The tension between might and rights: Siberians and energy developers in post-socialist binds

Abstract

One of the flashpoints of post-socialist life has been the conflict between indigenous peoples and energy developers in the Russian Federation North. As a result of tensions over land and resources, multiple identities and political rivalries have been revealed. Such tensions spark the uncertainties that are not only a hallmark of post-socialism, but also hallmarks of post-colonial and post-welfare societies. The many levels of social interaction in ‘transition societies’ provide a challenge for anthropologists accustomed to focus refined ethnographic lenses at the nomadic camp, village or ‘ethnic’ level. This article covers conflicts of values and expectations for several Siberian groups regarding ecology, land and homeland, as well as cultural rights and revitalisation. Featured cases derive from West Siberia (Yamal and Khanty-Mansi okrug) as well as the Far East (Sakha Republic), and highlight the author's field experience in Siberia for over 25 years. Conclusions urge greater sensitivity to internal debates and trans-national comparisons as we struggle to define a range of analytical categories that both embrace and go beyond ‘post-socialist’ and ‘post-Soviet’ studies. In the process, dilemmas of advocacy are probed, as well as dilemmas of defining ‘homelands’ for indigenous peoples.

Notes

Mark Soosar (1998) ‘Father, Son and Holy Torum’, Weiko Saawa, Film Estonia.

Andrei V. Gaidamaka, Lukoil development director, personal communication, March 2004. He added that when Western companies claim they provide better technology and subsidies to local governments to protect the environment, what really happens is that local officials skim the designated ecology money from the top for their own purposes. On checking with an Exxon/Mobil official, I learned that this is unlikely, given that foreign companies do their own ecology monitoring. She did, however, admit that local officials often benefit financially through a myriad of registration fees (Anonymous, personal communication, April 2004). While Exxon/Mobil does not currently work in West Siberia, she was referring to ‘licensing’ experiences on Sakhalin.

A full version of the report is printed as appendix 1 in Zen'ko (2004, pp. 59 – 61).

Timofei Moldanov, personal communication, 9 June 2003, Omsk. A document to A.V. Filipenko (Governor of Khanty-Mansi) dated 27 March 2003 from the president of the okrug's reindeer breeder's association and the head of the organisation ‘Spasenie Ugrov’ approves this plan, but also asks for a new law protecting reindeer breeding, for guaranteed pensions and easier credit. On nomadism and change, see Humphrey & Sneath (1999) and Vitebsky (2005).

Compare Balzer (1994), Mote (1998), Heleniak (1999) and Hill & Gaddy (2004). Hill & Gaddy's book, focusing on Russia's overextended northern settlement, is disturbing for its slighting of indigenous and long-term Slavic resident (‘Siberiak’) interests in Siberia.

See also Ssorin-Chaikov (2003), Balzer (2004), Novikova (2004), Vorob'ev (2004), Gray (2005) and Rethman (2001).

Ronalda S. Olzhina, personal communication, 29 July 1991, Kazym village.

However, see Balzer (1999, p. 4) for an account of a rare case involving guns that occurred in 1992. The incident concerned ‘armed Khanty hunters who encircled a camp of Russian geologist – prospectors and demanded that they leave within 24 hours. The hunters, fearing that their tiny settlements would be moved once again, were trying to curtail yet another influx of outsiders into their territories. Frightened and surprised, the tough Russian geologists packed up, but vowed to return’. While this tactic gained attention, it also illustrated that simmering anger and frustration can turn violent, sometimes resulting in repressive responses that backfire and harm all parties involved.

B. Anderson (1991), Balzer et al. (2001), Humphrey (2002) and Gellner (1994). See also Connor (1994), Chatterjee (1993) and Tamir (1993) and the nuanced history of Duara (1996). Debate erupted between two scholars (linguist Eugene Helimski and ethnologist David Anderson), who were studying the same Siberian multiethnic community, over degrees to which local conflicts can be termed ‘ethnic’. Helimski may underplay the salience of ethnic identity while Anderson (2000, p. 204) stresses it as a Soviet legacy and mentions its paradoxical, changing salience. The debate shows the importance of listening to the shifting ways people under diverse pressures identify themselves.

I learned of the protest from the forest Nenets poet Yuri Vella Aivaseda, one of its leaders, and from Nanai activist Evdokiya Gayer. See also Golovnev & Osherenko (1999).

Yuri Vella Aivaseda (a Forest Nenets reindeer breeder, poet and activist who is married to a Khanty woman) established a precedent-setting family-based territory (rodovaya ugoda), when in 1993 indigenous rights to traditional territories were permitted through an early version of the Russian Federation's complex and changing land codes. Legal disputes followed, but those who did not take the time to get deeds or those who got caught in bureaucracy and land thefts are even more vulnerable. In 1995, Yuri protested threats to his family territory by placing a tent at the local parliament building in Khanty-Mansiisk. In the late 1990s, Yuri was briefly arrested for slashing the tyres of a track vehicle that had trespassed his family territory (Larissa Abryutina, personal communication, 2005). Abryutina added that the ‘wonderful poet, orator, reindeer-breeder and unique person Yuri Vella Aivaseda’ was released and fined about 2,600 rubles as compensation for the damage.

Vladimir Kogonchin, personal communication, 25 May 2005, Prince George, Northern British Columbia.

Olga Balalaeva, personal communication, June 2004, telephone update.

Tatiana Gogoleva, personal communication, 30 January 2003, Cabin John, Maryland.

Timofei Moldanov, personal communication, June 2003, Omsk.

Exceptions include Fondahl (1998), Fondahl & Poelzer (2003), Wiget & Balalaeva (1997) and Balalaeva & Wiget (1999).

A letter from Governor Filipenko and okrug legislature speaker Vasili Sondykov was sent to President Putin requesting the name change, as reported in Kommersant-Daily, 2 October 2003.

Tatiana Gogoleva, personal communication, 30 January 2003, Cabin John, Maryland.

For example, Federal'nyi zakon ot maya 2001g. No. 49-FZ ‘O territoryakh traditsionnogo prirodopo'zovaniya korennykh malochislennykh narodov Severa, Sibiri i Dal'nego Vostoka Rossiiskoi Federatsii’.

See the journal of RAIPON, Mir korennykh narodov: zhivaya arktika, especially works by its President Sergei Kharyutchi and Vice President Mikhail Todyshev. For example Kharyutchi (2003) and Todyshev (2003).

Tatiana Gogoleva, personal communication, 30 January 2003, Cabin John, Maryland.

The early 1990s dream of Mansi writer Yuvan Shestalov to create a ‘Mansi Republic’ out of parts of Khanty-Mansi okrug and Sverdlovsk collapsed in the realisation that post-Soviet boundary change precedents were unrealistic at that time. See also Balzer (1999, p. 154).

This was the suggestion made at a Brookings Institute seminar in Spring 2004 by geographer Michael Bradshaw.

See Konstitutsiya Rossiikoi Federatsii (1993). For debate and discussion on consolidation, see Malyakin (2003) and Murashko (2003). See also Reddaway & Ortung (2004), Herspring (2003), Vinokurova (1999), and Hann & Dunn (1996). Compare Tishkov (2004).

Data on Khodorkhovsky's views come mainly from two Washington DC Carnegie Endowment presentations, in 2002 and 2003. His arrest in 2003 changes the equation of elite control over resources, but not of exploitation of indigenous lands. This in effect was confirmed by Chief Operating Officer of TNK-BP, Victor Vekselberg after a Carnegie Endowment presentation on 30 April 2004, when he told me that he approves of moves by the Putin administration to abolish some of the ‘national’ okrugs, since the ‘indigenous people have only tiny percentages of the whole population’, and these districts are administratively unwieldy. ‘Why are these districts in the indigenous people's interests?’ he asked me.

On this, compare Martin (2001).

Compare Vakhtin (1994), Balzer (1999), Ziker (2002), Fondahl & Sirina (2003) and Koester (2005).

Tatiana Gogoleva, personal communication, June 1991, Moscow.

For example, this was the opinion of the later assassinated democratic Duma deputy and Yeltsin nationalities policy advisor Galina Starovoitova (personal communication, October, 1993).

Andrei Krivoshapkin, personal communication, July 2002, Yakutsk.

Avgusta D. Marfusalova, personal communication, 15 September 2002, Cabin John, Maryland.

Ibid.

Galina Pavlovna Kharyutchi, personal communication, 11 June 2003, Omsk.

Vice President of RAIPON Mikhail Todyshev, a notable example of this important trend, explains that indigenous Siberian lawyers have increased in number to over 20, but very few are pursuing careers in public service or defending indigenous rights (Mikhail Todyshev, personal communication, April 2004). For comparison, Richard West, President of the Museum of American Indians, is a lawyer whose work reforming tax legislation for Native Americans has provided a lasting legacy, in addition to his founding role in establishing the museum.

Anonymous, personal communication, 2 August 1991, Kazym village.

See also Glavatskaya (2005).

See Bloch (2004) on the complexity of the history of ‘residential schools’ for Siberian minorities. The power of folklore language in general and for the Nenets case is argued by Pushkareva (2004). See also Vakhtin (1994) and Krauss (1991). On the interrelationship of language and thought, see Sapir (1970).

Olga Murashko, personal communication, June 2002 Moscow.

For both images, see the striking 2002 film ‘The Journey North: The Nenets Reindeer Migration’ made for Irish television by CTL films. For general perspective on Siberia and how it is viewed by Russians, natives and Westerners, see Mote (1998). For a British journalist's entertaining account (despite her subtitle), see Reid (2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer

I am grateful to Siberian friends and colleagues for help and insights, especially to Larissa Abryutina for a fine 2005 critique and update of an earlier version of this article. The article derives from two keynote addresses, the first for the British Universities Siberian Studies Seminar (BUSSS) and the second to the American Anthropological Association-based ‘SOYUZ’ conference. I am grateful to Victor Mote for organising the first, and to Jennifer Cash, Sarah Phillips and Nazif Shahrani for coordinating the second. I am indebted to Georgetown University, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Yakutsk University, the Academy of Sciences Institute of Languages, Literature and History in Yakutsk (AN IIaLI, now the Humanities Institute), the Sakha Republic Ministry of Culture, and to the Kennan Institute of the Smithsonian's Wilson Center for fieldwork and/or research support.