From ‘Traditional’ to Collectivized Reindeer Herding on the Kola Peninsula: Continuity or Disruption?1

1. An earlier version of this article was read as a report to the 2nd Regional Conference in Memory of Professor I. F.Ushakov, Murmansk, 2–4 March 2005, under the title “Istoriia kolektivizirovannogo olenevodstva na Kol'skom Severe: nekotorie nedorazumeniia i “belye piatna”. I want to express my gratitude to the academic leadership of the Murmansk State Pedagogical University who, as organizers of the Conference, gave me a chance to present my views before the Russian academic public.

Abstract

The article turns critical attention to the process of Kola Sami land-use changes that had occurred in the century immediately preceding Soviet collectivization drives of the mid-1930s. Particular attention is turned to influences brought by Izhma Komi settlers at the end of the 19th century. The overall argument is that Kola Sami land-use adaptive patterns had shown signs of orienting towards reindeer-driven, market-oriented form of husbandry well before collectivization. In this sense, there are grounds to see collectivization – in its expansive strategy for ever-rising production of reindeer meat – as part of a sufficiently long period of continuous changes, rather than an abrupt disruption of ‘traditional’ patterns – the latter reading occurring as a popular theme in Kola Sami related literature. Attention is turned also to post-Soviet forms of re-orientation in land-use. Here the problematic point of intra-community tendencies for ‘hidden privatization’ of extant collective assets is discussed in its current local controversy with foreign-supported experiments in private, clan community (obshchina) reindeer-husbandry.

Keywords:

• Kola Sami land-use
• reindeer husbandry
• Soviet collectivization

Notes

1. An earlier version of this article was read as a report to the 2nd Regional Conference in Memory of Professor I. F.Ushakov, Murmansk, 2–4 March 2005, under the title “Istoriia kolektivizirovannogo olenevodstva na Kol'skom Severe: nekotorie nedorazumeniia i “belye piatna”. I want to express my gratitude to the academic leadership of the Murmansk State Pedagogical University who, as organizers of the Conference, gave me a chance to present my views before the Russian academic public.

2. For recent illustrative examples see for instance Bol'shakova (2005, p. 212); Robinson and Kassam (2000), or, in a video-documentary form, the part referring to the Sami people in Face to Face (2004). In a variant, Lukianchenko's claim is that collectivization forced the Sami to adopt Komi ways of husbandry (2002, pp. 113–114).

3. For availability of timber (fire-wood) and fishing as determinants in husbandry and residential patterns see Rikkinen (1981, 1983), based on materials by the Finnish natural science expeditions of the 1880s (i.e. Kihlman, 1889; Kihlman und Palmén, 1890).

4. Opinion as to the exact date of arrival tends to differ. Some authors place it already in 1883-4 (Konakov et al., 1984, p. 8; Konakov, 1993, p. 97); while others suggest a later date, i.e. in 1887 as the beginning of migration (Rybkin, 1999, p. 7). Settlement in Lovozero is placed in the winter of 1886/7 (Konakov et al., ibid.; Zherebtsov, 1982, p. 195), or in 1888 (Archival Fund 1889, p. 1; Ushakov & Dashchinskiy 1988, p. 66).

5. My gratitude to Dr Ekaterina Orekhova from Murmansk Regional Museum who was kind to share this information with me. On a mention of granted colonist status to a Nenets herder, cf. Archival Fund 1912; on requirements for colonist status Orekhova 2004.

6. Fieldwork at the time of writing (August–September 2005) indicates that salaries of reindeer herders of the main cooperative – SKhPK “Tundra” of Lovozero, have not been paid since May. Supportive payments of RBL 1000 (EUR 29) are made in cases of stated hard need. Additionally, herders or members of their families may get products from the cooperative store, the value of such purchases being subsequently subtracted from salaries.

7. Until about the late 1920s the Komi people were commonly referred to as Zirians, an archaic name of the Komi, differentiating them from the Permians (komi permiaki). The Kola settlers are known as Izhma Komi (Rus. izhemtsy; Kom. iz'vatas), i.e. Zirians of the river basins of Izhma and Pechora in the north-eastern part of the present Komi Republic. (Konakov, 1993, p. 94; Zherebtsov, 1982, pp. 78–96)

8. Old Russian weight measure, equals 16.38 kg.

9. Herders’ families also have (and have had during the Soviet period) personal plots of land, the critically important potato-patches in an extended farm-yard to the house, or around blocks of flats. Stock, beside reindeer, may include sheep, sometimes cows.

10. I am grateful to the Administration of SKhPK “Tundra” of Lovozero, for sharing information and documents concerning the state of personal deer in the Cooperative, as well as for the assistance given to me by the staff of the State Archival Office (GAMO) in Kirovsk.