The Production of Knowledge and Heritage as a Struggle Against Uncertainty: The Case of the Indigenous Peoples of Taimyr in the 1920s–1930s

• Published in: Sibirskie istoričeskie issledovaniâ no. 1; pp. 139 - 165
• Main Author: Mochalova, Maria A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Russian
• Published: 01-03-2024
• ISSN: 2312-461X; 2312-4628
• DOI: 10.17223/2312461X/43/10

The process of accumulating knowledge about the indigenous communities of Taimyr and the formation of museum collections is examined through the optics of uncertainty studies using the example of several cases covering the activities of the Committee of the North, the Krasnoyarsk Local History Museum (the State Museum of the Yenisei Region) and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in the first decades after the revolution. The main purpose of the study was an attempt to establish how the museification of household items and the study of traditional life practices recognized at the state level as “backward” and “archaic” in the logic of the Bolsheviks were supposed to bring victory over “backwardness”, the transition to a sedentary lifestyle, collectivization and modernization of the economy, integration of the indigenous population into Soviet structures. It seems true to assert that the power of experience created by a museum or other cultural institution was used to maintain the narrative of the imminent transition of indigenous Northerners to socialism, which was supposed to mark the predictability of life. Having studied the activities of the local history post of the Khatanga cultural base and the museum-expedition work of famous ethnographers and Northern historians B.O. Dolgikh and A.A. Popova, the author comes to the conclusion that the struggle with uncertainty took place in two dimensions: a) the very accumulation of information about nomads allowed the authorities to more effectively determine the ways and forms of territorial management; b) the representation of the cultures of the northern nomads in the “modernizing” discourse explicitly represented the path from the “primitive” state “on the verge of extinction” to socialism and “civilization”. The work also showed that the very signification of things and practices through their transformation into exhibits largely laid the foundations of the Soviet policy of working with indigenous heritage, which was developed in subsequent years. The research is based on archival materials of the Committee of the North in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) and publications devoted to expeditionary activities and the collection of Taimyr museum collections of the period under study. The author also expresses gratitude to her colleagues who worked on the research commissioned by the Russian Geographical Society “The history of the settlement of indigenous small-numbered peoples of Taimyr in the territories of the Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Combine and related infrastructure in the 1920s and 1980s”, project manager D.A. Funk, as well as A.S. Basov, S.O. Kovalsky and A.A. Pushin. The author declares no conflict of interests.