Sibirica

This article presents two ethnographic case studies illustrating the practices and perceptions of contemporary wolf hunters (volchatniki) in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia). We aim to show how contemporary volchatniki rely on individual strategies such as self-crafted technologies and hunting magic. Hunting of wolves must be understood in terms of mutual intimate sensory interplay, an exchange that can be perceived as intersubjective communication between human and non-human persons. This personal interaction creates bonds between humans and certain wolves, allowing some wolves to survive. Despite the technocratic attitude of the Soviet era that wolves were a pest species to be exterminated, volchatniki of today perceive wolves as conscious subjects displaying personality and character. Animistic assumptions of non-human agency play an important role in wolf hunting, in combination with technological advances.

This study investigates the impact of the geographical location of uluses (municipal districts) and their climate on intraregional migration in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Six of the most common indices describing the intensity of migration were used for the analysis. Despite strong outflows of population from the north, the disparities between the Arctic uluses and the rest of the Republic were statistically insignificant. Disparities between geographical parts of Yakutia and clusters by temperature were more marked, but they were not observed for all indices. This is due to a very low migration turnover in the south. The study finds that the geographical location of the uluses and their climate had some influence on intraregional migration, but socioeconomic determinants were much more important.

This article considers regionalism (oblastnichestvo) as an independent direction in the history of Russian thought and culture. Four varieties of regionalism are pointed out: Russian, Ukrainian, Siberian, and Western Russianism (zapadnorussizm), which held the principles of federalism in common. The philosophical and methodological basis of regionalism was narodnichestvo (populism)—the ideology and movement of the intelligentsia in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Narodnichestvo was against serfdom and capitalist development in Russia, and for the overthrow of the autocracy by means of a peasant revolution, positivism, and Slavophilism. The program of the regionalists was addressed to the provincial intelligentsia and was largely aimed at the formation of an intelligentsia called to serve their region. The program of Siberian regionalism is considered in more detail.

The Man Who Loved Siberia Roy Jacobsen and Anneliese Pitz (London: Maclehose Press, 2023), 302 pp., ISBN: 9781529413038.

A Life in Music from the Soviet Union to Canada: Memoirs of a Madrigal Ensemble Singer Alexander Tumanov, translated and edited by Vladimir Tumanov (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2019), 435 pp., ISBN: 9781574417555.