Sibirica

Russian imperialism continues to leave a strong imprint on indigenous cultures across Siberia, and throughout the Russian Federation and the post-Soviet republics. Imperialism is invasive and persistent, and it might be impossible to escape its consequences. In 1986, African novelist and postcolonial theorist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o published his influential essay collection, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. One of his arguments is that no postcolonial subject could be free from the constraints of imperialism until she or he succeeded in freeing the mind from the trap of an imposed (and foreign) language. Ngũgĩ’s experience was based on his own life growing up in Kenya, but his lesson is as applicable to Siberia as it is for East Africa. For indigenous Siberians, language and education are at the forefront of the ongoing postcolonial struggle to maintain their cultural identities in modern Russia.

This article explores the ethnographic, philosophical, and political background of the image of the northern peoples as “silent,” by analyzing the diachronic perspective descriptions of the Finno-Ugric peoples of the north who inhabit Western Siberia and the Russian North from the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. Early modern ethnographies treated the Siberian peoples as aggressive, although from the end of the eighteenth century this image was reassessed and a different view of the silent character of the indigenous people was introduced in scholarly literature. Silent conduct was assessed as an archaic quality of the Finno-Ugric temperament, or as the result of the colonial encounter. This manifestation of silence was the most distinctive marker of the modern transformations of power and knowledge in the arena of Siberian studies.

This article explores the language attitudes of young residents of the Republic of Buriatiia toward two official languages in the region, Buriat and Russian. The article also contributes to the research methodology on language attitudes and use, notably by employing a verbal guise technique in a psychosociolinguistic experiment. In the experiment, both phonetically authentic (native, accent-free) and inauthentic (non-native, phonetically nonstandard) Buriat and Russian voices are evaluated by representatives of both nationalities based on two distinct lines: achievement and character traits. The experiment revealed positive attitudes toward native speaking and perception of non-native speaking as a deviation from the norm that are indicative of the unconscious “one ethnicity—one language” idea in the mass consciousness of the youth in Buriatiia along with the strategies of tolerance and ethnocentrism.

This article covers the process of identity construction in children; this process defines the focus of Russian educational policy, which also provides a venue for alternative ways to implement it. The article presents research on designing a system to form national, regional, and ethnocultural identity in children of the indigenous people of the North via the curriculum and teaching aids. The article examines regions of Russia inhabited by indigenous small-numbered peoples, as well as their distinctive features, which have a significant impact on the process of identity construction in children of the North. This has revealed the specific character of the large formation of positive types of identity within the educational system.

The Chukchi-speaking population is distributed within three regions of the Russian Federation—Chukotka, Kamchatka, and Yakutia. Because of the lack of regular transportation between these regions and different attitudes toward the Chukchi from the local authorities, Chukchi-speaking communities in these regions have become isolated from one another and have been developing independently. This article observes the dynamics of language shift in all Chukchi-speaking areas through the analysis of the data of the Russian Censuses (1897–2015), literature sources, and personal observations. The figures in this article illustrate the distribution of Chukchi-speaking communities within their historical and modern homeland, Chukchi vernacular zones, the participation in traditional economic activities, and contacts with other languages.

A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada Edyta M. Bojanowska (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2018), viii +373 pp., illus., maps. ISBN 978-0-674976405. $35.00

Thomas, Lucy & Alatau: The Atkinsons’ Adventures in Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe John Massey Stewart (London: Unicorn, 2018), 344 pages. ISBN 978-1-911604-30-3. Hardback, £25.00.