3 - Reindeer Herding in Siberia and the State

This paper examines the processes of collectivization and de-collectivization in two areas, each with different ecological features in the western Siberian Forest, and reveals how northern peoples have faced and dealt with state interventions depending on environmental conditions. The Northern peoples in the west of the Siberian Forest have managed to practice hunting-gathering, fishing, and reindeer herding and lived with high mobility. Although relations between northern peoples and the state have been considered from the points of view of politics and economics, this paper focuses on the local ecological and environmental factors. First, it shows the ways of life and mobilities of two settlements; one, a year-round movement with large-scale herds, and the other, a seasonal movement with small-scale herds, with the data collected by the author’s fieldwork from 2011 to 2018, objecting Khanty in Khanty-Mansi autonomous okrug and Yamal-Nenets autonomous okrug. Second, the paper looks at free range from the Soviet state intervention on these two settlements in the Soviet era and how they got through the collapse of the post-socialist society and after the post-socialist situation. Finally, it concludes that even though the government has controlled the mobility of reindeer herders and their possession of livelihood for centralized production, the production was closely connected to their way of life based on the local environment. Consequently, their production activity didn’t enter the current Russian market without municipal government or foreign capital support, and most remained subsistence.