in 1985. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster was further evidence that the world had to change. From the perspective of many with whom I came into contact, the faltering Cold War reigned over by Reagan and Andropov/Gromyko in the 1980s could be swept aside in a new decade of possibility for citizen movements and social transformation.
In 1988–89, I had the opportunity to study and work in the Soviet Union, just as cultural exchanges were beginning to flourish between the United States and the USSR. In this time of crisis when the policies of Perestroika were taking hold, staples such as soap, butter, and meat were rationed; one day my detergent was swiped while I was waiting for a bus. I learned about living on the margins in urban Russia; I became friends with migrants from outlying towns who were forced to be squatters because they lacked official identity papers and there was a government housing shortage. I also saw how permissible expressions of different types of belonging in Soviet society were emerging in a myriad of ways; I frequented a Hare Krishna café that opened in 1988, attended rock and jazz clubs where young hippies and intelligentsia congregated, and took part (albeit as an observer) in a growing number of opposition political rallies and public forums.
My curiosity about this society undergoing a massive transformation became much more than an avocation, and I sought out a means of understanding what I was experiencing. In particular, I wanted to learn what made people feel Soviet and how this was changing as the very definitions of the society were in flux in a way they had not been since World War II. In the urban setting of Leningrad, I had not been able to ascertain much about how non-Russians or those living outside metropolitan areas were incorporated into this society or about how they were making sense of the changes brought about by Perestroika and Glasnost’. The field of anthropology seemed to offer a way of examining the theoretical and real tensions imbedded in socialism as a system of social organization and as a cultural framework defining the lives of millions of people.
As I was to learn, the field of anthropology was being critically assessed from a number of perspectives beginning in the 1970s, but especially in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, authors point to the colonial heritage privileging the practice of anthropologists studying the “Other” (see Harrison 1991; Marcus 1986; Asad 1973). Today dynamics of fieldwork continue to be contested as practitioners and communities negotiate the relative benefits gained from ethnographic research (Smith 1999; Rothenberg 1999; Biolsi and Zimmerman 1997). In my initial efforts at ethnography as a white, middle-class anthropologist from the United States, I sensed that I could easily be viewed as reenacting a scenario from the past when earlier ethnologists and explorers of European extraction traversed Siberia in search of a world they found exotic. With this in mind, I sought to establish grounds for a relationship with consultants and members of the central Siberian community that would not be merely academic but would also allow me to address issues that many community members found compelling. These turned out to be issues of identity in the context of disintegrating and reformulating social structures in the former Soviet Union of the early 1990s.
Writing is inherently an activity that feels solitary, but it involves careful choices about social relationships that extend over time and through space. In an effort to respect the privacy of those who so generously included me in their lives, I have used pseudonyms throughout this book, except when a person was speaking in a public capacity. I have also thought carefully about the use of tense in this book. I do not want the reader to think of the Evenki as timeless, unchanging, and lacking the historicity inherent to all human societies, a perspective easily invoked through the use of the present tense, trapping subjects in an eternal “ethnographic present.” Likewise, I do not want to position my discussion of Evenki and their social practices as if they no longer exist, something that could be implied by settling on the use of the past tense. In reflecting on these issues, I have chosen to shift between past and present tenses where appropriate and also locate the text in a specific year. The dilemma of tense is, however, only recognized, not resolved, and remains a challenge for ethnographic writing (see Rethmann 2001: xviii).
This book is based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 1992 to 1999, primarily in central Siberia in the Evenk District but also in the central Siberian city of Krasnoiarsk (see Figure 1). The core of the fieldwork was carried out in the Evenk District from 1993 to 1994, with shorter stays in 1992, 1995, 1998, and 1999. Funding for the majority of the fieldwork was provided by the International Research and Exchanges Board (1993–94, summer 1998). Additional funding was provided by the University of Pittsburgh Nationalities Room (summer 1992) and the American Council of Teachers of Russian (summer 1995). I owe a debt of gratitude to my mentors over the years—Phillip Kohl, Robert Hayden, Laurel Kendall, Barbara Miller, and particularly, Nicole Constable who taught me to truly appreciate ethnography. A postdoctoral fellowship at the American Museum of Natural History (1997–99) was supported with funding from the Henry Luce Foundation. Teaching release provided by the Faculty of Arts (2000) and by the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies (2002) at the University of British Columbia made revisions for the book possible. I am grateful to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Library Services, for granting me permission to reproduce images for use in the book.
This book could not have been written without the generosity and assistance of many people in the Evenk District including teachers and students at the residential school; Khristina Ivanovna Chardu, former director of the Evenk District Regional History Museum; and a family of local artists—the Borisenkovs—who both warmly welcomed me and helped coordinate initial archival research and final permissions for illustrations. I am also indebted to the Evenk District Regional History Museum for kindly granting me permission to reproduce images from the museum’s photographic collection. Members of the Evenk District Association for Peoples of the North, Arun, and particularly its first president Zinaida Nikolaevna Pikunova, deserve a separate note of gratitude. From the project’s inception in 1992, Zinaida Nikolaevna and her colleagues sponsored me, welcomed me into the community, and patiently taught me about their struggles.
A number of scholars, both in and of the former Soviet Union, deserve thanks for their advice over the years. Igor Krupnik first suggested that I consider Tura as a possible fieldsite; he also read a draft of this project and provided important encouragement. Colleagues at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in Moscow introduced me to the workings of Russian scholarship, sponsored visas for research, and provided opportunities for discussing my findings. Otto Habeck generously shared his comments on an early version of the book manuscript; in particular he prevented me from committing several geographical errors. I am grateful to Olessia Vovina, who, with little advance notice, provided Russian language expertise to fine-tune the manuscript in its final stages.
In my home away from home over the past decade, I was fortunate to make lasting friendships in Tura, Krasnoiarsk, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. In particular the Savoskuls made Russia feel like home in countless ways, providing me with extended hospitality when I first began this project in 1992, and eventually integrating me into their daily lives during many subsequent stays. The Savoskuls did not just take on an extended houseguest but took on the task of engaging me with the pressing issues in their lives, including supply economics and specifically brick procurement in post-Soviet Russia. My archival research in Krasnoiarsk would have been impossible without the warm welcome of the Polonskis and the ever-capable Sergei Levshits. My perceptions of Soviet and post-Soviet society owe much to Elena Kosova’s sharp wit, and our discussions over piping hot cups of coffee and cooler cups of other liquids on topics ranging from illicit literature in the late 1980s to humor in the form of jokes (anekdoty) as social commentary.
In the late 1980s, prior to this project’s inception, Alexander Kozlov introduced me to the intrigues of Soviet youth culture, and in the 1990s Mariia and Vladimir Khomenko, Nikita Kaplan, and Maksim Khromov enthusiastically included me in their rapidly shifting world of central Siberian youth culture. I would also like to thank others in the Evenk District who taught me about their lives and gave so generously of their time over the years; out of respect for their privacy, I have chosen not to name them. This project would have gone unrealized without the formal and informal consultants
