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Between Indigeneity and Nationality: the Politics of Culture and Nature in Russia’S Diamond Province

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Between Indigeneity and Nationality: the Politics of Culture and Nature in Russia’S Diamond Province BETWEEN INDIGENEITY AND NATIONALITY: THE POLITICS OF CULTURE AND NATURE IN RUSSIA’S DIAMOND PROVINCE by Susan M. Hicks M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2005 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Anthropology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2011 © Susan M. Hicks, 2011 Abstract Despite a half century of rapid, state-sponsored industrialization in the region, only with its more recent, abrupt exposure to global capitalism has Siberia become a hotly contested site of debates over both indigenous rights and natural resource extraction. The Sakha Republic (Yakutia), a Northeastern Siberian region twice the size of Alaska, is now a particularly crucial site of contestation, boasting diamond reserves that produce about 25% of the world‘s diamonds. The region is also home to a sizeable, highly educated indigenous population, the Sakha, who comprise over 45% of the Republic‘s residents. Sakha activists have been engaged in a sustained project of cultural revival that has drawn upon globally circulating representations of indigeneity to contest environmental destruction, assert political control over their lands and resources, and to challenge socio-economic marginalization. However, in post-Soviet Siberia, like elsewhere in Asia, distinctions between indigenous and non-indigenous are not straightforward, and articulations of indigenous identity are fraught with complications. With a population over 400,000, the Sakha are in fact considered too numerous to fit within the official Russian category for indigenous peoples—the ―small-numbered peoples of the North,‖ and many Sakha are themselves ambivalent about the label ―indigenous,‖ seeing their own culture as more advanced than that of their neighboring indigenes. This dissertation examines the social processes that link globally circulating images and practices of indigeneity with Sakha cultural politics, and argues that articulations of indigenous identity are not only contingent and heterogeneous, but are also partial and uneven. In this context, indigeneity coexists alongside other kinds of identity, especially ethnonationalism. Analysis builds on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Sakha Republic, including participant observation in 2 cities, semi-structured interviews and life history interviews with Sakha and non-Sakha residents, and regional newspaper analysis. ii Preface This research was approved by the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board: Certificate Number H07-02909 and H07-00790; Principal Investigator: Dr. Patrick Moore. iii Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ..................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ........................................................................................................................ vii Note on Transliteration ......................................................................................................... ix Glossary ................................................................................................................................... x Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... xii Dedication ............................................................................................................................. xiv Chapter 1: Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1 Sakha Indigeneity: Global Discourses, Local articulations .............................................................. 5 Indigeneity in Practice.................................................................................................................... 15 A Siberian Frontier Town .............................................................................................................. 19 The Chapters .................................................................................................................................. 28 Chapter 2: Tradition and Tractors—Cultural Revitalization and Indigenous Marginality in the Sakha Countryside ................................................................................ 32 2.1 ―Demodernization‖ .................................................................................................................. 36 2.1.1 The Vigorous Development of Nyurba ............................................................................. 42 2.2 ―People are More Valuable than Diamonds‖ ........................................................................... 46 2.3 New System of Labor Payments ............................................................................................. 50 2.4 Cultural Rights and Neoliberalism .......................................................................................... 53 2.4.1 Bichik: the Olonkho Pre-School ....................................................................................... 56 2.4.2 Center for Children‘s Art .................................................................................................. 60 2.4.3 Healthy Lifestyles and Cultural Revival ........................................................................... 63 Chapter 3: Cultural Revival and the Politics of Sovereignty ............................................ 66 3.1 Sovereignty, Ethnonationalism, Indigeneity ............................................................................ 71 3.2 Cultural Revival and the Politics of Sovereignty ..................................................................... 78 3.4 Federal Challenges to Sovereignty .......................................................................................... 86 3.5 Cultural Revival Decoupled from Ethnic Politics.................................................................... 90 iv Chapter 4: Remembering Stalin—Ethnic Oppression and Collective Sacrifice ............. 95 4.1 The Sovietization of Yakutia ................................................................................................... 99 4.1.2 1920s: New Economic Policy and the ―Golden Age‖ of Sakha Culture ........................... 99 4.1.3 Cultural Revolution in Yakutia ...................................................................................... 101 4.1.4 The Great Patriotic War ................................................................................................. 105 4.2 Stalinism and National Revival .............................................................................................. 109 4.3 ―We Were Hardworking People…‖ ....................................................................................... 114 4.3.1 The Great Leader ........................................................................................................... 115 4.3.2 Defending Stalin ............................................................................................................ 118 4.3.3 The Value of Work ........................................................................................................ 120 4.4 Memory and Trauma in Nyurba ............................................................................................ 124 4.4.1 Remembering the War ................................................................................................... 125 4.4.2 Victory Day: Memorializing the War............................................................................. 127 4.5 Stalin and the Dilemmas of Democracy ................................................................................ 131 4.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 133 Chapter 5: Friendship of Peoples—Cosmopolitanism, Multiculturalism and Indigenous Rights ................................................................................................................................... 135 5.1 Early Bolshevik Views on Colonization and Interethnic relations ........................................ 139 5.2 Indestructible Friendship and Voluntary Annexation ............................................................ 144 5.3 Soviet Multiculturalism in Practice ....................................................................................... 147 5.4 ―Friendship of Peoples‖ in a Sovereign Sakha Republic ....................................................... 154 5.5 Friendship of Peoples: Ethnonationalism and Rossiiskii Identity .......................................... 158 5.6 ―Inciting Interethnic Tensions‖ ............................................................................................. 161 Chapter 6: “The Only Weapon that Doesn’t Misfire”—Feminine Beauty, Gender Roles, and the Politics of National Identity .................................................................................. 169 6.1 Embracing the Feminine in Post-Soviet Beauty Contests ...................................................... 172 6.1.1 Demographic Politics, National Preservation and Women as Mothers .........................
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