Nenets National Okrug: Encyclopedia Arctica 10: Soviet North, Geography and General

Author Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 1879-1962

Nenets National Okrug

Form for receipt of article "Nenets National Okrug"
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NENETS National Okrug ^ (Area) ^ , within Arkhangelsk Oblast (qv), lies [: ] in the northeasternmost corner of the European Arctic between 65°47′ and 69°52′ N., and 43°30′ E. It is bordered on the east by the Yamalo-Nenets National Okrug (qv), on the south by the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (qv) and by the remainder of Arkhangelsk Oblast, and on the north by the seas and bays of the Arctic Ocean. Administratively, it is divided into four raions (counties): Amderma (qv), Bolshezemelskaia, Kanin-Timan, and Lower Pechora. Its territory is 82,800 sq. mi., and the population in 1937 numbered 28,125. It may be estimated to have increased ^ markedly ^ since then to ^ through further ^ ^ growth of ^ T^t^he capital is at Narian-Mar.^, and the mining town of [: Anderama ] . School pop. ^ ^ attendance figures for '1949 indicate a population in excess of 32,000, excluding the probability of a large additional, purely adult population in the mines, on the wharves, and in lumbering^
Physical Geography . The Nenets National Okrug occupies a coastal zone extending from southwest to northeast from the Mezen [] ^Bay Gulf^ of the White Sea to the Baidaratskaia of the Kara Sea. In all, the coast is 600 miles in length, and is washed, for most of its distance - the central portion - by the Barents Sea, which [: ] is broken into three great gulfs here (Chesh, Pechora and Khaipudyr) by ^ large ^ great peninsulas pro– jecting northward. In the east, the width of the Okrug from north to south attains 180 miles, but in the west it decreases to 60. However, ^ in this area there is the Kanin ^ here there extends far to the ^ Peninsula, which extends far to the north. ^ north the Kanin Peninsula, which falls within its bounds. The Okrug lies on the outer bounds of the Northern Lowland, which underwent marine transgression during the [: ] Post-Pliocene epoch. Moraine ^ formations ^ [: ] dating from the Ice Age has have been preserved on the higher spots of the watersheds. Clearly marked terminal moraines extending from westsouthwest to eastsoutheast between the Pechora and Khaipud– yr Gulf bear varying ^ various ^ designations, i.e., Tabrov-khoi, Yanei, etc. They attain an alt– itude of 558 ft. above sea level. In the Malozemelskaia Tundra, however, they attain 656 ft., but on the south of Kanin Peninsula (the so-called Shomokhov Peaks), they reach only 262 ft.
The lowland is intersected by tectonic ridges at two points. These ridges are called the Timan and the Pai-khoi. The portion of the Timan Ridge lying within the bounds of the Nenets National Okrug consists of four parallel ranges, low in altitude (810 ft. maximum) but rising very sharply from the surrounding plain and separated by valleys seeming very deep by contrast. [: ] They are flat-topped. The Pai-khoi falls entirely within the bounds of the Okrug, and contains its highest

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point, More-pai Mt., 1562 ft. above sea level. The Kanin Stone, a range on the penin– sula of that name, constitutes a continuation of the Timan Ridge, and reaches a height of 656 ft. above sea level.
The climate of the Nenets Okrug is the most severe in Europe. The average annual ^ temperature ^ [: ] at Pustozersk ^ at the mouth of ^ [: ] the Pechora River is 24°F., and varies between an average of −1°F. in the coldest month and 53.5°F. in the warmest. The most extreme cold on record there is −48°F., while the greatest heat is 86°F. The climate becomes more severe as one moves northeastward. The duration of the warm season, i.e., the period with an average [: ] temperature above freezing each day, varies from 5 1/2 months in the southwest to four months in the northeast. The summer - the period with an average temperature each day above 50°F. - is of one-and-one-half month's duration on the lower Pechora. That being the midway point of the Okrug, geographically, all climatic conditions are more severe to the east and north of [: ] Pustozersk, and milder to the west and south. Average annual [: ] precipitation at the point of observation i [: ] ^ s ^ 14", of which two-thirds occurs during the summer. The snow cover is thin, with the [: ] formation of permafrost as a result. Shrenk found permafrost near Pustozersk at depths of from five to 63 ft. beneath the surface. However, in the Bolshezemelskaia Tundra to the northeast, the layer of permafrost attains a thick– ness of 100 Ft.
The most important river in the Okrug is the Pechora (qv), which flows through this territory for 125 miles on the last leg of its journey to the sea. Most of that distance may be considered to fall within its delta ( ^ a ^ multiplicity of islands and chan– nels, increasing as the sea is approached). [: ] This is the most thickly ^ best- ^ populated area, of the Okrug. The river is navigable to ocean-going vessels from the sea up to Narian-Mar (qv), at which point the navigation season is 143 days, i.e., a little under five months, in duration. Lumber floated down the river and processed at Narian Mar is the chief reason for the existence of this new town and the port [: ] around which it was built, and forms the major article of shipment, while e^E^quipment for that industry and supplies for its workers and the town population, as well as for the Nentsy of the hinterland are the main freights brought here.
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No other river in the Okrug compares even remotely to the Pechora, but the next most important is the Indiga, whose [: ] mouths are particularly well suited for the use of deep sea vessels. The Sula, a tributary of the Pechora, is the third river in importance. It is planned to link the Sula and Indiga by canal. Lakes are numerous but small. The largest are called Urdiuzh and Vizhas. The Okrug falls within the zones of tundra and forest-tundra, except for its southwestern and southern portions, which lie within the taiga of ^ coniferous ^ forest and marsh. The north of the Kanin Peninsula, the mainland north of the Sula River west of the Pechora, and the entire territory east of the Pechora are covered with the [: ] vegetation of the tundra. These areas are called ^ and ^ Bolshezemelskaia Tundra, Malozemelskaia Tundra, and Timan Tundra [: ] [: ] ^ Malozemelskaia Tundra, and Bolshezemelskaia Tundra, ^ ^ respectively. ^ Of forest trees ^ , ^ spruce grow ^ s ^ the farthest north. Peat bogs up to 16 ft. in thickness are encountered. However, they do not find indus– trial use, both due to the abundance of wood, and because of the difficulty of dry– ing peat under the damp conditions of the Arctic.
The fauna of the tundra includes Polar fox, brook trout and [: ] ^ ptarmigan. ^ A considerable variety of birds nest here during the summer, including geese, ducks, eider, etc. The taiga is inhabited by the typical denizens of northern forests, and the rivers are rich in fish.
Economy . The chief occupation of the native Nentsy, who form somewhat less than half the population, is reindeer-herding. By ^ 1937, ^ 1936 64% of the nomadic families and some 90% of the settled population had joined collective farms, and the total head of reindeer had increased from a low of 137,000 in 1932 to 170,000. [: ] A network of veterinary stations and slaughter corrals has been established, and a scientific research sta– tion for inquiry into the problems of [: ] reindeer stock-farming set up in Narian-Mar. The tundra has been surveyed and divided into sections, each assigned to the use of a given collective or group thereof, thus ending the open-range grazing which had misused the resources of reindeer-moss. Some four-fifths of the reindeer are in the Bolshezemelskaia Tundra, i.e., east of the Pechora. Reindeer meat is, of course, the chief item of food of the Nentsy, while the hides are chipped out to the ^ suede ^ chamois factory at Ust-Tsylma in the neighboring [: ] Komi A.S.S.R. (qv).

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Second in importance to the Nentsy is fishing. The catch has been rising rapidly, i.e., from 2,200 tons in 1933 to 4,800 in 1937. Almost every Nenets family engages in fishing to a greater or lesser degree, for its own use. Commercial fishing is con– ducted in the Lower Pechora and Kanin-Timan areas, i.e., not in the eastern tundra and its adjacent waters. These fisheries take salmon (350 tons in 1936), whitefish, herring, etc. Canneries were built in 1933 in the settlements of Shoina and Indiga. Two government stations for the renting of powered fishing equipment to fishermen's cooperatives have been established. Seals and white whales are hunted commercially along the coast. ^ A shipyard builds fishing vessels at Narian-Mar. ^
Fur trapping also occupies an important place in the economy of the Okrug. Polar fox, ermine and red fox are the chief animals sought. The value of the catch increased from 494,000 rubles in 1932 to 1,375,000 in 1937.
The lumber industry is of rapidly increasing importance. The single sawmill at the site of present-day Narian-Mar (Red City) burned in the early ′20s. It was rebuilt in 1923-4. In 1933 it sawed 103,000 cubic meters of wood, and in 1936, 127,000.
Coal mining, utilizing the [: ] resources of the major field centered at Vorkuta (qv) just outside the Nenets National Okrug, but projecting into it, in– creased from a yield of 5,600 tons in 1933 to 150,000 tons in 1936. Fluorite mining at Amderma, beginning ^ with 4,000 tons ^ in 1934, had reached 15,000 tons in 1936, and was planned to attain 18,000 in 1942.
Agriculture , [: ] Livestock farming is the chief form of settled agriculture, and is pursued primarily by the Pomors - Russian fishermen-farmers who have dwellt on the shores of the European Arctic for ^ at least ^ 400 years. It is centered in the Pechora delta country, along the mouths of the rivers of Kanin Peninsula, and at Amderma, where it is an innovation for the purpose of providing milk dairy pro– ducts and meat to the miners. and their families. In [: ] 1937 there were 4,123 head of cattle, 1,365 horses and 3,972 sheep in the Okrug. [: ] Several small dairy plants have been built along the lower reaches of the Pechora. Since 1934 [: ] truck-farming has also been practised in the Okrug, de– spite the belief previously held that this was impossible. In 1935 a crop of ten

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tons of potatoes, turnips and cabbage was harvested from the garden plot established at the Narian-Mar sawmill. Barley ^ and oats were ^ [: ] successfully grown, by means of exceedingly early sowing of [: ] most hardy ^ varieties, ^ [: ] prior to World War II, [: ] but it was not until 1947 that experiments with rye were successful. ^ Prior to 1934 wild onions were ^ ^ the only vegetable known. ^
Transport . The most important media for bulk transport are the Pechora River for inland freights, and the sea for communication with rail-served ports - Arkhangelsk primarily. The port of Narian-Mar, meeting point for river and ocean traffic, handled 61,000 tons of freight in 1932 and 146,000 in 1937, of which 87,000 tons [: ] ^ was ^ incoming and 59,000 tons, outgoing. The outgoing tonnage consisted primarily of lumber and coal, while equipment for these industries, for freight-handling facilities, housing, schools and the like, represented the incoming freights. Away from the waterways the sole means of transport is by reindeer. The longest such trail extends for more than 500 miles, and links Narian Mar and Khoseda– ^ Khard ^ Sard to the central tundra. [: ] In 1947 mail was delivered along it thrice weekly. There is year-round scheduled air freight and passenger service between Narian-Mar and Moscow, via Mezen, Arkhangelsk and Vologda, while bush flying in the provides service to whatever other points require it. ^ Frozen fish is flown out in winter. ^ The growth in the economy of the Okrug is indicated by a rise in the trade turnover from 9,000,000 rubles in 1932 to 30,000,000 in 1937, and in the Okrug budget from 1,209,000 rubles in 1932 to 7,353,000 in 1937, the bulk of which represents investment and subsidy from Moscow. The eastern tundra now bids fair to outstrip the Pechora River delta as the most populated and economically developed area, for it has access to rail, just across the Okrug border in the Komi ASSR since the building of the line to Vorkuta in 1941. Moreover, there is sound reason to suppose that that line will be carried northward to the Arctic coast at ^ or near ^ Amderma, through the Nenets National Okrug, in the near future. The distance is only 150 miles, but the terrain is that of the Pai-khoi Mts. (up to 1,500 ft.). The chief problem is that of selecting the most suitable location for a port.
History . The first people known to inhabit this territory in historical times have come down to us under the name of Yugra ^ or Chud ^ with whom the ventursome merchants of Lord Great Novgorod came into contact "probably about the time of the First Crusade (1096) and certainly before the Second (1147)" according to Prof. Be ^ a ^ zley of the University 40 [: Kenky of No.X. in 193?]

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Pre-History and History . Archeological expeditions since 1939 have found flint arrow– heads , ^ and ^ ornamented ceramic fragments [: ] dating from the ^ beginning of the ^ Second Millenium B.C., at three points in the present Nenets National Okrug. All three are in localities which are inhabited today and have been during the 400 to 900 years of written history of this area. The presumption logically follows that they have been inhabited more or less without interruption since the time of these archeological finds. The first finds, in 1939, were made in [: ] an area of the open tundra centered at 67°30′ N. and 59° E., for considerable distances along the banks of two small northern tributaries of the twisting Pechora, the Kolva-vis and the Sandibei. A year later, a second group of finds was made 100 miles due westward, in the Pechora mouth area, around present-day Narian-Mar and centuries-old Pustozersk. A single find was made 30 miles to the southwestward, along the Sula River, important because it is along the same river, portage and trail route westward to Mezen and Arkhangelsk that has always been in use in historical times. Finally, the most north– easterly discovery was made on the shore of the Arctic at 60°E. and almost 69°N., on the west bank of the mouth of the Talata River, just east of Khaipudyr Gulf. This is 75 miles NNE of the first finds, and 200 miles ENE of the second. The nature of the finds indicate that the people of that day, approximately 4,000 years ago, were fishermen and hunters. What is of overriding interest is the similarity among the finds at these widely-scattered localities, and the similarity of all of them as a group to those of the White Sea culture of that day centered [: ] near present-day Arkhangelsk, hundreds of miles to the southwest.
M.E. Foss, a Soviet A ^ a ^ rcheologist of standing, who has herself made important discoveries infield excavations, has demonstrated clearly by reference to 56 descrip– tions of finds over all of northern ^ Scandinavia, north ^ Russia and northwestern Siberia in the past half century, that there was trade and other intercourse between the people dwelling along the Barents and White Seas, and those of the Pechora and Ob, and the tundra between. Similar contact existed between them and cultures as far south as present– day Leningrad (Karelian Culture) and the middle west slope of the Urals (Ananin Culture),

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eastward of, but on the same latitude as, Moscow (56°N.). These similarities are demonstrated both in the cultural field and anthropologically, by comparisons of skulls and skeletons. According to Foss, the contact between the Arkhangelsk area and the present Nenets territory was via the same routes as today: by sea along the coast to the mouth of the Pechora and beyond, and also up that river via its tributaries.
Cliff paintings near Arkhangelsk show boats apparently capable of seating 24, and island finds show open water was crossed.
[]Although the Kolva-vis and Sandibei finds are due east of those in the vici– nity of Narian-Mar, along the trail now used for centuries by reindeer-herding peoples, Foss doubts that the contact in the period of the White Sea Culture was over– land, but believes instead that it was roundabout, via the Pechora River network. History . The first, semi-legendary, people, known to inhabit this territory in hist– orical times have come down to us under the name of Chud, or Yugra, with whom the ventur ^ e ^ some merchants of the great early mediaeval, semi-democratic city-state of Lord Great Novgorod (south of today's Leningrad) came into contact "probably about the time of the First Crusade (1096 A.D.) and certainly before the Second (1147 A.D.)", according to Prof. Beazley of the University of Birmingham. As late as 1837, Alexander Schrenk, traveling through the Nenets tundra, found very vivid and precise folk memories of the Chud among both the natives and the Russians who had dwellt on that shore for at least 350 years.
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The Fundamental Chronicle , usually known as Nestor's , one of the earliest written records of Russian history ^ (Povest vremennykh let) ^ containing, of course, much that is fantastic, says that ^ in ^ ^ 1092 A.D. men of Novgorod went to the pechora people and from there to the Tugra. "The Tugra people have a dumb (unknown) ^ ^ language and they neighbor the Samoyeds (Nentsy) in the midnight lands." The same Chronicle says that ^ in a year which apparently was 1112 A.D., a [: ] Novgorod merchant named Guriata Rogovich sent his servant to the Pechora River, that the natives of that river valley then paid tribute to Novgorod, and from the Pechora the messenger went on to the land called Yugra. An entry for 1169 reports a tribute– gathering expedition, but in 1187 the Yugra rose and massacred the Russians. The number involved in these expeditions was usually small. About 100 men were lost on this occasion. A punitive expedition of 1193-4 ended in disaster, but Novgorod evident– ly was able to re-establish some contact or hold, for, in the agreement of 1264 between Novgorod and Prince Yaroslav, Yugra appears among the domains or claims of the Republic of Novgorod. Finally, a last effort was made by Novgorod to subject the Yugra in 1445. The report is interesting because it indicates the large number of Rus-

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[: ] ^ Fur trading ^ contact with the Yugra across the entire East European plain may date back to the 5th Century B.C., for Herodotus describes the people of the area south of the North Russian Sea (Arctic?) as the Yurkai, from which Hennig draws the not improbable conclusion that this was merely another or an earlier pronunciation of Yugra. From the 10th Century A.D. onward there are numerous reports by Arabian traders of a people called the Yura, north of the Volga Bulgar Kingdom. Henning describes the route northward as following the Kama and [: ] ^ Kolva ^ , then the Vychegda, and finally over the Pechora Portage to the Pechora. The northern trading center was Cherdyn, which remained until the present century the chief source of [: ] trade goods for the Nentsy. Iban Sa'id wrote in 1250 that "they (the people of the North) have a white bear, which goes into the sea and swims and catches fish." and that its fur was sold as far south as Egypt. Ibn Battuta in 1354 reported a single, exceptionally beautiful ermine from north Russia as being sold in India for the extraordinarily high price of 400 dinars.

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sian settlers ^ at that early date ^ beyond the Northern Dvina River, i.e., the Russian portion of present– day Arkhangelsk Oblast, of which the Nenets National Okrug is a part. There were enough, apparently, to raise 3,000 men of military age. The Chronicle of Novgorod reads, for that year:
"The same year Vasili Shenkurskoi (N.B. Shenk ru ^ ur ^ sk is southeast of Arkhangelsk - W.M.) and Mikhail Yakol^,^ Voyevodas of Novgorod, with three thousand men from beyond the Volok (N.B. the portage linking the Arctic and Baltic watersheds) went against the Yugra people, and, after capturing many Yugra men with their wives and children, disbanded. And the Yugra people succeeded in deceiving them, saying thus: 'We will pay you tribute, and will count our numbers and show you our camps, settlements and islands and natural boundaries.' At the same time they collected and attacked Vasili's fortress, killing many good men, sons of Boyars, and eighty other brave men. It was terrible to hear their destruction, but Vasili [: ] escaped with his son Semeon and a small party, and others fled into the forest and dispersed. The other Voyevoda Mikhail Yakol was then on another river, and coming to Vasili's fortress and finding it demolished and his fellows killed and others scattered, he set about seeking his own people along the river. And Vasili and his son and the others joining him, they all returned to their own country."
There is no clear distinction among the peoples named Pechora (cave-dwellers), Yugra and Chud. Some maps show the Pechora - whose "caves" may have been semi-dugouts – south of the Yugra, who are presumably identical with the Chud. However, ^ recently-discovered ^ labyrinths of found on the Solovetskie Islands in the White Sea containing finds dating back to the White Sea culture of archeological antiquity tend to lend credence to the stories of "cave" dwellings. Schrenk, describing his ^ 1837 ^ [: ] [: ] Journey to [: ] the Northeast of European Russia Through the Tundra of the Samoyeds to the Northern Ural Mountains in a sober, scientific and detailed work of 665 pages under that title, writes:
"All the inhabitants of these lands preserve a legend, substantiated by history, that the most extreme northeastern portion of European Russia was, in earlier times (when that land was hardly known) inhabited by a tribe entirely different from that which dwells here today. This tribe was among many not speaking the Russian language, which were known to the Russians under the name of Chud, i.e., strange people. The Samoyeds call them Siirte, and state with certainty that they lived in the country before them." The

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The Siirte spoke a strange tongue, but also understood the Nenets tongue, according to legends heard by Schrenk. They were richer than the Nentsy, possessing silver and copper, iron, tin and lead. [: ] The reason for this, said the Nentsy, was that the Siirte dwelt underground. This poses the question, not raised by Schrenk, as to whether the Siirte are remembered as living underground because they knew how to mine the mineral wealth which the Pechora headwater area and Vaigach Island possess. Thus far, there [: ] are no reports indicating that the modern mining operations of the past decade have uncovered signs of ancient workings. Schrenk reports having heard, also, from a "bright" resident of Mezen, Russian by nationality, that a locality near Mezen (just south of the area under our consideration) had been inhabited by Chud, who had been driven from it by the men of Novgorod. They had been pursued to a river bank, where some died under the swords of the Russians, and the remainder sought death by plunging into the waters. To this day, that spot carries the name of "bloody", ascribed to this event. Two villages near Mezen are described, in folk memory, according to Schrenk, as having been villages of the Chud– not, therefore, a nomadic people - before the early Russians [: ] drove them out and took over. Moreover, there were, Schrenk said, Russian families in Pustozersk, the oldest Russian settlement in the Nenets National Okrug, which traced [: ] their lineage back to the Chud. [: ] [: ] This is not necessarily [: ] imaginative, for the folk bards of the Russian Arctic seaboard have retained a more exact memory of the history of ancient kiev, 1,000 years ago and as many miles to the south, than is the case anywhere else in Russia. Unfortunately, the particular old man of alleged Chud origin from whom Schrenk hoped to get his family tradition, was away when he visited Pustozersk.
Schrenk also describes more tangible traces of the Chud-Yugra-Pechora in the form of the "numerous" caves along the Pechora (cave) River. The Russians called them Chud caves or Chud mounds - the latter term being of even greater interest. Unfortunately, he himself does not describe having seen any. Accepting the idea that these peoples lived in caves, he speculates that the reason may have been an inability readily to fell the trees of the northern forests with the instruments at hand. This would, to some degree, contradict the Nenets legend that they possessed iron.
More than half a century before Schrenk, Witsen, [: ] wrote as follows:
"If one travel up the river Indiga (the next west of the Pechora - W.M.), one finds

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en route the hamlet of Gorodishche (that is, an abandoned place where a town had stood,..) [: ] where in ancient times there lived a people called the Chud; that people was at war with the Russians, but today has disappeared entirely and only the (earth?) walls of its ancient town remain."
Schrenk regarded as further [: ] proof of the existence of the Chud, [: ] whom he believed to be a Finno-Ugrian people, the names of coastal rivers and localities. As known to the Russians, and marked on the maps today, they are not Russian, but Finnish, while the Nentsy have entirely distinct names for them.
The facts seem to be that the Chud existed, and probably called themselves Yugra; that they were a more advanced people than the Nentsy, perhaps knowing the use of iron; but that they were defeated and exterminated by the Nentsy. who had pushed westward across the northernmost Ural. The Nentsy may not antedate the Muscovite Russians in this area by many centuries. The early men of Novgorod may have known the Chud rather than the Nentsy. But the picture is not clear by any means.
The modern history of the territory begins with Moscow's conquest of [: ] Novgorod, in 1471. Where [: ] Novgorod had sent expeditions to collect tribute and plunder, not unlike [: ] the Kiev state in the south 500 years earlier, Moscow founded perma– nent outposts. In 1499 a fort was built at the mouth of the Pechora, called Pustozersk, by Princes Kurbskii and Ushatov, to collect tribute from the Nentsy and protect the Rus– sian fishermen of the coast from their raids. The town was administrative center of the north country at that time, and the governors dwellt there. It is of considerable interest to note that the natives, who had resisted the men of Novgorod for 400 years, stood up against Muscovite Russia and the Empire which soon succeeded it for another 250 years. It was not until 1746 that the garrison, aided by all Russians capable of bearing arms, and by some Nentsy, succeeded in crushing the Nentsy so thoroughly that all later visitors to the area describe them as an entirely peaceable people. As a place of exile, Pustozersk was the home[: ] of such figures as the boyar Artamon [: ] Matveev, and Prince V.V. Golitsyn, the lover of Empress Sophia. [: ] Earlier it had been the place of exile of the famed founders of the Old Believers' sect, Avvakum, Nikifor, Lazar and Epiphany, who were here burned alive in wooden cages.
The reference above to the final suppression of the Nentsy does not at all mean that

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One of the [: ] Nenets legends [: ] very popular to the pre– sent day, named after its hero, Khariutsei , tells how the Nentsy attacked a town to rescue fellow-tribesmen who had been taken as slaves. After a long march they came to a town sur– rounded by a stone wall. ^ and defended by cannon. ^ This would indicate a campaign far to the southwest of Pustozersk, for its wall was wooden. The unequal battle ended with the defeat of the Nentsy. The legend is chanted in exciting metric verse, [: ] not unlike that of the Karelian Kalevala , [: ] from which Longfellow took the meter for Hiawatha . Khariutsei tells of the struggle:
"From the town there burst upon us " Strong and thunderous, a volley. Turned I round upon my brothers, Saw, that like ^ by ^ a wind of power, They were gone ^ borne ^ from earth and snowland, With them forty tents were lifted Berne ^ High ^ into the air above us.
"Answered we with flights of arrows, But the town sent forth another, Just as terrible a volley, Turned I once again and witnessed, Like the wind it took my brothers, [: ] [: ] Forty tents with them went skywards, Bore them off into the [: ] heavens."

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relations with the Russians were traditionally or primarily unfriendly. On the contrary, a^ A ^ lthough the Russians had come for tribute, they had remained to trade, particularly after the founding of Pustozersk. [: ] That trade required constant contact both with the Nentsy of north Europe, but also with the Yamal Nentsy to the east, whose wander– ings took them to Mangazeia, the Russian outpost established at the mouth of the Taz, just east of the Ob, in 1601. Nentsy visited Pustozersk each winter [: ] for trade, and in considerably larger numbers than ^ they did ^ 200 years later. As for Russian coasting trade to Siberia, there is ample evidence ^ of it ^ in the writings of the early English and Dutch explorers and mer– chant adventurers. Thus, Willem Barents' description of his second northeast voyage, in 1595, written by Gerat de Veer, states [] , regarding the vicinity of Yugorskii Shar, the [: ] narrow[] strait between the northernmost mainland point of the present Nenets National Okrug and Vaigach Island to the north:
"The three and twentieth of August we found a Lodgie, or Boat of Pitzore (Pechora), which was sewed together with Bast or Ropes, that had been Northward to seeke for some Sea-horses (walrus) Teeth, Traen (oil), and Geese, which they fetcht with their Boat, to lade in certaine shippes that were to come out of Russia through Wey-gates (Vaigach Island, i.e., Yugorskii Shar). Which ships they said (when they spake with us) were to sayle into the Tartarian (Kara) Sea, by the River of Oby (Ob), to a place called Ugolita (Yugria, i.e., to the Yugra) in [: ] Tartaria, there to stay all Winter, as they used to doe every yeere (my emphasis - W.M.): and told us that told us that it would yet bee nine or ten Weekes ere it began to freeze in that place, and that when it once beganne to freeze, it would freeze so hard, that as then men might go over the Sea into Tartaria (along upon the Ice) which they called Mermare."
This last is of particular interest, because it indicates that the Russians, pre– sumably following the example of the Nentsy, made sledge [: ] journeys out of sight of land, for a trip from Yugorskii Shar eastward to the site of Mangazeia requires cross– ing the broad Baidarat and Ob Gulfs. Other descriptions dating from 1611 and 1612 in Purchas' Pilgrims give detailed and circumstantial accounts of Russian voyages by sea to the Yenisei, while those to the Ob, somewhat nearer, involved fleets of two dozen 15-ton vessels or more, travelling together. As for Pustozersk, it had apparently been burnt down by its governor in 1610, more than 100 buildings and the fort being destroyed, in con-

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nection with the Troubled Times then plaguing Russia. However, there were 80 to 100 houses standing in 1611. [: ] Agents of the English company for trade with North Russia re– ported variously that the number of Nentsy coming to the town for the winter fairs in 1611-1614 [: ] was between 800 and 3,000. The objects they sold were identical with those which constituted the main riches of the region for the next 200 years: furs, including Siberian beaver and valuable Mangazeia sable^,^ mammoth ivory, and rock crystal from the quartz rocks of the Arctic Ural and the shores and islands of the Kara Sea.
In addition to the Nentsy visiting Pustozersk, and the Russians voyaging by sea and the Yamal Peninsula portage, other Pustozersk Russians crossed the tundra ^ and forest ^ to Yugria, in the northern Urals, or across the tundra and the Arctic Urals to Obdorsk and Mangazeia. However, conflict between the Nentsy on both sides of the mountains often rendered these trips unprofitable. This also reduced the quantity of commodities brought by the Nentsy themselves to Pustozersk. Another trade route was from Pustozersk east-south– east to the hamlet of Rogovoi Gorodok, which served at one time as a point of deposit for the prohibited wares brought in from Siberia. That village, [: ] lying just south of the present Nenets N.O. border, owed its existence to the institution of customs-houses at the end of the 16th century, at Berezovo, Verkhoture and other small northern towns in Siberia. A description of an overland journey to this smugglers' haven ^ in 1614 ^ was written by W. Gourdon of Hull, who had been stationed at Pustozersk.
The merchants of Pustozersk also voyaged, it goes without saying, southwestward to Mezen, Pinega and Kholmogory (near the present city of Arkhangelsk), to dispose there of the furs, ivory and crystal purchased from the Nentsy. However, the bulk of this southward export was conducted by Vologda and Arkhangelsk merchants who wintered at Pustozersk each year, purchasing both at first hand from the Nentsy and also from the Pustozersk each year, purchasing both at first hand from the Nentsy and also from the Pustozersk Russians, who evidently had little better knowledge of the true value of their goods than the natives.
The coastal route ^ followed by the Russians ^ to Mangazeia was described as follows by the British merchants stationed at Pustozersk. Using boats seating 12 to 30 men, they followed the mainland coast to Yugorskii Shar, and then pursued the low shoreline of the Kara Bay to the mouth of the Mutnaia River on the west coast of the Yamal Peninsula. They hauled their

Nenets National Okrug

boats up this stream for eight days to reach two lakes, 12 miles long, from which they emerged upon a portage of somewhere between 1,400 ft. and a mile in length - sources differ - to reach another lake giving rise to another river down which they floated for 10 days to reach the Gulf of the Ob. The reason for the length of the downstream journey is that this [: ] river, the Zelenaia, was so shallow as to [: ] require ^ very frequent ^ repeated unloading and re-loading of the boats. From this point they followed the coast down to the mouth of the river Taz, and then upstream. With a favorable wind, this last leg took four days. Otherwise, using oars, it took 8 to 12. It is clear from an account by Hakluyt and others that Mangazeia was by no means the farthest limit of the eastward journey of the merchants from Pustozersk. Following the Taz further upstream, the finally emerged at the muddy portage of Volochanka in the Siberian marshlands. From it they followed the Turukhan down– stream to Turukhansk, where that river enters the Yenisei. [: ] [: ] [: ] [: ] ^ These ^ voyages are believed to have begun in the 16th century. i ^ I ^ t would appear, ^ however, ^ from the archeological evidence [: ] of ^ the existence of ^ vessels of ^ [: ]^ similar size^,^ and ^ of ^ intercultural relation– ships discusssed [: ] earlier, that, whereas there may have been inter– ruptions, such voyages [: ] might well have been made literally thousands of years earlier. At all events, the articles offered for trade by the Russians included rye and oat flour, salt, butter (?), some processed hides, and fabrics.
The trip to Turukhansk from Pustozersk was, however, extremely long and hardly profitable. The importance of Pustozersk, making it worthwhile for the English Merchant Adventurers to station agents there, hinged entirely upon the existence of Mangazeia. But [: ] precisely in order to prevent foreigners from penetrating ^ Siberia, ^ an area of Russian monopoly, which Russia herself had only just conquered^,^ [: ] Mangazeia was literally torn down at Moscow's orders and the Siberian outpost moved to Turukhansk,^.^ Pustozersk ^ then ^ lost its significance. For Turukhansk was reached much more readily by more southerly portages in latitudes where the rivers remained open for a longer period of time. This tragedy — from the viewpoint of ^ the people of the Pechora basin — ^ occurred in 1620. From that point on, the chief signi– ficance of north European Russia was for trade westward, not eastward. Pustozersk declined, and Arkhangelsk stood alone as a flourishing port, until the building of the "window on the

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West"^,^ [: ] St. Petersburg, deprived it ^ too ^ of its importance for centuries.
Not only was Mangazeia dismantled, but the government specifically prohibited the navigation of the Yugorskii Shar, so as to prevent smuggling from Siberia. Finally, the Siberian Nentsy were now able to find a market for their furs at Obdorsk, which began to be visited by Russian merchants coming downriver along the Ob, and the need for barter with the European Nentsy across the difficult North Ural country disappeared. When a regular annual winter fair was set up in Obdorsk, the last reason for trading with Pustozersk disappeared, and it became a purely local center for barter with the Nentsy of the European tundra alone. ---------------------------
We have mentioned earlier that it was not until 1746, i.e., a century-and-a– quarter after the closing of Mangazeia, that the Nentsy were finally subjected by the Russians, although they had paid tribute, first intermittently, and later, for the most part regularly, for at least 250 years. The rate of tribute, originally laid down by the Novgorod raiding parties about 1100 A.D., remained unchanged until early in the 19th century. The old rate was two polar fox skins per bow, i.e., per adult male. In order to give Pustozersk protection beyond that provided by force of arms - for the Russians were greatly outnumbered at the time of its founding and for long thereafter - the Tsarist government issued letters patent to the Nentsy guaranteeing them the possession of the tundra in perpetuity. But the trickery and robbery they suffered at the hands of the Russian merchants - whose precarious voyages could often not be profitable without such methods - brought its harvest of hate. At one time the Nentsy besieged Pustozersk. Individual merchants who had taken them in, and were found out, had their ears, noses and tongues cut away, and their eyes gouged out, and were turned loose to meet their fate in the tundra. Needless to say, the conquerors replied in kind, if it was not they from whom such devices had been learned in the first place. When and where the yasak – tribute - was payable in terms of possession of reindeer, crooked officials demanded that it be paid, not per head, but per hoof, i.e., fourfold. At other times, the Nentsy would be forbidden to pasture their reindeer, hunt or fish in the usual places, until they had paid graft to the officials.
As almost everywhere in the Far North, vodka became the means whereby the chief permanent wealth of the natives - the reindeer - passed from their hands into those of

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Russian and Komi kulaks (a word for tight-fisted rural usurer, merchant or farmer which one finds used in entirely [: ] ^ conservative ^ Russian writings of 1880 and earlier). The effect of liquor, and also the standards of wealth in the tundra, were described [: ] remarkably well by one Nenets in the 19th century:
"Wine is tastier than meat; when you drink it, you become wealthier. You suddenly have many reindeer and you are a merchant. And when you awake, you realize that you are poor and have drunk your last reindeer away."
The effect, in essence, was that to a considerable degree, the Nenets became the herdsman for the reindeer ^ of ^ which he had formerly ^ been the owner. ^ owned. Nemirovich-Dancheko, writing in 1881, pictured the situation as follows:
"Formerly there were Samoyeds with innumerable [: ] ^ herds; ^ five or six thousand reindeer were not deemed anything out of the ordinary; now he who owns 500 is regarded as wealthy. Epidemics have taken them all! But worse than ice (in this area of less than extreme cold, conditions of thaw followed by freeze occur, making it impossible for the reindeer to crop the moss beneath the snow - W.M.), worse than [: ] the gadfly, worse than epidemics and sudden cold snaps is the kulak and the Izhemets (Komi -q.v.) entre– preneur, who have seized the forests simply as robbers, driven the Samoyeds from their edges into the tundra, the while [: ] plundering them with the aid of vodka. In the tundra control (over this) is impossible. (N.B.- It will be seen later how the present regime has instituted such control with the aid of the Nentsy themselves - W.M.). [: ] Only the Samoyed himself could protect himself....They have taken the best moss-lands in the tundra from him, driven him from the fishing streams and from the shores rich in sea mammals....
"It is interesting, although disgusting, to observe the means whereby the Zyrians (also Komi) have attained their present position, i.e., become the rulers of the tundra. Formerly there were as many rich Samoyed owners of large herds - and therefore competitors of the Izhemtsy - as there were Pustozersk Russians. (N.B. - Needless to say, the Russians also became large reindeer-owners only by gaining them from the Nentsy - W.M.). The Zyrians began systematically to trample down (evidently with their herds - W.M.) and destroy the moss pastures of both.... [: ] In the course of time the herds of the Pustozersk people died of starvation (the Russians, not being nomads,

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could not, despite their political and military dominance, wander afield in search of new pastures - W.M.) and those of the Samoyeds passed into the hands of the Zyrians. Every impoverished Izhemets who wants to better his condition stocks up with vodka, tobacco and tobacco and sets forth into the tundra. There he seeks out a rich grazing area, plies the Nenets reindeer-owner, his wife and children with liquor, and then begins to trade with him for the remaining stock of vodka. For it, the Samoyed yields the take of his previous and forthcoming season, his reindeer and furs....The results are obvious: [: ] famine and the dying-out of the tribe. The Zyrians introduced drunkenness here, and the Russians - syphilis. In the 1830s (the burden of) county government was added thereto. "Fish, fowl, reindeer, furs and berries were taken from the Samoyeds, when they lacked money (to pay tribute). Entire clans fled into the tundra, and, in panic, crossed beyond the Ural Mts, into the Vasiugan tundra of Siberia, when they learned that their protectors, the county officials, planned to visit them."
Islavin, [: ] found in 1844 that the 1,470 Zyrians in the area had 1,141 Samoyeds as herdsmen. Antonov showed that of approximately 5,000 Nentsy, 1,400 now did not possess a single reindeer, and the remaining 3,600 had an average of only four each. The herdsmen were fed poorly, and rotten meat into the bargain: reind eer that had died, and small fish of the kind that usually was thrown to the dogs. Instead of clothes, they were given [: ] scraps remaining after clothes had been cut. Their wages in money were 4 rubles and 20 kopecks per family per year, but even this they rarely saw, because their employer made sure to sell them [: ] drink and tobacco to that value.
^ Insert 16a. ^
In view of the apparent simplicity of the Nentsy in economic matters, it is worth nothing that this was due to the fact that they had had no experience of this sort in their own society, and not due to any inherent backwardness. On the contrary, their assistance was regarded as indispensable in those enterprises in which their experience was great. The Russian employers of Pustozersk regarded them as irreplaceable. Expedi– tions to Novaia Zemlia and Vaigach were unthinkable without them. Their fearlessness, shrewdness and skill in dealing with bears, powerful sea mammals and other dangerous phenomena [: ] of their native tundra won [: ] universal admiration. Many Nentsy spoke Russian, Komi and Khante quite abl ^ y ^ , in addition to their own tongue.

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In Nenets folk poetry, there is the Song About a Boy, which tells this story most vividly:
Bore I wood full three years for him, Years full three bore him his water, Garbage fed he me, [: ] my master, Ate I leavings, sobbed and sorrowed.
Only when the dogs had entered Could I come into the wigwam. When the dogs were driven outward, Must I also leave the wigwam.

Nenets National Okrug

Those who served on the fishing schooners of the larger Mezen entrepreneurs also readily acquired a working knowledge of the English, Norwegian, French and German languages during stays in the ports of those countries. Prior to their complete conquest, the Nentsy had not hesitated to send deputations as far as Moscow to defend their rights before the Tsar's Duma of noblemen.
But by a century ago, [: ] ^this people was in a hopeless state.^ [: ] Islavin, sent by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to investigate the situation, reported: "If no boundaries are set to the movement of the Izhemtsy, and they are not strictly watched over, then within twenty years they will dominate the Timan [: ] tundra and the land of the Siberian Samoyeds as they not ^ now ^ control all the Bolshezemelskaia tundra." He summarized his findings ^ of 1844 ^ as follows:
"The Samoyeds are the true pariahs of the Russian north. Russian and Zyrian kulaks take their reindeer herds from them by trickery, drink and robbery. They take their pastures. They have taken all the best rivers and lakes and trampled out the reindeer moss around them. The seaside occupations have also been taken from the Samoyeds. Russian entrepreneurs have taken all the best bays and gulfs. The Samoyeds have been left only those places to which sea mammals almost never come. The Izhem kulaks compel the Samoyeds to serve them for [: ] 'debts' of their fathers which their sons had never heard about. They take them as shepherds in the tundra and are held by force.
"The Samoyeds have nowhere to register complaints, and they must remain, unwillingly, in eternal enslavement.
"All of this has resulted in impoverishment of the Samoyeds to the point of complete pauperization. [: ] Entire families of starving nomads, begging charity, are seen in the streets of Pustozersk, Ust-Tsylma, Pinega, Mezen and Arkhangelsk.
"The local officials aid in the plunder and themselves strip the Samoyeds. They take bribes and engage in extortion, not refusing anything: fur, fish, fowl, reindeer and money. [: ] Learning that their ^'^protectors^'^ are to visit them, entire clans of Samoyeds will abandon their pastures in fear and fly beyond the Urals to the Siberian tundra."
Seven years earlier, Schrenk personally had observed how the Komi trappers had destroyed

Nenets National Okrug

the lairs of polar foxes in order to take the skins of the young, thereby destroying the resource for the [: ] Nentsy and whoever else would follow. On another occasion, coming into a tent all of whose inhabitants were sodden drunk, he learned that they had sold not only their herds, but themselves and their families. Later, his companion took down 18 specific complaints against the Komi, which Schrenk believed to be justified. [: ] [: ] It is of particular interest to record [: ] the desires of the Nentsy themselves for an equalitarian re-distribution of the herds, voiced to Schrenk in 1837. ^I^in view of the charges^[]^ that, when the soviets finally instituted such a reform, almost a century later, it represented an imposition of a concept foreign to a people content with their traditional lot. Schrenk writes: ^ He wrote: ^
"This people (the Nentsy) already was everywhere informed of my journey, and as no one could understand its objects (it was strictly scientific ^ - W.M. ^ ), each reasoned it out for himself and finally drew the conclusion that I had supposedly been dispatched by the government for the purpose of determining in detail how many reindeer were in the possession of each owner – which might readily appear to them to be the case, as my companion inquired about the number of reindeer in each tent - so as later to divide them equally among all the inhabitants of the tundra. In view of the intentions ascribed to me, all the wealthy owners, and therefore the Zyrians as well, had of necessity to be my avowed opponents, while the impoverished and tricked Nentsy loved me with all their hearts, as they considered me [: ] ^ responsible ^ for all their future happiness ^ to be. ^ This concatenation of circumstances compelled us, wherever we went, to conceal from the Zyrians [: ] the route we proposed to take, so as thereby to deprive them of all opportunity to act against us in unity." (The point was that Schrenk engaged reindeer as he went along. The Komi owned the reindeer, and would have abandoned his route of travel, leaving him with no means of transportation, had they known whither he was bound. They were exceedingly angry with their Nenets herdsmen who [: ] appeared with reindeer along Schrenk's route, but the Nentsy used various ruses to do so without harmful results for themselves. ^ ) ^ This picture repeated itself 30 and 90 years later, except that on the latter occasion the Nentsy were right about the intentions of the present government, although by that time its representatives had to overcome deep-rooted suspicions of all Russians, particularly outsiders.)

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Elsewhere Schrenk reported that the local traders, when they paid in money rather than goods, passed off 10-kopeck pieces as rubles (one ruble contains 100 kopecks). That at least was consistent with their rate of profit in barter transactions.
In Schrenk's day the economy of the Komi, the Russians and the [: ] Nentsy differed as follows. The Komi kept reindeer as a commodity whose meat, hides and horns were marketable, particularly the hides. Therefore they permitted them to multiply as rapidly as possible, having attained a trebling in a few decades. But this upset the natural balance in the tundra, and exhausted the moss resources, thus paving the way for a drastic fall in the herds from starvation, particularly in case of a season unfavorable due to ice or other special conditions. ^ That problem has only been solved in the past decade, as will be seen below. ^ For the Russians, reindeer-keeping was a secondary occupation, and they ^providing them with a means of land transport, and they^ permitted their Nenets ^h^erdsmen to pursue it in the traditional manner. ^ They engaged ^ engaging in suffi– cient slaughter for meat to maintain the human population^,^ at its height and the reindeer population at a level consistent with the resources of the tundra.^, as it was then used. ^ -----------
The one area of settled habitation [: ] a century ago in the territory under our consideration was the mouth of the Pechora. In all, there were 18 hamlets with a total population of about a thousand in 1832. Together, they were known as Pustozersk. Their chief occupation was fishing and the hunting of sea mammals, but they also engaged in trade, [: ] which gave them grain and other necessities of life and occupation; reindeer-keeping, mainly as a means of transport; cattle farming and the hunting of wildfowl. Fishing began in the spring, immediately upon the melting of the ice^.^ and was conducted by means of nots 560 to 700 ft. in length. Except for one species, which was dried, all the fish taken was salted. The Various types of salmon constituted the chief marketable fish. . The fish was sold, not to the great fishing town of Arkhangelsk or the lesser - Mezen - but to the up-river Pechora country through merchants from Cherdyn on the west slope of the Urals, who came down to Pustozersk between late June and early August, offering ^ bread ^ grains, as the main requirement of the fisherfolk.^, in exchange^ Prices depended, of course, upon the relative success of the fish catch and the current price of grain to the south. Salt was provided chiefly from government stores, for the government had a monopoly virtual monopoly in this field.
Both the Pechora fairway and the adjoining seaside bays with the best fishing had, after having been taken from the Nentsy, been carefully divided among the Russians on the basis

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of [: ] common law. As the various fishing grounds were not equally productive, a system of rotation was in effect, whereby each fisherman had the opportunity of [: ] using the more profit– able grounds once in several years. Here one had an application to the sea of the ancient Russian village community system, but something which was used strictly on behalf of the Russians and against the native majority of the population. However, as on the land, this system was no protection against the impoverishment of some and the enrichment of others. There were fisherfolk whose poverty reached the point of ^ complete ^ lack of nets, without which fishing a catch of adequ ^ a ^ te size could not be gained. To live, they had to rent their sections ^ of water frontage ^ to the well-to-do for a pittance, and then go to work for them at wages far lower than the value of the catch taken from their holdings.
An interesting [: ] contradiction in religion arose out of the differences between the needs of the fishermen on the coast and the farmers just 2 1/2° of latitude to the south. When the fisherfolk prayed, in August, for a north wind to drive the salmon into their nets, the farmers beseeched intercession for the very opposite, in their fear of unseasonable frost!
The Pustozersk people hunted sea mammals chiefly off the shores of Vaigach Island and Novaia Zemlia, and in the mouths of the Korotaikha and Kara Rivers on the mainland. They built huts there which, to this day, are the only human habitations along the coast except for the [: ] mining towns of Amderma and [: ] Vaigach Island. ^ and the new fisheries at ^ ^ Shoina and Indiga ^
A third occupation ^ was ^ [: ] the hunting of wildfowl. This ^ was ^ is done by Nentsy on Kolguev Island. The Russians supplied them with a year's necessities, in the form of foodstuffs, powder, [: ] nets, etc., in exchange for which the Nentsy turned over the entire catch.
Agriculture consisted chiefly of the maintenance of cows of the Kholmogory breed, large and good milkers ^ by local standards. ^ The islands of the Pechora delta provided ample forage, and haying was carried on in August to provide silage for the year. The local horses were ^ then ^ particularly large and strong, being the result of [: ] the improvement of Russian breeds by a Danish workhorse stallion. Chickens were the only domestic fowl. Some few sheep were kept.
Berries and mushrooms were gathered.
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Nents National Okrug

In 1859 a company for the export of [: ] lumber via the Pechora mouth was formed by Capt. Kruzenshtern (not the famed explorer of half-a-century earlier) [: ] [: ] , Latkin and Sidorov. Latkin had explored this area in 1841 and 1843, while Kruzenshtern had been there in the latter year with Count Keizerling. This company undertook to ship timber both abroad and to Kronshtat, the Russian naval base off St. Petersburg, for the needs of the Admiralty. Therefore, in 1859 two foreign vessels appeared off the river mouth — perhaps the first in [: ] 230 years!— of which one suffered disaster, and the other took a cargo of lumber to France. During the next ten years, 38 [: ] German and English steam and sailing ships came to the Pechora for lumber. The company itself built three vessels on the Pechora, and also possessed an ocean-going steamer. The company failed after ten years, but a merchant named Ikonnikov thereafter organized the annual shipment of lumber to Kronshtat ^ in ^ [: ] chartered foreign bottoms [] until 1885. During the decade of existence of the Kruzenshtern-Latkin-Sidorov firm, navigation markers were maintained annually in the fairway and an several landmarks. In 1894 two naval vessels under the command of Lieut. Zhdanko conducted hydrographic surveys of the Gulf and bar of the Pechora. In the last decade of the 19th century annual service between the Pechora mouth and Arkhangelsk and St. Petersburg was maintained by A.M. Sibiriakov's vessel, Nordenskiold. This ship determined that, under the conditions of that day, the Pechora mouth was open to navigation ^ at least ^ between July 10 and September 15. In 1895 a government-subsidized scheduled shipping line was established, with four [: ] round-trip voyages each season between the Pechora mouth and Arkhangelsk, while a merchant named Neritsin put two freight-and-passenger vessels into service on the river itself, providing 10 trips per summer between the mouth and Ust-Kozhva, at 65° N., a distance of several hundred miles. The ^ down-river ^ river trade then came to about $250,000 per year, including grain, clothing and footwear, salt, exotics (tea, etc.) and ironware, some of which was sold en route, and some brought to the river-mouth settlements. The up-river trade con– sisted of the familiar fish, furs, hides, feather ^ s ^ and down, sea-mammal oils, and reindeer products. ^ This was carried in barges. Four tugs were in service. ^
In the 1890s only 20 small entrepreneurs, employing a total of 55 paid employees, were engaged in sealing along the coast and its island. The total value of the catch, in prices of that day, was $3,150, which makes clear the need for fishing, cattle-raising and

Nenets National Orkug

reindeer-breeding to eke out a livelihood.
In 1897 there were 5,080 Nentsy in the District of the Pechora, which includes much of the present-day Komi A.S.S.R. However, the majority of the Nentsy, being tundra– dwellers, were undoubtedly to be found ^ within the borders ^ in the confines of the present Nenets National Okrug. Their head-man - a Russian innovation - resided at Pustozersk, which had then vir– tually disappeared - and he had an assistant ^ in ^ each ^ of ^ [: ] two towns of the Komi area. In 1896 there were 276,315 reindeer in the Pechora District, ^ a much larger area than the present Nenets N.O., ^ of which Nentsy, who tended them all, owned but 46,950, and Russians, for whom this was of limited importance, even less. The impoverishment of the Nentsy [: ] is indicated by the then Governor of the Province of Arkhangelsk, Alexander Engelhardt, who describes them as having but 40 to 50 head, while those possessing half-a-dozen or less had to resort to employment by Komi. The poverty of the bulk of the Nentsy, and the class stratification among them, is indicated ^ by the fact ^ that a single individual owned 6,000 head, or one-eighth of the entire Nenets-owned number. Put differently, he owned as many as forty average Nentsy. The decline in reindeer-ownership by the Nentsy is indicated statistically as follows: 95,000 in 1847 (after the vast bulk had been taken from them, according to the observations of Schrenk, Islavin and others), 79,677 in 1892, and 46,950 in 1897. [: ] [: ] By contrast, Komi owned 120,470 head in 1842, and 207, 115 head in 1892. [: ]
Among the Nentsy, in 1892, of 1,750 families, more than [: ] a thousand possessed no reindeer at all, and, for the most part, served the 739 Komi owners as [: ] herdsmen. Of the 686 Nenets families which did own reindeer, a majority, or 439, owned less than 50 head each, averaging 25 head, which is [: ] half the minimum subsistence level. Only nine families owned more than 1,000 head each, thus constituting, economically at least, an aristocracy. Another ^[] 60 ^ 60 families owned over ^ 200 ^ 200 head each, and presumably engaged herdsmen to help care for them. Thus, ^ 28 ^ 70 families of 1,750 among the Nentsy constituted the kulak group , against whom the Soviets organized the poor forty years later. There were another 119 Komi families owning more than 5[: 0]0 head each, and employing Nenets herdsmen. Included among the Komi were 36 owning over 1,000 head each.
These data make it clear that the apparently humanitarian Regulations for the Admin– istration of the Samoyeds of Arkhangelsk Province, promulgated by the government in 1835

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as an aftermath of the Speransky Reforms of 1820 (qv Yakut A.S.S.R.), were never enforced. The regulations, and the failure to carry them into effect, are both well described by Gov. Engelhardt:
"Special regulations in favor of the Samoyeds were passed in 1835, probably owing to the growing opinion as to the necessity of protecting them against their empoyers. By these [: ] enactments the Samoyeds could conclude terms of employment for any period not exceeding one year. Verbal agreements, entered into merely on the good faith of the parties concerned, could not come within the cognizance of any court, whether Samoyed or Russian. Such cases could only be argued amicably before arbitrators, whose decision was to be considered final. If the conditions of service were in writing, ac– counts had to be rendered annually between master and man. (The Nentsy were, and remained until the 1920s, 99% illiterate. The handful of literate were among the wealthy. [: ] Therefore verbal agreements were the only agreements possible! The same government which passed this commendable regulation was responsible for not providing the minimum of educa– tion which would have given it validity. - W.M.) If it came out that the workman remained indebted to his employer for any sum exceeding five rubles, this debt was to be considered as having arisen "without the permission of the authorities", and was therefore, from a legal point of view, null and void.
"This ordinance endowed the Samoyeds with extensive rights in the direction of self– government. In their own internal affairs the Samoyeds are governed according to the customs of their tribe, by their own starshinas, i.e., mayors or elders, one of whom is annually elected for each tundra. (Again, the fly in the ointment was that none dared to oppose the election of starshinas from the nine families owning more than 1,000 reindeer each, although their interests were diametrically opposed to those of the 1,500 families which owned 50 or less, and most of them none at all. -W.M.) The starshinas are the only intermediaries between their own people and the local Russian administrations....In spite, however, of these privileges and immunities, the Samoyeds have not been able to consolidate either their powers of self-government or their economic position.... Any sort of supervision (by the government - W.M.) over the boundless expanse of the tundra would be out of the question, no^r^ could any arbitrary measures be taken to interfere with the immemorial rights of its inhabitants to communicate freely one with the other. "(My emphasis - W.M.)

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It is the last sentence, emphasized above, which contains the essence of the differ– ence between the present and pre-revolutionary Tsarist governments on the matter. "Free communication" one with the other is, clearly, from Engelhardt's context, which we have not the space to quote, a euphemism for relations between the Russians and Komi on the one hand, and the Nentsy on the other, resulting in an exploitation of the latter which he readily admits. Yet he denies the applicability to the mainland of the "the highly successful results of the Government's guardianship of the Samoyeds of Novaia Zemlia.... as the interference of the authorities in the economic life of the settlers there was called for by the absence of all private competition, and by the absolute necessity of providing the settlers with food, arms and tackle." Needless to say, the program of the present regime, which began to be enforced 30 years after those lines was written, was based precisely upon bringing about an "absence of all private competition".
With regard to the local Russians and Komi, superior as their position was to that of the Nentsy, Engelhardt wrote: "....from want of competition, the traders and fishermen have to get rid of their produce as best as they can to dealers, who pay them in kind on the credit system, the consequence being that the fishermen are completely in the hands of these men."
Little changed in the twenty years between the report of Engelhardt and the Revolution. This period was described in 1932 ^ by ^ a Nenets, O, Pyreko, one ^ a member ^ of the first generation to receive extended education ( grade school , high school. then Institute of the Peoples of the North) under the Soviets. He was himself old enough to have a clear and detailed memory of the pre-Revolutionary period, and there is no sharp difference between the picture as he described it and that as Schrenk pictured it 85 years earlier. On the eve of the Revolution, the rulers of the tundra were still the "lord provider" [: ] as he was called - merchant - and the Nenets and Komi kulaks. The chief pro– duct of the area for trade was fur. Each Nenets ^ was in^ ^debted to a particular merchant, ^ [] and was re– quired to turn all the furs he trapped over to him in exchange for the grain, tea, sugar, tobacco and manufacturers on which he lived. If a Nenets sought to sell as much as a single fur elsewhere to secure a better price, his creditor would cut off his provi– sions and demand the payment of the outstanding debt. This would compel the Nenets to

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slaughter some or all of his few reindeer to feed his family, thus leaving him without draft animals and therefore unable to earn a livelihood. He had, therefore, ^ little ^ no choice but to remain in subjection to his creditor. Whereas the [: ] Nentsy of middling prosperity, i.e., those [: ] owning from 50 to ^2^00 reindeer ( ^ 178 ^[: 219] families in 1892), were free to switch from one merchant to another, although at the cost of considerable loss to themselves, and the ^ 69 ^ [: 29] kulak families were entirely free of debt, the 1,500 poor families could, if they desired to break away from a merchant, only hire out as herdsmen to a [: ] rich Nenets. One form ^ of such labor ^ was a type of sharecropping, rooted in the clan system, but also having certain feudal characteristics. The impoverished Nenets teamed up with a more fortunate kinsman, whose reckoning - expressed in a stand– ard folk formula - was that the poorer relative would eat off the reindeer he saved. That is to say, the wealthier Nenets ^ otherwise ^ counted on losing a certain number of animals ^ suffering from ^ [: ] hoof-and-mouth disease , , heart disease, etc.^, to wolves. ^ The "beneficiary" of his kindness carried the full burden of maintaing his herd. The ^ laborer's ^ family ate rotten meat ^ and ^ wore out its foot– wear and tent in chasing after the herd of the kulak relative. The few reindeer remain– ing to the poorer Nenets usually succumbed rapidly to fistulas upon the first appear– ance of greenery in the spring, and to the other diseases which exhausted animals readily fell victim to. The survivors, accustomed to running in a small herd, usually kept to the outside of the patrons herd, and soon were pulled down by [: ] wolves.
When reduced to this state, the poor Nenets became a farm laborer pure and simple, receiving as annual payment three [: ] or four female reindeer, while the other members of his family worked for their board alone. It was only on rare occasions, in years free of epidemics of cattle disease, that such laborers accumulated herds sufficient to enable them again to become independent. [: ] The others remained laborers all their lives.
In addition to the burden of merchants and kulaks, the Nentsy suffered at the hands of the church. Although efforts to convert them dated from the end of the 18th century, Pyrerko reports that in 1912 whole stacks of wooden idols were still being carted out of the tundra by the [: ] Orthodox priests exactly as had been done in 1825-30 and earlier. Those who had been converted contributed part of their hard-won reindeer and furs as tithes, believing that these sacrifices were necessary to propitiate the new gods.

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These contributions had been sufficient to build two churches at Telvisochnoe, one at Koseva and a bell-tower at Yugorskii Shar. These structures represented splendor and riches [: ] immeasurable in the eyes of the Nenets. "Needless to say", Pyrerko adds, "no little passed into the hands of the [: ] earthly representative of the heavenly God."
Revolution, Civil War, First Reforms
Although, as we have seen from Schrenk, the desire for redivision of reindeer– herds on some basis of equality was nearly 100 years old at the time of the Revolution, the backwardness of ^ the ^ [: ] [: ] Nentsy, Komi and Russians in the Arctic was such that the great up– heaval of 1917 was something which reached them only three years later, as a backwash of a movement originating elsewhere. The Allied intervention in Arkhangelsk , [: ] had not ^ affected this hinterland, ^ [: ] but it had prevented the Soviets from reaching it. Finally, when the [: ] representatives of the new government did come to this area, inci– dents such as the following occurred. In August or September of 1920 a motorboat full of Red soldiers and organizers reached Logorskii Shar. They convened a gathering of the Nentsy, and questioned them with regard to the merchants. They inquired about ^ the traders' ^ their names, their arms, and whether or not they had fought with the anti-Soviet armies on the fronts of the Civil War, now just ended. But the Nentsy, fearful of all Russians from the outside, and, in the case of some of the poorest, having been promised much by the kulaks, answered as follows, according to Pyrerko:
"These are our neighbors, good Russians. They have come here from the Pechora to fish, and not to trade."
The kulaks, for their part, knowing of the Revolution and the policies of the Bolsheviks, had concealed the furs they had received, fearing a search. Questioning of the Russian traders was put off for the morrow, after the meeting, and the Communists spent the night in their boat offshore, in view of their small numbers. The traders used the night's grace therefore to prepare their boats and sail, put the hidden furs aboard and quietly push out from shore. To their good fortune, they had a favorable wind. Before departing, one of them delivered a sentimental little speech to the Nentsy along the following lines, as Pyrerko reports it:
"Farewell, brothers and sisters. Bear us no grudge. Don't surrender us to the Reds.

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We too want to live, and look upon God's heaven with these eyes."
Then they and their wives embraced their Nenets reindeer herders. ^ as equals. ^ Apparently ^ this ^ the device, and pledges of faithfulness taken before ^ holy ^ ikons, ^ was effective, ^ worked, for the traders slipped away unhindered. Thereafter, the Komi and Russian kulaks went "underground", becoming pure and simple reindeer-keepers to all appearances, and concealing the true extent and nature of their possessions. They pictured themselves as being of assistance to the new regime in that they provided a marketable surplus from their reindeer-keeping, which the poor, of course, could not. However, in order to be sure that the Soviet regime would not classify them as "exploiters", they did reduce their herds to some extent by slaughter and sale. Further, they organized cooperatives which actually consisted of the old merchant-usurers operating in the old manner under a new name. The priest also sought protection from prosecution as a non-producer by joining a newly-organized cooperative of Nentsy, becoming its bookkeeper and, in actuality, guiding spirit.
When the New Economic Policy was introduced in 1922, for the purpose of [: ] reopening channels of trade through private initiative until the government and national consumers' cooperatives gained sufficient experience to take over this field, the kulaks emerged in their old role and re-appeared in the tundra, offering for sale the stocks of manufactures, tobacco and vodka they had secreted during the previous two years. Some were engaged as salaried experts by the government and cooperative purchasing and distribution agencies. By 1925, however, the national economy was well on the road to recovery from the effects of six years of World War I and Civil War, and the government had again turned to a policy of squeezing out the private merchant. The bulk of the traders in the Nenets tundra had been ^ smoked out, ^ [: ] but the kulak reindeer-owners sought a new means of living off profit, rather than their own la bor, as Soviet principles demanded. This was not difficult, as the government's organizers in this area had little knowledge of its problems and were assigned to it for terms of only a single year's duration, while the new native Soviets did not as yet have the experience or enjoy the prestige necessary to deal with the situation on their own. The ^ native ^ kulaks took advantage of the government's policy

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of encouraging minor peoples^,^ to appear offer themselves as examples of initiative and articulateness among them. The only literate people being kulaks, it was they who provided local newspaper editors with the articles so avidly sought from the pens of these forgotten peoples themselves. Again, as in the first two years before the New Economic Policy, they described themselves as ordinary reindeer-raisers, successful in providing a marketable surplus. Their influence, and the ignorance and backwardness of the rank-and-file, was such, that as late as 1928, the Chairman of the County Executive Committee in the Bolshezemelskaia Tundra was one of the wealthiest men in the area, Peitama Pashko. and Moreover, he was sent to the All-Union Congress of Soviets in Moscow [: ] as a Representative from that area. He was, ^ in addition ^moreover , a member of the Executive Committee of the Komi Region. Thus, he headed the government of an area with more than 5,000 people, and was a standing member of that of an area with amost 300,000 a quarter of a million.
However, in 1925 the foundation had been laid for the education of the northern peoples en masse, and their involvement in the course of Soviet affairs. This found– ation was the organization of the Committee of the North for Assistance to the Small Nationalities of the North[: ,] under the All-Union Central Executive Committee (Congress of the U.S.S.R.). It opened ^ the first ^ schools and hospitals, and in 1929 organized and 1930 established the present National Okrugs (Areas), of which the one under our considera– tion was the first. [: ] The attitude toward these nationalities taken by Soviet representatives - teachers, medical personnel, journalists, political figures - and the impression the Nentsy made upon them is given very well by Viktorin Popov, a Russian, describing [: ] his [: ] experiences in 1926^.^ [: ] Stating that at that time the youth was [: ] pro-Soviet and supported the efforts of the new regime to transform the life of the tundra, he points out, however:
"But their fathers, and particularly their grandfathers, were confused at first. in t^T^heir minds, embittered by years of humilitation and exploitation, struggled over the problem of how to believe in the new, since all their lives it had turned out that

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everything new [: ] had ^ proven ^ turned out to be a new deceit, a new bondage? Listening to the enthused speeches of their sons and grandsons, the elders comprehended them but poorly....An unfortunate event in the nomads' camp was utilized by the shamans to agitate against medicine. [: ] [: ] [: ] The parents of a ten-year-old boy suffering, as it turned out, from a burst appendix, had turned to the doctor for aid too late. The boy died a day after having been placed under medical care. After the funeral, the Secretary of the Tundra Soviet (i.e., "mayor") addressed himself to the inhabitants of the camp with a talk on the necessity of applying for medical care in proper time. But the grandfather of the dead boy [: ] retorted: 'I called upon heaven – Mother Sun, Grandfather Moon, Brother Stars, have pity on his ailment! - but the boy has gone from us.'....The elders cried out: 'We don't need doctors!'. 'People died without doctors and [: ] ^ they ^ will die with them:', said Mikhail Ledkov. But at this point young Efim (his 17-year-old son) stepped forth. It may be that this was his first speech to the people. (N.B. - 22 years later this same Efim Ledkov, now an M.A. and acknowledged authority on reindeer, was delivering public lec– tures before learned audiences in Moscow. - W.M.). With eyes cast down, he said in a low voice, but firmly: 'You must always call the doctor as soon as you fall ill. When the nurse made the rounds of the [: ] wigwams, she was told that no one was sick, and then suddenly..the boy was at the point of death! The doctor - that is good, let him do his healing...' Efim wanted to say much more, but only smiled and fell silent. The shaman was glowering at him from beneath frowning brows. But behind these few words, pronounced with the stubbornness of conviction, one felt the appearance of a new type of youth in the tundra."
[: ] With the doctor, the journalist and the official, a philogist had been sent in, as part of this first team in 1926, so as to begin the process of setting the Nenets tongue down on paper, and thereby paving the way for education founded on the sound basis of the language of the people themselves. He was confronted with

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difficulties equal , if different to those met by the doctor. [: ] Popov, describ– ing an interview between the linguist, Asafev, and the same elderly Mikhail Ledkov, reports it as follows:
"Investigating the morphology of the language for the compilation of the first Nenets disctionary, the linguist was confronted with [: ] great obstacles. The Nenets was on his guard. What would come of this? 'I want,' said Asafev, 'your people to have its own written language, ^ said Asafev, ^ and that is why I am interested in your words.' 'But what for is that needed ^for^? What for do you need our words ^for^?' 'The Russian can write,' replied Asafev, 'he can read books, but when you go to the Government store and turn in skins, and they write it down, you don't even know how many are written down....Well, tell me, how would this sentence go in your language - Paul and Peter went to hunt polar fox.' 'Which Paul?', the ^ Ledkov ^ [: Nenete] asked incredulously. [: ] An abstract Paul was incomprehensible to him. The philologist replied: 'Paul - Novozemelov's son.' 'And which Peter?' 'Well, Kirill's son.' Silence followed. 'Say in Nenets: Paul and Peter went to hunt polar fox.' 'When was it?' Again a concrete explanation was necessary. 'It happened last winter.' The Nenets^ Ledkov ^ sat in thought for a long time, and then sud– denly, as though remembering, jumped up, saying: 'Last winter Paul was at Varandeia, and Peter followed the edge of the forst. How could they have been hunting polar fox together?' Efim, the son, sat in the corner with an ironic smile on his face. 'Well, all right,' ^ the exhausted Asafev ^ Asafev, by now exhausted, conceded, 'it wasn't last winter, but some other time.' Ledkov finally translated the sent– ence into his dialect, but out of caution, not trusting his memory - after all, who knows what actually happened that 'other time' - substituted the name of one Ivan for Peter."
The training of educated and competent native leaders is [: ] typified by the story of young Efim [: ] Ledkov. (The [: ] clan name, Ledko, had long since been Russified by the addition of the final consonant.) In the Fall of 1926 the local League of Communist Youth sent him to study at the [: ] Institute of the Peoples of the North, founded the previous year at Leningrad. The diffi–

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culties of the trip itself, of which he had been warned by the rare Nentsy who had been to the "mainland", as it was called, reflect his determination to break with tradition. Five days of seasickness on a small vessel on route to Arkhangelsk, followed by the sight of a frightening multitude of masts taller than anything in the tundra, and sawmills ^ illuminated ^brightened at night by electric light, were as nothing compared to the bright-eyed, honking little houses that ran around the streets like maddened reindeer and bore straight down upon the passer by. Sleeping in the close , fly confines of the Peasants' Hotel was beyond his will-power, and he sat on the steps all the first night. Arrived in Lenin– grad, he refused ^ for months ^ to sleep in a bed, between sheets, and in underclothing, nor could he become accustomed to the fact that it made a difference where one did or did not expec– torate. The food was not to his taste. Study ing did not come ^ easily ^ easy to this youth in his late teens sitting before a desk for the first time in his life, and his eyes, far-sighted as with all Nentsy, soon tired from the printed page. He literally beat his head against the wall for refusing to understand what it should! On occasion, the hectic urban life so unnerved him that, without telling anyone, he fle^d^ to the woods outside the city and camped beneath a fir tree for days on end.
In 1929, Popov again encountered young Ledkov in the tundra, returned after three years of schooling. This was a new man, self-confident and business-like. He ^ now ^ wandered the broad tundra with his nomadic fellow tribesmen arguing the merits of collective enterprise. [: ] Popov heard him address a sess^i^on of the tundra Soviet on one occasion. The members had feasted on fish and onions, [: ] crackers and huge quantities of tea. They now loosened their belts, stretched their fur outer garments beneath them and, with their clothes open, reclined on the benches and the floor as they were accustomed to rest on reindeer skins in their wigwams. Efim [: ] listed the merits of cooperative labor. It would result in bringing large numbers of Nentsy into a single place, provide a con– siderable working force, and then they could group themselves accordingly, some fishing the lakes, others hunting [: ] sea mammals, still others pasturing reindeer. That would make it possible to have veterinaries to serve the herds and save them from illness. Living in a single place, a school, a hospital and a clubhouse could be built. [: ] Efim told of carrying his message all the way from Telvisochania to Yugorskii Shar, a distance of 500 miles. but which had

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been much longer for him, ^ Actually, he had travelled much farther than that, ^ as he had visited every wigwam en route, and had walked almost the entire distance.
"But the kulaks and shamans weave all kinds of fairy tales, and the Nentsy fear the collective farm idea," he declared with heat. "There is yet much explanation to be done....In other places machines are coming into use. You can't tie a machine to a reindeer's tail, but we do need [: ] nets, motor boats, traps and guns....Through the collective farms, our land will find a brighter life."
His father interrupted, shouting: "He wants to make a new tundra. That can't be. One reindeer is different from the next. Each has its own nature. How then can all the Nentsy be grouped together, when we are all different. I want to trap furs, when some one else chooses to sleep....There is a collective on Vaigach Island, and there has already been a [: ] fight."
"Drunkards always [: ] brawl," Efim replied. "There have been few fights in the collectives."
An old man rose and [: ] said, referring to the argument between the Ledkovs: "If father and son can't get along, then how can we all work together? I have to go to Novaia Zemlia, a second to Varandeia, a third beyond the Urals. How can we go to– gether? And who shall say where the owl will fly, where the polar fox will go?"
Efim argued [: ] tirelessly against all objections. He proposed to set up, by way of a start, [: ] cooperative ^ sealing ^ hunting after the mammals of the sea, They would rid themselves of the ^ ir ^ dangerous [: ] ^ rowboats, ^ sailing craft and jointly operate from a motor boat, and then, when this proved itself, cautiously move on to collective reindeer breeding.
Despite Mikhail Ledkov's opposition to the collective farm idea, he had been af– fected by the new way of life himself, as far back as 1929. There was a sewing machine and a radio in his wigwam.
^ 1930: Beginning of Major Change in Nenets Way of Life ^
Beginning with 1930, we have a mass of published material from the pens of Nentsy themselves, appearing first in the occasional periodical, Taiga i Tundra , issued by the Regional Study Group of the Institute of the Peoples of the North. These articles are brief and business-like. They inform us of the organization of the first collective [: ] farm as a result of the efforts of Ledkov and others^.^ one so small that only

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At first only six families joined it. But, having acquainted ^ ourselves ^ [: ] with the state of mind of the Nentsy at that time, let us examine the changes in their economic posi– tion from the time of Engelhardt's study in the late '90s. [: ] [: ] [: ] ^ Taleeva, a Nenets ^ woman student at the Institute of the Peoples of the North ^ [: ]^, presents a picture of standards of property in 1930 [: ] [: ] [: ] [: ] [: ] different from that of Engelhardt in 1898. According to her, [: ] owners of more than 100 reindeer tended to employ a herder, and therefore should be classed as kulaks. The "middle", i.e., merely self-sufficient, owner, had 80 to 100 head, and the poor Nenets usually had 30 to 40 head. It was, however, only those with less than this number, usually with 10 or less, who found wage labor better than the [: ] starvation their negligible herds condemned them to. The wealthies ^ t ^ , according to her, had only 300 to 400 head. As that is a far smaller [: ] maximum than recorded by Engelhardt, one may ascribe this to the following changes, aside from the possibility of error in either case. (As to that possibility, it would seem more logical to accept the word of a Nenets that owners of more than 100 tended to employ herders than that of a Germen-Russian governor writing on the basis of a single visit of his own and the data compiled by previous Russian investigators that it was only the owners of 500 or more who engaged herdsmen.) In the first place, it is certain that the herd of 6,000 owned by the wealthiest single Nenets, if it still existed at the time of the Revolution, was confiscated and made the basis of ^ a ^ an exemplary state ^ -owned ^ farm. So, probably, were those of the owners of 1,000 or more, and, less surely, those of 500 or more. ^ In all, this would have affected 28 families. ^ That would account for the origin of state-owned herds numbering 28,000 in 1932. Secondly, we have already seen reference to efforts of well-to-do families to conceal their status by reducing their herds to norms accept– able under the Soviets, by slaughter or sale.
It is also evident that the status of the herder had improved markedly in Soviet times. Whereas his annual wage had been three or four reindeer per year before the Revolution, it was now ten for an adult, and one to five for a child. Taleeva's shaman,

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however, evidently enjoying greater prestige than an ordinary kulak due to his spiritual power ' s, apparently felt free to pay an adult herdsman only five reindeer per year if he deemed the man's work to be unsatisfactory. Despite the regulations, dating from 1835, [: ] prohibiting labor contracts of more than a single year's duration, it was still customary in 1930 ^ that ^ for arrangements for two and three years to be made, and five-year contract agreements were not out of the ordinary. The husband, in a family reduced to laboring for others, would not only herd the deer, but hunt for his employer in the winter, while the wife would perform various household duties. Children were usually hired for the summer only fishing season only.
Wage laborers were usually made fine promises before being hired, and treated well at first, but more and more poorly as time went on. Written agreements under Soviet law were entered into only in the villages, and then not registered with the authorities. Among the nomads there were no written agreements. It happened upon oc– casion, as late as 1930, than an employer did not pay wages at all. One such instance was known to Taleeva, but when the worker took it to court, he got more than the or– iginal agreement called for. The only difference between the situation at that date and in pre-Soviet times, except for the more than doubled annual wage in reindeer, was that employers of labor were subject to disfranchisement by vote of a "town meeting"^,^ and [: ] usually were ^ deprived of the vote. ^ However, economic change had advanced beyond that stage at least [: ] insofar as fishing was concerned, for the existing fishermen's cooperative would provide tackle to the Nenets who had none of his own, and he was therefore no longer obliged to hire himself out to a richer man who would take the lion's share of the catch. But drunkenness was still a plague. It still occurred that a Nenets would exchange a pelt worth 80 rubles for a bottle of vodka worth one-and-a-half.
In the field of education, more impressive beginnings had been made by 1930, but the difficulties were great. The absence of lumber for permanent buildings in the tundra , ^ and ^ the need to haul it upstream through shallow rivulets dictated a tremendous expenditure of time and means for the construction of each school. There were, at that time, four schools. Two were, respectively, at Kolva and Khoseda-Khard, and were located in buildings specially erected for the purpose, and therefore satisfac– tory for the time being. The others, at Siavta and Madora, were in private homes, not

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really suitable for use as schools. The same room had to serve as school, dormitory for the students (children of nomads who were themselves on the move) and residence for the teacher. Despite that, the owners [: ] charged high prices for the rental of these rooms. Moreover, the landlords conducted a business in bootleg liquor on the side. Despite this environment, hardly ideal for education, it was claimed that the schools had succeeded in winning the sympathy of the adult population. The students at Kolva numbered 40, and were all children of non-nomadic Nentsy. The Khoseda-Khard school had 45 pupils, all children of nomads, with the exception of a very few whose parents were only semi-nomadic. The other two fell into the latter category: nomads and semi-nomads. The total attendance of 165 was deemed quite a triumph, in view of the nomads fear that something might happen to their children, their difficulty in understanding the usefulness of education, and the fundamental fact that the children were needed as shepherds, trappers, and the like. The arguments against the schools were familiar: "Our [: ] forefathers got along without education, so we and they (the children) will live our time without it." "The fur animals in the tundra shan't dis– appear, and the Russian muzhik won't stop sowing grain, so we won't die from hunger, and there's no purpose to learning."
The chief A considerable problem was presented at that time by the great dis– tance which had to be travelled by anyone desiring to go beyond the elementary school of four years. It was proposed that such children be provided with ^ a ^ per diem ^ allowance ^ and [: ] expenses en route. Another problem arose from the fact that the success of education depended, in the last analysis, upon the teacher's knowledge of the language of the Nentsy , ^ and of ^ their conditions of life, and also upon the teacher's [: ] persever– ance. It was therefore deemed essential that teachers be trained from among the Nentsy themselves, for which the first step was to make it materially possible for them to go beyond four years of schooling.^, through the foregoing proposal. ^
In 1930 there was one "Cultural Base". It had been erected at Khoseda-Khard, in the heart of the tundra, on the route of the annual nomadic migration, and therefore at a most appropriate spot. It enjoyed exceptionally good response on the part of the Nentsy, because it represented to them the most tangible evidence that the new govern– ment was spending large sums for their betterment. The center had a doctor, a teacher,

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a radio which received Moscow, and a portable movie projector which was out of order. The radio won credence only when the Nentsy recognized the voices of their own child– ren broadcasting in their own tongue, from Moscow. At that time there were, as yet, no libraries, or "Red wigwams", i.e., traveling education and recreation centers. Two of them were scheduled to be established shortly . thereafter.
- [: ] [: ]
It was at about this time, i.e., 1929-30, that the provisions for self-government began to win the confidence of, and sink roots, among the rank-and-file Nentsy. We [: ] ^ have ^ already pointed out that, as late as 1928, wealthy elements played a prominent and even dominant role in the native Soviets, [: ] "if only because no others were available", according to a Nenets named Khata, writing in 1930. How– ever, with five years of experience in the election of local nomad Soviets (there were half-a-dozen by that date, apparently governing roughly a thousand Nentsy each), and of [: ] "county" Soviets at fixed locations for each of the three, these bodies began to acquire authority. A clear measure of that [: ] was the increased attend– ance ^ of the "active" ^ at meetings of the Soviets, and consultation with ^ them. ^ the "active". ^ This is ^ a body of civic– minded individuals, usually persons with prestige in the community, which it is regular [: ] practice, in the USSR, to establish at each level of government.
It is of interest to note that, at that time, the Nentsy considered [: ] ^ service ^ as a member of the Soviet to be a duty incumbent upon all, so that if one men serve ^ d ^ for one year, another would be chosen the next. One weakness ^ during those years ^ at that time was that due to inexperience, the Chairman of the Soviet, i.e., the Mayor, was not actually the leader in public affairs, but an advisor to the Secretary, or Executive, who was ap– parently named, or at least nominated, from above. Another difficulty at that time was that the local Soviets ^ then ^ had no [: ] income of their own, but depended entirely upon funds from higher levels. Apparently there was no direct taxation whatever, , and it was being suggested that a direct tax be levied upon the more prosperous so as to give local government some financial independence.
Another interesting phenomenon is the fact that the courts were entirely native, ^ included ^ involved elected jurors (two jurors sitting with each judge, and having equal rights

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with him) and based themselves on local customary law where it did not contradict Soviet law. Many ^ civil ^ cases at that time dealt with complaints as much as 15 years old, [: ] (apparently there was no [: ] statute of limitations), for it was only then that, for the first time, courts were available which would hear with sympathy the grievances of the poor against the rich. Divorce, theft and alimony [: ] cases were being brought to the courts, indicating that they had gained acceptance among the people. [: ] One case, of a criminal nature, is of particu– lar importance because it marked the reversal of a century-old trend leading to the exhaustion of the reindeer moss. To preserve the moss , particularly near ^ a ^ localit ^ y[: ,] ^ subject to glare ice conditions under which reindeer would starve, the native Soviet had marked off ^ a ^ reserved areas where the grazing of reindeer was prohibited. When one Nenets trespassed, with his herd, upon the reservation, he was fined fifty rubles by the [: ] nomad Soviet. He not only paid but expressed agreement with the sentence, indicating the beginning of a new attitude social attitude toward the most important source of wealth in that area.
The chief police function of the Soviet at that time was directed against bootlegging. A legal [: ] liquor store at Ust-Tsylma in the Komi territory - the traditional source of goods of commodities of all kinds for the Nenets tundra - provided a ready source of supply for the ^ black-market ^ bettlegging dealers. The taste for liquor was still so strong that the Nentsy paid them three [] times the store price. Moreover, far from denouncing them ^ the bootleggers ^ to the authorities, the Nentsy sometimes helped to conceal them. ^ But there were also ^ However, their ^ signs of a changing attitude, ^ attitude began to change, particularly among those more publicly-minded. On once occa– ion, when a meeting of the nomad Soviets was called near Yugorskii Shar, and many households assembled from dozens of miles around, a bootlegger set up his tent [: ] at the edge of the group, and began to distill homebrew in addition to selling purchased stock. To his great surprise, he was reported and arrested.
^ The road to ^ I^i^mprovement in the work of the Soviets was seen, at that time, to consist of greater attention to [: ] securing election of members from among the poorer elements, and effort to bring about the location of the Soviet at a fixed point, so that its work could take on more regular and organized character.
As in all portions of the Soviet Union, the effort to change the way of life toward

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socialism as understood by Stalin and his associates, was centered on the recruitment of membership for the Communist Party, the Communist League of Youth, and the Young Pioneers' (children's) organization. These individuals and the local clubs into which they were organized, were deemed to be the channels through which the population could be taught the new ideology and moved in the desired direction. At first the Communist Party attracted very few members, because, as we have seen above, the adults were slow to move toward a new ^ w ^ ay of life. The Youth League was, therefore, the center of effort. The first branch of this organization was set up among the Nentsy in 1925, eight years after the Revolution. Two years later, the organization of a school at the Nenets Cultural Base resulted in attracting some more young people, and a second branch was organized. A third came into being at [: ] another location in the same year. In 1929 there were three members of the Communist Party among the Nentsy, 35 members of the Youth League, and 56 of the children's organization. Of this total number of 91, 22 came from the poorest element: reindeer-less wage laborers, while the rest came from the lower and middle groups of reindeer-owners. The most active of the three organizations was the Youth League: the Party was too small, and the children's organi– zation could, obviously, not be influential to any great degree. The members of the Youth League took the lead in advancing new ideas before the Soviets (as in the case of Ledkov's plea for the use of doctors, [: ] cited above), and in organizing and maintaining cooperative stores, collective enterprise and reading– tents (libraries). But the organization complained that it suffered from absence of leadership on the part of experienced adult Communists, and also that it was not given [: ] educational guidance in the execution of certain of its projects. Specifically, one of its avowed functions was the struggle against religious belief, which was equated with superstition and unwillingness to adopt new ways of life in medicine, education, economic matters and government. But the shamans could not be exposed unless a compre– hensible, scientific explanation of the mysteries in which they dealt could be ^ were ^ offered in their stead.
The ^ beginning of ^ improvement of the status of women in the among the Nentsy also dates from the early '30s. Writing in 1930, the same Taleeva whom we quoted earlier in another con– nection states;

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"Hard is the life of the Nenets woman. She is still under the domination of her husband, and prior to marriage, under the unlimited power of her father. While dwell– ing under her father's roof a girl does not at all prepare herself for the idea of marriage, for she considers herself young, while her father already thinks of how to dispose of his daughter and receive a large marriage payment for her. [: ] At times it happens that she will be given away without payment (N.B. - The inference is, to get rid of the need of maintaining her. - W.M.) Thus, [: ] my aunt's little girl was given in marriage when she was only twelve years old, and [: ] the [: ] groom was twenty. That happened this year. (My emphasis - W.M.)....It is chiefly the rich whose daughters are bought and sold for payment. It happens, too, among the poor, but less often. The payment may be between 40 and 100 head of reindeer, or it may be in polar foxes. A typical example is one in which the husband paid 40 reindeer, while the wife brought as dowry six reindeer and all her own requirements in clothing.
"When a girl is married off, her father clothes her for three years. After three years, if she has a good mother-in-law, the latter will clothe her. If not, her father has to, during the fourth year and even longer. Upon marriage, the bride has a rest from work for a day or two, but then she is compelled to work, and is forever being reminded: 'You work! A large purchase price was paid for you.' And the poor girl begins to carry a burden of labor beyond her [: ] strength. ...
"Our Nenets woman plays a big role in the economy. She does all the housework, goes out to pasture the reindeer and even, upon occasion, participates in the hunt. Work is all she knows. Without her husband's permission She may go nowhere without her husband's permission. More than that, she may not even converse with another man, unless ^ her husband ^ he approves. While that custom has begun to disappear in certain places, it remains in force in the tundra where there are as yet few good (government) workers."
The writer goes on to point out that the woman gives birth out of doors, or in the wigwam if no one is home. She may give birth unassisted, or with the assistance of an old woman. Afterwards she carries the child herself, although yet hardly able to stand on her feet. There was, by that date, as yet virtually no education in hygiene. If there were at least a "Red wigwam", Taleeva urged, it would be possible to orga– nize education in hygiene. The settled Nentsy were better off, as a hospital was already available for them. It was difficult to draw women into educat. ^ convince women to learn to read and write. ^

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educat ional activities. If one said to a women: "Attend the school for adults", she would reply, reply not without truth, that she was already aged and her eyes were bad, although she might not yet be 25 years old. One got this sort of reply in the villages. As for getting tundra women to attend school, that was even harder.
Things were still bad as far as drawing women into public life was concerned.^, Taleeva complained. ^ Men formed the majority of [: ] those attending the annual general meeting of the population called by the Soviet. Nevertheless, the Chairman of one of the six native Soviets was a women, and several were members of the governing board of the consumers' cooperative. For the future, ^ However, young ^ girls were attending the schools that had been opened, and that would change things ^ in the Future. ^ Taleevax proposed that [: ] competent women be sent to the tundra to draw the native women into public affairs. Some, including herself, were being trained at the Institute of the Peoples of the North and at the Arkhangelsk [: ] Normal School.
A year later, ^ in 1931 ^ another writer Nenets writer, while still describing the position of the Nenets woman in the darkest terms for the most part, points to beginnings of a new way of life:
"Now the woman is beginning to raise her voice against her oppression from [: ] time im– memorial. She is beginning to understand her rights and participate in public affairs. It is [: ] ^ now ^ no longer rare (My emphasis -W.M.) for marriage to occur by mutual agreement of a man and a woman. And the purchase and sale of wives is beginning to recede into the background, despite all the tirades to the contrary on the part of those of the older generation who are attempting to maintain the old customs. And the relations between husband and wife are improving, i.e., the husband resorts to force less frequently. The chief obstacle to the elimination of all the old customs is the ignorance of the Nenets woman. She has grown ac– customed to her regarding her downtrodden position as normal and this interferes with efforts to induce her to end her illiteracy.
"In this connection the question arises as to how that eternal ignorance and illiteracy is to be eliminated under cirumstances wherein the Nentsy wander from three to six months in the year and there is an absence of civic personnel from among the women themselves. It is necessary, in the areas of nomadic life, to establish schools of literacy during the summer time, when the Nentsy camp near the lakes and engage in fishing. Schools can be maintained for three to four months during this period.....Women have begun to visit the hospital in con– nection with childbirth, but they do not remain the full period, le

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leave for home and turn to the shaman for help....
"Despite this situation, women are beginning to participate in the government of their country, [: ] in the Soviets, the cooperatives and the government stores. For example, recently, while engaging in my practice field work, I often [: ] [: ] witnessed the participation of women in the [: ] discussions at meet– ings I conducted....Suggestions: It is essential to undertake political education work among women, with women in charge. Medical personnel must be trained from among the native population. Day nurseries should be organized at the government and collective reindeer farms."
1932: Results Become Evident .
The suggestions made in the numerous articles cited above, dating from 1930 and, in the last case, from 1931, and constituting the first published writings by Nentsy in their entire history, were evidently put into effect with considerable rapidity, as was the government's program, now that it had a group of trained graduates of the Insti– tute of the Peoples of the North through whom to work. There were now ten Nentsy in attend– ance at the Institute, excluding the graduates of previous years. ^ The following year there were forty. ^ Far more important – revolutionary, in fact - was the extension of schooling to 60% of the children in the tundra, and all those living in the settlements. Additional vessels had been added to the Pechora River and coastal lines, enabling more effective supply to the area and quicker marketing. The building of port facilities at the mouth of the Pechora, and of the new town of Narian-Mar, had begun. 60% of the Nenets families engaged in fishing and sealing had formed collectives for that portion of their economy, as Efim Ledkov had [: ] urged them to, three years earlier. Moreover, there were now seven collectives of reindeer-owners, with a total common herd of 20,000 head. The average collective herd, therefore, numbering almost 3,000, was seven times as large as that of the first tiny experimental collective in 1930, wherein six families, totalling 24 persons, had pooled a total wealth consisting of 396 reindeer, 62 freight sledges, 18 passenger sleds, four rifles and shotguns, 12 traps, some nets and the like. Modest as this beginning had been, other Nentsy were attracted to the collective idea because of the generous credits given it by the government, which was convinced that such enter– prises would be solvent. In the first year, it had bought 200 reindeer with four years to

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pay. It had also been able to obtain 20 lbs. of heavy fishing line, 10 traps, four un– tanned hides, 65 lbs. of rope, lassoes, etc. The quantities are negligible, but the fact that this assistance was [: ] available to collectives, and that they were able to become successful through such assistance, was an argument which outweighted the kulaks' blunt threat to hang those who joined up. Kulaks who had found there their way into posts of responsibility in government, and the government trading posts were ousted, and there had begun the process of actually depriving them of their wealth, on the grounds that it represented the fruits of years of exploitation of the people, and should be returned to them. On this basis, houses, fur clothing and boots beyond the minimum needed to cover themselves, and similar inventory had been taken away, but they had been permitted to maintain - up to this point, at least - ownership of the large herds of reindeer that enabled them to employ others and derive profit thereform. The problems now deemed to be most pressing were of a constructive nature: the modernization of the fishing, trapping and and hunting, and the improvement of means of communications and transport. A radio station at Narian-Mar now reduced the time for receipt and transmission of information from weeks to seconds.
The time was now at hand to safeguard and improve the resources of reindeer moss [: ] upon which the livelihood of the Nentsy depended, and through which increasing prosperity could be assured. The chief danger was from glare-ice, which made large areas of moss in– accessible. In 1929, for example, it had cost the loss of five per cent of the adult herd in the Timan tundra and 50% of the calves ^ fawns ^ had been lost by miscarriage, due to the weaken– ing of the cow ^ doe ^ reindeer through hunger. [: ] Glare ice caused further suffering in that [: ] those Nentsy who were poor in reindeer, and there– fore were desperately in need of additional sources of food and income through sealing along the coast, were compelled to leave that area to save their reindeer from death by starvation. Even though the wealthy also had to do this, their herds ^ alone ^ were of sufficient size to provide them with a livelihood even when they were forced away from the coast. Or, in the opposite case, their sealing operations were large enough to let them regard the maintenance of reindeer as secondary.
The poor ^ er ^ Nenets native to the coastal area who took her his herd inland to save it from starvation was then faced with a new problem: to pasture his herds independently in

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unfamiliar territory already cropped and trodden by the thousand-strong herds of the kulaks, or to join the kulak and seek pasture jointly, at the price of [: ] [: ] working for him. (In fact, both worked equally, but since the kulak's herd was the larger, usually by far, the effect was to make the visitor from the coast in part an unpaid herdsman.)
The solution offered in 1932, and put into effect in the following years, was [: ] framed in the following terms. The Timan tundra had had 20,000 reindeer in 1930. Their daily requirement of 2.2 lbs. of reindeer moss per head totalled forty tons. It was im– possible to pick and preserve so large a quantity as fodder. Therefore, when, as often happened, the 18-inch snowfall of September and October was followed by a false spring with rains and warmth, bringing a thaw of the undersurface combined with solidification of the upper, and then was succeeded by a sudden frost going to −22°F., the reindeer began to starve. To feed themselves, they dashed wildly in all directions [: ] toward ^every^ browned-off hillock, despite the fact that every scrap of moss had long since been eaten off it, and the Nentsy were compelled to work round-the-clock, not sleeping for days on end, to prevent their herds from dispersing entirely.
To meet this situation it was proposed that a careful survey of the reindeer moss resources of the entire tundra be met, and that those areas not subject to the forma– tion of glare-ice for climatic reasons be set aside as a reserve where grazing be pro– hibited in years without ice. ^ Very small beginnings in this direction had been made previously, as indicated above. ^ Specifically, the valleys of the Sula, Pisha and Oma had been free of ice formation for a number of consecutive years. But up to 1932 it was pre– cisely in those areas that the Komi and Nenets kulaks regularly pastured their herds. Therefore the preservation ^ from starvation ^ of the herds of the poor from starvation and the struggle against the kulaks merged into a single problem. In answer to those officials who believed that Nenets nomadism was entirely [: ] ^ without pattern, ^ irregular , i.e., one day on the mainland, the next on an island, [: ] the Nenets writer, O. Evsiugin, who proposed the solution we have de– scribed, pointed out that this was not the case. On the other hand, each family followed a regular course 90 to 120 miles in radius, making [: ] camp at the same spots each spring, each summer, and so forth, where he ^ it ^ left caches of food, sledges, etc. ^ and the like. ^ During the summer, when mosquitoes appeared in force, the reindeer circled rapidly in dense masses and trampled down the moss. It was therefore proposed to build corrals, and also to keep

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the reindeer away from the best moss grounds during this period. The corrals were needed to avoid the ruination of the moss over an area half a mile in diameter used for round-up purposes. If a single area were used even as often as once in five years, the moss would not return. Therefore the Nentsy, to keep the reindeer fed under these conditions, moved the round-up from year to year, but only succeeded thereby in enlarging the area where the moss was trampled out.
Another indication of progress lay in the increasing willingness of the Nentsy to subject their herds to vaccination. In 1927-28 only five permitted this to be done, and 700 head were vaccinated, but by 1930 forty agreed, and 17,000 reindeer were protected. In 1932 it was proposed to attain 100% vaccination against anthrax in the following two years. That was carried out. Finally, it was proposed to prohibit entirely summer entry into the Kanin Peninsula without permission of the veterinary and local government, as that area was free of anthrax and could be preserved entirely against infection [: ] by such a measure.
Nenets Participation in Public Life
The result of all these measures was ^ a ^ an abselutely unprecedented drawing together of the Nentsy and their participation in public life. In March of 1932 the first effort was made to hold a "convention" of the most successful reindeer-raisers. ^ Never having been ^ Unprecedented ^ done before, ^ and poorly prepared, its chief value lay in that it set a precedent. But the second ^ such gathering, ^ in December, 1933, was of an entirely different character. In the first place, 115 persons were in attendance - a vast gathering ^ large conclave ^ for a nomadic tribe. 64 of these were only visitors to a fair being held at the new town of Narian-Mar, but 51 were actual delegates. They included 15 representatives of cooperative reindeer-herding enterprises, 33 from collective farms (i.e., enterprises in which all activities, including sealing, fishing and hunting, were cooperative), 7 more from exploratory committees investigating the desirability of setting up cooperatives, three herdsmen from state-owned farms, and eight individual reindeer-herders. Thus, every element but the kulak employers of labor [: ] was repre– sented. Almost half the delegates - 25 of 51 - could read and write^. This represented ^ an enormous step forward. Only 10% of the delegates had been literate at the first gathering 21 months earlier. This time half the delegates were members of the Communist Party or Youth League, whereas, on the previous occasion, only one in 20 had belonged to either of those organi–

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zations. Since they were the fundamental policy-making bodies, it was of basic import– ance that the Nentsy were now [: ] well represented in them.
A further indication of the efforts made to involve make participation in public affairs accessible to the largest number is the fact that the delegates spoke their native tongues - Nenets, Komi and Russian in that order - and interpreters translated from one to the other. [: ] [: ] The order of business included the most important problems before the inhabitants of the tundra: (1) reorganization of the economy of the tundra along socialist lines; (2) producers' - as distinct from consumers' - cooperatives, and the strengthening of those organizations administratively and economically; (3) the state of reindeer– breeding and the [: ] effort to increase the total head.
The subjects touched on by the 62 persons who took the floor showed the broadest [: ] vision, practicality and the conviction that their [: ] words would not be wasted, as their decisions would carry weight. ^ be listened to and acted upon by the government. ^ In addition to the three major points listed above, they ^ discussion embraced ^ included the execution of the annual plans (economic planning had reached this area by that date) for fur trapping and fish catch, the [: ] proper allocation of the labor force in the collective and state farms, the [: ] best means of distributing cooperative income so as to provide the fullest incentives, the struggle against the power of the kulaks and the influence of the shamans in the tundra, cultural and political uplift of the tundra population, ^ and ^ the erection of schools, hospitals, Red tents, farmers' hostels, cor ^ r ^ als, etc.
Some of the speakers' remarks were of particular interest. A farm laborer reported that in his area the chairman of the joint-pasturing cooperative had been the local shaman, who had refused to accept him and one other poor man with few reindeer to contribute, and had sabotaged the cooperative by pasturing the reindeer in bad spots, [: ] and had ^ had the animals ^ them tramp down ^ good areas. ^ others. He had finally been removed from his post and excluded from the cooperative. A collective-farm gang-leader suggested that a corral half-a-mile in diameter be built for sick reindeer so as to protect them from wolves^.^ "a hospital for reindeer, so to speak". He said that his farm would do that immediately. Another

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speaker, shepherd on the state farm, complained that it was poorly run. Some were ^ Individusals had been ^ given jobs as [: ] shepherds who had had no experience with reindeer. They lost the reindeer and themselves got lost in the tundra. The farm executives rarely left their office ^ s ^ to get out in the tundra and ^ inspect ^ observe the herds at first hand. They used the pastures badly, and didn't know how to feed the reindeer properly.
The early errors made in organizing collective farms, and their correction, were described by a speaker who pointed out that when his farm was first organized in 1931, all the reindeer, tents, sledges and dogs had been pooled. This had resulted in irresponsible attitudes toward the joint property. Later the tents, sledges and a portion of the rein– deer had been restored to private ownership, so that the collective efforts could be centered on reindeer-keeping, while the members would individually have a few reindeer for transport purposes. This resulted in an improvement in the state of affairs in the collective.
As the convention met in Narian-Mar, this afforded an opportunity to acquaint the delegates at first hand with urban life and the industrial plans for their area. They were taken to the lumber-mill, the print-shop, the brick-works and to construction sites, and the purpose and operation of these various enterprises explained to them. ^ In the form of badges and arm-bands. ^ ^[: t]^hey were also given visible mementos of their participation in this, for the Nentsy, truly historic occasion. In the form of badges and arm-bands. By way of con ^ c ^ rete [: ] reward for the good work that had caused them to be elected delegates, they had each received a suit of underwear and a sweater. This had ^ had ^ the additional hygienic function of teaching them to use underwear. The three best cooperatives and the half-dozen outstanding individuals were given prizes, ^ in the form of rifles and cash awards equivalent to two or three months' pay ^ which served, of course, as incentives to others in the future^.^ [: in] ^in^ the form of rifles and cash awards equivalent to two or three months' pay. Finally, the speeches, resolutions and proposals of the gathering were published in the Russian and Nenets languages, and distributed broadcast ^ widely ^ through the tundra. Summarizing the results of the meeting, the head of the Communist Party in the Nenets Okrug offered the view that: "If some stranger had come in ^ entered ^ during a session of the convention, he would not have be– lieved that those seated here, who were engaged in solving the problems of the socialist reorganization of life in the tundra, were Nentsy, formerly oppressed and suppressed by the Tsarist government."

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1934: Fundamental Changes Completed
By January, 1934, the Nenets language had been reduced to writing, and a Latinized alphabet created. (A few years, later, however, a Russian-type alphabet had to be substi– tuted, because the former arrangement had proved an obstacle to the learning of the Rus– sian language, [: ] spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of the Okrug - the new urban population of Narian-Mar, etc. - and also the language [: ] of science and culture in the Soviet Union.) Eight Nenets-language schools were functioning in the tundra among the nomadic majority of the native population. The number of Nenets children at school had multiplied four-fold since 1929, and 57% of the children of school age were now [: ] in the classroom. Literacy among the adult population had increased from less than one per cent - and that in Russian, for there was no Nenets script - to 12%, and the publication of a Nenets primer was speeding that process greatly. A new primer published in mid-1934 appeared in a printing of 8,200 copies. It was evidently designed for the Nentsy east of of Siberia as well as those of Europe, judging by the size of the edition. Its contents make it worthy of some description here.
In the first place, it is lavishly and well illustrated in black-and-white by artists who obviously made their drawings from life in the Nenets country. Trees, animals, people, sledges, tools, work in progress, buildings and the like are all faithful repro– ductions of reality in that area. The book also attempts to give provide an elementary understanding of the outside world by pictures and simple explanations of a large city, an automobile, a street-car, a railroad, a plane, radio, the Red Army and the heads of the Soviet government. The book is so designed as to teach not only language but the jobs of work necessary to the existence of every Nenets child as he grows older, cleanliness, the need for schooling, the advantages of cooperatives and how they operate, the [: ] superi– ority of medicine medical care over the incantations of the shaman, the greater desirability of a community center and the alleged undesirability of a church, etc. Nor does this Marxist ABC neglect Communist civics. There are brief descriptions of the Komi and Tungus peoples designed to supplant traditional ^ Nenets ^ hostility ^ toward them ^ by mutual respect. Likewise, there is a comparison between the oppressed state of the Russian worker and the Nenets herder before the Revolution, and the improved social status they both have ^ had ^ attained under the

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new regime. The udarnik [: ()]"shock-worker") who studies hard and lives cleanly is contrasted to the laggard. The primer, hard-covered, is 76 pages in length.
[: ] ^ In 1932 and 1933 ^ there also had been published a series of pamphlets in the Nenets tongue for the literate portion of the population. They include such titles as: What Is A Government Reindeer Farm? , ^ 16 pp. ^ with a clear drawing of one of the new corrals on the cover; What Is a Court? , 8 pp.; The Red Tent (explanation of the ^ five ^ reading-and-clubhouse tents set up to travel with the nomads), 14 pp., and What Has the October Revolution Given to the Peoples of the North? , [: ] 20 pp. Each of these is printed in exceptionally large, clear type. It is probable that pamphlets covering the following subjects, which the present writer has seen in the languages of other northern nationalities, have also been published in Nenets: What Is a Factory?; The Status of Women Among the Advanced Peoples of the USSR; The Party Leads ; and Learn To Read and Write . The last of these was pro– bably designed to be read aloud by those already literate, so as to convince others..
By 1934, in addition to the elementary schools, a [: ] [: ] high school with 144 students was functioning in Marian-Mar, turning out elementary school teachers, persons with elementary training in government and Party work, ^ and ^ others with specific instruction in the administration of consumer cooperatives and producer collectives. The school also had a preparatory department, equivalent to junior high school. Another school specialized in training reindeer herders for the state farm ^ s. ^ Attached to the lumber mill were schools training skilled workers in that field. In addition to the foregoing, 55 Nentsy had been sent to specialized high schools and colleges outside the Okrug for education which it could not yet provide. Moreover, some were already [: ] engaged in post-graduate work.
Five hospitals had been built and, in addition thereto, a number of trained nurses traveled with the nomads. However, many of them were still beyond the reach of any medi– cal care.
Nentsy Take Over Government Posts
The idea of establishing a distinct Nenets Okrug, in which that [: ] tribe could develop into a nationality, further its own cultural and economic interests, and enjoy a certain degree of autonomy, had first been broached in 1925, at a session of the Arkhangelsk Committee on the North. There was, at first, a considerable conflict

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of opinion over the location and the boundaries of the proposed Okrug, for the then Komi Oblast (now Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, qv), demanded that the Nenets country be left within the boundaries of Komi territory. This had been the case under the Tsars, when the whole Pechora basin had been, administratively, the District of the Pechora, in which the Komi had [: ] predominated numerically and, as we have seen, had exploited the Nentsy in the North. The Soviet government, at the outset, had provided autonomy for those nationalities which had manifested a consciousness of nationality. The Komi, numerous, having at least a minimum of literate leaders, and not as isolated, [: ] [: ] from the course of political affairs as the Nentsy, had let themselves be heard from. The Pechora District had therefore been transformed into the Komi Oblast, including the Nenets tundra and extending to the shore of the Arctic. When the leaders of the Committee of the North, having a broader view, proposed encouragement and recognition of the Nentsy as a people, the Komi objected, for obvious ^ fear of ^ ^harm to the interests of Komi reindeer-breeders employing Nenets labor in the tundra.^ [: ] Further, they stated that if a distinct Nenets administrative unit were established, it ^ should ^ be subordinate to the Komi Oblast.
It was finally decided by the Committee in Arkhangelsk to subordinate the new Okrug, whenever it would be formed, to the Arkhangelsk Oblast. One reason was the greater facility of transportation via the sea-coast. The Russian kulaks, however, at that time no w ^ t ^ without influence upon government in such outlying areas, also objected to any degree of Nenets autonomy, feeling that it would hinder their operations. Since that idea could not be advanced thus baldly ^under^ [: ] the Soviet regime, they phrased their argu– ment to the Nentsy as follows:
"Why should you be organized into a district, when you don't as yet have any ^ capable ^ offi– cials of your own ^ ? ^ In an independent district things will be worse than before."
[: ] Fundamental to that argument, and to the entire situation at that time, was the fact that the Nentsy themselves, never having had a government of their own at any time, had a very limited understanding of the entire situation. It was necessary for the Soviet officials to convince the Nentsy of the advantages of having their own gov– ernment through [: ] talks at general meetings called for various purposes, and at family gatherings in the wigwams. The matter was raised at each annual session of the county governments and at the more frequent sessions of the tundra Soviets. These, too, had had

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to be set up on a different basis among the Nentsy - and all other northern tribes - than in the country at large. Whereas the general Soviet principle was one of internationalism, i.e., of organization of government including all nationalities in a given district, whichever might predominate, the northern peoples could at first only be brought together by the organization of Soviets limited to themselves alone. Further, whereas another fundamental principle of Soviet government was organization along class lines, i.e., in– clusion of working people and peasants regardless of nationality, and exclusion of employing groups on the same basis, the northern peoples could be brought together at first only on a clan basis. This meant that the rich uncle and the poor nephew, who was his reindeer-herder, belonged to the same Soviet, and, as we have seen above, ^ the uncle had ^ usually dominated it . ^ in the earlier years. ^
Finally, in the couple of years prior to 1929, the [: ] Nenets Soviet congresses passed annual resolutions requesting the formation of a distinct national area, and in 1929 ^ the delegates to the Congress on the lower Pechora ^ they gathered before a wall map and heatedly discussed the proposed boundaries, indicating clearly that the idea had sunk in. Nevertheless, the tug– of-war over affiliation continued. The Komi get ^ influenced ^ a Nenets Congress of Soviets at Yugorskii Shar [: ] in the Komi Oblast to adopt a resolution favoring the formation of a Nenets area that would be placed under that Oblast, and the next session of the Komi Soviets passed such a local law ^ to that effect ^ although it had already been informed that the Committee on the North of the central government of the USSR had decided the matter differently. When the Soviet of the western tundra received a request from the representative of the Arkhangelsk Committee of the North to determine the economic status of the Nentsy living under the Komi, the Soviet of the latter refused to provide the [: ] information, stating that it was none of the affair of the former, and declaring simply that [: ] ^ their ^ Nentsy were better off. ^[: ]^
Despite this conflict - a peaceful one, be it pointed out ^ noted ^ - the Nenets National Okrug, including both areas, and independent of the Komi, was finally set up in October, 1929. This was, however, the first such autonomous arrangement for any of the minor northern tribal peoples of the USSR. The others followed in 1930.
When the Nenets National Okrug was formed the number of Nentsy actually occupying [: ] posts in that government could be counted on the fingers of one hand, but less

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than five years later, i.e., in January, 1934, Nentsy numbered half the government offici– als and 80% of the membership of the Communist Party in the Okrug. [: ] ^ In 1931 there were 31 Com- ^ ^munists in the tundra, but in September, 1933, there were 103 in 14 branches. In 1931 the Nenets^ [: ] Soviets had done little more than to conduct a census of population and reindeer, but by 1934 they had become the active and accepted leaders of the people, drawing them into public affairs, as described above. However, a special form of organization, which had gone out of existence in Russia proper twelve years earlier, was still in effect in the Nenets areas. This was a Committee of the Poor in each Soviet - for here the Soviets still included persons with varying economic interests - which served as the [: ] means whereby the rank-and-file Nenets was drawn into the effort to improve the techniques of and productiveness of hunting, fishing, sealing and reindeer-keeping, and through which the collective and state farms were directed along lines in keeping with the policies of the Soviet government.
As early as 1934 a beginning was made toward the abolition of nomadism. Some of the collective farms of reindeer-keepers had built permanent structures at their winter– ing camps in place of the wigwams put up and taken down each year. In that year 75% of the settled population belonged to fishermen's cooperatives, and 28% of the nomads ^ held ^ to ^ membership in ^ joint pasturing associations or collective farms. There were now two state reindeer farms. The new town of Narian-Mar already had a population of 7,000. Industr ^ y, ^ hitherto lacking, ^ had been ^ was founded: [: ] fish canneries, ^ at Shoina and Indiga, ^ two brickworks, a lumber mill, coal mines at Vorkuta, and lead-zinc mines on Vaigach Island. The 5,000 kilowatt power plant at Narian-Mar was already in process of construction.^, and the Pechora River fairway was being deepened. ^ Including the foregoing, there were now five indus– trial settlements, however small. Each year, literally dozens of prospecting expeditions toured the tundra, and, in 1934, the Nenets area came within the purview of the Academy of Sciences when that body sent a group of scientists ^ there, ^ to the area, under the direction of Prof. To^l^machev. [: ] The reindeer industry was being served by a zonal scientific station established at Narian-Mar in 1931. Four corrals, two cold-storage plants and several slaughter-houses had been established. The enlargement of the network of cooper– ative trading posts from 34 in 1931 to 68 in 1932 and ^ to ^ 79 in 1933 was more effective in driving the old traders out of business than all repressive measures could possibly have been. There were now six radio stations along the coast, on the river and in the tundra, a regular airline and a regular shipping line from Narian-Mar to Arkhangelsk.

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The weakest spot in the situation of the Nenets National Okrug in 1934 was deemed to be an insufficiency of permanent buildings in the tundra to serve as schools, hospitals, county seats and homes for those desiring to settle permanently in a given spot. Such construction was regarded as the key to raising the standard of living and culture of the Nentsy. As a further step in that direction, a new cultural base was built in 1934.
^[: Cha] Women in Government ^
A remarkable phenomenon, and one worthy of some attention, in view of the tradition– ally sub-human status of womankind among the Nentsy, was the fact that by 1934 a woman, then 46 years of age, had served successfully for three years as Chairman of the nomad Soviet of the tundra west of the Pechora River. This woman, illiterate, had [: ] been a paid ^ laborer, ^ [: ] as had her father and grandfather before her, i.e., she had sprung from the poorest stratum among the Nentsy. [: ] ^ She described the activities of her administration ^ ^as follows, to the editors of Sovetskii Sever . The area governed by her Soviet had, in 1934,^ 150 families owning 20,000 reindeer. 98 of these families had been convinced to join coop– erative pasturing associations or collective farms. They included the very first in the Nenets country. The collective farms numbered, respectively, 12, 13 and 30 households. There were still three families classed as kulaks. The entire Malozemelskaia tundra had been surveyed and [: ] assigned, so that each collective farm and each family of inde– pendent reindeer-keeperss knew the area in which its reindeer could pasture. The popula– tion pulled up stakes four times each year, and the nomad Soviet went with it. The herds did not remain at any single spot for a long period, in order not to tramp out the moss, and to be able to return to that spot not too long afterward. This problem of the rational utilization of the tundra [: ] was supervized [: ] most closely by the Soviet chaired by this middle-aged woman Nenets.
In general she seemed very businesslike and a capable administrator. and pre– sented a striking illustration of the vast fund of talent called into being by giving the female half of the population equality of rights, and by patient efforts to [: ] con– vince it to [: ] rise to the opportunity offered. Continuing, she reported that groups of the poor and of deputies to the Soviet had been organized. The former regularly conducted preliminary discussion of the collective farms' [: ] plans for the year, the schedule of fish and fur marketing, etc. Her Soviet ^ conducted joint discussions ^ discussed with the collective farmers such of such matters as the direction and course of travel, [: ] inoculation of the reindeer, and the like. There was close contact at all times between the nomad Soviet and

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the collective farms. Considerable prosperity, by local standards, had been attained by certain of the local farms. One of them distributed [: ] to each member money and payment in kind - meat, reindeer hides, and the like - to a value of 1,500 rubles, in addition to which the best workers received prizes in the form of [: ] hunting guns. [: ] Production was higher, food intake greater, clothing better, and, she reported with pride, even cloth garments were beginning to be worn. She stated that many of the poor who had previously not wanted to join collectives had been won over by ^ these ^ the clear indica– tions of improved standard of livelihood.
Of considerable interest is her report of the relation between the collective farms and the market. The farms planned their activities in accordance with advance orders from the consumer cooperatives, which acted as buying and selling agencies. Fish was sold to them, but furs were sold to the State trading company, [: ] which dispatched special agents to this territory to hold meetings at which contracts were worked out and signed. The nomads procured their store goods - manufactures and foodstuffs - chiefly from the cooperative, which made very frequent reports on its activities to the Soviet. The Soviet had repeatedly subjected its work, [: ] and that of the State trading posts, to criticism. With regard to the cooperative, the plans for the bringing in of commodities and the shortcomings in its business operations had been subjected to detailed examination. [: ] The State trading posts were criticized for not having such essentials as traps, guns and fishery equipment on hand in sufficient quantity.
The Soviet governing 150 families consisted of 22 members, apparently one from every seven households. ^ Four were women. ^ 16 of the members were classed as poor reindeer-owners, 3 as wage laborers, and three as owners of middle prosperity. (This pertained to their status as individuals before merging their herds as common property in collective farms.) There was a Presidium, or body of officers, consisting of five members. The Soviet held full meetings three times per year. Apparently ^ the officers represented the Soviet in ^ the other consultations [: ] ^ with ^ various farms, cooperatives and agents mentioned above. [: ]
Convocation of the full Soviet was not difficult, as the meeting was always held in the center of the area occupied by the Nentsy at that period of the year. The sessions were always held in the Nenets tongue. The Secretary of the Soviet was a Russian, but worked badly, and the illiterate woman Chairman was troubled by this, wondering what would

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come of the situation in view of her own illiteracy. Eventually the Secretary was replaced.
Efforts to advance women out of the home had had the following results. One Nenets woman had become a trained nurse, and worked in the local hospital. Others worked as house– keepers and kitchen-and-dining-room personnel at the boarding schools. This represented a step forward, in taking them out of the limiting confines of the wandering wigwam and plac– ing them in contact with broader horizons. Two women performed similar housekeeping func– tions in the Red Wigwam. Sewing circles had been organized in the collective farms. Almost all the women in this group of 150 families were engaged in learning how to read and write. The Chairman herself, Apitsyna, was doing so, despite the fact that she was approaching middle age. The women no longer avoided the assistance of trained midwives, but came to them on their own initiative. Special women's gatherings were called by the Soviet, to consider both general problems, which they were still backward in discussing at joint meet– ings with the men, and specific matters of concern to them. There were occasions on which these meetings had to discuss instances of brutal behavior [: ] on the part of men, "but now these instances were very rare". This represents a very considerable change in a period of only three years.
The Red Wigwam, travelling with the nomad Soviet, had a personnel including a trained nurse, a veterinary and an assistant to the latter. The population was quite satis– fied, the Chairman reported, with the activities of the Red Wigwam, whose staff participated in the execution of all the [: ] practical measures decided upon by the Soviet.
There was no school in the area of this nomad Soviet. Instead, the children were sent to Telviska, to a boarding school which had four teachers. The parents sent their children to school very willingly - another marked change over the situation three or four years earlier. Both the schooling and the feeding of the children were regarded as satis– factory by the Soviet.
The Soviet was nomadic only because it had no definite place to stay. However, a cultural base was being built at Kolokolkov Bay in 1934. Upon its completion, the Soviet would establish permanent headquarters in its vicinity. The cultural base would have a hospital, a boarding school and a veterinary office. Under those stable conditions, it was expected that the activities of the nomads' Soviet would be able to be carried out more easily, and would be more fruitful.

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A report dated May, 1938, four years later than the foregoing, gives us a picture of the activities of the hospital at the Kolokolkov cultural base. Construction and staffing had proceeded more slowly than originally hoped for. The building was not yet completely equipped, and the personnel lacked a trained nurse, a midwife, nurses' helpers and a dentist. Nevertheless, the existing staff had won the confidence of the Nentsy, as shown by the statistics on vists. In 1936 2,300 natives had The number of out-patients had risen from visits by out-patients had risen from 2,300 in 1936 to 4,972 the following year, i.e., had more than doubled. There was an average of three occupied beds serving in-patients occupied by in-patients in 1937 for a total popula– tion of less than a thousand. This utilization of hospital bed facilities represented a veritable revolution in the attitude of the natives, and had been won by the careful attention given by to the sick, the cleanliness and comfort maintained in the hospital, the good food, and an unceasing educational campaign. Three Nenets women had been trained as nurses, and were now working among the nomads in the tundra. The Russian doctor and nurse had made long trips with the wandering tribesmen, 13 in 1937 alone. On these tours they had aided 574 patients, including 557 nomads. Three teams had been set up to vaccinate the population against small-pox. They had visited [: ] all the six collective farms and the three fisheries. Despite the fact that [: ] vaccina– tion was new to the people, only a single individual refused that service. It may be surmised that the [: ] attitude of the rest was determined by their observation of the beneficial results of the inoculation of their reindeer. The doctor and nurse also conducted some 70 meetings in the tundra, many with lantern slides, on the subject of minimal standards of cleanliness in the wigwam, first aid, trachoma, pregnancy, child– birth, etc. A health officer was trained in each collective farm, and supplied with a minimum of medications. At two collective farms groups to study first aid were set up. A traveling bath-tent was toured through the tundra and demonstrated in every collective farm. Bathing became part of the cultural pattern, but an absence of the necessary materials resulted in a shortage of bath-tents. For the immediate future, the hospital was planning, early in 1937, to train 40 persons in first aid, convince pregnant Nentsy to bear their children in the hospital, establish three model wigwams

Nenets National Okrug

to demonstrate how they could be divided and maintained internally for purposes of sanitation, complete the vaccination program, conduct another 100 health lec– tures in the tundra, and provide baths for 500 persons with the existing bath– tent.
A report of February, 1937, provides a far less satisfactory picture of the solution of the reindeer problem ^ in this same, Malozemelskaia, tundra, ^ than was offered in the articles previously cited. That is not surprising, [: ] ^ as ^ they were written or dictated by Nentsy, for whom the steps toward organization of the economy of the tundra represented a veritable leap forward in their way of life. The 1937 report, however, is by the Russian manager of the Nenets State Reindeer Farm of the Northern Sea Route Administration. whose standards of efficiency were naturally far higher.
The area of the farms ^ farm's ^ pasturelands extended westward from the Pechora River for a distance of 20 to 25 miles in summer and 35 to 40 miles in winter, occupy– ing, as we have previously indicated, land formerly held by kulak households. In 1937, although moss-pasture survey and allocation had been completed, consi– derable explanatory work was still being done and was still needed among the native population to get it to abide by the established allotments, particularly the summer pastures. The previous summer a kulak - apparently the confiscation of the property of the kulaks, which had been completed several years earlier in agricultural Russia, had not yet been fully extended to the tundra - had regularly pastured his reindeer on the moss grounds of the state farm.
The state farm required an enlargement of its pasturelands, because of the projected expansion of its herd to 7,000 head. On January 1, 1936, it had had 5,017 head, which had increased by calving to 7,367 head six months later, but then declined to 5,949 in the three following months, in part due to the slaughter of 1,003 head for meat. The remaining 400-odd head had been lost by various causes, chief among them hoof-and-mouth disease. The farm manager com– plained that an inter-departmental argument between the two institutions had held up the necessary campaign to wipe out that disease. One institution had, during two successive years, sent personnel to the tundra in September, when

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the disease is usually on the decline among reindeer. The manager commented sourly that "guest stars" would not solve the problem.
One of the chief functions of the farm was to serve as a source for the enlargement of the collective farm herds. 224 reindeer had been transferred to one collective farm, and 50 to another. In addition, a third collective that was in a bad way, had been provided with foodstuffs, apparently reindeer meat, and two others had been given assistance in the establishment of mobile corrals.
The state farm also served the collectives by [: ] radio broadcasts to them over its transmitter and by providing its facilities for ^ taking the lead in organizing ^ the traditional annual holiday, Reindeer Day, [: ] animals and by giving it a useful purpose through the institution of competi– tions for the best [: ] bull, cow and calf reindeer. In 1936 the holiday was held at a gathering in the nomad tundra, but the Nentsy were so pleased with the aid given by the state farm that they proposed that it be held at its base the following year.
The state farm now began putting large-scale reindeer-farming on a scientific basis by a number of measures. A scale was set up in the corral, enabling 60 to 90 head to be weighed per hour. Thus records began to be established for each animal individually. Likewise, poor animals were weeded out, for the first time, while a stud-book was introduced, and large, ^ readily ^ visible identification marks [: ] were made in the wool of each. The weak animals were grouped in a special herd and given particular care in the pastures. The results so obtained were most encouraging, both insofar as the poor and the good animals were concerned.
Further progress of the farm was retarded by a number of obstacles. The herders were illiterate [: ] and utterly ignorant of stock-raising techniques beyond the experience of the fathers their fathers. Wolves were still doing

Nenets National Okrug

considerable damage, and insufficient efforts had been made to exterminate them. Too much uncontrolled mating was permitted, so that the stock was not being improved as rapidly as was possible with the best bulls and brood-cows avail– able. Finally, the manager was critical of his own efforts hitherto in making the best use of the existing moss-pastures, holding that much remained to be done in mapping the most effective grazing routes, particularly during the summer. He stated that, now that that error had been recognized, the state of affairs in this respect would be improved in the future. For the future, the [: ] state farm would be developed mainly as a source of blooded stock for the surrounding collectives, rather than as a market farm.
Despite his dissatisfaction with the general ignorance of the shepherds, herdsmen, the manager singled out nine of them for personal mention. Several knew their herds so well as to be able to recognize, name, give the age and pedigree of 50 to 80% of them. They had solved new problems, such as how to herd the reindeer so as to drive them into corrals. Their herds had never shown decline, and the average weight of meat of the animals in their care was above average.
Eve of World War II
By 1939, the Narian-Mar was being served by a steamer making the run from Arkhangelsk in three days, two days less than a few years earlier. The port was now visited by dozens of Russian and foreign timber export vessels annually. Each summer, in connection with the farmers' fair and the Reindeermen's Conven– tion, a Nenets Folk Art Festival was held, of which the first had occurred in 1936. The best buildings in town, clubs and dormitories, were turned over to the visitors, who made an attractive picture in the brightly-decorated furs of the Nenets women, the rich traditional ^ holiday ^ garments of the Russian Pomor fisher– women, and the colorful scarves, skirts and huge shawls of the newcomer peasant women. The workers of the lumbermill, the longshoremen of the port, and the staffs of the fur-purchasing agency and the government offices had,

Nenets National Okrug

several years earlier, each "adopted" a Nenets reindeer farm. This is a medium, universal in the U.S.S.R., for establishing close contact between urban and rural populations, and, specifically, for winning the peasantry to closer sup– port of the regime through concrete aid and assistance on the part of city– dwellers. This help usually took ^ takes ^ the form of vacation-time excursions to the countryside to help with farm work during the [: ] rush season, in exchange for which city folk benefit ted by several weeks of country life. They repair [: ] equipment, and the like. They also make gifts of [: ] various useful objects [: ] [: ] to the collective farms. Specifically, in Narian-Mar, when the Nentsy came to town, the patron organization would see to the housing of those from the farm it had adopted, and supply them with radios, phonographs, musical instru– ments, billiards, chess, checkers and books.
The following is a description of a single day in the life of Narian-Mar, May 8, 1938. ^ The town, it will be remembered, had not been in existence six years. ^ Although the opening of the navigation season was still five weeks off, the overhaul of vessels in the harbor was completed on that day. 483 persons worked in the port on that day. [: ] [: ] The telegraph office handled 101 outgoing messages, 72 incoming, and relayed 50 others. 163 out-patients visited the town clinic. [: ] [: ] (There were no private physicians.) 12 visits were made to patients at home. One medical lecture was read. On that day, 18 fishermen took an examin– ation at the end of a course [: ] designed to increase their skill at their trade. A new 1,000-sq.- [: ] yd. hothouse was placed in operation at the zonal agricul– tural experiment station. This station was the center for the study of reindeer farming. Its staff included veterinaries working on [: ] problems of feed and sickness, geobotanists [: ] studying the food value of the various grasses, mosses and lichens, and computing the fodder resources of the area, dog experts studied ^ studying ^ the herders' reindeer-dog and problems of how best to organize dog– raising in the tundra. The station had large kennels, grain fields and vegetable gardens. It exhibited home-grown peppers, turnips of several varieties, beets, kohlrabi, Chinese cabbage, tomatoes and potatoes grown in the open here at 67°35′N.

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In 1937 the best yields per plot came to 41 ^ 16.4 ^ tons of potatoes per [: ] acre, 98.4 ^ 40 ^ tons of cabbage, 88.8 ^ 33 ^ of turnip, 36 ^ 14.4 ^ of scallions, 35 ^ 14 ^ of carrots and 48 ^ 19 ^ of kohlrabi. The station gave a course for Arctic gardeners each year, training Russians, Komi and Nentsy. The lumbermill maintained its own garden, which had engaged in fairly large-scale farming since 1934. In 1935 it had harvested a crop of potatoes, turnips and cabbages totalling ten tons. Two workers, lacking seed potatoes, had taken a [: ] ^ chance and ^ planted 20 lbs. of rotten ones. They got a crop of 200 lbs. The local people had become so accustomed to agricultural "miracles" that, seeing two visitors returning from the market with water-melon and apples, they asked whether they could be gotten at the lumbermill garden. Actually, they had been brought by ship, as no fruits had yet been raised in Narian-Mar. Barley and oats were raised successfully in 1938. The hothouse put into operation May 8th gave, that summer, a crop of two tons of tomatoes and more than 5,000 flowers, grown to brighten the new, board town in the tundra.
Perhaps the most impressive statistic on Narian-Mar in 1938 was the fact that 2,000 persons in the town attended school daily each day or evening. This included the normal school, the []^training^ school of public administration, the trade school of the state reindeer farm with its headquarters in the town, two high schools, one junior high school and evening schools for adults. The total figure included several hundred Nenets boys and girls.
One of the most remarkable individual instances of progress among the Nentsy of Narian-Mar in 1938 was the story of the Siadei family. A quarter of ^ Almost half ^ a century earlier they had been exhibited as wild men in a St. Petersburg public square ^ park, ^ , living in a tent, wolfing raw meat and barking like dogs for the edification of the customers. Now their daughter was graduating from normal school and obtaining her diploma as a teacher in the Nenets language. She had was an accomplished violinist, and had won a fine concert instrument as a prize for her performance at the regional music festival in Arkhangelsk. Her brother was an official of the Nenets Okrug admini– stration, now completing ^ then beginning ^ his studies in the Higher Communist Agricultural School at Arkhangelsk. His wife was a graduate of the local school of public administration. The whole family lived in one of the best buildings in town.

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On Returning to the events of May 8, 1938, the following additional occurrences were recorded. in the Narian-Mar newspaper that day. ^ The paper is published in Russian and Nenets editions. ^ The government construction firm reported that, for the first time, all its illiterate and semi-literate workers were attending courses. [: ] The [: ] ^ central ^ library was visited by 98 readers, and loaned out 174 books. [: ] ^ There were nine other small libraries, and ^ ^the ten combined had 40,000 volumes. That day, the theater company^ [: ] played Korneichuk's drama of the contemporary Ukraine, Platon Krechet , to a full house of 326 people. 125 mothers brought their children to day nurseries or kindergarten. [: ] In addition to the legitimate theater, the town had two motion picture houses, 10 community centers and clubrooms in offices and factories.
A noteworthy evidence of the broader horizons of the youngest generation is the fact that five Nenets school-children, who had heard of two books being written collectively by children in other Soviet towns, had successfully launched the idea of such a book in Narian-Mar, to be called Children of the Arctic . The book described their schooling, their vacation camps, their experiences hunting seal, polar fox and the birds of the tundra, their work in with reindeer herds, their meetings with [: ] [: ] the fliers and explorers of the Schmidt-Papanin expedition establishing the drifting station at the North Pole in 1937, and their corres– pondence with children in other Soviet cities. The book was published at Arkhangelsk early in 1939, and a copy was exhibited at the New York World's Fair later that year.
Plans for the city for the years 1939-42 included the building of a large electric power station, a House of Culture (city-wide community center with diverse facilities), a House of Pioneers (children's "settlement house"), an additional motion picture theater seating 500, a new legitimate playhouse, a park and exhibition ground, a stadium, new schools and numbers of additional dwelling houses. Undoubtedly, the war prevented most, if not all of this, from being done at that time, but in view of the rapid and scheduled growth during the preceding years, it would appear likely that this program has been carried out since the close of hostilities. A photograph of the town in 1939 shows it to be an orderly collection of solid, unattractive one and two-story wooden build–
^ <formula> 3.6 9 ﹍ 14.4 </formula> <formula> 4 ﹍ 110 </formula> <formula> 8.3 9 ﹍ 3 32 </formula> ^

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ings, with spacious unpaved streets and squares between.
Post-World War II . The new playhouse opened in 1946, and the company offered a repertory including Shakespeare, Moliere and Lope de Vega in addition to classical and modern Russian works.
By the beginning of 1949, the Narian-Mar agricultural school had graduated more than 100 specialists in reindeer [: ] breeding and other fields, who were now working in various collective and state farms throughout the area. There was now also a cultural enlightenment school. training head librarians and personnel for the houses of culture. The new Russian-style alphabet for the Nenets tongue had been devised by a graduate of the Narian-Mar School of Pedagogy, A. Rozhin. The Okrug now had a completely adequate [: ] network of schools, 58 in number, with 6,000 Russian, Nenets and Komi children in attendance. ^ 1,500 of them in boarding schools were being housed, clothed and fed by the government. They were almost all Nents. ^ There was a school for every 600 in the population, indicating that each collective farm and area of the tundra had its own. It will be recalled that there had been only six schools 15 years earlier. ^ Nine sound-equipped motion-picture projectors ^ ^ toured the tundra, or had been installed in theaters in the towns, i.e. one per 4,000 in the ^ ^ population. There were now six reindeer-drawn culture tents - Red Wigwams - accompanying the reindeer-men. ^ Likewise, there were, early in 1949, fifteen hospitals, 55 other medical offices, six clinics and a number of maternity homes, hurseries, milk kitchens and kindergartens. There was one hospital, that is, for every 2,000 in the population, and a medical office staffed by a trained nurse [: ] and, in some cases by a doctor, for every 600.
In agriculture, rye had been added to the list of crops that were successfully being grown in the open. In the preceding decade, the average yield of onions per acre had doubled, ^ and ^ that of cabbage had risen 20%, while the potato yield had, for some was in 1949, for some reason, 25% lower than that reported ten years earlier. The experimental station was engaged in the systematic acclimatization of suitable varieties of the various vegetables, whereupon they were turned over for ordinary cultivation to the collective farms along the Pechora.
With motor vessels having universally replaced the old deep– water dories, fishing had been extended down the Pechora from the old

Nenets National Okrug

limit at Andeg, near Narian-Mar, to its very mouth. Previously the broad lower reaches had been deemed unsafe. ^ A new shipyard at Narian-Mar built fishing Vessels. ^
For the reindeer industry, the entire expanse of tundra had now been surveyed and entered on a pasturage map. The master map, maintained in Narian-Mar, showed where the collective and state farm herds pasture at each time of year. [: ] [: ] The Nenets collective farms now maintained cattle in addition to reindeer. One farm, for example, numbering forty families, had 12,000 head of reindeer. This average of 300 per family [: ] was as great as that of a kulak family a generation earlier. Evidently improvement of the breed had spread from the state farm at which we saw it being [: ] introduced in 1937 to the col– lective farms, for this collective farm kept its reindeer in eight herds, one of which consisted of pedigreed animals. It also had 37 cows and 60 calves. The cows gave an average of 1,000 liters of milk per year, still quite low very low, but it was believed that better feed, care - the Nentsy were just learning how to deal with this animal - and breeding would double the yield within a few years. Even that figure would, of course, still be quite modest in more southerly climes. The Nentsy now had permanent homes - one of which had been built as early as 1931, and this farm had, probably typically, [: ] an elementary school with a four– year course, in which the children were boarded during the seasons when their parents were wandering the tundra with their herds. Beyond the four-year level, they continued their education in Narian-Mar. However, later in 1949, the Soviet government announced that the extension of compulsory schooling to the seven-year level had been completed everywhere in the U.S.S.R. It is probably that, for the Nentsy, this meant an extension of the course in the local schools, rather than the maintenance of additional three-year boarding schools in Narian-Mar, Amderma and elsewhere large enough to provide for all the children in the tundra.
In the field of transportation, 1946 had marked a radical extension of the navi– gation season. In that year, nine river tugboats, specially strengthened for the voyage, and convoyed by a small port icebreaker and powerful sea-going tug, left Narian-Mar on Sept. 22 for Arkhangelsk. The voyage was completed in ten days.
^ Pencilled math and sketches on back of page ^

Nenets National Okrug

When federal elections took place in the USSR at the beginning of 1946, elaborate measures were taken to bring polls within reach of the nomads. Eight voting places were set up in the tundra proper, some of them as far as 850 miles by trail from Narian * Mar. It is of considerable interest that five polling places for the Nentsy voting for candi– dates from the Okrug to the Soviet of Nationalities at Moscow were set up in the forests of around Mezen, beyond the boundaries of the Okrug. Whatever one's opinion of Soviet elections in general, it is obvious that the Nentsy would be favorably impressed by this measure to enable them, as nomads, far from their normal "residence", to exercise their right to vote. Radio and aircraft were used for communication between Narian-Mar and the outlying polls.
The known mineral resources of the Okrug had been increased during the war by the discovery of coal on the Voloncha River, and of petroleum.
The most impressive fact about the Nenets National Okrug, however, at the close of the 1940s, was that Nentsy now served as managers of State reindeer farms, doctors, veterinaries, teachers and radio operators.

Nenets National Okrug

Recent Cultural Developments
The first Nenets folk festival, held in 1936, and representing the culmina– tion of several years of effort on the part of ethnographers and others, included [: ] performances by singers, musicians, story-tellers, dancers and dramatic groups. This was not an effort to present the pure and unalloyed culture of the Nentsy, but rather to call forth maximum cultural expression both in the traditional forms and in those adapted from the Russians. The leading form of folk art is the [: ] ^ saga. ^ The meter is usually [: ] similar to that of the Karelian-Finnish Kalevala , on which Longfellow's Hiawatha was patterned. Earlier we have cited one of the most popular [: ] ^ sagas, ^ which deals with a Nenets attack upon a Russian town centuries ago, and how it was repelled by artillery. Its title is Khariutsei , which is the name of its hero. Another, Man of the Unknown Land , tells of clan and tribal wars of the past, particularly with the Yamal Nenetsy east of the Arctic Urals. The Abandoned Ancient deals with an aged herdsman and his servitude to and conflicts with his employer. Earlier we have also cited escerpts from The Song of a Boy sold into slavery to a reindeer owner. Some of these folk tales in meter were taken down for the first time during the 1936 festival. One of them, The Rich One , tells of a man who employed 30 herdsmen:
....Midst the reindeer were they born, And midst reindeer death did find them. Paid them bones their wealthy master, For their labor past all bearing.
And for twelve full months of labor, Not a sickly reindeer gave them, Not a single, lonely reindeer, Stiff in leg and bony bodied.
Only gut of slaughtered reindeer Were the herdsmen fed the twelvemonth....
Finally the hero, Mando, leading [: ] [: ] Nentsy from the seven tundras, poor or entirely lacking in reindeer, wages war upon the wealthy Tsungar. After many battles, he flees. Overtaken by eight pursuers, he kills them by trickery, but is finally defeated, whereupon Mando distributes his reindeer the reindeer equ–

Nenets National Okrug

ally among all. [: ] Thenceforward life among the Nentsy of the seven tundras is good; they live without conflict "and eat reindeer meat".
Nenets tales in prose are no less interesting. They also describe relation– ships among human beings, [: ] Nenets con– cepts of their environment, and the hopes and fears of the people. The tales, like the sagas, are off chanted in a sort of recitative. In most of these tales the popular heroes fall into complex and difficult situations, but always emerge from them successfully. One such tale, for example, is [: ] The Son of The Smith , in which the hero gets the better of the sons of merchants, but then is fated for what seems to be certain death. However, he comes out of it alive and un– harmed. Then there is the story, which seems to exist among all peoples, of the poor Nenets who always managed to make a fool out of the king who was [: ] hounding him.
This folk tale tradition is very much alive and deeply-rooted. Nenets child– ren at the boarding schools spent [: ] many of their leisure hours chanting to each other the tales they knew best, and creating others as they went along. There are special fairy tales for children which develop a sense of fantasy, initiative and curiosity.
Song also [: ] occupies a prominent part in Nenets folklore. Some of the songs are encountered everywhere from the Kanin Peninsula to the Kara Sea, and from the coast at Yugorskii Shar to the forests of Mezen. The women are parti– cularly [: ] ^ fond ^ of The River of Khan-zerovo , which tells of their oppressed status under the old way of life. A woman, pursued by a husband whom she hates bitterly, flees from him and undergoes a number of marvelous transformation in order to escape ^him. At one time she becomes a duck and swims up the tundra river Khan-zerovo, and at another^ [: ] a golden fish and swimming away from [: ] him into the frozen ocean.
Rozhin, the [: ] teacher of the Nenets language who later devised its Russian-style alphabet, and who has done extensive translations of Nenets songs into the Russian language, states that he knows of no other language in

Nenets National Okrug

which word sequence in songs is as strictly ordered. [: ] Even the interjections with which all Nenets songs are generously interlarded, [: ] are introduced in specific and unvarying order. Many of the songs, likewise, are rigidly re– served for [: ] group singing only. Large choral groups have been organized and trained on the basis of this folk tradition. []^New^ songs of the past dozen years are much faster in rhythm and gay ^ gayer ^ in theme and words than the laments and songs of sorrow which formerly predominated. These new songs, similar in style and content to the traditional Russian peasant couplets - "chastuchki" - originated among the Nenets student youth. The [: ] sisters Lagei had won particular popularity for their rendition of these songs both in the Nenets Okrug and at the regional folk festival in Arkhangelsk.
The music of the Nentsy was subjected to [: ] study for the first time in 1937 [: ] by a team organized by the Arkhangelsk Oblast Arts Administration. Their melodies bear a slight similarity to those of the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmen and Tajiks of Central Asia, in their calmness of rhythm, periodic repetitions of motif, and repeated [: ] exclamations at the end of each couplet, [: ] taking the place of the chorus in western music. Whereas the improvisded small songs in which the tundra is rich are improvised both in verse and tune, the populat songs and, in particular, the epics such as Khariutsei are chanted to precise melodies that vary but little from singer to singer and place to place.
The Nentsy judge the best singer to be he or she who can utter the largest number of sounds during one breath. The jury at the folk festival must therefore maintain a constant count. Rimsky-Korsakov, in writing [: ] "Sadko", utilized the unusual time of 11/4 for the Sadko aria, completely unprecedented in classical music. This was not an original experiment, but grew out of his pro– found knowledge of musical folklore. This time, encountered in Russian folk music as a rarity, appears quite frequently in Nenets songs.
From the shaman's drum, which was their only musical instrument a generation

Nenets National Okrug

ago, the Nentsy have advanced to considerable familiarity with the accordion, guitar, balalaika and mandolin, which are frequently to be found in their wigwams and houses. Piano accompaniment has become the rule in connection with the rendition of Nenets songs at folk concerts.
As early as 1936, the first folk festival witnessed the performance of three plays by Nentsy. The best received was The Shaman , by Matvei Varsapov, a member of a reindeer collective farm in the Bolshezemelskaia Tundra. The piece was based on a song then making the rounds of the tundra, dealing with the exposure of the shaman. The play dealt with the shrewdness [: ] and cupidity of the shamans, the harm they had done, [: ] and their final dis– appearance of their influence. The play was quite simple, and much that it tried to say was offered only in outline form, but the originality of the theme and the unexpected appearance presentation of a dramatic performance, something entirely new for the Nentsy, made a strong deep impression upon the audience, and judges.
The play tells of the reindeer-herder Syro and his wife who work for a kulak, Yangut. For a year's work they are paid only a single reindeer, the worst in the herd. They are fed bones from the master's leavings. Syro becomes disgusted with his lot, and threatens to leave and join a collective farm. He is unable to carry out this plan only because he is suddenly taken seriously ill. When he asks that the doctor be called, the kulak advises that the shaman, Khutlingi, be called upon instead. Khutlingi's accidental appearance at this moment enables [: ] Yangut to [: ] make it appear as though the shaman really possesses supernatural powers, and had known in advance of Syro's ill– ness. Syro, overwhelmed, is done out of all his possessions - three reindeer, a foxskin and fur boots - by the shaman in exchange for his healing services. But the shaman's sorcery was to no avail. Syro became worse. But his wife ac– cepts the advice of the members of the nearby collective farm to go for the doctor, and, through the tundra Soviet, exposes the shaman who had taken in her guileless husband.

Nenets National Okrug 68.

The two other plays, although written and performed by Nentsy, did not create so strong an impression, because they both originated with the advanced student youth, probably at the suggestion of their Russian teachers, and were more directly didactic. The students of the normal school offered Two Laws , which depicted the conflict between the customs of the old and new tundra and the triumph of the latter. The students of the school of public administration offered a piece titled Red Star . The importance of all three [: ] lay in the fact that they brought forth the first actors and directors in Nenets history, however amateurish they inevitably were. As a result, a play called Tadibei (shaman in Nenets) was prepared with considerable care and extended rehearsal for the regional folk festival at Arkhangelsk, and won fair reviews both in the Arkhangelsk and Moscow press. A photograph of a scene in a wigwam shows that the staging and costuming certainly was most impressive. Undoubt– edly, the assistance of competent Russian producers was available. The outcome of these first efforts was the founding, in January, 1938, of a Nenets-language studio group attached to the Narian-Mar playhouse, in which the first 16 professional actors were given systematic training preparatory to the organization of the first theater company.
William Mandel
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Entsiklopedicheskii Slovar , Vol. 46, St. Petersburg, 1898.

Bolshaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia , Vol. 41, 1939 Moscow, 1939.

RSFSR, Administrativno-Territorialnce Delenie, 1942.

"Kulturnye sviazi severa Vostochnoi Evropy vo vtorom tysiacheletii do nashei ery", M.E.Foss, Sovetskaia Etnografiia , 4, 1948.

The [: ] Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016-1471 , trans. by R. Michell and N. Forbes, Intro. by C. Raymond Beazley, Camden Third Series, Vol. XXV, London, 1914.

Terrae Incognitae , by R. Henning, Leiden, 1937, Vol. II

Reise mach ^ nach ^ dem Nordosten des [: ] europäischen Russlands, durch die Tundren der Samojeden, zum arktischen Uralgebirge..., by A.G. Schrenk, 2 vols., Dorpat, 1948 1848-54.

"Mezenskaia Tundra", V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, in Zhivopisnaia Rossiia , Vol. I, Moscow and St. Petersburg, 1881.

Nenets National Okrug

Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes , by Samuel Purchas, B.D., Vol. XIII, MacLehose, Glasgow, 1906.

A Russian Province of the North , by Alexander Platonovich Engelhardt, Archibald Constable, Westminster, 1899.

"Sovetskoe stroitelstvo u nentsev (samoedov)", E. Khata, Taiga i Tundra , 2, 1930.

"O raionirovanii", E. Khata, ibid .

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"Polozhenie nenetskoi (samoedskoi) zhenshchiny", E. Taleeva, ibid .

"Komsomol u nentsev", E. Labazov, ibid

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"Khoziaistvo Kanino-Timanskogo raiona Nenetskogo okruga", ^ O. ^ Evsiugin, ibid .

"Zhizn zhenshchiny- [: ] nenki Bolshezemelskoi tundry, Kataisko-Glaskogo raiona", E. Labazov, ibid .

"K voprosu o zemleustroistve tundry Nenetskogo okruga Severnogo kraia", O. Evsiugin, ibid , 1(4), 1932.

"O proshlom tundry", A. Pyrerko, ibid .

"Pechora", A. Khatanzeiskii, ibid , 2(5), 1933.

"Nenetskii okrug", Sovetskii Sever , 1, 1934.

"Malo-Zemelskoi kochevoi sovet Nenetskogo okruga (Soobschenie predsedateliia soveta – t. Apitsynoi)" , , ibid .

"Slet kolkhoznikov-udarnikov Nenetskogo okruga", I. Vyucheiskii, ibid , 2, 1934.

"Kochevye obedineniia edinolichnykh khoziaistv v tundre Severnogo kraia", P. Maslov, Sovetskii Sever , 5, 1934.

[: ] "K voprosu o parmakh Nenetskogo okruga", P. Terletskii, ibid .

T'm Wadambada Sowhoz Namge , (What Is a State Reindeer Farm?), Y. Koshelev, Selkhozgiz, Moscow-Leningrad, 1933.

Sud Namge (What Is A Court?), I. Kulagin, Partizdat, Moscow-Leningrad, 1932.

Narjana Mah (Red Wigwam), G. Verbov, Lenpartizdat, Leningrad, 1933.

Oktabr rewolucija nerm nana jilena tenzahah namgem tasa ? (What the October Revolution Gave to the Peoples of the North), Y. Alkor, Lenpartizdat, Leningrad, 1933.

Nenets National Okrug

Jadej wada (Primer), G.N. Prokofev, Gosudarstvennoe Uchebno-Pedagogicheskoe Izd., Moscow-Leningrad, 1934.

"Nenetskii Olensovkhoz", I.K. Prokushev, Sovetskaia [: ] Arktika , 2, 1937.

"Iskusstvo nenetskogo naroda", Nikolai Leontev, ibid ., 5, 1938.

"Narian-Mar", N. Leontev, Nasha Strana , 8, 1939.

"Istoki Zhizni", V. Popov, Vokrug Sveta , 12, 1948.

"On the Banks of the Pechora", Victor Lyubinsky, Soviet Woman , 2, 1949.

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