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Revival and Survival in Iugra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Eszter Ruttkay-Miklián
Eszter Ruttkay-Miklián*
Affiliation:
Finno-Ugrian Department, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
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Extract

In the administrative usage of the Soviet Union, the category “minor peoples of the North” embraced 26 ethnic groups of the North and the Far East. According to 1989 data, the populations of these groups ranged from 179 to 34,190 and together totaled 181,500. In addition to being small in numbers, the common denominators of the groups include a northern location and dependence on such sources of livelihood as hunting, reindeer herding, and fishing. Furthermore, some of these peoples remain nomadic or semi-nomadic.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 2001 , pp. 153 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

2. “Vsesoiuznaia perepis' naseleniia 1989 goda,” Vestnik statistiki, No. 10, 1990, pp. 72–73. Seven Uralic peoples, the Saami, Khanty, Mansi, Nenets, Nganasans, Selkups, and Enets, are among the minor peoples of the North. In addition, the list includes 19 peoples speaking Eskimo-Aleut, Paleoasiatic, Tungusic, and Chukotko-Kamchatkan. In the mid-1990s, the government expanded this list by three or four peoples and in 2000 Vladimir Putin signed a decree establishing 45 “Minor Indigenous Peoples.” For some non-Russian positions on this issue, see, for example, Juha Janhunen, “Ethnic Death and Survival in the Soviet North,” Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne, Vol. 83, 1991, p. 111; Gail Fondahl, “The Status of Indigenous Peoples in the Russian North,” Post-Soviet Geography, Vol. 36, No. 4, 1995, pp. 215–216.Google Scholar

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28. Ibid., p. 227.Google Scholar

29. Status malochislennykh narodov Rossii, op. cit., p. 321.Google Scholar

30. See, for example, Pineva, “Sovremennaia ekonomicheskaia,” p. 80.Google Scholar

31. Vakhtin, “Native peoples,” p. 25.Google Scholar

32. Personal communication with Svetlana Popova. Budapest, 25 March 1997.Google Scholar

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37. Eva Schmidt's unpublished report from January 1997 on the operation of the Northern Khanty Folklore Archive of Beloiarskii.Google Scholar

38. “Chanten—Mansen—Nenzen. Leben im Schatten der Öl- und Erdgasindustrie Westsibiriens,” Pogrom. Zeitschrift für bedrohte Völker, No. 180, 1994/95, pp. 20–22.Google Scholar