The displacement of Nenets women from reindeer herding and the tundra in the Nenets autonomous Okrug,Northwestern Russia

“One of the biggest problems of current reindeer herding is the fact that there are only a few women on the tundra. It creates pitfalls for the normal running of reindeer herding. Soviet policy caused women to lose interest in reindeer herding”, recounted a local Nenets reindeer herding administrator. Herders, both women and men, pointed out that Soviet officials effectively displaced women from reindeer herding, and claimed that this has lead to serious problems.

The Nenets and Soviet approaches to the life of nomadic herders were diametrically opposed. For the Soviet state, reindeer herding entailed producing meat and hides ‐ a purely economic action ‐ and life on the tundra was seen as backward. The Soviet state viewed the presence of an entire family on the tundra as an obstacle to increasing production. In contrast, for the Nenets the presence of the family was a prerequisite of normal life. Soviet officials implemented a policy to end the presence of women and children on the tundra. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 this policy was abandoned, but there remain practical obstacles for the return of families to the tundra. In this article I will discuss the content of this policy, its impact on the Nenets reindeer herding family, and the role of women in contemporary Nenets reindeer herding.     

Corporate advertising,public relations and popular exhibits: The case of du pont

Abstract

After recapitulating and re‐evaluating the principal early signals that the Soviet Union was planning to launch an artificial earth satellite (Sputnik 1) in 1957, which have long been familiar to space historians, this article presents some additional pre‐sputnik material from Radio, the Soviet government's monthly magazine for radio amateurs, and from other sources, which has not previously been identified by western scholars. The preparations of the Soviet radio amateurs for satellite tracking are also described. The fact that western radio amateurs were no more successful in discovering Soviet intentions, at the time, than the scientists or the intelligence agencies, is documented and discussed. To complete the picture, contemporary assessments of the scientific value of amateur radio observations of the early satellites are surveyed. The article concludes by discussing the surprise aspect of the first sputniks in the light of the fresh information presented, and by noting some still unanswered historical questions.     

Editorial II

Abstract

This paper begins by outlining some recent initiatives to encourage the incorporation of ‘enterprise skills’ in British higher education and discusses the response of the academic community. Geographers are at the forefront of these developments. The second part of the paper illustrates how a first year practical course in geography was redesigned into a set of largely resource‐based group projects which incorporate many of the personal transferable skills emphasised in the various enterprise initiatives. It is concluded that the inclusion of enterprise skills is relevant to geography courses, but they are best integrated into mainline courses rather than taught as separate courses.     

Soft power,Russia and the former Soviet states: a case study of Russian language and education in Armenia*

Abstract

As in human relations, attraction can be an influential force in international relations. A well-known tool in Western countries, in Russia ‘soft power’ has come into play mainly under Putin’s presidency in the 2000s. This paper focuses on language and education as sources generating ‘soft power’. It looks first on the institutional framework progressively established to attract and integrate culturally the former Soviet space. Second, it studies the evolution of the Russian language and education in Armenia. The findings suggest that even if the previous decline in the usage of Russian has been reversed, the monopoly once enjoyed by this language seems to be over. Russian is promoted in a multicultural environment – alongside English, French, German or Chinese – which reflects the new geopolitical reality. Multicultural landscape characterises also the Armenian higher education system.     

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.     

“Genocide is Fascism in Action”: Aron Trainin and Soviet Portrayals of Genocide

ABSTRACT

This article examines the Soviet legal scholar Aron Trainin’s evolving writings on international law. Initially, Trainin formulated aspects of his concept of “crimes against peace” as a sort of Soviet alternative to Raphael Lemkin’s crimes of barbarity and vandalism. Crimes against peace both converged with the larger international movement to outlaw aggressive war, provided a Soviet alternative to proposed international crimes that they believed would threaten Soviet sovereignty, and provided a Soviet response to Lemkin’s proposals to outlaw mass killings. During World War II, Trainin articulated the Nazi extermination of the Jews as “crimes against peaceful civilians,” linking the Nazi atrocities to his concept of crimes against peace. Trainin’s concept of “crimes against peaceful civilians” encompassed the atrocities of the Holocaust while also asserting that the Soviet experience of the war – most notably Soviet sacrifice and suffering – meant that the Soviets should determine how international criminal law punished the war’s perpetrators. After World War II, when it became clear that genocide, rather than “crimes against peace” or “crimes against peaceful civilians,” was becoming the primary concept in international law to understand mass killings, Trainin portrayed the concept of genocide according to the perspective of Soviet propaganda, opposing an international criminal court for genocide, supporting the concept of cultural genocide, and portraying genocide as an inevitable outcome of capitalism. At the same time, Trainin and the Soviets never abandoned his concept of “crimes against peace,” portraying capitalism as inherently bound up with war and genocide. Trainin was the most significant genocide scholar in the Soviet Union, and his work exemplifies both the ways in which Soviet approaches to international law converged with other approaches, and the ways in which the Soviet Union diverged from non-Soviet international law.     

Russia’s Natural Resources in the World Economy: history,review and reassessment

Abstract

Russia’s role in the global economic system today, and the Soviet Union’s in the past, is dominated by the export of natural resources, particularly oil and gas. The rents earned from these exports are both a source of strength and weakness, as they link the fortunes of Russia’s domestic economy to the volatility of global resource markets. This paper returns to a major research project conducted through the offices of the Association of American Geographers that resulted in Soviet Natural Resources in the World Economy, published in 1983. The project was first conceived in the aftermath of the resource crisis in the 1970s and concluded in the early 1980s as the Soviet Union sought to increase resource exports to support a failing domestic economy. This paper examines the origins, evolution, and management of this seminal work and presents a re-reading of the book in a contemporary context. We develop some of the key themes of the original project and conclude that it has contemporary relevance, as a reliance upon the resource sector remains a defining characteristic of Russia’s political economy and continues to shape Russia’s role in the global economy. We find that the regional dimension that was so important in the original project remains critical as Russia seeks to extend the resource frontier into new regions in the Arctic and the East and, at the same time, reduce its reliance on European markets – that are both stagnant and hostile – by developing new markets in Asia.     

Norwegian and Soviet/Russian World War II Memory Policy During the Cold War and the Post-Soviet Years

Abstract

World War II has played a significant role in using “memory” in all kind of “memory politics” in Europe as well as in the USA. Using examples from Norway and the Soviet Union, later the Russian Republic, this article shows how successfully, but also how contradictorily, historical events can be used as memory politics. We will also see what “memory culture” and “memory policy” is predominant in circumpolar Norway and the Soviet Union/Russia after World War II. We are introduced to the concept of “memory agents”, the producers and directors of “memory politics”. The case is first and foremost the battle of Narvik in Norway in the spring of 1940. We also take a look at the circumpolar borderland between Norway and the Soviet Union during World War II, where the German “Gebirgsjäger” from the Narvik front regrouped and continued their assault on Soviet Union in Murmansk County from the summer of 1941. In what way were the war events useful in the post war era, and how could they directly affect Soviet–Norwegian relations during the Cold War? In addition we ask how memories contributed to the justification of different approaches to the foreign policy in both countries. Besides, the article demonstrates how the memory policy of World War II was affected after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union in Norway and Russia, respectively.     

SPATIAL PATTERNS OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE SOVIET UNION

Analysis of spatial patterns of attained educational levels is helpful in understanding the cultural geography of an area, perhaps especially in the Soviet Union, with its many ethnic groups and stated aim of providing equality of education regardless of ethnicity or sex. The proportion of the population that had completed a higher education was mapped at oblast level from 1970 census data. High rates are found in certain urban areas, Estonia and Latvia, Georgia, and certain sparsely populated areas of the Far North, Siberia, and the Far East. There are regional patterns of disparity between male and female rates of completed higher education and between rural and urban rates, despite Soviet attempts to reduce these inequalities. The distribution of Soviet higher educational institutions conforms generally to the distribution of population, although access to higher education opportunities appears to be geographically limited in some regions. (Maps by Joann L. Krupa, George Mason University.)     

From water to tears: extra-curricular activities and the search for substance in China’s universities

ABSTRACT

Why do university students participate in extra-curricular activities in China? What do they seek in a meaningful education? This paper explains the rising interest in extra-curricular activities by looking into students’ frustration about classroom-bounded education in China’s universities. A transforming socio-economic landscape and increasing imagination about global modernity have inspired new neoliberal demands for practical knowledge and personal meaning. And yet, China’s universities have failed to keep up with students’ changing visions of education, success, and productive personhood. This paper explores students’ agentive pursuit of sociability and emotional sensitivity through extra-curricular activities as a lens to examine the fluidity of meaning-making in contemporary China. In the process, I discuss why self-reported aspirations in skill cultivation cannot encompass the range of motivations that have driven students to extra-curricular participation, and explain how the ethnographic method can help to address gaps of knowledge in inquiries about youthful aspirations.     

The Sector Theory and the Canadian Arctic, 1897–1970

ABSTRACT

Although European discovery in the Arctic began during the Middle Ages, sovereignty issues did not become a major concern until the early twentieth century. At that time, the controversial sector theory was taken up by Canada, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, but opposed by the United States and Norway. This article examines the sector theory in Canadian state practice, clarifying the version of the theory to which Canadian officials subscribed and the aims they hoped to achieve through its use. The international response to Canadian claims is also described.

The article demonstrates that Canadian use of the sector principle during the 1920s was pragmatic and successful, but in later decades, confusion arose both inside and outside the government. Inconsistent public statements were made by government representatives in the 1950s and 1960s; these have puzzled and misled scholars ever since. Differences between the Canadian and Soviet versions of the sector theory, lack of adequate institutional memory in Ottawa, and partisan political rivalries all played a part in creating the confusion, but perhaps the key factor was the inherent difficulty of state control over this remote yet geopolitically crucial region.     

Moral teaching in geography

Abstract

Moral issues tend to be marginalised in contemporary education. This paper argues that geography is well placed to help to address this defect. Some cases with an obvious geographical dimension are outlined, to show how they might be used to open up broader moral problems. Geography teaching in higher education could have an important part to play in the reassertion of a moral dimension in how people come to understand the world and play a part in its re‐creation.     

A History of Archaeology in the Republic of Armenia

Abstract

This article traces the development of archaeological inquiry in the former Soviet Republic of Armenia, from its antiquarian roots in the 19th century, through the Soviet era, and into modern times. The resurgence of western attention in the region since the end of the Cold War has been driven by collaborative research projects from the United States, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, England, Russia, and Canada, that employ a variety of methods to understand the archaeological heritage of Armenia. Research problems are related to the Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages, as well as to the Urartian, Achaemenid, and Hellenistic periods.

For those unfamiliar with Armenia, this article is meant as a primer to the history of the discipline as it has been practiced in the region. For those already engaged in archaeology there, it is our hope that this discussion will lend an added historical dimension to ongoing field projects.     

Nuclear Superiority in the Age of Parity: US Planning,Intelligence Analysis,Weapons Innovation and the Search for a Qualitative Edge 1969–1976

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that between 1969 and 1976 US policy-makers actively sought to transcend nuclear parity. The Nixon and Ford administrations demonstrated increasing uneasiness toward nuclear parity and yet, proved unwilling to match the Soviet Union quantitatively. In the search for an answer to the question of what strategic superiority was in the age of parity, they came to understand it in distinctly qualitative terms, adopting a number of decisions related to nuclear planning, intelligence analysis of the nuclear balance, and nuclear weapons innovation and modernization, aimed at securing a qualitative edge over the USSR.     

Performing space across time: a 520-year anniversary in a western Ukrainian village

Abstract

Festivals and celebrations have special significance for the foundation of community and collective memory. They are part of social practice and, at the same, also reveal much about current and historical social structures, traditions and rituals. Festivals contrast with everyday life, taking participants away from it; celebrations, conversely, celebrate and reinforce social hierarchies, the role of individuals in the community and the characteristics of the community. This is clearly demonstrated in this contribution on the example of the festivities of two western Ukrainian village communities celebrating 520 years of existence. The communities’ notable peculiarity lies in the fact that they were founded as a single village. Due the partitioning of Poland along the Zbru? River, however, the two sides were situated in Austria-Hungary and Russia, respectively. In the interwar period, they were located in Poland and the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Second World War, they were part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Although they did not have borders for the first time in 150 years, they nevertheless continued to exist as independent villages. Given this starting point, a celebration of the 520th anniversary of the founding of these communities obviously has very complex historical contexts within different past state regimes. The following analysis of the village festival will first demonstrate how such a celebration was achieved. Further, it will examine the extent to which a socio-spatial demarcation was reproduced just as efforts were simultaneously made to eliminate it. The village is a striking example of the manifestation of the experience and perception, design and imagination of present and past spaces.     

Weak seams: Controversy over welding theory and practice in american shipyards, 1938-1946

At the height of World War II, America's record-setting shipyards were stunned when several merchant ships literally cracked in half. Worried that endemic manufacturing defects might endanger the entire wartime merchant marine, engineers argued that poor workmanship by shipyard welders had contributed to the accidents, that their own technical expertise should be more highly valued, and that they should be granted greater authority over the shipyard workforces. However, administrators in US Maritime Commission rejected these arguments. Instead, federal officials and shipyard managers assumed that many factors had contributed to the fractures and chose to implement a few modest, practical measures which soon stopped the fracture epidemic: improved worker training, the elimination through redesign of certain structural flaws in the endangered ships' hulls, and especially the installation of reinforcing devices at weak points in the ships. This episode not only draws attention to the way warfare heightens the stakes of technical controversies, but demonstrates the utility and resilience, even and especially at highly-charged moments, of practical knowledge and straightforward craftsmanship.     

A history of failed innovation: continuous cooking and the Soviet pulp industry, 1940s–1960s

Abstract

In the years before and after the Second World War, chemical and related industries in a variety of countries experienced a surge in innovation and development. As a result, the pulp industry became a space for considerable innovation. In Sweden, Johan Richter developed the Kamyr digester, a pulp cooker that could run continuously and was adopted by industry within a decade. Prior to Richter, Soviet engineer Leonid Zherebov designed a similar cooker. But after 25 years of experiments, Zherebov’s design failed, and Soviet factories began to produce pulp using imported Kamyr digesters. This article examines the history of continuous pulp cooking in the Soviet Union as a means to understand the nature of Russian technological innovation and its failures. The paper contends that his effort failed because of the technological system developed by Soviet forestry – a system characterized by a lack of open communication among its main institutional actors and a scarcity of resources to facilitate innovation.     

Soviet official critiques of the resource scarcity prediction by limits to growth report: the case of Evgenii Fedorov’s ecological crisis rhetoric

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on official Soviet attitudes towards ‘ecological crisis’ and the rhetoric developed to address it. It analyses in particular the discussions in the Soviet Union that followed the publication of the Club of Rome report Limits to Growth (1972). It contributes to the better understanding of the debate around resource scarcity in a framework of so-called ‘ecological crisis’ as it was conceptualized in the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. It is based on the analysis of writings by the Soviet geophysicist Evgenii Fedorov (1910–81) who was among the few Soviet members of the Club of Rome and thus had direct access to contemporary Western scholarship. The paper explores how such rhetoric accepted and reconceptualized the notion of crisis for use in both domestic and international environmental politics and the associated advancement of technology as the most effective remedy against resource scarcity. Fedorov largely built his ideas on Soviet Marxism and Vladimir Vernadsky’s concepts, which preceded the current notion of the Anthropocene. In addition, his experience in nuclear projects and weather modification research –– both more or less successful technocratic projects – gave him some kind of assurance of the power of technology. The paper also provides some comparison of the views of the problem from the other side of the Iron Curtain through a discussion of the thoughts of the left-wing American environmentalist Barry Commoner (1917–2012), which had been popularized for the Soviet public by Fedorov.     

Crafting Aboriginal Nations in Taiwan: The Presbyterian Church and the Imagination of the Aboriginal National Subject

Abstract

This study argues that since the end of World War II, the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church’s practical institutionalised arrangements for evangelisation have had the unintended consequence of creating an imagined multi-layered aboriginal national Subject. The argument is founded upon analysis of three main points. First, aboriginal members’ daily practices within the three-level federalist church polity formed in their minds an acquired “schema”, a ready-made cognitive structure that could be easily appropriated by them to imagine their own nations in a certain way. Second, when the Church promoted the translation of the Bible and hymns into aboriginal vernaculars for practical evangelising reasons, it unintentionally created tribe-based cultural-linguistic mediums as national languages upon which the contents of aboriginal nations could be elaborated and reproduced. This step further consolidated tribe-based ethnic categorisation and facilitated the reification of aboriginal nations. Third, since aboriginal ministers and elders were institutionally endowed with many strengths in comparison to other aboriginal elites, they came to serve as human activators in formulating and spreading the imagination of the multi-layered aboriginal national Subject.     

The Professional Ethos of Rangers in Russian Nature Reserves

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of Russian nature reserves, which are now changing their form and status as all organizations have done since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The author is mostly concerned with the study of the professional ethos of the ranger. The similarity of the rangers’ ethos is determined by their common experience of work in the forest. The variability is explained by the difference in the environments of nature reserves, such as the proximity of a city or state border. The attempt to integrate this study in the corpus of works about social effects of nature reserves is made in the conclusion.