(!ric Republics in the World Context

29

Russia, interwined as they are with Russian provinces and having sizeable Russian majorities. It might be expected that the latter feature would block autonomy strivings, but this has not been the case. In Karelia (13 per cent ethnic Karelian and Finnish) and Kami (23 per cent Kami), both of which declared sovereignty in the early 1990s, the motivation of the local Russians was the same as in Sakha: territorial pride and desire to control their own destiny in face of neglect by the imperial government in Moscow. Contrasting both with the distant Siberian and North Caucasian nations and the nearby but strong Bolgar, the Finno-Ugric nations are closer to Moscow and weak. This exceptional situation presents Russian democracy with a different challenge: magnanimity. There is no question that the Russians can hold on to the Finno-Ugric republics. Rather, the cha_llenge is moral, as in the case of the Australian aborigines, the New Zealand Maoris, and the US and Canadian Amerindians. Can the dominant culture begin to treat an indigenous minority decently? The Australian aborigines might offer the closest analogy to the Hantis and other northern indigenous peoples in that small populations are spread over wide areas and are overwhelmed by a far greater number of settlers. There is, however, one crucial difference. In north-eastern Europe the politi­ cal culture of the dominant group is at stake to a far greater extent than in Oceania or America, where, for example, genocide could be carried out without blocking any development towards democracy. The Russians cannot maintain such a separation. The murder of Prokopi Sopachin, imperils the rise of Russian democracy just as much as it threatens the survival of the Finno-Ugric republics. The Finno-Ugric republics and okrugs are the touchstone of Rus­ sian evolution towards tolerance and the rule of law, without which democracy remains but an empty word.

2 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW When the earth, our ways began on the Earth the Creator placed a water, a gFeat water; into the water he .loosed three fishes, the first fishes, three brother-fishes. What did these fishes say, what were the enchanters thinking? (Erzian folksong, recorded in 1899, from The Great Bear, 1993)

Mastor i shachs', koin'e i shachs' mastorost' lanks n'ishk'e-pas makss' in'e v'edn'e vai poksh v'edn'e in'e v'ets noldas' kolmo kalnyt' kolmo kalnyt' da kal-avat kolmon'en'est syn brat'inn'ik. Koda kortyt' n'ei n'e kaltny m'est' dumait' n'c v'esht'utny?

The common denominator for the nations considered is linguistic. This overview therefore begins with the prehistoric development and shared characteristics of Uralic languages of which the Finno­ Ugric group fom1s a major branch. Another common denominator is Russian conquest and domination, which, to varying degrees, has affected all Uralic peoples. The First World War resulted in independence for Hungary; Finland and Estonia, and also in the fom1ation ofterritories officially assigned to the eastern Finno-Ugric nations, in the form of formally autonomous republics and districts within the USSR. This Soviet period concludes the general his­ torical overview. The changes that began in the late 1980s are described in the country chapters that follow. FINNO-UGRIC LANGUAGES AND PEOPLES

Who are the Europeans? Piazza (1993) finds remarkable genetic uniformity in Europe, as compared to the other continents, but that Europe nevertheless consists of three partially overlapping 'genetic landscapes'. The predominant one, centred on the Mediter­ ranean, represents a migration ofNeolithic farmers from the Middle East about 10,000 years ago. The second one in importance is at its strongest in northern Europe, from the Urals to Scandinavia, 30

Historical Overview

31

and Piazza associates this with the Uralic language family. The third genetic zone ranges from the c;spian Sea to the British Isles and seems connected with the migration of the carriers of Inda-European languages, starting some 6,000 years ago. In tem1s of language, Inda-European has prevailed throughout most of southern and northern Europe. The Uralic languages, however, represent the modem continuation of the speech used by one-third of the genetic ancestors of the present Europeans. Uralic prehistory Around 6,000 BC the world population stood at around 15 million. Paleolithic populations of perhaps no more than 100,000 were scattered over a wide area between the Ural mountains and Scan­ dinavia, speaking variants ofwhat linguists now call the Proto-Uralic language (Sammallahti 1988: 480). This language set may have been distantly related to ancient Inda-European, out of which developed most European and Inda-Iranian languages (Collinder 1956). Words possibly common to Uralic and Inda-European include 'name' (Nenets Samoyedic nym; Hungarian nev; Estonian and Finnish nimi) and 'water' (iqq, viz, and vesi, respectively). On the other hand, the Uralic languages also show similarities with the Turkic, Mongol and Tungus languages, which are loosely 1 grouped under the name Altaic. The hunter-gatherer Uralic tribes, ·each consisting, perhaps, of 2-300 individuals, were continuously on the move, and their consequent intemungling kept the language fairly uniform over 1

For further details see Hajdu (1975, 1976a, 1976b), Mark (1970), Uibopuu (1984), Sinor (1988) and Korhonen (1991). The preceding simple model oversimplifies and pos�ibly distorts a vastly more complex process oflinguistic interaction. Languages borrow words and fonns. They fuse as much as they diverge, as speakers of different languages intermix. The present speakers of the various Samoyedic and Finno-Ugric languages clearly differ in much of their genetic heritage. People may adopt a language their genetic ancestors did not speak. Living conditions n'iay also have preferentially selected for Mongoloid traits among the present Samoyeds-and Europid traits among the Finns. In the following we continue to present a 'language family tree', but the reader should beware of the pitfalls of such a simple model, a point made by scholars ranging from Seta.la (1926) to Hakkinen (1984) and Sinor (1988: xiii-xx). Above all, linguistic ancestors can be diffe·rent from genetic arn::estors, and both can originate in very disparate quarters.

32

The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

long distances. The advent of Neolithic technology, including traces ofagriculture rendered the tribes more sedentary and probably contributed to language differentiation. By 4,000 the Proto-Uralic area had split into two: Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic. The linguistic ancestors of the present Sam.oyedic peoples expanded east, over the Urals, while those of the Finno-Ugric peoples stayed put or expanded westwards, possibly reaching the British Isles. The terms 'Uralic' and 'Finno-Ugric' have often been used interchangeably, but this is not quite correct, given that Uralic also includes Samoyedic. The speakers of Finno-Ugric most likely were the earners of what archaeologists call the comb ceramic culture, distinguished by decorations impressed in pottery with a vaguely com.blike tool. Racially they were Europid: towards the east Mongoloid admixture took place later on (Liptak 197 6: 140). They were in contact with the Inda-European peoples further south, who had differen­ tiated into Centum (Greek/Latin/Celtic/Germanic) and Satem (Indo-Iranian/Slavic/Baltic) language groups and possibly into even narrower sub-groups, because some specifically Iranian loan words are shared by all Finno-Ugric languages (but not the San1oyedic), such as words for 'hundred' and 'horn' (Hungarian szaz, szarv; Estonian sada, sarv; Finnish sata, sa,vi). These loan words suggest acquaintance with metal tools and partial adoption of agriculture and animal husbandry before 2000 BC. Another differentiation occurred around 2000, separating the Finno-Ugric peoples into Ugric toward the east and Finno-Permic toward the west. Both branches rapidly underwent further splits. The dates are controversial among linguists, but the general trend has been towards accepting ever earlier dates. 2 The Ugric peoples acquired horsemanship skills in the neigh­ bourhood ofsouthern Urals. They separated into Ob-Ugric peoples, who eventually moved north along the Urals, and Hungarians, who much later moved west and settled on the Danube. Separation dates ranging from 2000 to 500 BC have been offered; a vocabulary analysis (Taagepera 1994) suggests a date before 1500. Also around 1500, Finno-Perrnic split into Pennie, ancestral to the present 2

'Finnie' has often been used to designate all Finno-Pen11.ic languages, based on an earlier belief that Permic languages are very much closer to Finnish than to Hungarian. What I call Finnie is in such nomenclature 'Balto-Finnic', which unintentionally suggests a tie to the Indo-European Baltic language group (Lithuanian and Latvian).

33

Historical Overview

SOUIBERN [Kamass] SAMOYEDIC Sellcup

SAMOYED IC

NORTHERN SAMOYEDIC

Nunassan Eneu Nenets NonhernH. 1EasternH. I SouthernH.

Hanti

-

URALIC

OB-UGRIC

-

Nonhern M. 1_1;'.astern M.

Mansi

UGRIC

HUNGARIC PERMIC

FINNO-PERMIC '---

'

''

\?

-·--

... I ........__.. ;..-

r. , -, . >vsk)

0

200 km

Fig. 9.1. Hanti-Mansia and Iamal-Nenetsia and surroundings.

l

342

The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

The Nenets AO (177,000 km.2) is a thin coastal band, at most 200 km. wide, stretching 950 km along the Arctic Ocean from the White Sea in the west to the Urals in the east. It is almost entirely north of the Arctic Circle. Most of its land border is with Komimu, to the south. Owing to the presence of the sea, January is warmer (-12 to -22°C.) and July cooler (6 to 13°C.) than in Hanti-Mansia. The ground is flat and often swam.py, covered with treeless tundra. Almost one-third of the population (20,000 out of 55,000 in 1990) lives in the capital city, Narian-Mar, near the mouth of the Pechora. Two-thirds are Russian; 13 per cent are Nenets; and 11 per cent are Komis. No major mineral resources have been discovered, and hence the population density is merely 0.3 per km.2 - one-tenth of Hanti-Mansia's. Fishing, hunting and raising of reindeer and fur animals are the main occupations. The Nenets AO is administratively subject to the Russian Arkhangelsk oblast that lies further west. The Iamal�Nenets AO (750,000 km.2), due north of Hanti­ Mansia, is bisected by the Arctic Circle and, in the north-south direction, by the narrow Ob Bay, the 750-km. long estuary of the Ob, Pur and Taz rivers. The largest east-west and north-south dimensions are both around 1,100 km. Iamal ('Land's End' in Nenets) is the nan1e of the peninsula that juts into the Arctic Ocean, west of the Ob Bay. Winters are even colder (-22 to -26° C. in January) than in Hanti-Mansia, and the brief summer (+4 to +14°C. in July) hardly melts the surface ice in the north. It is low swampy tundra with some coniferous forests in the south. The population oflan1al-Nenets AO (495,000 in 1989) consists mainly of Russian newcomers; the Nenets are down to 4.2 per cent, to which one should add 0.3 per cent Selkups and 1.5 Hant.is. Population density (0.7 per km.2) is intern1ediate between those of the Nenets and Hanti-Mansi AOs. Gas is extracted throughout the south-eastern third of the country and more recently also in the Iamal Peninsula. The main cities are Noiabrsk on a railway entering from eastern Hanti-Mansia and Novy Urengoi further north, gas towns for which any population figures are hard to come by. The Capital, Salehard (about 30,000), on the lower Ob is small in comparison. A railway from Vorkuta in northern Komimu reaches the opposite bank of the Ob at Salehard, and an extension to the oil fields in Iamal is under construction.

Hanti-Mansia and Nenetsia: The Curse of Arctic Oil

343

Like Hanti-Mansia, the Iamal-Nenets AO is subordinated to the Tiumen oblast. The Dolgano-Nenets AO (fom1er Taimyr NO, 862,000 km. 2 and 49,000 inhabitants in 1994) further east, on the lower Enisei River and the Taimyr Peninsula, also has a Nenets population, pushed there by Russian oppression 250 years ago. The area was originally inhabited by the Enets and Nganassan relatives of the Nenets. Presently, the most numerous northern people are the Dolgans, who moved in from the south-east. The Dolgans are Evenkis (a Tungus people) who have mixed with the Turkic Sakhans (Iakuts) and adopted a Sakhan dialect. Near the capital of the Dolgano-Nenets AO, Dudinka (32,000 in 1994), the copper and nickel mining city of Norilsk is administratively separate from the AO, though surrounded by it. Both are subordinated to the Russian Krasnoiarsk krai further south. Founded in 1935, Norilsk had a population of 181,000 in 1987 but only 173,000 i.n 1990, reflecting the collapse of the mining industry. In the following discussion, the term Nenetsia' will not generally include ilie Dologano-Nenets AO - geographically and ethnically, it lies beyond the scope of this book. Table 9.1. POPULATION CHANGES OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF NORTH-WEST ASIA, 1926-89 Name (Previous name)

1926

16,800 ± 5% Nenets (Iurak Samoyeds) 19,100 ± 16% Hantis (Ostiaks) 5,800 ± 5% Mansis (Voguls) 1,200 ± 44% Dolgans 3,800 ± 57% Selkups (Ostiak Samoyeds) 850 ± 5% Nganassans (Tavgi Samoyeds) 412 ± 17% Enets (Enisei Samoyeds)

1959

1989

23,000 34,700 19,400 22,500 6,400 8,500 3,900 6,600 3,800 3,600 750 1,300 209

Change

1926-89

+107 +18 +46 +470 -5 +53 -49

(%)

Source;: Census results of 1926, 1959, and 1989-as separatdy reported by Forsyth (1992: 249), Kolga et al. (1993) and Vakhtin (1992: 8). They show broad agreement for 1959 and 1989 but considerable disagreeme,m for 1926, for which the averages of the three sources are presented, along with the variation. For Selkups in 1926, Forsyth gives 6,000, Vakhtin 1,600, and Kolga ct al. decline. The Soviet census of 1959 did not recognise the Enets as a distinct ethnie.

The indigenous population dynamics in this entire area during the 20th century is shown in Table 9.1. The peoples are listed

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77ie Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

in the order of their present numbers (throughout the forn1er Soviet Union). The table also indicates the pre-Soviet names by which the Russians called these peoples. The names presently used try to follow the peoples' self-designations (although these might differ from clan to clan). Since the 1920s, most populations have increased slightly, though at a rate much lower than the Russian. These figures also hide the extens1.ve loss of native language and culture. The strong growth in the number of Dolgans is most likely due to cultural assimilation of their neighbours. In face of the large colonist popula­ tion (mainly Russians), only the Nenets seem to have both the mass and the growth rate to assure survival beyond the 21st century. For the others, much depends on the Russian and world attitudes towards indigenous peoples. HISTORY

The first humans in north-western Siberia were Paleoasiatic peoples of unknown stock. They were replaced or assimilated by Samoyeds, who habited most of Western Siberia's forest zone after -4000. Along the Enisei River they also moved further south to the Saian Mountains (Kothonen _ and Kulonen 1991). East of the southern Urals, they were later replaced or assimilated by the Ugric Hantis and Mansis and then by various Turkic peoples. Further east the last Samoyeds on the upper Enisei were absorbed by their Turkic neighbours during the last few centuries, after the Russian conquest. 1 The Nenets are currently the only San10yedic people numbering more than 4,000. They have straight black hair and the attenuated Mongoloid features characteristic of most northern Siberian peoples. They began to domesticate reindeer two millennia ago (Korhonen and Kulonen 1991), much earlier than the Samis. The Ob-Ugric linguistic ancestors ofHantis and Mansis separated from those of the Hungarians probably before 1500 BC, as estimated by the extent of conunon vocabulary (Taagepera 1994). All these peoples lived near the southern Urals and acquired skills in 1

Tht: main sourct: for prt:-Sovit:t history is Forsyth (1992); also Kolga l't al. (1993), Korhont:n and Kulont:n (1991 ), Martin (1988), Uibopuu (1984: 257-7) and Vakhtin (1992).

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horsemanship. A sequence of climatic changes probably m.otivated the Ob-Ugrians to move further north, out of the area suitable for horses. First, during a dry sp_�ll in the steppe they moved north on both slopes of the Urals and may possibly have adopted agriculture. Later, as the climate became colder, their new home turned into taiga, and they became hunters and fishers. A return to the south was most likely blocked by other, stronger popula. ? t10ns.When the Mansi an_d Hanti languages began to separate around -500 (Taagepera 1994), their area lay appreciably south and west of the present, extending to the middle reaches of the Irtysh River in Siberia and to the adjoining areas west of the Urals. In Europe, they were the neighbours of the Pemuc ancestors of Udmurts and Komis. They faced southern Samoyedic peoples (Selkups) and the linguistically isolated Kets in the east. In the southern steppe various Turkic peoples appeared at the time of the Hunnish empire, close to 2,000 years ago, replacing Iranian­ speaking Scythians. The speakers of the Ob-Ugric languages were most likely white, before they nuxed with the existing Mongoloid population (probably Samoyedic) of the northern areas they penetrated. The present Hantis and Mansis present a wide range of racial types. In the 11th century Kipchak Turks gradually moved from the steppe into the forest, pushing the Mansis, Hantis and Selkups further north or assimilating them. By 1500 the Siberian Turks occupied most of the Irtysh basin, so that the ethnic border was close to the present south-eastern border of the Hanti-Mansi AO. West of the Urals, the Konus slowly pushed the Hantis out of the upper reaches of the Pechora and the Mansis from the lands south of it, from +900 to 1400 (Kokkonen 1991). In the south-west, however, the Mansis still inhabited most of the present Ekaterinburg/Sverdlovsk oblast and the Chosva (Chusovaia) basin east of present Pern1., on the European slope 2

In the northern hemisphere population-carrying capacity generally tends to decrease towards the north. This means that populations hit by adverse cir­ cmnstances may well have sufficient mass to push north, deplacing their northern neighbours, but are no longer able to return south. Indeed, north of the Russians and Tatars, many Eurasian peoples - Karelians, Kem.is, Mansis, Hantis, Selkups and Sakhans (Iakuts) - have gradually expanded north while simultaneously losing ground in the south.

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The. Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

of the Urals. The name of the city of Sarapul in eastern Udmurtia is so close to saranpaul ('Komi village' in Mansi) that one may wonder about the Mansis extending even that far. To judge by their intense resistance to the Russians, the Mansis may have once been as numerous as the neighbouring Komis, something hard to envisage now that they are reduced to 8,000 (compared to 500,000 Komis). Further east, a strong Turkic Tatar khanate was founded in the fourteenth century, after the break-up of the Mongol empire. Its capital was first Chimgi-Tura (present Tiumen) and later Sibir (near present Tobolsk), which gave its name to the present Siberia. It extorted tribute in the fom1 of furs and other forest products from the Mansis, southern Hantis, and Selkups and assimilated part of them. Most of the time, however, these peoples remained independent, separated into various clans according to the river basins. Pre-conquest culture The Mansi clans, ruled by hereditary chieftains, were at times joined into larger principalities organised along the rivers, such as Konda (at the south-western tip of the present Hanti-Mansi AO) and Pelym (south-west of the present AO). Hanti principalities included Koda (between the Kanda and Ob rivers), Kazym (in northern Hanti-Mansia), and Kunowat (in Iamal-Nenetsia). Pushed by the Tatars in the south, the Hantis in turn penetrated the main river valleys· of the Nenets area in the north, resulting in occasional warfare. Forsyth describes the relatively sophisticated set-up of the principalities: The chiefs of the Khanty and Mansi clans wielded considerable power over their subjects and were surrounded by a certain degree of wealth and barbaric splendour, including silver orna­ ments and vessels and large quantities of sable, fox and other furs. Their residences were forts surrounded by stockades and earth ramparts. (Forsyth 1992: 11) It is surprising that such a degree of political organisation could be carried out in swampy areas that even today remain extremely sparsely inhabited (except for the oil extraction centres). The total

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Hanti and Mansi population around 1500 has been estim.ated at 16,000 (Forsyth 1992: 11) -already one-half of the present. Agriculture (mainly barley), cattle and horse breeding, and apicul­ ture were possible only for the southern Mansis. Most Mansis and Hantis were semi-nomadic hunters and fishern1en, depending on skis in winter and dugouts and birch-bark canoes in summer. Log huts were used in winter and light birch-bark shelters in summer. Northern Hantis (and some Mansis in the Ural mountains) adopted the nomadic reindeer culture of the Nenets. Clothing was made of reindeer skin, furs, and even bird and fish skins. In the south weaving of nettle or hemp fibres was adopted from the Tatars. Social organisation of most Hanti and Mansi clans (especially in the north) featured two moieties, mash (or mashcli) and par, who lived intermixed and had to marry within the opposite moiety. The distinction may reflect the fusion of the Ugric settlers (mash) from the south with the preexisting population (par). Remarkably, the Udmurts call the Maris par (Ivanov 1995). Religion was animist. There was a complex pantheon centred on Num Torym, the supreme god, as well as spirits that inhabited lakes, trees and animals. In the holy places in forests the male members of the clan assembled for ceremonies where the shaman sacrificed horses, or lacking these, r�indeer and other animals. Occasional human sacrifices have been claimed in earlier times. The dead were not buried but laid to rest in wooden coffins above ground, accompanied by weapons and ustensils to be used in afterlife. While each clan prohibited the killing of its own totem animal, they all shared a reverence for the brown bear. It could be killed and eaten occasionally but had to be assuaged by a ritual funeral. 3 The far north of eastern Europe and western Siberia was the last refuge of the Samoyedic peoples as they gradually were as­ similated or pushed out of southern Siberia. They were mainly Nenets. The Nenets had shamans but, unlike tlieir Hanti neigh­ bours, no pernianent chiefs, though a temporary leader might be chosen to lead a hunt or do battle witli another tribe. In inter-Nenets 3

Islam did not reach the Mansis and Hantis before the sixteenth century. Even the Siberian Tatars largely remained animist. In the late sixteenth century, however, some Mansis may have adopted Islam.

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The Finno- Ugric Republics and the Russian State

warfare the place and conditions were negotiated beforehand, reminiscent of some American Indian practices. Conflicts also arose with peoples who expanded or retreated northward: Hantis (and, to a lesser degree, Selkups) in the east and Komis (and their Russian overlords) in the west. The Nenets economy depended on wild and domesticated rein­ deer, which they herded with the help of the famous Samoyed dogs. On the sea inlets at the mouths of the Pechora and Ob rivers the Nenets also fished and hunted seals and walrus. Housing consisted of conical deerskin-covered tents which could be transported on reindeer-drawn wooden sledges. Deerskin also dominated in clothing. Religious practices were similar to those of Hant.is.

Russian conquest The Novgorod Russians first entered Nenetsia and Hanti-Mansia using the northern river and portage network beyond the Kami area. In contrast to the relatively peaceful subjection of the northern Komis, some Russian marauders were killed in 1187 when they tried to extort furs from the Pechorans and Iugrans near the northern Urals.4 A Russian chronicle describing the next Russian aggression (1193) alludes to the existence of Hanti towns (rather than just villages) and fierce resistance: They set out from.Novgorod to Iugra with an am1y ... [and] came to another town. And [the Iugrans] barricaded themselves up in the town, and it was besieged for five weeks. And they sent out false word [to the Russians] that 'we are gathering silver and sable skins and other treasure, so do not destroy us, your serfs, or your tribute', but all the time they were assembling an army. And when they had gathered warriors they sent out word to the [Russian] 4

'Iugra' denoted sometimes only the ·Hantis, but often both Hantis and Mansis. It will be used here in this broader sense. The Pechora tribe that gave its name to the major river in northern Komimu and resisted Russian encroach­ ment in the twelfth century is commonly assumed to have been Nenets, although a Russian chronicle seems to contrast the Pechora with the San1oyed: 'I sent my servant ... to the Pechera, a people who pay tribute to Novgorod. When he arrived among them he went among the Iugra. The latter are an alien people dwelling in the north with the Samoyeds.' (Cross and Sherbowitz­ Wetzer 1953: 184)

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commander. 'Come into town with twelve men.' And they entered the town ... and they slew them. (Quoted in Forsyth 1992: 3) Only eighty Novgorodians survived (Martin 1988: 28). Such incursions were repeated over the next 250 years. A Novgorod expedition may have briefly reached the Ob in 1364. An ancient Russian chronicle (Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis) describes genocidal tactics during which Hanti women and children were seized by Novgorodians. The chronicle saw nothing cowardly in such acts, although it decried ·as unethical any successful Hanti attacks on the agressors' forts where 'good' people (meaning Russians) were killed. When a Novgorod army of 3,000 once again invaded Iugra, eighty Russians died at Vasili fort (the location of which is unknown) in 1445. Partial christianisation of the northern Komis encouraged the Russian bishop ofUst-Vym (near the present Syktyvkar) to attempt forcible conversion of the Iugrans. Iugra-Komi relations were complex. At times the Komis of the Great Penn joined the Iugrans in fending off the Russians. At other times those Komis who were allied with or subjected to Russians participated in raids on the Iugrans and thereby became targets of Iugra retaliation. After another attempt to impose Christianity on the Iugrans, the Mansi prince Asyka counter-attacked in 1455, pushing deep into Russian­ dominated Komi territory and killing the chief culprit, the bishop of Ust-Vym. Pressure on the Mansis increased when Moscow took over Novgorod's claims and pretensions in 1456 and overthrew the Pemiian Kami state in 1472. The Mansis were clearly the next in line. Muscovy was no longer interested in christianisation, even as a fig-leaf to justify aggression. Superior power became its own justification. The Russians skilfully exploited the existing tensions between the Komis and the Mansis. Supported by Kami auxiliaries, they raided the Mansi lands in 1465 and again in 1467, when they captured Mansi chiefs Kalpik and Techik. The latter were forced to accept the tsar's suzerainty and returned as Moscow's governors to collect fur tribute from their own people for the Russians. Raids by Russians and Komi auxiliaries multiplied in 1483-5. A Muscovite army first crossed the Urals in 1499 and reached the Ob River. Pillaging and hostage-taking forced several Mansi and Hanti princes west of the Ob and Irtysh to agree to at"least

350

The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

tem.porary tribute. Although the Moscovite tsar added 'Iugran' to his numerous titles, southern Mansi resistance still continued and the Hantis were only marginally affected. Up to then the Russian advance towards Siberia followed north­ ern river routes and avoided the arctic coast. In 1499 the Russians established the Pustozersk fortress (near the present Narian-Mar) in Nenets lands, close to the mouth of the Pechora River. They soon opened a northern sea route, navigating from the White Sea to the mouth of the Ob. There they confronted the distant influence ofthe Tatar Khanate ofSibir. Russian conquest of Kazan in 1552 opened up a third, southern route that began to dominate. A low pass through the Urals was offered by the Chosva valley, the home of the southern Ma.nsis, east of Pern1. These Mansis had paid occasional tribute both to the khan ofSibir and Moscow, but now they were also subjected to colonisation by Russian peasants. Resented by the Mansis, this colonisation also caused alarm in Sibir, where a new khan, Shibanid Kuchum (1563), chose a policy of spreading Islam and confronting Muscovy. Islamisation attempts may have alienated some Mansi and Hanti leaders and induced them to cooperate with the Russians, but others joined the khan's anny that devastated the Russian settlements in Chosva in 1572, triggering a long spell of Mansi revolts against the Russian intruders. In 1581 the Mansi prince Begbeli Agtai plundered the Russian colonies in Chosva. Further north, the Pelym Mansi prince Kikhek raided the Russian centres of Cherdyn and Solikamsk in Permian Komi territory (east of the present Permian Komi AO). The Russians captured Agtai in 1583, extorted from him an agreement to submit, and then released him (Huttenbach 1988: 79). Muscovy assigned full control of the conquered lands on and east of the Kama to the Stroganov merchant famiiy who hired cossack mercenaries to attack the Mansis and Tatars. The cossacks had the advantage of firearms against their opponents' bows and arrows. Led by a former outlaw, Ermak, this band plundered Mansi and Hanti villages, defeated the Tatars, and occupied Sibir in 1582. They spent the next three years marauding down the Ob and up the Irtysh rivers but were worn down and elinunated in 1585. The Khanate was restored, yet remained shaky. Muscovy finally achieved permanent control over Sibir and the Mansi lands

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in strenuous military campaigns, in 1586-98. The Russians destroyed Sibir and built Tobolsk 20 km. north-east of it (1587). In the 17th century it became their main administrative center for Siberia. In 1590 the Russians succeeded in building a fort on the eastern slope of the Urals, on the Lozva River, forced the Mansi prince of Pelym to surrender, and took him and his family hostages to Moscow. His name, recorded as Ablegirim (Abu-1-Kerim?), and those of several other Mansi leaders (Iusup, Al-Seit) suggest that islamisation of the Mansis may have picked up speed. Th_e last major Mansi principality, Konda, was destroyed in 1591 by an alliance of Russians with the neighbouring Hanti prince of Koda, Alach, who accepted vassal status and retained 1his government and troops. This collaboration bought his descendants only limited time. In 1643 the Russians reduced the Koda Hantis to the same level of subjection as those who had resisted the conquest. By 1600 the Mansi struggle against Russian encroachment that had began at least 250 years earlier was finally over. Their most fertile lands in Chosva and elsewhere in the south were seized by Russian colonists. The subjection of Hantis and Nenets proceeded apace on the lower Ob, where the Russians used the sea route and may have started colonies in the early sixteenth century. Berezov (present Beriosovo in the northernmost Hanti­ Mansia) was founded in 1593, and Obdorsk (the present Salehard) followed suit in 1595 at the very mouth of the Ob. The foundation of Surgut (1594), the present oil centre, marked the penetration of the last eastern Hanti lands, and that of Mangazeia on the Taz River (1601) completed the conquest of Nenets lands. In 1616 Dudinka (the present capital ofDolgano-Nenets AO) was founded. The supposedly voluntary submission of the Hanti prince Bardak of Surgut is highlighted by Russian historians, probably because such submission was so rare. (Indeed, why would any sane person volunteer for subjection and paying tribute, with nothing in return?) Resistance to the invaders continued. Eastern Hanti uprisings are recorded for 1606, 1608 and 1616. The Hanti struggle against Russian subjection, which began with the raid of 1187, lasted more than 400 years. Now the subjected Hantis began to supply auxiliaries for further Russian aggression. Koda Hantis participated in the foundation of Tomsk (1604) in Turkic territory and in breaking the resistance of the Ket people in 1618.

352

The Finno- Ugric Republics and the Russian State

By 1620 practically all Ob-Ugric and Nenets lands were under Russian control or rather rule of terror, comparable to the worst excesses of West European colonists: The Russian conquerors of all classes treated the native peoples of Siberia as enemies so inferior to themselves in way of life and military potential that they could be disposed of callously and unceremoniously, and invaded for the enrichments of the in­ vaders. It was quite usual for armed bands of Russians to kill natives whom they encountered and divide the booty, and it has been said that in the first stages of conquest the natives were hunted like animals. [...] One of the San1oyed chiefs, Ledereiko, wrote in his petition to tsar Aleksey: 'For five years ... they have been robbing and abusing us in every way, taking from us ... with violence and all manner of threats our sable and beaver furs, our deerskin bedding and clothing, our ropes and all kinds offootwear, our geese, ducks and reindeer-flesh... Theft of the laboriously hand-made gar­ ments and stores of food on which survival in the Arctic depended was tantamount to murder by starvation and cold. (Forsyth 1992: 34 and 45)

Tsarist Russian rule The main interest of Russians lay in exploiting the natives for furs. Voluntary barter and use of cheating soon gave way to blatant coercion and wanton cruelty. Clan leaders were forced by oaths and hostage-taking to participate in the despoliation of their own people. Every layer of colonial administrators took a cut. The same unashamed Russian .collector might return imme­ diately to demand a second payment, or gangs from one district might be followed by those from another. In the south, the in­ flowing Russian peasants seized whatever land they coveted. Private traders competed with the officials for the bonanza, buying trade monopolies and enslaving the natives. Slavery was officially abolished in 1825, but the ve1y same year a contra1y law ordered local Siberian authorities to purchase native girls so as to provide wives for Russian settlers (Forsyth 1992: 114). Opposition to the intruders continued, especially among the Nenets. They had offered comparatively little organised resistance during the original conquest, possibly because the very notion of

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domination was absent in their culture. When they experienced what the Russians n1.eant by 'subjection', the Nenets repeatedly attacked Pustozersk during the seventeenth and early- eighteenth centuries. Nomadic mobility enabled the Nenets to coordinate their actions over huge distances. Thus in 1662-3 Pustozersk, Obdorsk and Mangazeia came under simultaneous attacks, along an arc of 1,400 km. Pustozersk was burned down and the garrison was killed. Russian punitive expeditions hanged the Nenets leaders, but in 1672 the town of Mangazeia was given up as undefensible, and nothing remains of it. The garrison of the residual small fort was saved from a siege by the Samoyed chief Nyla only by the treachery of other chiefs. The Russian state made no effort to convert the natives of north-western Siberia to Christianity until the early eighteenth century when two imperial decrees (1706 and 1710) were abruptly issued threatening the death penalty for non-compliance. Officials searched the forests for animist temples and offered pieces of cloth and remission of tribute as inducement for baptism. Some Hantis and Mansis moved deeper into the forests, taking their sacred statues with them. Others retaliated for desecration of holy places by killing the officials responsible (e.g. Konda Mansis in 1717). As some Hantis withdrew towards the north and the east, Mansis who also fled east replaced them in the south-western part of the present Hanti-Mansi AO. By 1750 most Mansis accepted the outer trappings of Christianity but continued to practice animism in secret. The Hantis placed St Nicholas, the most popular saint among the local Russian peasants, among their own gods. Once more, the Nenets put up the most resistance, and their last attack on Pustozersk came as late as 1746. They also retreated from the mouth of the Ob, moving west, north or east. The latter move caused two wars with the hard-pressed Enets, whose numbers began to dwindle. The late eighteenth century brought a relaxation of religious pressures, abolition of the hostage system, and some increase in the importance of tribal chiefs in dispensing justice and raising tribute. However, the demoralised chiefs all too often followed the example of corrupt Russian officials. Ill-advised refom1s (espe­ cially in 1822) designed to ease the burden of the northern peoples actually worsened their plight. Land grabs, slick loans, and outrageous

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The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

barter and lease transactions formed a sad pattern all too familiar from nineteenth-century West European and American colonialism.. Having no concept of debt, such people as the Khantys readily accepted cash loans, but were incapable of repaying the money when it became due. Thus they forfeited the leased land forever, and in addition were frequently held to their debt - ever increas­ ing through interest ... Destitute and helpless in the hands of their Russian creditors, they could pay their debts only with their own person, working as slaves for those who had robbed them. ( ...] Many native debtors in the nineteenth century were victims of mortgages contracted by their ancestors 200 years before. (For­ syth 1992: 158-9) Not only alcohol but even bread became a means to enmesh the natives, for whom bread was a tasty exotic luxury, into dependence on Russian merchants. Introduction of syphilis and epidemic dis­ eases completed the list of woes. In 1824 the Russian state renewed its assault on the Nenets religion. The Russian administrative changes also subjected the Ob Nenets to tax collection by Hanti chiefs, their traditional adversaries. The result was an eleven-year freedom struggle that started in 1828, led by the charismatic Vavlo Neniang (a.k.a. Vauli Piettomin). After capture in 1839 he escaped and gathered both Nenets and Hantis for an attack on Obdorsk before the Russians caught him again and shipped him off to hard labour in distant eastern Siberia. The 19th century saw a penetration of Nenets and Hanti areas by Komi merchants who joined the business skills learned from Russians to their knowledge of the far north. By devious deals the Kom.i entrepreneurs cheated the Nenets out of their reindeer herds and developed huge herds for conllllercial purposes. West of the Urals, only 17 per cent of the some 280,000 reindeer rem.ained Nenets property by 1895. The rest belonged to Komis and Russians, who employed the Nenets as herdsmen. By 1910 the Komis began to acquire herds east of the Urals too, contributing heavily to Nenets destitution. As for the Russian colonisation of Siberia, it shifted in the nineteenth century further south and largely by-passed the remaining Hanti-Mansi area and Nenetsia. Previous northern outposts, including even Tobolsk, lost their significance.

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Forsyth (1992: 156 and 162) concludes that the nineteenth century was the time of deepest decline and degradation for most native peoples of Siberia. Yet he also notes that, after a decline in the seventeenth century, the number of Hantis and Mansis almost doubled from 1700 to 1900 (to 23,000), as did that of Nenets and Enets (to 15,000). Vakhtin considers Russian colonialism typical of the time: The Russians demonstrated racial prejudice and treated their subject peoples no more kindly than did other colonial powers. [...] The tribes were thrown upon the mercy of the Siberian administration which, even compared to that of European Rus­ sia, was notorious for its embezzlement of State property and for violence. (Vakhtin 1992: 9) Printed literature in Hanti, Mansi and Nenets barely made its appearance in the nineteenth century, in the form of gospels and religious primers. It had a false start in 1868 when the British Bible Society in London published St Matthew's gospel in Mansi (translated by G. Popov) and Hanti (P. Vologodski), using Latin script. The Hanti version was republished in St Petersburg (1880) in Cyrillic. Orthodox missionary texts in Nenets, composed in the 1830s, apparently did not see print; some were printed in the 1880s. The next attempts were primers, using Cyrillic: Selkup, 1879; Nenets, 1895; Obdorsk Hanti, 1897; Vakh Hanti (in the east), 1903; and Mansi, 1903. The Russian state could find the resources for the suppression of traditional spiritual culture but put little in its stead.

Early Soviet rule: creation of National Okrugs Soviet rule in Nenetsia and neighbouring areas begari with a huge loss of reindeer and the resulting famine (1919-20), and not only because of anthrax epidemics and raidings during the Russian Civil War. The eager commissars imposed the same three-animal limit as used for cows in agricultural areas, although a Nenets household needed at least 250 reindeer to avoid starvation. 5 The new masters did away with existing native administrative 5 The main sources for the Soviet period are Forsyth (1992) and Vakhtin (1992).

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The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State

structures along with the tsarist ones. The task of developing a new structure fell to a 'Committee for Assisting the People of the Far North' that consisted of officials and scholars (but no indigenous representatives) and lasted from 1924 to 1935. In this 'Committee of the North' those who proposed protective in­ digenous reservations gradually lost out to those who considered the natives ordinary citizens (only dumber) and were mainly con­ cerned with exploitation of the natural resources. The existence of the indigenous peoples received symbolic recognition by the creation of National Okrugs (NOs), first the Nenets (1929) and then those for other Northern Minorities, including Hanti-Mansi, Iamal-Nenets and _Taimyr NOs (all in 1930 -see Table 2.5). The Nenets NO was carved o:ff the Konn AO and was transferred to the Russian Arkhangelsk oblast further west, so as to deprive the Komis of an outlet to the sea. The Nenets probably approved, given their negative experience with Komi traders and herd owners. As the centre of the Nenets NO, a new town was founded in 1933 on the lower Pechora - Narian­ Mar ('Red Town', in Nenets), near the old Pustozersk. Similarly, a new settlement (1930) near the village of Samarovsk at the confluence of the lrtysh and Ob rivers, Ostiako-Vogulsk (from 1940 on, Hanty-Mansiisk) becan1e the centre of the Hanti-Mansi NO. Initially called Ostiako-Vogul NO, it was subordinated to the Russian Tiumen 9blast. So was the Iamal-Nenets NO, whose capital, the old Obdorsk, was renamed Salehard ('Capetown' in Nenets) in 1933. The Taimyr (future Dolgano-Nenets) NO was subordinated to the Russian Krasnoiarsk krai. Its capital, Dudinka, has kept its Russian name. The Selkups received a lower-ranking National District on the upper Ob, within the Russian Tomsk oblast, but it was abolished in 1950. Forsyth describes the motives behind such moves: The intention behind the creation of these national territories was paternalistic and at first altruistic: ...bring the native peoples of Siberia into the twentieth century by telling them what was wrong with their traditional way of life and ultimately inducing them to abandon almost every aspect of it. [... ] This was in fact a kind of refomung missionarism without the Christian religion, but with an equally strong conviction of absolute enlightenment. (Forsyth 1992: 284)

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Within the national okrugs, clan assemblies and local clan soviets were foreseen but largely existed on paper only, the more so because the Soviet authorities prohibited the local elites from participating. When the Communist Party commissars excluded the shamans and wealthy reindeer owners from a Hanti village assembly in Kazym, the whole assembly simply disbanded (Sovetskii Sever, no. 5, 1931, as reported in Vakhtin 1992: 15). In a district where a Nenets clan soviet had been elected, subject to similar restrictions, a secret clan meeting was immediately held to uphold a regional prince, so that the Russians could have their soviet but the Nenets would have their chief. The widespread distrust was expressed by the Hanti.s of Synia valley: If there is a tribal Soviet in the Synya River area, we, the natives, will have nowhere to live. Schools and medical institutions will grow gradually around the Executive Committee, the natives will be taught, drafted into the army; trading stations will be estab­ lished. Russi.ans will come to the Synya River and settle down, steamboats will com.e into the river. We don't like this, and we don't want this. (Zibarev 1968: 11-2, as quoted in Vakhtin 1992: 12) One might suspect that the Hanti.s were seeing a bogeyman behind any Russian-instigated move. In the long run, unfortunately, they were absolutely right to do so. Still, in the 1920s and early l 930s various improvements took place. The crippling debts to traders were cancelled. Consumer and hunting-fishing cooperatives were organised and proved profitable and popular. The Northern Minorities were exempted from taxes and military service. A modernising 'cultural base' for health and education was established for Hantis and another for Nenets, and native-language basic schooling was set as a goal. Writing systems based on Latin script were developed for Nenets, Hanti (1930), and Mansi (1931), and teacher training was under­ taken in institutes at Tobolsk, Arkhangelsk and Leningrad. Given the practically universal illiteracy, the Committee of the North realistically started the first grade only at the age of 10-14. The timetable was to fit local customs and seasonal activities and numerous small schools were to be set up so as to enable as many students as possible to live at home. The first schools were set up among the Nenets on the Pechora and the Hanti.s on the lower Ob. For the Nenets, teacher and veterinary colleges· were

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set up at Narian-Mar and Salehard. Some schoolbooks and even newspapers were produced in N enets and Mansi, but for the Hanti only primers were compiled, in the Obdorsk (1931) and Kazym (1933) dialects. However, the national okrugs were administratively subor­ dinated to neighbouring Russian oblasts, where colonialist attitudes and enthusiasm for industrialisation dominated. The oblasts ignored government decrees on freedom from taxes and equal funding for indigenous administrations, compared to local Russian soviets. Russian settlers were beyond the jurisdiction of the indigenous courts, limiting the latters' power where it most mattered. In­ digenous lands confiscated before 1917 were not returned as prescribed by law. To the contrary, more land was forcefully seized by state enterprises, ousting the indigenous population. When hunters desisted from selling their furs, because lack of supplies at state stores made money worthless, the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Trade ordered the sale of alcohol, contrary to other government efforts to outlaw alcohol in the north, so as to increase the hunters' need for money. Meanwhile, the colonisation of the north proceeded at an un­ precedented pace, largely due to the forced collectivisation can1paign launched throughout the Soviet Union in 1929 and the accompanying mass deportations. Many of these 'special settlers' were sent to Hanti and Selkup lands in the valleys of the Ob and its tributaries, as if this were empty land. The indigenous people were not consulted. To attract free labour to the north, discriminatory payments were introduced. Thus, if a Hanti and a Russian newcomer did the same work in the same team, the Hanti would receive less pay. In 1926-35 the settler population grew between 15 and 20 per cent annually. Accordingly, the indigenous population share in the NOs decreased from 56 to 35 per cent. The forced collectivisation of the Hantis, Mansis and Nenets themselves proceeded slowly, except in the main valley of the Irtysh and lower Ob rivers. Further north, ifchiefly affected reindeer ownership. Once more, a wave of armed uprisings swept Nenetsia (1930-32), to be ruthlessly suppressed. The northern part of the lamal Peninsula resisted any collectivisation until 1937. Ironically, Soviet fake collectivisation destroyed a kind of tribal 'primitive comnrnnism' that involved extensive mutual assistance and equal

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sharing of hunting spoils, imposing in its stead a money economy and other ingredients of market relations (Forsyth 1992: 247, 293-4). Stalinist devastation

In the 1930s real power began to slip away from the Committee of the North, the local administration, and even the oblasts, into the hands of central industrial ministries and speeial- agencies in Moscow. Among the latter, Dalstroi (Chief Administration for the Development of the Far North) later ran the slave labour camps and the entire northern economy. In 1938 the Soviet Arctic was effectively divided up among the central ministries as inter­ spersed quasi-feudal fiefdoms. No central body any longer existed to look for a balanced development of the north, and the indigenous population lost all control over their fate. 'In many cases, the industrial enterprises behaved like a victorious army in an occupied town' (Vakhtin 1992: 15). The positive cultural developments of the 1920s were reversed in the late 1930s. The Committee of the North was abolished (1935). Northern peoples began to be drafted (1936). Without consulting either scholars or teachers, the government decreed a switch to Cyrillic script so as 'to facilitate teaching'. Many of those who had worked on the Latin-script literary languages were arrested as 'enemies of the people'. Russian was introduced from the first grade on. School policy shifted from small local schools to boarding schools where children would be most of the year hundreds of kilometres away from their families, in Russian surroundings. Besides presumed economic efficiency (although boarding actually involved new costs), the explicit goal was to remove the children from the influence of 'shamans', by which the Soviet Russians meant any indigenous spiritual culture. Whether intended or not, the boarding schools also prevented children from acquiring traditional everyday work skills, turning them from self-sufficiency to lifelong depend­ ency. Hanti collective memory still preserves the sagas of the resulting 'Kazym Rebellion' (1933). The Soviet authorities began a forced round-up of children. Rumours spread that children would be taken away for ever - and, in a cultural sense, it was true. Fathers resorted to hunting guns to prevent the removal of their children,

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the authorities called in the army, and entire Hanti villages were destroyed.6 The Soviet Russians blan1ed the rumours and resistance on the shan1ans rather than their own hamfisted tactics. They carried out house-to-house searches to destroy anything that to them smacked ofshamanism: religious paraphernalia, musical instruments, folk costumes, and any other Hanti cultural items not related to production. The more isolated villages that infantry could not reach were subjected to air bombing, totally devastating some settlements. Many Hantis moved further into the backwoods. The idea of using bombers as truant officers strains the credulity of Western readers, but unfortunately it has been reported by several independent sources, each adding different details (Relve 1991; Mi.irk 1993a; Barkalaja 1994). Soviet wrath turned against the shamans, and every Hanti suspected of being one was to be executed. Hantis tell of a shaman who was cornered in a traditional tall conical tent-like abode and held the Russian attackers at bay for hours, although the dwelling was utterly riddled with bullet holes. The soldiers were beginning to believe the stories about bullet-proof shamans, when a stray shot finished him off: he had hitched himself at the very top of the cone (BarkalaJa 1994). The Soviet Russians also forbade bear funerals; participants netted ten years in the Kolyma slave labour camp in eastern Siberia. To make doubly sure, any bear hunt was prohibited (Kolga et al. 1993: 114). Three centuries of tsarist rule had brought many upheavals and changes, but the long time period also offered breathing spells, and major aspects of indigenous life had remained untouched or had time to adjust. Stalin wrecked everything. 'In only ten years, the way of life and balanced economy which they had developed over centuries was largely destroyed' (Vakhtin 1992: 14). 6

In a related incident children already in the boarding school were not allowed to return home during the winter break because of stomach troubles caused by the school food. ·Their parents retrieved them by force. A small am1y task force sent to propagandise the Hantis impudently entered a taboo island on Lake Numto and were slaughtered. Reprisals and protests snowballed. In an attempt to seize all Hanti men on the Kazym river, the Soviet Russian authorities caught eighty-eight; fifty-four never returned. Deprived of their menfolk, on whom they depended for food, several hundred women and their children starved to death in the depths of winter.

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Post-Stalin. Soviet Russian. rule: from bad to worse In most of the Soviet Union Stalin's death brought a relaxation of terror and some improvement of living conditions and cultural life, but for the northern peoples the conditions actually continued to worsen. Soviet practices were two-pronged. On the one hand, respect for even the smallest nationalities was proclaimed and token cultural activities were promoted, in rharked contrast to the tsarist attitudes. On the other hand, having thus become the self-proclaimed benefactors of the natives, the Russians felt entitled to compensation in the fom1 of taking everything the natives possessed. 'The new communist state was no less inclined than the old tsarist one to make the colonial natives pay for the privilege of being ruled by the Russians' (Forsyth 1992: 246). The time was past when unprepared natives were foisted into local leadership roles - where they failed to behave like Russians, to the surprise of their masters. While expressions of respect con­ tinued in Soviet publications, in the local Russian culture the natives came to be considered unfit for responsible work. Russian chauvinism encouraged similar attitudes by the Komis towards the Mansis, Hantis and Nenets. As in the case of the Sanus, a policy of forcible relocations, activated in 1957, amounted to short-distance deportations, under the guise of supplying better services and bringing the natives to 'modern socialist civilisation'. The sen-ii-nomadic Hantis were among the hardest hit. The Soviet authorities destroyed as 'unprofitable' many of their traditional smaller villages of birch-bark tents and up to fifty people. In others, all stores, services and work places (state and collective farn1S) were closed. Having been forced to become dependent on such outfits, the inhabitants were left no choice but to move 'voluntarily'. The new settlements of 600-800 people did not take account of the traditional hunting and fishing needs and led to further impoverishment: The traditional seasonal migrations of the Khants [Hantis] were economically suitable for a territory that could support only a limited �umber of hunters. Since the new settlements were chosen purely for their convenience for transportation, ad­ n1ini tration and centralised supplies, the native Khant population soon found itself with no means of support. (Vakhtin 1992: 19) In culture, the Soviet goal visibly was not indigenous-Russian

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bilingualism but full russification. Native-language instruction in schools was reduced, and by 1970 the Nenets were · the only northern people to preserve it, in the preparatory and first grades. Hanti and Mansi languages continued to be taught as electives, but this was mainly for purposes of outer fa�ade, because as early as in 19 5 7 children began to be punished if they spoke any language other than Russian at school. Parents were urged not to speak the native language with their children, even at home. Similar ill-guided policies have at times targeted the Amerindian and Inuit populations in the United States and Canada. However, the North American guidelines were· public and hence subject to open criticism and eventual abandonment. In contrast, the Soviet Russian language policy was never officially published, in line with the aforementioned two-pronged approach, which in this case became blatantly hypocr:itical. No objections or criticism were tolerated, and so the destructive work continued. The infamous boarding school system was extended to the point where in some areas indigenous parents had to turn in their toddlers at the age of one, for six days a week, even if they lived in the same village. Older children were removed for most of the year. Aged fifteen to seventeen, the youngsters returned to their families as strangers, unable to speak their native language, and lacking initiative and the necessary life and work skills. The result of all these practices was a younger generation of Mansis, Hantis and Nenets who were more comfortable with Russian (or, in the case of western Nenets, even Komi) than their native tongue. Vakhtin (1992: 18) sees 'a loss of bilingualism even before it was established', producing semi-lingual individuals who lacked full command ofany language. Between the native- speaking elderly and the Russian-speaking yow1g, there was a 'broken generation' aged between thirty and fifty at the time of the Soviet collapse: 'This generation lost its language, its culture and sometimes also its identity, without receiving any viable substitute.' The despair of her people was expressed by one Hanti woman as follows: I wish I was dead, to avoid this earthly hell. What have I had children for -for this torture and disgrace? Let Russians be everywhere, then there will probably be paradise. They will have nobody to destroy and ruin. They will have everything, they will raze to the ground the graves of our ancestors and our own, and that's it. Nobody will ever remember that there were once

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Khants, Mansi, and other useless nations. (Osvoeniie, 1989: 45, as quoted in Vakhtin 1992: 18) Record-size nuclear tests on the Novaia Zemlia islands in the early 1960s polluted reindeer food in the south of the Nenets AO and the north ofKomimu, the so-called 'Large Land Tundra'. Entire families died of cancer, according to one eyewitness (Ehin 1995). The 1963 atmospheric test-ban treaty stopped this scourge. As if all these woes were not enough, oil was discovered in Hanti-Mansia and gas in Iamal-Nenetsia in the 1950s, leading to the largest new mineral development in post-1945 Siberia. The planners did not consult the indigenous populations and hardly took account of their existence. Oil extraction first began in the Mansi heartland on the Kanda River (1960), and a new railroad from the Urals to the Ob River created a continous ribbon of Russian settlements. Later, the focus shifted to Surgut on the middle Ob, the last area where the Hantis had lived relatively undisturbed. Gas extraction was first concentrated in the south-eastern part of Iamal-Nenetsia, north of Surgut. Novy Urengoi near the Pur River became the major gas centre. A railway was built from Tiumen to Surgut and on to the upper Pur. Oil and gas pipelines crisscrossed the area east of the Ob. Another railway and pipeline were projected to reach new gas fields in the very north of the Iamal Peninsula. As a result, Hanti-Mansia's population increased sixfold between 1959 and 1982, and Iamal-Nenetsia's almost four folded. The indigenous component was reduced to less than 5 per cent. Many natives lost their livelihood when huge areas of forest and reindeer pastures were destroyed by site clearing, heavy vehicle movement, oil spills, and the construction of pipelines, roads and railways. The last refuges of Hantis, Nenets and Selkups were cut up by modem industrialism: The worst feature of these grandiose industrial projects in Siberia was that they proceeded without regard for the local people, whose whole livelihood could be destroyed by them. Not only had theKhantys and Nenets ... been ousted from their devastated homeland by the oil and gas industry, but they received no compensator·y benefits from this 'development'. (Forsyth 1992: 395-6)

364

The Finno- Ugric Republics and the Russian State LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

The histories of the north-west Siberian peoples are interwoven, traditional life styles overlap, and reciprocal assimilation has taken place. Still, these peoples are distinct, and their languages and cultures are best discussed separately. In addition to sections on the Hantis, Mansis and Nenets, a short section will introduce the Selk:ups.7 Hanti language and culture The self-designation hanty, also kantyk in the east, may have the same root as the Hungarian had (war party). The fonner Russian name for the Hantis, ostiak, may come from Hanti aas-iah ('people of the Ob River'), according to Kulonen (1991: 254). The 1989 census recorded 22,521 Hantis, of whom only 11,896 (53 per cent) resided in their own autonomous okrug, where they represented a mere 0.9 per cent of the total population (compared to 9.2 in 1959, before oil production began). One-third ofthe Hantis (7,247) lived in the Iamal-NenetsAO. Native language was reported as their main language by only 60.5 per cent of the Hantis (compared to 77.0 in 1959, prior to the creation of the boarding schools). The Hanti language has three dialect groups: the shortened and simplified Northern on the Kazym and lower Ob (about 7,000 speakers), the more archaic Eastern on the middle Ob (8,000) and the Southern on the Konda (4,000). The figures do not add up to 22,500 because �ome Hantis have completely lost their language. As with Sarni dialects, the three Hanti dialects could be considered separate languages, because mutual intelligibility is 7

The Nenets and Selkup languages are quite different from the Hanti and Mansi. The latter offer more similarities with Hungarian than with Nenets (see Table 2.1). The presumed conm1on origin ofSamoyedic and Finno-Ugric languages goes back some six millennia (see Figure 2.1). The relatively bte move to the north by the Hantis and Mansis shows up in the institution of strong pem1anent chiefs (something absent from traditional Nenets society) and the importance of the horse in ritual and myth even among the northern Hantis, in a climate that precludes horse breeding. The main sources for languages and cultures in this section are Kulonen (1991), Korhonen and Kulonen (1991), Hajdu (1963, 1988), Honti (1988), Kalman (1988), Lallukka (1992a), Mikola (1988) and Uibopuu (1984: 253-73).

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limited. 'Horse' is low in Northern Kazym, tow in Northern Sherkal, /oh in the Eastern and tdw in the Southern. Still, such pronunciation changes are fairly systematic, so that mutual intelligibility depends on the extent of cultural contacts (without contact and a common school language the Swiss and the North Gem1ans could understand very little of each other's speech). Radio broadcasts in Northern Hanti are listened to throughout the area and are gradually unifying the language. Prolonged contacts have also increased the similarities between the Northern Mansi and Northern Hanti dialects. Soviet linguists overrated the differences when they created five separate written languages for the Hantis, thus reducing all of them below the critical mass for development. The Northern rualects alone were saddled with three written variants: Kazym (1930, initially using Latin script), Sherkal (1940) and Shuryshkar (1950). Another two (Vakh and Surgut, 1950) were in the Eastern dialect area (Uibopuu 1984: 262). In the 1990s only two literary fonns survived, both ironically based on Northern rualects and thus mutually intelligible. The Shuryshkar variant tends to have shorter words than the Kazym: ap ('dog') versus amp, ut (forest) versus wont. Like all Finno-Ugric languages, Hanti has a declension with many cases: only three in Northern Hanti, but six in the Southern, and up to eleven in the Eastern. Consonants are numerous (twenty, plus palatalised forms), inclurung a soundless l (like the Welsh ll ), denoted here as L. As in Sanu, the dual (that may have existed in original Uralic) appears: hot, hotn,