Socioeconomic Life of Climate Change: Extensivity in Reindeer Husbandry in Relation to Synergies between Social and Climate Change (Kola Peninsula)

Abstract

This article examines the phenomenon of synergy between postsoviet socioeconomic changes concerning Kola Peninsula reindeer husbandry, and climate change. It is argued that where the social and the climate factors interlock is in an overall perception of catastrophic change and the consequent need for emergency action. The latter accelerates a process of husbandry becoming ever more extensive, leading to increasing dependence on infrastructural investment (reindeer fences, heavy track ATV transport, high-speed snowmobiles). It is concluded that the process of a mutual reinforcement between socioeconomic and climate change enhances existing preferences for a ‘private-in-the-collective’ (‘sovkhoist’) socioeconomic arrangement in the reindeer herding community, reflecting an accommodation to the renewed role of the state in Russian society as a whole.

Keywords:

• Climate change
• Postsoviet reforms
• Reindeer pastoralism
• Kola Peninsula

Notes

1. Earlier versions of this text were read as lectures at the weekly seminar of the Centre for Siberian Studies, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (11 November 2008), and the Ecology Seminar of the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University (6 February 2009). My gratitude goes to the organizers of the seminars – Dr Joachim-Otto Habeck and Professor Hugh Beach – and the participants, whose stimulating questions and constructive comments have helped me considerably in producing the present version. A revised and expanded version of the lectures has been published in Russian together with Dr Vladislava Vladimirova (Konstantinov & Vladimirova, 2008a), and has benefited from the stimulating concern of Prof. Igor Krupnik of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. Parts of the present text have been treated in greater detail in Konstantinov (2009). For the careful reading of earlier versions of this text and valuable suggestions for improvement, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Roger Took, who readily shared his impressive knowledge of regional geography and history. I am grateful also to the anonymous reviewer of the submitted manuscript for her/his encouragement and the constructive comments made.

2. The qualifier ‘extreme’ is synonymous to Whitaker's use in his term ‘hyper-extensivity’ (Whitaker, 1955: 27), or in Beach's ‘over-extensive’ (1981: 503). I consider that my preference for the suggested phrasing places a clearer emphasis on the gradual escalation of the process, and its development to near-ultimate levels where herd movement and migration is next to entirely uncontrolled.

3. Sovkhoz is an abbreviation from sovetskoe khoziaistvo – soviet farm, as a state enterprise, as distinguished from the other main agricultural structure kolkhoz (collectivnoe khoziaistvo, collective farm). Gradually the difference between the two remained largely nominal (Humphrey, 1983: 3ff). For the history of creation see Piatovskii (1965), Danilov (1990, 1991); for Kola regional history, see Budovnits (1931), Fedotov (1955a, 1995b, 1961), Kiselev and Kiseleva (1979), Ushakov and Dashchinskii (1988), Rybkin (1999).

4. NOMAD. Social Science Migrating Field Station: Monitoring the Human–Rangifer Link by Following Herd Migration. Kola Peninsula, 1.01.2006-–8.02. 2008. International Polar Year Individual Project No. 408. Supported by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany, the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Tromsø, and the Roald Amundsen Centre for Arctic Research in Tromsø (Konstantinov & Vladimirova, 2008a, b; http://www.polarjahr.de/NOMAD-Blog-und-forum.196.0.html).

5. NOMAD 2. Kola Saami Herders in Post-Soviet Society: Ethnopolitics in Urban and Tundra Spaces. Kola Peninsula, 1.10.2009–30.09.2012. Supported by the Research Council of Norway (NFR), Project No. 195413.

6. In outside learned discourse ‘traditional practices’ or ‘traditional land-use’ (traditsionnoe prirodopol'zovanie) is vaguely positioned in some pre-soviet period, in contrast to local users’ discourse in which it is connected with a recent sovkhoz past of the period 1960s–1980s.

7. For a more detailed discussion of the term ‘sovkhoist’ and the form of ownership referred to further as ‘private-in-the-collective’, see Konstantinov (2002, 2004, 2005, 2007).

8. For a differing opinion, suggesting an abrupt end to Saami reindeer husbandry culture with the imposition of soviet collectivization, see Wheelersburg and Gutsol (2009).

9. Idealized, let me add, has to be heavily emphasized here. It can be said that the events of the current global economic crisis have highlighted the fact that the ‘private-in-the-collective’ formula has a far wider application than the postsoviet reindeer-herding arrangement discussed here may suggest. The private gain of bankers, brokers, or executives dealing with high-risk credits has not resulted in private loss for such elite players at all, but in many instances in considerable private gain. The bailing out of banks (the ‘cooperatives’) is happening by pumping into them public assets.

10. The compromise for villagers was originally connected with the well-documented ‘private plot’ allowance to kolkhoz members, cemented by the decisions of the Second Congress of Outstanding Kolkhoz Members in February 1935 (Konstantinov, 2007: 4; Fitzpatrick, 1994: 117–127; Mitrany, 1951: 76f); for private gardens with cottages, near big towns (the dacha concept) (Caldwell, 2004: 100–127).

11. For a careful breakdown and description of relevant parameters, see Rees et al. (2008: 201–207).

12. According to regional media sources, the first in the world to raise the issue of the inevitability of global ‘warming’ was the Soviet scientist Mikhail Budynko, who is reported to have done that in 1972 (Bolychev, 2009). Cf. Nilsson (2009): 15) about history of climate change discourse, ‘warming’ being first mentioned, according to her, in C. Revelle's report to the US President's Advisory Commission in 1965.

13. The eruption of environmental concerns is especially characteristic of the period 1986–1990, as witnessed by the proliferation of informal groups in response to Gorbachev's call for citizens’ empowerment. As rightly noted in the political science literature (i.e. Weaver et al., 1997: 117–127), while the CPSU's fundamental right to rule was still uncontested, holding the ruling elite accountable was easiest in the area of the environment (ibid.: 122). A similar situation occurred, for instance, in Bulgaria, where the ‘Committee for Publicity and Restructuring’, created shortly before 1989, focused its main attention on the industrial pollution in the Danube city of Russe, thus precipitating the demise of the Zhivkov-led regime.

14. On the significance of publications like Ogonek, ‘Moscow News’, and Novyii mir in the perestroika liberation of public speech, see Ries (1997): 165f).

15. On radioactive pollution in Murmansk Region, see Nilsen and Bøhmer (1994); on cross-border (Northern Norway–Murmansk Region) industrial pollution discourse, see Hønneland (2003).

16. Justice cannot be done in this article to the topic of apocalyptic readings of history in Russian/soviet mass consciousness. With particular reference to such responses during perestroika and the beginning of the ‘difficult nineties’, the interested reader is referred to the fine-tuned analysis of the culture of ‘litanies and laments’ in Ries (1997), as also to Caldwell (2004), and Lewin (1995).

17. See Ries (1997: 44f) for the array of lexical markers, reflecting what she calls ‘the perestroika epic of complete disintegration, polnaia razrukha’.

18. In a popular description of Murmansk Region, a regional historian writes in the late 1950s: ‘The climate of our land is very peculiar (…) At the height of winter in the northern part of the region it can sometimes be warmer than in the north of the Caspian hinterland (…). During the winter, thaws are frequent in the northern part. It happens that it may rain in January (…), while in the hills it can snow in August’, etc. (Dvinin, 1959: 10–11).

19. Personal (lichnii) and private (chastnii), used in reference to deer, are synonymous in the herding community; but ‘private’ in this sense is ‘private-in-the-collective’ – a property form to be carefully distinguished from ‘private-outside-the-collective’ as, for instance, when talking about private herding in Fennoscandia (Konstantinov, 2004; Konstantinov & Vladimirova, 2006; Vladimirova, 2009).

20. Very recently, a representative of the Agricultural Committee at the Murmansk Regional Government has been involved in counting activities (Regnum, 2009), as have also representatives of the State Veterinary Service of Murmansk Region (Utkin, 2009). Whether these presences are to be sporadic and token, or whether controlling measures are to be introduced in earnest, remain for the moment open questions.

21. The abandoning of the practice of maintaining discrete brigade territories bears a resemblance to the abandoning of siida borders for winter pastures in Finmark, making the whole range available for ‘common’ grazing (Marin, 2006: 221f).

22. By korennoe stado (indigenous brigade-territory herd) herders mean that part of the composite herd which follows a migratory pattern originally characteristic of a specific brigade territory.

23. According to the average exchange rate for 2007, this was equivalent to 11 euro per reindeer. For comparison, Laakso (2008: 144) quotes Finnish subsidy per head of reindeer to have been 24.50 euro for reindeer herding year 2007/08, which indicates that the discrepancy with the Nordic neighbours in this respect is not as great as is popularly believed.

24. For a more detailed study see Konstantinov (2009).

25. This is a topic that needs to be elaborated in its own right; here I can only note that synergies between socioeconomic and climate change eventually translate into shifts in brigade social structure and hierarchical ordering.