Academic literature on the topic 'Samoyedic peoples'

The article examines one of the most important traditions of the Samoyedic peoples, which complicates the mission of the Russian Orthodox Church — the consumption of fresh blood of a young deer. This tradition refers to the practice of sacrifice, so it cannot be fully accepted by the Church as there is a canonical prohibition against consuming blood. As a result, a problem arises that hinders a successful mission among the Samoyedic peoples and impedes the growth of the Church. Despite the ban, there is also a modern medical assessment on the use of animal blood by humans, according to which a certain benefit of blood as a nutritional element is recognized. The state, in turn, is interested in maintaining the traditional way of life of the Nenets. It can be stated that the ban penetrated into new Testament Christianity under the influence of Judeo-Christians. The purpose of this article is to examine the effectiveness of missionary activity among the Samoyed peoples and to identify the possibility of missionary reception in light of the cultural tradition. The authors propose a new strategy for missionary work among the Samoyed people, which will be feasible if the Council of Bishops will consider relaxing the canonical prohibitions for the Samoyeds.

Introduction: the article considers the system of Ob-Ugric games developing memory and thinking. It includes competitive entertainment using sticks, planks, cubes, puzzle toys, and rope-weaving existing in the traditional culture of the Khanty and Mansi peoples. The material on the game culture of the Nenets in a comparative aspect is also given as evidence of close Ugric-Samoyedic intercultural ties, Objective: to present a complex of the main types of traditional Ob-Ugric intellectual games as one of the directions of the game culture of the Khanty and Mansi people; to present their classification. Research materials: oral reports of informants and data from published sources. Results and novelty of the research: the author has collected, described, systematized and for the first time comprehensively presented material on traditional Khanty and Mansi games and toys that develop mental abilities. The typology of this type of games is developed. The work also touches upon the problems of actualization of the game culture of the Ob Ugrians and the reconstruction of forgotten games and considers Ugric-Samoyedic parallels.

This paper discusses the issues of the convergence process, which allows revealing the peculiarities of the interpenetration of customary law among some representatives of the Samoyed and Finno-Ugric peoples. The relevance of the study is due to the identification of the process of influence of customary legal views of the indigenous population of the Northern Russia on the formation of positive law. Objective: to study the process of approximation of customary legal norms, that existed among some Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic peoples both among themselves and with the customary legal elements of ethnic groups living in the neighborhood not excluding the interception between the norms of positive law and customary legal norms of Komi, Nenets, Khanty and Mansi. Results and scientific novelty: The work shows that the approximation of customary legal norms and institutions among these peoples occurred constantly both among themselves and with the customary legal elements of peoples living in territorial proximity with them. Usually legal institutions, which started to be realized in the 17th century, are distinguished. However, by the 19th century an integral system of legal customs is being developed, that was applied among the studied peoples. Attention is drawn to the fact that starting from the 17th century the Russian legislator “protected” the northern peoples from illegal influence and arbitrariness on the part of the officials. By the first half of the 19th century the legislator even sanctioned the most important principles of state policy in the “Charter on the Management of Foreigners”, where normatively not only the traditional forms of using patrimonial lands for indigenous peoples were fixed, but also the possibility of codification of customary law. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that empirical material has been used to identify the process of interception of customary legal norms and institutions among the studied peoples.

The article systematically defines and analyzes the project initiatives by the masters of the spoken word among three generations of the Mansi, Nents, and Khanty peoples. The first generation includes those born in the 1910s (Ivan Istomin — Nenets; Anna Konkova — Mansi; Taisiya Chuchelina — Khanty), the second one — those born in the 1930s (Yuvan Shestalov and Andrey Tarkhanov — Mansi; Leonid Laptsuy — Nenets; Mariya Vagatova and Roman Rugin — Khanty), and the third one — those born at the turn of the 1940s–1950s (Anna Nerkagi and Yuriy Vella — Nenets; Yeremey Aypin — Khanty). The authors of the article describe motivational environment for the creative endeavor of the spiritual leaders of indigenous minorities within the historical and cultural dynamics of the region they are biographically related to. In addition, the semiotic foundations of syncretism and traditionalism of the ethnosubjects’ fiction are presented in all the diversity of their written and action projects. This article indicates the transformation in the identities of the masters of the spoken word during the country’s transition from the Soviet to the post-Soviet experience, as well as difficulties and nature of their presence in writers’ associations among Russian authors. Along the historical axis, one can see growing creative endeavor, initiative, and national identity of the representatives of the indigenous minorities of the northern regions. The authors of the article consider Ugric-Samoyedic writers’ experience within the framework of contemporary understanding of historical poetics of Russian philology.

The paper describes a bronze plaque, made in Perm animal style by method of one-side casting. It depicts a rampant winged bear with its paws on the shoulders of a standing man. Being an accidental finding, the plaque comes from the northern regions of the Altai Territory (the village of Vysokaya Griva, Pankrushikhinskiy District). The paper features its composition and plot, which has a complex semantic content. Following other researchers, the authors consider such products a metal reflection of the three-part world structure, characteristic for the peoples at a certain level of social development, and a myth about the origin of the people. A comparative analysis with both neighboring and quite remote areas made it possible to assume that there were different totem animals, ancestors of the major ethnic groups of different Finno-Ugrian peoples. Thus, a bird of prey was the most typical totem animal for the western territories representing a Finnish-speaking population that lived in the European part of Russia. The bird was both the ancestor and the guardian spirit of the ethnic group. A bear was the totem for the eastern territories of the Finno-Ugrian peoples living in Siberia, in the Asian Russia, that represented the Ugrian-Samoyedic population. It is evidenced by the absence of bears on the plaques with encoded myths about the origin of the kindred in Western European regions, and on the contrary, a practically complete absence of birds on similar plaques in the Asian regions. The finding is published for the first time.

In the Finno-Permian languages, the words denoting ‘salt’ are loans (from an Indo-European language of the Proto-Baltic or Iranian groups), while in the North Samoyedic languages, they are later innovations (a word meaning ‘white’). Their appearance can be associated with the spread of cattle breeding and agriculture among the respective peoples. The situation is similar in the Ugric languages and in Selkup, but the sources of words for ‘salt’ are different there. The Khanty (*sФl-nк) and Northern Mansi (solwкl) words for ‘salt’ were borrowed from the Permian *sЫl ‘salt’, or, more precisely, from its derivatives (compare Udmurt s2lal), between the first half and mid-first millennium AD, which mainly reflects the hunting and fishing lifestyle of the Ob-Ugrians before and during the contact (the word was borrowed to denote salt as a preservative from the Permians who were familiar with agriculture and cattle breeding). In the Mansi dialects except for the Northern dialect and in the Selkup language (in most dialects), apparently, the older word for ‘salt’ was kept (Mans. *CЁkkг ~ Selk. *њяq < *ќяq) going back to the Proto-Ugric times (there is a Hungarian parallel: szik ‘swamp; salt marsh, ground soda outlets’) when the Ugrians were familiar with the producing economy. Its only possible source may be the Yeniseian *VкЭ ‘salt’, which is of a Sino-Caucasian origin, or a word of some Sino-Caucasian language, since one can assume that this term has also penetrated into the languages of the peoples of the Far East. The Hungarian word for ‘salt’ (sв < *VaU) has a relatively late origin and is most likely to have been borrowed by the ancient Hungarians from the Adyghe languages (*ќкʁwк) before the Hungarian land-taking (between the fifth and ninth centuries).

The article discusses the history of the hydronyms Shchugor, Patok, Glubnik, Torgovaya, Volokovka, Pyatidyrka, and Semidyrka, i.e. the names of the Shchugor River and its several tributaries of the first and second orders. Presently, these names mostly have a “Russian” phonetic appearance, however, their historical variants suggest that some of them may be a result of semantic adaptation of pre-Russian names. The authors suggest that the hydronyms Pyatidyrka and Semidyrka originated from Nenets names with a composite determinant -dyrma, expressing recurrence and place of action. In other examples, there is a parallel coexistence of several similar versions of one hydronym belonging to different languages, cf.: Russian Torgovaya, Komi-Zyryan Törgövöy-yu, Nenets Menyaylava. This can be regarded as a testimony to the past and current contacts of the Russian population with indigenous peoples — speakers of Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic languages. In some cases, the older pre-Russian form of a hydronym might be missing, i.e. replaced by a Russian-language variant without any trace of the substrate name. For example, the Komi-Zyryan hydronym Pyzhenyuts (from Komi-Zyryan pyzh ‘boat,’ literally “River on which boats can sail”) was replaced in the Old Russian period by the name Padun and, later, by the name Patok, both of the latter hydronyms being originally Russian. The article also analyzes native Russian names for which the most probable motivation can be established based on geographic data. Incidentally, the traditional interpretation of the name of the river Glubnik as “deep river” or “river with deep places” is called into question, since such an interpretation does not correspond to physical and geographical features of the river, the authors interpret the name as “River flowing from the depths of the taiga.” All linguistic observations and etymological interpretations of hydronyms presented in the article are based on the analysis of a large array of cartographic sources of the 16th–20th centuries; finally examples are given of the distortion of the spelling of the hydronyms of the Shchugorsk area of the Urals on the maps of various times.

Mid-nineteenth-century Russian ethnography used fiction, artistry and education to enlighten the masses. Maksimov’s One Year in the North became one of the first examples of this new style of ethnography. Maksimov constructs ‘cultural masks’ regarding northern people (Samoyeds, Lapps, Karels, Zyrians). His impressions are developed out of long traditions and personal characterisations, such as: ‘little brothers’, blacksmiths, tricksters, ‘friends of deer and dogs’. The most interesting positions on his ‘evolutionary ladder’ are the first and the last, which belong to the Samoyeds and the Zyrians. Samoyeds find themselves partly outside the human space, but they are most diverse in the aspect of artistry. Zyrians, on the other hand, constitute a concern to their well-being. Maksimov’s biases are typical for this period of ethnographic development. Although Maksimov appreciates the spoken word, his colonial discourse replaced it by repulsion for Finno- Ugric languages. Artistry in the text of ‘ethnographic fiction’ enriches scientific discourse.

The article is devoted to the poorly studied problem of the origin of the name Yuraki, which the Russians, as well as the Enets and Nganasans, called the group of the Samoed-speaking population that wandered along the northern outskirts of Western Siberia in the 17th — first half of the 20th century. On the basis of published and unpublished archival materials, information from the works of Russian and foreign scientists, as well as dictionaries of the peoples of the North, we attempted to identify the ethnic composition of the Yuraks, the boundaries of their settlement, determine the chronological framework for the emergence and existence of this name and clarify its origin. The research has resulted in a number of reasonable conclusions and assumptions. The name Yuraki appeared in the 17th century, when the tax policy of the tsarist administration in the north of Western Siberia provoked active resistance of certain groups of the nomadic Samoyed population. Russians called the Yoraks / Yuraks nomadic in the deep tundra, who did not pay a permanent tax, tundra and forest Nenets and Enets, as well as a mixed Nenets-Enets group. This name comes from the Nenets word Yor meaning "depth". By the 19th century, the Nenets of the Yenisei province began to be called Yuraks, regardless of the tax system. In the Soviet household documents of the Dolgan-Nenets National District, this name appeared until the middle of the 20th century.

The article gives a general view of the modern Koibal dialect of the Khakass language. The history of studying Koibal speech includes several stages. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the first evidence of the people living at the mouth of the Abakan River and their language, was collected. Some interesting records were made by G. Miller, P. Pallas, G. Spassky, some other scientists and travelers. Comparing the people under study with other peoples inhabiting the Minusinsk Hollow at that time allowed defining quite a large number of peoples in this area (including Koibals) to be Samoyeds speaking languages with one common property: these are different versions of the Turkic type language. In other words, in that period already, the assimilation of Samoyeds languages by Turkic languages was underway. The article then provides an assessment of the main work of an outstanding Finno-Ugrist and Altaist Mathias-Alexander Castren in linguistic Turkology − a brief grammar of Koibal and Karagas dialects (published in 1857), with notes made by the prominent orientalist Nikolai Katanov to the text by Kastren taken into account. In the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries, the information on the Koibal dialect and other linguistic formations of this part of Southern Siberia was systematized by L. P. Potapov, N. A. Baskakov in the Khakass-Russian dictionary (1953) and an essay by S. I. Weinstein. Later, when the study of South Siberian languages was put on a serious scientific and organizational basis, the Koibal dialect, like other territorial varieties of the Khakass language, was described in sufficient detail by V. G. Karpov, M. I. Borgoyakov, D. F. Patachakova, O. P. Anzhzhanova, in Grammatik and the Khakass-Russian dictionary (2006). Finally, some lexical and grammatical phenomena in modern Koibal dialect are considered, and a scheme (model) of language interaction that resulted in the Koibal dialect of the Khakass language is introduced.

This thesis examines strategies and practices, in Soviet ethnographic research, concerning terminologies for and classifications of what in research texts are conventionally called “supernatural beings” in the world views of the Samoyedic peoples. The question is put whether there are any general rules for the terminology used by scholars for these kinds of beings. The thesis also explores claims that a conventional ethnographic terminology, consisting of technical terms such as gods, goddesses, spirits, owners etc., leads to misinterpretations of the indigenous conceptions under study. By presenting, analysing and discussing Soviet scholars’ strategies and practices in this regard, the thesis is a contribution to the ongoing debate among historians of religions on the use of scientific terminology for beings in different world views. It is also, to a limited extent, a source critical investigation of Soviet research on the religions of the Samoyedic peoples. In chapter 2 the international scholarly debate on terminology for so called supernatural beings is summarized and discussed. The principles for constructing concepts in general are also delineated, using prototype theory and a model for polythetic definition. In chapter 3 a survey over the purposes, main fields of interest, and theoretical and methodological development of Soviet ethnography is presented as an essential background to the investigation of individual ethnographic texts. Chapter 4 and 5 constitute the empirical part of the thesis, with a presentation and analysis of Soviet ethnographic descriptions of beings in the world views of the Samoyedic speaking Nenets, Enets, Sel’kup and Nganasan. Since findings on Nganasan world view in Soviet ethnography was seen as particularly viable for reconstructions of proposed primitive communist thought, matriarchal society, the origin of religion, and mankind’s development of beliefs in “spirits” and “gods”, chapter 5 is solely dedicated to the research on the Nganasan. In chapter 6 the result of the empirical part of the study is confronted with the questions put in chapter 1, as well as the theoretical and methodological conclusions of chapter 2. It is concluded that there is no typical Marxist-Leninist terminology for “supernatural beings”, but that certain developments regarding terminology and classifications in Soviet ethnography on the Samoyeds can be detected. These developments consists of (1) a growing awareness among ethnographers of the distinction between indigenous, emic and etic terminology – an awareness which makes their descriptions become more detailed and closer to the Samoyedic sources. (2) From the 1960s one can trace an ever deepening reliance on Marxist-Leninist theory in Soviet Samoyedology. In accordance with Marxist ideas about primeval society as matriarchal and non-religious, ethnographers focused more and more on (and discovered more) female beings in Samoyedic world views. They also interpreted the “beings” under study as remnants of a primeval materialistic world view and proposed explanations of their development from “natural” to “supernatural beings”. It is also concluded that there are no general rules for scientific terminology. Technical terms are chosen in accordance with the varying aims and theoretical standpoints of different scholars. Whether the terms are appropriate or not, depends on their transparency.