Sibirica

Language contact between Russian and non-Russian-speaking populations in the Russian Federation has typically produced subtractive bilingualism with successive generations of ethnolingual minorities shifting to Russian. Tuvan, an Altai-Sayan Turkic language spoken in the Republic of Tyva in southern Siberia, displayed a high level of intergenerational transmission during the Soviet period. This interdisciplinary study examines the evolution of the Tuvan literary language and the key institutions supporting Tuvan language literacy. The article places the development of Tuvan language literacy in a historical perspective, viewing it as part of the overall evolution of Tuvan-Russian language contact. The article also reviews local policies enacted to revitalize Tuvan literacy since the end of the Soviet period.

Using recent sociological and demographic data, this article reviews the vibrancy of several ethnic minority groups in the European North of Russia. The article is framed in terms of three paradoxes. The first paradox is that the group thought to be the most vulnerable—the Samis of the Kola peninsula—have the strongest ability to preserve their identity. The second paradox is that the process of de-ethnicization, which refers to the assimilative pressure of urban settings, continues despite institutional structures designed to prevent it. The final paradox is that ethnic revival can be identified in unexpected places relatively independent of the structural factors of language and birthrate that are traditionally associated with ethnic reproduction.

This research report is based on one of the three known copies of the album of photographs ascribed in bibliography to Baron von Brandis's The Countries of the Amur, Eastern Siberia, Western Siberia and the Urals, 1860-1866. This American copy was offered for sale in October, 2008 at Bloomsbury Auctions, New York, but was passed and bought in-house. The 371 photographs in the album document a six-year photographic expedition from the Amur to the Urals. This report contextualizes the place of the album in Russia's political and economic history, as well as notes its importance as a source that enhances our appreciation of the visual culture of the Urals, Siberia, and the Amur regions. The report also speculates on some of the motivations of the expedition, the targeted audience for the album, and Brandis's collaborators.

The conference “Siberian Society in the Context of Russian History from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century” was held at Irkutsk State University in October 2009, and commemorated the second centenary of Eastern Siberia governor general Nikolay Nikolayevich Muravyov-Amursky’s birth.

Julian Agyeman and Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger, eds., Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union Elana Wilson Rowe

Svetlana Vladimirovna Vasileva, Vlast i staroobriadtsy Zabaikalia (konets XVII–nachalo XX vv.). [Power and the Old Believers of Transbaikalia: From the End of the Seventeenth through the Beginning of the Twentieth Century] Robert Montgomery

Natasha Kuhrt, Russian Policy towards China and Japan: The Eltsin and Putin Periods Falk Huettmann

Elana Wilson Rowe, ed., Russia and the North Kate Dunsmore

Sarah Milledge Nelson, Shamanism and the Origin of States: Spirit, Power, and Gender in East Asia Kathleen Osgood Dana

Galsan Tschinag, The Blue Sky Janice Cori Cobb

John R. Bockstoce, Furs and Frontiers in the Far North: The Contest among Native and Foreign Nations for the Bering Strait Fur Trade

Barbara A. Brower and Barbara Rose Johnston, eds., Disappearing Peoples? Indigenous Groups and Ethnic Minorities in South and Central Asia Valerie Alia

Books Received for Review