Art Leete
Sédentarisation, introducing professional medical care and
"civilised" hygiene were materialistic projects of the Soviet autho
rities that, to a large extent, aimed at changing the worldview and identity of indigenous peoples of the North. The idea is in accordance with the materialistic view of the effects of basic material factors of culture on its mental, spiritual aspects.
In fact, all changes in economic organisation, education and administration were targeted by Soviet ideologists, politicians and administrators to change fundamentally the way of life and world-view of indigenous peoples (Kaliss 1999: 491). For this paper, I have chosen only a small part of this huge project as a topic of my analysis. Obviously, the economic reform (collectivisation), establishing boarding schools and changing the local self-administrative system were more profound efforts of Soviet reforms and directly affected the daily life of northern nati ves. Yet these "little projects" of sédentarisation, medical care and hygiene had their own characteristic role in transforming northern peoples' communities from relatively traditional ("primitive") stage into modern, Soviet ones. And the fact is that these peripheral reforms have got much less attention in analyses of culture change in the
70 Invasion of Materialism into the Soviet North...
Soviet North compared to collectivisation, schooling and other large-scale reforms.
The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the descriptions of northern peoples' medicine, hygiene and houses of the Soviet authors in the 1920-40s, and also to describe their ideas concerning the reforms neccessary to change the situation in these fields. I try to demonstrate the impact of these "little reform projects" on northern peoples' lives and worldview and also dis
cuss their role in provoking resistance among northern indigenous groups.
Changing living conditions and sédentarisation Changing living conditions of the northern peoples was a process that, despite it is clearly materialistic explanations (providing more civilised houses and working conditions for the natives) was in its essence directed also towards affecting profoundly their worldview and identity. I will bring a number of examples of northern peoples living conditions and reforms that were meant to change their
"savage home environments" in the 1920-40s. The corresponding attitudes of the Soviet authors in the 1920s and 1930s differ remarkably and since that period it has remained quite the same for next 50 years. My aim is to analyse the official image of the Soviet sédentarisation project carried out among northern indigenous communities. I also demonstrate briefly the possibility to find ideo
logical and practical parallels to the Soviet reforms in the North in Evengelical mission and in colonisalism in general.
Samokhin complained that, although the weather conditions in the area inhabited by the Tungus people are severe and people's primary concern is building warm houses, the indigenous people,
"in opposition to a survival instinct", did not do that. Samokhin indicated that the Tungus did not use Russian-style wooden huts but lived in conical tents (Samokhin 1929: 15-17).
Art Leete 71 Lobachev had quite the same feelings towards the Vakh River Khanties' "primitive" living conditions:
"Until nowadays, a primitive peoples' ground-built hut with no walls neither floor, can be found in some areas around the Vakh River. Embryos of the houses, shalashts, are also widely used as living spaces. Several parts of the yurtas - windows, doors, floor, fireplace, smoke-hole - all are extremely primitive. A piece of ice in the window-opening is not replaced by glass neither even by animal bladder" (Lobachev 1934: 101).
Afterwards, linking the living conditions and health care issues of northern peoples, Lobachev noted:
"It is obvious that these houses have disastrous impact on their health. [—] Among the first towards improving the everyday environment of the Vakh Khanties, their houses should be made healthier and inhabitants relocated to standard houses with enough light" (Lobachev 1934: 102).
Orlova wrote about the Asian Eskimos that sleeping in the polog on reindeer skins that were put on earth was a common habit among them in the beginning of the 1940s, because the Eskimos thought that separation from the earth was a sin. But in the village of Ugrelyk, there was a young educated Eskimo man named Tag-rak, who cut a hole into the wall of his polog and put there a glass.
Tagrak brought a table, bookshelf, tabouret, and, the main thing, a bed into his polog. Tagrak's example also brought about the discussion of comfort among other Eskimos. Orlova considered polog an anti-hygienic building. Since the end of the 1930s, Glavsevmorput started to build Russian peasant style five-wall huts for the Eskimos and Orlova estimates that these were perfect buildings for the North. (Orlova 1941: 212-214)
A couple of years after the mandalada, the major uprising of the Yamal Nenets against the Soviets, Brodnev described the local Nenets as actively and voluntarily searching for opportunities to settle around the culture base in southern region of the Yamal Peninsula:
"The houses of Yakov Serasho and Maxim Sukharinov are clean, warm and comfortable.
72 Invasion of Materialism into the Soviet North...
Yakov has two tables - a toilet table and dining table. Curtains in front of the windows. The bed is made up. Photographs on the walls.
Housewife, Shura Serasho, is satisfied with everything. She comp
lains only about the floor: "It's not painted, so it's hard to clean." We agreed, that in spring we should paint it, for sure.
Maxim Sukharinov does not use a bed that was given to him by the culture base. He did not give up the habit of sleeping on the floor in the conical tent but brought this habit into the house. On this topic I had the following conversation with Maxim:
"Why don't you sleep in a bed?"
"I can't, I'd fall down, perhaps."
"We didn't know that. We shouldn't give you that bed. Now it's useless."
"Why useless? I can try later, may be we can sleep on it."
"Why not try - in the bed it's warmer and more comfortable."
Maxim did not find any counter-arguments. He just shut up. A habit that has oppressed him during centuries is still present. But he will give it up soon" (Brodnev 1936: 105; 1937b: 96).
Yakov Serasho is, according to Brodnev, extremely enthusiastic during his speech after the demonstration dedicated to the anniver
sary of the October Revolution:
"Because of excitement and joy, he speaks at first in Nenets, afterwards in Russian and finally in the Khanty language:
"I used to be poor. Now I am not poor. I am a kolkhoz worker.
How can I be poor if I built a house for myself. Soviet power helped me. Lenin ordered to do so that there would be no poor people. That's right. Stalin ensures that there will be no poor people, everybody is well off. Everybody must live decently. You see, I start living culturally, too. Thanks to culture base for help. But they did not help without nothing. Stalin gave them the order. Lenin gave them the order. Soviet power is good"" (Brodnev 1936: 105).
We can bring another sample text concerning Dzhugdyrsk Evenkis. In 1941, the building of new individual dwelling houses according to the typical Soviet plan started. As it was described, the Evenkis became extremely excited about such new houses:
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"Houses became settled immediately. Within the houses, youn
ger generations tried to arrange everything "exactly as the Russians do". Living rooms and kitchens were separated. Furniture was obtained, and some were able to get even embroidered curtains, portières, and small carpets on the wall above the bed. In many houses, there are shelves with books and, of course, framed photo
graphs and portraits of the [Soviet] chiefs on the wall" (Vasil-yevich 1950: 171).
The Aleuts were among of the most Sovietised ethnic group in the Soviet Arctic during the early Soviet period. As early as in the 1930s, they had at least 9 stakhanovets among them, a number of members of the Communist Party and the Young Communist Lea
gue. It was especially stressed that stakhanovets lived in attitude towards the living conditions of northern peoples - tra
ditional houses were considered unhealthy and anti-hygienic and moving to "civilised", "cultural" buildings was seen as a positive step. Of course, the enthusiasm of indigenous peoples towards resettlement and sédentarisation was described just according to Soviet ideological schemes. And so it continued, in fact, from the 1930s through the 1980s.
There are plenty of similar idyllic descriptions of extremely accelerated cultural progress of northern peoples under the Soviet regime. It is not clear if these records contain any truth at all, but these texts function quite well as rhetoric manifestations. In this text by Brodnev, there are the main features of the icon of Soviet develop
ment of formerly "retarded" people - they are modelled as making quickly a giant leap from absolutely cultureless situation to socialism.
They started "living culturally" - largely thanks to the Russians. This ideological schematics does not correspond to the attitudes and opinions among native communities. But it tells us something about the rhetorical aspects of the modernisation project of the Soviets.
10
74 Invasion of Materialism into the Soviet North.
Evangelical missionaries who acted in Southern Africa had quite similar attitude towards the reforms of living conditions of natives. And they saw the housing reform as part of Christiani-sation process. There is some evidence that missionaries set up even a kind of a slogan about this, e.g:
"If their homes can be revolutionized in a generation, so can their hearts" (Chirgwin 1932: 28, cit. Comaroff & Comaroff 1997:
274).
This slogan is so perfectly universal that every Soviet ideologist could as well apply it to the northern peoples without changing a single word in it.
Home had a central position in the Christianisation attempts of the European missionaries in Southern Africa. And this attitude was expressed in socio-economic, psychological, and also in archi
tectural reforms. Changing the home environment was believed to correlate with changes in peoples' consciousness. (Comaroff &
Comaroff 1997: 274-278)
Again, the attitude of Soviet workers towards Siberian natives was quite the same. The fact is that resettlement of northern natives to centralised villages and into hygienic" and "cultural" houses was carried out mainly since the beginning of the 1960s. But the process was started in the 1930s and, as we can see, discussions about these problems were firmly present in writings of Soviet authors. I gave only few examples, but these are quite typical to the early Soviet epoch.
There are other explanations for the sédentarisation project of the Soviets. Debra Lee Schindler analyses the logic behind the Soviet resettlement concept as an attempt to obtain more control over the life of indigenous peoples. It was also easier to involve them in collective work, to supply them, and to make them communicate with other ethnic groups (Schindler 1990: 107-108).
The question about the more effective control over the northern peoples' communities is related to the general claim of colonial powers to break tribal sovereignty of indigenous groups who initially preferred to consider loyality to their clan or local
Art Leete 75 community more important than the feeling of subordination to colonial regime (comp. Frazier 1968; Bodley 1982).
Also, we should not forget about the early Soviet ideological discourse over the gender roles among reindeer nomads. According to this point of view, reindeer herders must be sedentarised, be
cause women did not have any particular role in tundra. They were considered just hanging around there. And modern settlements could provide them different kind of jobs, particularly, several
"cultural" posts (nurses at hospital, officials at local Soviets, teachers at schools etc.).
But in this paper I want to emphasize the general issues of comparative ideology. Perhaps it was essential for Soviet ideo
logists that indigenous peoples who wandered around the forests and tundra did not give up their worldview so easily and it was much more hopeful to "revolutionise their hearts" while they were forced to live in big settlements "just like Russians".
Medical care and hygiene issues
Introducing medical service and habits of hygiene among the northern peoples is also connected with the sédentarisation and resettlement projects. One of the main arguments against traditio
nal buildings of indigenous people was that these houses were anti-hygienic. At the same time, existence of modern medicine was considered to be the indicator of "cultureness" and, when put in a wider perspective, also of certain world-view and identity. As to medicine, Soviet ideologists even did not hide one of the most important reasons for developing it - this was a measure, directed against the influence of shamans among native communities.
Ilya Gurvich (1987: 21, 27) describes the organisation of medical care to the northern peoples as a process that had enor
mous impact on the life and consciousness of native peoples. Since 1924, nomadising Red Cross medical groups have acted in the North. Members of these groups healed people and examined
76 Invasion of Materialism into the Soviet North...
medical-hygienic conditions of indigenous groups. After a few years, the Soviets established medicine bases in the North that were later transformed into permanent hospitals and medical assistants' offices. At the beginning, the Soviets experienced some misunderstanding on the part of indigenous communities towards their healthcare actions. Doctors were considered to be "Russian shamans". Elderly people and women avoided medical care or taking medicines and following doctors' prescriptions, examina
tions and a whole treatment. At the same time, natives were imp
ressed by skills of medical doctors in fighting epidemic diseases.
However, the propaganda of visiting saunas and washing clothes remained ineffective especially among elderly people.
Vdovin complained that during the 1920s, it was impossible to explain to the Chukchees the importance of hygiene, because they did not see any neccessity for that. "Changing the sanitarian-hygie-nic living conditions of the Chukchees became possible only after removing them from yarangas to houses" (Vdovin 1965: 327).
Samokhin observed a number of anti-sanitarian living condi
tions around the Tungus of the Bodaibinskij rayon. He noticed, that conical tents were never ventilated or washed (or were washed rarely), underwear was washed rarely, their bodies were almost never washed (at the same time faces were washed every day, sometimes even with a soap). Inside conical tents there were lots of parasites and the Tungus fought against them only by catching them simply from clothes and hair. Soot, lack of free space and dirt were the usual stuff in conical tents (Samokhin 1929: 16, 18, 66).
Samokhin wrote also that the Tungus practically never saw doctors. But, suprisingly, among the Tungus the epidemic diseases were quite rare, only in 1925 there were smallpox in one village.
Samokhin also complained that there were only a few shamans who dealt with healing and sometimes people must ride 50 or 100 kilometres to reach them. (Samokhin 1929: 18-19)
Lipskaya-Valrond wrote in the mid-1920s that washing of clothes is a relatively new activity among the Nanays, because during earlier times all clothing was made from fish and animal skins and was never washed. Because of certain conservativeness
Art Leete 77 the Nanays started only recently to wash their clothes made from textile (Lipskaya-Valrond 1925: 158).
Sosunov, Novitski, Lappo, Aizin and other authors of the 1920s stressed the neccessity of organising medical services for the nort
hern peoples, practically nonexistant in the mid-1920s. Sosunov argued that because of several epidemic diseases (mainly typhus and smallpox), the northern peoples "were dying out rapidly before our eyes". Providing medical aid was a key for preventing northern peoples from dying out. (Sosunov 1925: 82-83; Ostrovskikh 1925:
134; Soveshchaniye 1925: 88, 90; Rasshirennyi 1927: 81-82;
Novitski 1928b: 71-72, 76)
In the 1930s, it was stressed that the Chukchee women started to visit a hospital of culture base for delivering babies and to follow the rules of hygiene (use soap1 and toothbrushes, wear European-style clothes and underwear) (Margolin 1937: 71-72).
As Orlova argues, Asian Eskimos started washing themselves in the second half of the 1930s. Orlova was not satisfied with the clothing of Eskimos. The most anti-hygienic parts of it were, according to Orlova, small panties of women, because these were never taken off, even in a hot polog. At the same time Orlova gave credits to the Eskimos for taking over (although slowly) Russian clothes and underwear. (Orlova 1941: 213-218)
Khazanovich described in detail how she introduced cutting and washing hair among Nganasans. At first the Nganasans were afraid that haircut makes people blind. Khazanovich also taught the Nganasans how to wash clothes, hands and dishes. All the time she must give a personal example and look after the following of these rules of hygiene. If she delivered to the Nganasan women colored textile shreds for dishwashing, at first they used those for
1 This statement is definitely incorrect. Anna Kerttula (2000: 24-25) writes that Siberian Yup'ik and Chukchee word for soap is so-op. This fact indicates that the Yup'ik and Chukchees knew the item even before the Soviet period and that they traded soap from American merchants as early as during Czarist times. For elderly generation of the Chukchees, the Russian term for soap - мыло - was unknown at the end of the 1980s.
78 Invasion of Materialism into the Soviet North..
ornamentation of their winter clothes. (Khazanovich 1939: 69-72, 74, 77-78)
Similarily, a sanitary situation of the Vakh River Khanties was considered bad by Lobachev (1934: 99). He described his impressions quite vividly:
"Houses do not satisfy even the most elementary sanitary rules.
Inside yurtas there can be found moisture, little light and air. A wind is continually blowing under the walls and roof and through the walls. Despite that, the atmosphere of winter yurta is unbearable due to dirt and sweat of people who are not familiar with sauna, smell of dogs, wet dresses, footwear, stockings, rags for the foot etc. In the holes of rough earthfloor dirt has become stiff and rots, leftover food, children's excrements, lungs' spittle and a nose-snot of the inhabitants of a yurta. [—] Enormous amount of fleas and lice are inhabiting yurtas" (Lobachev 1934:
102).
But Lobachev had not finished with his description of a kind of
"end of the world" situation. He had several additional complaints about the hygiene of the Khanties:
"Among the Khanties, a resting place is available for common use. Everybody who goes inside a yurta is allowed to lay down on any resting place without asking a permission. This supports spreading of trachoma. Of course, they do not change their pillowcases and the original color of pillowcase has disappeared under a thick layer of dirt and sweat. Things are also bad with bedclothes. [—] Despite that there is enough water available, people have a number of extremely anti-sanitarian skills and customs: a) the Khanties wash themselves rarely, b) kids under one year of age are not washed at all, c) usually they do not wash dishes, they only wipe these with "chivykh"2, d) as a rule, they do not wash their clothes, e) water is rarely used for washing face and
2 Chivykh - thin bast-like strips (shreds) of a birch or willow, the term is used among the Vakh and Vasyugan River Khanties (Tereshkin 1981:
2 Chivykh - thin bast-like strips (shreds) of a birch or willow, the term is used among the Vakh and Vasyugan River Khanties (Tereshkin 1981: