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Arctic Mirrors : Russia and the Small Peoples of the North / Yuri Slezkine.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2016]Copyright date: ©2016Description: 1 online resource (476 p.) : 12 halftonesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781501703317
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 947/.004971
LOC classification:
  • GN673
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Sources and Abbreviations -- INTRODUCTION. The Small Peoples of the North -- PART I. SUBJECTS OF THE TSAR -- CHAPTER 1. The Unbaptized -- CHAPTER 2 . The Unenlightened -- CHAPTER 3 . The Uncorrupted -- PART II. SUBJECTS OF CONCERN -- CHAPTER 4. The Oppressed -- CHAPTER 5. The Liberated -- PART III. CONQUERORS OF BACKWARDNESS -- CHAPTER 6. The Conscious Collectivists -- CHAPTER 7. The Cultural Revolutionaries -- CHAPTER 8. The Uncertain Proletarians -- PART IV. LAST AMONG EQUALS -- CHAPTER 9 . The Socialist Nationalities -- CHAPTER 10. The Endangered Species -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary: For over five hundred years the Russians wondered what kind of people their Arctic and sub-Arctic subjects were. "They have mouths between their shoulders and eyes in their chests," reported a fifteenth-century tale. "They rove around, live of their own free will, and beat the Russian people," complained a seventeenth-century Cossack. "Their actions are exceedingly rude. They do not take off their hats and do not bow to each other," huffed an eighteenth-century scholar. They are "children of nature" and "guardians of ecological balance," rhapsodized early nineteenth-century and late twentieth-century romantics. Even the Bolsheviks, who categorized the circumpolar foragers as "authentic proletarians," were repeatedly puzzled by the "peoples from the late Neolithic period who, by virtue of their extreme backwardness, cannot keep up either economically or culturally with the furious speed of the emerging socialist society."Whether described as brutes, aliens, or endangered indigenous populations, the so-called small peoples of the north have consistently remained a point of contrast for speculations on Russian identity and a convenient testing ground for policies and images that grew out of these speculations. In Arctic Mirrors, a vividly rendered history of circumpolar peoples in the Russian empire and the Russian mind, Yuri Slezkine offers the first in-depth interpretation of this relationship. No other book in any language links the history of a colonized non-Russian people to the full sweep of Russian intellectual and cultural history. Enhancing his account with vintage prints and photographs, Slezkine reenacts the procession of Russian fur traders, missionaries, tsarist bureaucrats, radical intellectuals, professional ethnographers, and commissars who struggled to reform and conceptualize this most "alien" of their subject populations.Slezkine reconstructs from a vast range of sources the successive official policies and prevailing attitudes toward the northern peoples, interweaving the resonant narratives of Russian and indigenous contemporaries with the extravagant images of popular Russian fiction. As he examines the many ironies and ambivalences involved in successive Russian attempts to overcome northern—and hence their own—otherness, Slezkine explores the wider issues of ethnic identity, cultural change, nationalist rhetoric, and not-so European colonialism.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781501703317

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Sources and Abbreviations -- INTRODUCTION. The Small Peoples of the North -- PART I. SUBJECTS OF THE TSAR -- CHAPTER 1. The Unbaptized -- CHAPTER 2 . The Unenlightened -- CHAPTER 3 . The Uncorrupted -- PART II. SUBJECTS OF CONCERN -- CHAPTER 4. The Oppressed -- CHAPTER 5. The Liberated -- PART III. CONQUERORS OF BACKWARDNESS -- CHAPTER 6. The Conscious Collectivists -- CHAPTER 7. The Cultural Revolutionaries -- CHAPTER 8. The Uncertain Proletarians -- PART IV. LAST AMONG EQUALS -- CHAPTER 9 . The Socialist Nationalities -- CHAPTER 10. The Endangered Species -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

For over five hundred years the Russians wondered what kind of people their Arctic and sub-Arctic subjects were. "They have mouths between their shoulders and eyes in their chests," reported a fifteenth-century tale. "They rove around, live of their own free will, and beat the Russian people," complained a seventeenth-century Cossack. "Their actions are exceedingly rude. They do not take off their hats and do not bow to each other," huffed an eighteenth-century scholar. They are "children of nature" and "guardians of ecological balance," rhapsodized early nineteenth-century and late twentieth-century romantics. Even the Bolsheviks, who categorized the circumpolar foragers as "authentic proletarians," were repeatedly puzzled by the "peoples from the late Neolithic period who, by virtue of their extreme backwardness, cannot keep up either economically or culturally with the furious speed of the emerging socialist society."Whether described as brutes, aliens, or endangered indigenous populations, the so-called small peoples of the north have consistently remained a point of contrast for speculations on Russian identity and a convenient testing ground for policies and images that grew out of these speculations. In Arctic Mirrors, a vividly rendered history of circumpolar peoples in the Russian empire and the Russian mind, Yuri Slezkine offers the first in-depth interpretation of this relationship. No other book in any language links the history of a colonized non-Russian people to the full sweep of Russian intellectual and cultural history. Enhancing his account with vintage prints and photographs, Slezkine reenacts the procession of Russian fur traders, missionaries, tsarist bureaucrats, radical intellectuals, professional ethnographers, and commissars who struggled to reform and conceptualize this most "alien" of their subject populations.Slezkine reconstructs from a vast range of sources the successive official policies and prevailing attitudes toward the northern peoples, interweaving the resonant narratives of Russian and indigenous contemporaries with the extravagant images of popular Russian fiction. As he examines the many ironies and ambivalences involved in successive Russian attempts to overcome northern—and hence their own—otherness, Slezkine explores the wider issues of ethnic identity, cultural change, nationalist rhetoric, and not-so European colonialism.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Apr 2024)