Sibirica

This issue marks the re-launch of our journal with Berghahn after a year’s hiatus in publishing. I would like to thank Vivian Berghahn and her team in the journals division for all their efforts in working with us to continue the journal and improve upon the excellent base established by Alan Wood and Cathryn Brennan. As editor, I coordinate the work of the associate editors, who put in many of the hours necessary to prepare high-quality manuscripts for publication. In volume four, we published short editorial notes that were collectively signed. This manifesto marks the introduction of a new genre to the journal, a substantive editorial intended to provoke discussion on a particular topic. It is authored by a single person, but distributed for comment to the other editors, and although not peer-reviewed, it has at least received some peer discussion before going to press. We will take turns stepping onto the soapbox, and we invite our readers to contribute to discussions, as well. The topic at hand is very broad: the place of Siberian studies in the humanities and sciences generally.

This article presents a first step towards creation of a demographic analysis of Siberia's exilic population during the nineteenth century. The article makes the argument that traditional Russian attitudes towards children were reflected on a macroscopic scale in the state's treatment of the children of criminals and other deviants deported and exiled to Siberia and the Russian Far East. The article uses a statistical approach as well as anecdotal materials to suggest some of the possible impacts the deportation of tens of thousands of children had on the later history of Russia.

This article gives an overview of the primary records of the 1926-1927 Turukhansk Polar Census Expedition. The author argues that rather than being an exercise in statistical surveillance, the expedition can be better characterized as a classical expedition of discovery. The article describes the structure of the expedition and the documents that were collected, places the expedition in a history of the surveillance of aboriginal peoples, and presents a research program for re-analyzing the data in light of the contemporary interests of Siberian indigenous peoples.

Nil (Isakovich), bishop of the Irkutsk and Nerchinsk eparchy from 1838 to 1853, completed a major work on Tibetan Buddhism, Buddizm, razsmatrivaemyi v otnoshenii k posledovateliam ego, obitaiushchim v Sibiri (Buddhism, examined in relation to its Siberian followers), published in St. Petersburg in 1858. It was a thorough description of Buddhist doctrine, rites, and organizational structures in the Transbaikal. The bishop observed the rapid spread of Buddhism with the growth of the number of followers, clergy, and monasteries (datsan) in this area. As a Christian missionary, he tried to find out the reasons why this teaching was so powerful and influential, and why Buddhism became so popular among the Buriat population, attracting far more converts from native Shamanism than Christianity. Nil was interested in organizational aspects, hierarchical structure, Buddhist dharma, everyday rituals, and ceremonies during major holidays. Throughout his book, Nil presented his erudition and understanding of the Buddhist tradition. He used numerous sources in Tibetan, Mongolian, Latin, Russian and French. The quality of his writing varies greatly from other contemporary works of the Russian Orthodox missionaries. Unfortunately, Nil's book, published in Russian, was unknown to the majority of European scholars of that time.

The Tofa and Tozhu peoples of southern Siberia are closely related ethnically, linguistically, geographically, and in their traditional economic activities of reindeer herding, hunting, and gathering. However, they have long been divided by administrative boundaries, leading to different historical trajectories and drastic differences in their sense of property rights. The Tofa have a much longer history of interaction with Russians and other incomers than the Tozhu. Many Tofa now find themselves without official hunting grounds, while those who have rights to hunting grounds guard them jealously. This situation is striking in contrast to the sense of property just across the border in the Tozhu district of the Republic of Tyva, where non-exclusivity is still the salient feature of Tozhus' sense of property today. This article discusses changes in the distribution of hunting grounds among the Tofa, and compares the Tofa's sense of exclusive rights of access to the remarkably inclusive approach among the Tozhu.

This article analyzes the morphological and semantic patterns of personal names found among Koryak-speaking people in the village of Middle Pakhachi (Oliutor Raion, Koryak Autonomous Okrug) in northern Kamchatka. Names are connected to the essence of a person, and are thus connected with beliefs about personhood, reincarnation, spirit attack, and sickness. Names are typically from nouns, but can also come from verbs or modifiers. They are often nominalized. Many names come from compounding roots, which is common to distinguish two individuals with the same name in the same village. Most names are gendered. Feminine gender is overtly marked, but masculine is not. Not all names have analyzable meanings apparent to ordinary speakers of the language, but names are thought to reflect the inner essence or character of a person.

Siberia is more than a region of Russia; it is also an integral part of how Russians understand themselves. This cultural historical article examines the process by which Russians incorporated Siberia through the ideology of nash (ours; female nasha, neuter nashe), a possessive term that has deep roots in Russian literary and philosophical traditions. The author argues that it is important for us to understand the 'mental appropriation' of Siberia in order to understand its place in Russia today.

The eastern region of Russia left a noticeable imprint on the historical fates of the peoples of many foreign countries. Many works on the culture, history, and ethnography of Siberia sprang from the quills of foreign authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The study of Siberia was presented by people who were themselves exiled and cast away by the Russian government as undesirable or dangerous elements. This fate did not escape the peoples of foreign nations: tens of thousands of Poles, Hungarians, Germans, French, and Japanese were in various times forcibly sent to become acquainted with Siberia. Unfortunately the memories of Siberia for the peoples of a number of countries (Japanese, Hungarians, Poles,) became serious impediments in the way to mutual understanding and collaboration between Russia and those countries. The arrival of foreigners in Siberia is in large part chronicled differently by Russian historians in contrast to historians from other countries. There are various ‘blank spots’ in the history of foreign prisoners in Siberia (for example, prisoners of war from both World Wars), which Russian (Soviet) historians viewed in different terms owing to differing circumstances (with respect to the political character); the Russian ignorance of scholarship by foreign historians was further limited as a result of their inaccessibility.

Valerii Skubnevskii and Iurii Goncharov, Goroda zapadnoi Sibiri vo vtoroi polovine XIX – nachale XX v. Chast’ 1: Naselenie, ekonomika

Iurii Goncharov, Gorodskaia sem’ia Sibiri vo vtoroi polovine XIX – nachala XX v.

Piers Vitebsky, The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia Piers Vitebsky

Semion Lyandres and Dietmar Wulff, Eds., A Chronicle of the Civil War in Siberia and Exile in China: The Diaries of Petr Valil’evich Vologodskii, 1918–1925

Geoffrey Elliott, From Siberia with Love: A Story of Exile, Revolution and Cigarettes

Anna Bek, The Life of a Russian Woman Doctor: A Siberian Memoir, 1869–1954

Gudrun Bucher, Von Beschreibung der Sitten und Gebräuche der Völcker: die Instruktionen Gerhard Friedrich Müllers und ihre Bedeutung für die Geschichte der Ethnologie und der Geschichtswissenschaft

Andrei Znamenski, Through Orthodox Eyes: Russian Missionary Narratives of Travels to the Dena’ina and Ahtna, 1850s–1930s