Pre‐Soviet pasts of reindeer‐herding collectives: Ethnographies of transition in Murmansk region

This article summarizes observations from field studies with reindeer herders in northwest Russia (Murmansk Region) carried out between 1994 and 1999. The work has been done by living with reindeer‐herding crews at their seasonal tundra camps.

For a large majority of the herders and their families, the concept and practices of the Soviet State Farm (.sovkhoz) tend to represent not only the most desirable form of livelihood, but indeed the only conceivable, although now seriously shattered, reality. In the face of a grim present, new reinterpretations of the sovkhoz are constantly being tried out. The pool of options is found in pre‐Soviet traditions and tends to reveal links between the Sami pogost (siji) social organisation and practices and those of the Soviet and post‐Soviet reindeer‐herding crew (brigadd).The article pursues these connections and discusses the sovkhoz not as destroying all previous tradition, but as drawing from and incorporating pre‐Soviet pasts. The underlying continuity with such pasts may explain the tenacity of the sovkhoz concept in this particular Arctic setting and, possibly, in a variety of others.     

The European spatial development perspective and North‐West Europe: application and the future1

The European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) is the product of a north‐west European planning tradition. This article discusses the role of north‐west European concerns, in particular the use of the concept of polycentricity, in the making of the ESDP, and the application of the ESDP in the North‐west European Metropolitan Area (NWMA), more in particular in Germany, the UK, The Netherlands and Belgium. The article also explores the future of spatial planning as regards north‐west Europe. Much will depend on how Community policy will adapt to the enlargement of the European Union. However, it seems certain that existing member states, in particular those in north‐west Europe will see their share in the structural funds evaporate. This may give added significance to INTERREG IIIB respectively to the successor of this Community Initiative. In addition, concepts like territorial cohesion and territorial management may become functional equivalents to that of spatial planning, for which the Community is said to have no competence.     

The Sino‐Soviet Conference, 1924–1927

Soviet Union issued two declarations toward China in 1919 and 1920, promising to nullify all treaty privileges in China previously established by the Tsarist government voluntarily. However, in the formal negotiations Karakhan insisted that old treaties must be replaced by new treaty. Finally, the Sino‐Soviet Agreement, literarily, “Agreement on General Principles for the Settlement of Outstanding Questions”, signed in May 1924 and diplomatic relations restored at once, a conference was stipulated to meet within one month to solve all questions and to conclude a formal treaty. Nevertheless, the conference was postponed for more than a year; when it did convene too many controversies led it nowhere. Since no treaty was produced at the Sino‐Soviet Conference, the old treaties were not abolished, therefore the Soviet's promises were never practiced.     

From Hope to Escape: Post‐Soviet Russian Memory and Identity

Drawing on letters written by citizens of the USSR to US Congressman James Wright following his 1987 congressional visit and Soviet television appearance as well as follow‐up interviews conducted by this author with many of the same individuals in 2002–2004, this paper will recount the memories of several Muscovites and argue that although the western collective memory of the Cold War is one of victory, the individual accounts of Russians reveals a created memory of the Soviet past which, when confronted with the dire socioeconomic conditions that exist in post‐1991 Russia, leads to a crisis of identity.