the yakuts - the unz review

The task of getting the Muslims to conform tostandard Soviet culture has been much greater andhas involved much more drastic methods than similarefforts with respect to other nationalities whose cul-ture was either European or near-European, or soprimitive as to offer no serious resistance. Theeffects on the Soviet Muslims of cultural regimenta-tion and their segregation from their fellow Muslimsoutside the USSR have undoubtedly been consider-able, but they are still very far from being decisive.Islam has certainly not been superseded by com-munism as an ideological concept, but there aresigns of a fusion of the two in the minds of Muslim

intellectuals—a development which is not likely tobe welcomed by the Communist authorities.

Muslim cultural particularism in relation to othergroups, and most of all in relation to the Russians,undoubtedly exists. Whether in a political sensethis particularism can be said to amount to nation-alism is doubtful. Many factors militate againstthis—geographical separation, racial and linguisticdifferences, and most of all the uncompromising at-titude of the Soviet regime. This last, however, mayeventually be affected by the emergence of a power-ful China abutting on three of the Soviet Muslimrepublics over a boundary of 1,800 miles.

The Yakuts

By Violet Couolly

T_ l _ h e

.he Sino-Soviet conflict, Chinese territorialclaims against the Soviet Union, and the RedGuards' frenzied anti-Soviet agitation in Heilung-kiang Province of Manchuria, often within earshotof the Soviet border city of Blagoveshchensk, haveinevitably quickened interest in the state of affairsin the vast lands of the Soviet Far Eastern Region,stretching from the southern Amur River frontier far

Miss Conotty was a fellow in Soviet Studies at theLondon School of Slavonic Studies. She is nowa free-lance writer and reviewer, and her latestbook, Beyond the Urals, will be published this yearby Oxford University Press.

northward to the Arctic Ocean. Until the most re-cent period, this huge territory of over six millionsquare kilometers had been virtually closed to West-ern visitors, and the very restricted facilities nowgranted to selected travellers to visit such places asYakutsk or Khabarovsk still leave most of the areawithin the banned travel zone. Thus, almost the onlyavailable sources of information about this regionand its peoples are Soviet ones, which are excep-tionally difficult to check under the circumstances.

The Soviet Far Eastern Region is now divided intoseven large administrative-territorial divisions: theYakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic(YASSR), Khabarovsk krai, the Maritime krai,

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Amur oblast (province), Kamchatka oblast, Ma-gadan oblast, and Sakhalin oblast. The region con-tains the homelands of many small indigenouspeoples of Tungus-Manchu, Paleosiberian (Paleo-asiatic) or Mongol origin, who before the coming ofthe Russians in the 17th century roamed the tundraand the taiga, undisturbed by Western penetration.Many of these small peoples have already lost theiridentity and become assimilated to the Russian orother more numerous nationalities surroundingthem. Where they survive, their rate of growth isvery slow, and in all cases it is exceeded by the in-flux of Russian immigrants, so that it seems only aquestion of time before they will be completelysubmerged.1 This would be in line with the aims ofthe current CPSU Program (1961), which welcomesthe trend towards assimilation of non-Russianpeoples and looks forward to the time when "com-plete unity" will be achieved on the basis of aculture common to all the Soviet peoples.2 In viewof the numerical and cultural predominance of theRussians in the multinational Soviet state, thisprocess can only result in a devious form of Russifi-cation, however strongly the party ideologues mayprotest their interest in the "free development" ofthe national cultures and languages of the peoplesof the USSR.

T. his study is specifically concerned with theYakuts of the Soviet Far East, who are relative new-comers to the region and are not regarded by theSoviets as belonging to any of the above-mentionedindigenous Tungus or Paleosiberian groups of"small peoples of the North." They are in manyways a more distinctive group than any of theirneighbors. For more than a millenium, they havebeen settled in a compact mass in the enormousarea known as Yakutia, which is about six times thesize of France and the largest unit in the Soviet FarEast. They are more advanced than the reindeer-breeding Tungus, the Yukagirs, or the Chukchi,their neighbors. The distinguished anthropologistM. A. Czaplicka, who spent a year among the nativesof northern Siberia, described the Yakuts as "thearistocrats of the tundra . . . they are at a much

higher stage of culture, both material and intellec-tual, than their neighbors.""

Historically, racially, and linguistically, the Ya-kuts differ significantly from the rest of the mosaicof peoples in the Soviet Far East. Their origin andthe origins of their language were long enveloped inmystery, and indeed are still somewhat of an enigmato Soviet scholars. It is now generally agreed thatthe Yakuts are a Turkish people—though they neverhave been Muslims—and that their language isbased on a mixture of Turkish with strong elementsof Mongolian and Tungus, plus some hitherto un-defined pre-Turkish elements that puzzle philolo-gists. How this islet of Turkish people found itsway to the land of the reindeer Tungus and othercompletely non-Turkish peoples of the middle Lenabasin is still the subject of controversy amongSoviet historians and anthropologists. From theirstudy of Yakut folklore and archeology, Sovietscholars are now mostly of the opinion that theYakuts, during the 10th-13th centuries, migrated inseveral waves from the Baikal region and furthersouth from the fringes of the Kazakh-Kirghiz lands,up along the Lena and its tributaries, pushing theformer tribal occupants of the taiga northward andeastward before them. The name Yakut is in fact aRussian adaptation of the Tungus name for thesepeople. In their own tongue, the Yakuts call them-selves Sakha, a name deriving from their Baikalancestors.4

In recent years, Yakutia has become extremelyimportant to the Soviet Union economically owingto its rich deposits of such valuable minerals asgold, diamonds, tin, mica (phlogopite), wolfram,and mercury, in addition to large reserves of coaland iron, oil and gas. The development and ex-ploitation of these resources as a result of Russiangeological research is only one facet of the historyof Russian influence in Yakutia. This influence hasbeen at work now for over three hundred years andhas transformed the face of the country and itspeople.

The Russian Conquest

Little is known about the Yakuts before theRussian conquest of the Far Eastern region in theearly 17th century. They were then settled in the

1 Yuri Mironenko, "Population and Territorial Division,"Studies on the Soviet Union, No. 4, 1962, p. 62; A. A. Isupov,Natsionalnyi sostav naseleniia SSSR (National Compositionof the Population of the USSR), Moscow, 1964, pp. 39-42.

2 Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1961.

» M. A. Czaplicka, My Siberian Year, London, 1916, p. 99.1 M. G. Levin, A. P. Potapov (Edg.), Narody Sibirii (Peoples

of Siberia), Moscow, 1956, pp. 269-70.

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lands between the Lena, Amga, and Aldan rivers.The Cossacks, the spearhead of the Russian advance,reached Yakutia via the river Lena and establisheda fortified post (ostrog) at Yakutsk, the site of thepresent capital, in 1632. A Russian military gov-ernor was appointed in 1640. In keeping with theirusual practice in the conquered Siberian lands, theRussians immediately exacted a fur tribute (Yasak)from the Yakuts, and the severity of this forcedlevy, as well as the attempt to carry out a localcensus in 1649, caused many risings against Russianrule before the end of the century. These risingswere harshly suppressed, and the Yakuts eventuallylearned the hard way that resistance to the Russianswas futile. They either settled down to live withthem peacefully or fled beyond the Russian strongarm to remote parts of the tundra and taiga. Animportant element in the Russians' subjection of theYakut people was their success in winning over thetribal aristocracy, or toiony, to their side and usingthem as agents to run the country.5

The Yakut population in the mid-17th century,soon after the Russian conquest, has been estimatedat about 26,000. Russian colonization remainedsmall until political deportees began to arrive inthe 19th century. The Yakuts at this time were semi-settled folk. They had large herds of cattle andhorses but did not keep reindeer like their nomadicneighbors. They knew the use of iron and wereskilled craftsmen in wood and metal. The Russiansintroduced them to bread, which they had not knownbefore as they did not grow grain, and in spite ofthe extremely harsh Yakutian climate and the per-mafrost terrain, they soon learned to grow a littlegrain and potatoes. The Russian presence exerciseda favorable influence on the local economy and cul-ture—a fact which Soviet sources do not fail to pointout. The Soviet ethnographer 0. V. Yonova, for ex-ample, expresses the view that "the union of theYakut krai to Russia had great progressive signifi-cance for Russia and Yakutia": for Russia it wasprimarily of economic significance, while for theYakuts it helped, through Russian elimination ofintertribal feuding, to consolidate them into "aunited people," expedited the development of theirproductive forces, and gave them membership in apowerful, centralized state with an incomparablyhigher technique of production.0 The Yakuts werequick to learn new domestic arts from the Russians,

HnyTKH B CTapHHHMx ranrwflxax H MBXOBMX mannnx (pwc. xv.i. M. M. HocoBa)

Yakuts in traditional fur coats and hats. Reproduced from S. A.Tokarev Etnografiia Narodov SSSR (Ethnography of the People ofthe USSR), Moscow University Publishing House, 1958, p. 465.

to imitate their dress, and to adopt from them toolsand implements that were better than the primitiveones they had been accustomed to using.

There was also a certain amount of "Yakutiza-tion" of the Russians. Yakuts taught the Russianstheir hunting and trapping skills, how to live in theirextremely severe climate, and also their language,which some Russians—we are told—gradually adop-ted instead of their own. Intermarriage was notuncommon, and there was no "color barrier" al-though the superior status of the Russians was cer-tainly taken for granted here, as elsewhere in theRussian Empire. Indeed, Dr. Terence Armstronggoes so far as to maintain that probably nowhereelse in the Russian dominions was the culture ofthe conquerors so strongly influenced, and evensubmerged, by that of a conquered ethnic group asin Yakutia.7

The darker side of Russian relations with theindigenous peoples of the Far Eastern region was

s Ibid., pp. 270-71.«In S. A. Tokarev (Ed.), Istoriia Yakutskoi ASSR (History

of the Yakutian ASSR), Vol. II, Moscow, 1957, pp. 40-42.7 Russian Settlement in the North, London, Cambridge

University Press, 1965, pp. 96-97.

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described by a Russian "merchant and owner ofgold mines," N. L. Latkin, in a late 19th-centuryaccount of conditions in the Yeniseiskaia guberniia,which could also apply to Yakutia:

The history of Siberia shows clearly the merciless ex-ploitation of natives by all who are in a position to do so,from the bread shop managers, rich peasants, Cossacks,traders and local clergy to the duly-constituted authori.ties.8

Latkin was writing in the 1880's, but his words givea general picture of Russian behavior in Yakutiafrom the 17th century to the end of the Tsarist re-gime.9 There were exceptions to this sort of con-duct, of course—most notable of all, the religiousand political deportees who began to arrive in con-siderable numbers in the middle of the 19th century.

The Role of Political Exiles

Yakutia was chosen as a place of exile becauseof its remoteness, harsh climate, and difficult livingconditions. Highly educated Russians and Polesdeported by the Tsarist regime for political reasonswere dumped in obscure corners of Yakutia alongwith simple peasant exiles like the fanatical Skoptsy(an Orthodox sect which practiced self-castration).They made up an odd company, but in their severalways they rendered great services to the Yakutpeople. In particular, the scholars and scientistsdevoted their energies to studying the language,customs, and archeology of the country, and toexploring the physical geography of many of itslesser known areas. E. K. Pekarski compiled the firstdictionary of the Yakut language between 1899 and1930, completing this monumental work more thana decade after the Bolshevik Revolution. The YakutMuseum was founded in Yakutsk by exiles in 1891,and E. M. Yaroslavski, later a famous Bolshevikparty historian, was its curator. The Polish exileV. Seroshevski made an intensive 12-year study(1880-1892) of the north Yakutian districts ofVerkhoian and Kolyma, the Russian GeographicalSociety recognizing the value of his ethnographicalresearch by publishing his work, Yakuty, in 1896.

8 N. L. Latkin, Yeniseiskaia guberniia, yeio proshloe i na-stoiashchee (Yeniseiskaia Province, Its Past and Present), St.Petersburg, 1892, quoted in Armstrong, op. cit., pp. 118-19.

9 Tsarist laws governing relations with the native populationswere on the whole liberal. They forbade the sale of alcoholto the natives and made other provisions to protect the latterfrom the rapacity and brutality of officials and private traders.But the laws were easy to evade in view of the remoteness ofthe region and the laxity and venality of many officials.

Though subject to certain official restrictions,Russian exiles also participated in the so-calledSiberian (i.e., Yakutian) Expedition of 1894-96,organized and financed by the rich mine owner I. M.Sibiriakov, which produced important scientific re-sults in the fields of Yakut customary law, eco-nomics, and primitive religions, thanks largely tothe contributions of Pekarski, the distinguished an-thropologist V. G. Bogoraz-Tan, and Vladimir Yok-helson (all political exiles). In this and otherscientific expeditions, the Yakuts cooperated veryusefully with the Russians, guiding them throughdifficult and unknown areas and elucidating localmyths and legends. One of the most interesting ofthese early study projects was the Russian-AmericanEthnographical Expedition through Chukotka(1900-02), organized by the American Museum ofNatural Sciences, in which both Bogoraz andYokhelson again took part.10 These two politicalexiles also were instrumental in stimulating theemerging young Yakut intelligentsia and encourag-ing the stirrings of national consciousness.

The industrious Skoptsy and other sectarian peas-ant exiles made their contribution in the field ofagriculture, particularly in the development of grainand vegetable production. The best results wereobtained in the Olekminsk and Viliui districts,where the methods introduced by the exiles werequickly imitated by the Yakuts and applied else-where. The Yakuts learned how to use new imple-ments and to clear woodlands, and large numberswho had previously grown only hay for their ani-mals now took up arable farming on a broaderscale.11 The development of the gold-mining indus-try in Yakutia and the neighboring Irkutsk guber-niia created a growing market for dairy and grainproducts from the Lena-Viliui districts, benefitingboth Yakut and Russian farmers. There were alsoskilled Yakut joiners and carpenters who helped toadjust construction to the peculiar permafrost soil.

Cultural and Economic Progress

During the last century of Tsarist rule, the cul-tural horizons of the Yakuts were considerably en-larged. The people were now converted, at leastformally, to Orthodox Catholicism, although the oldShamanistic rites were often still practiced in thehome. Church services in Yakut were started in

10 Tokarev, op. cit., pp. 362-63.11 Ibid., pp. 272-74.

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Yakutsk in 1859 and extended later to many coun-try districts. Some religious books were publishedin the Yakut language, but Russian was as a rule thelanguage of instruction in Church schools for Rus-sians and Yakuts alike. In spite of the lethargy andinferior educational and moral quality of manyteachers and local officials, the network of schoolsfor Yakut and Russian peasants grew slowly butsteadily throughout the country. In remote places,schools were often started by devoted Russian exileswith no assistance from the government. Nativeliteracy rose from 0.7 percent according to the 1897census to 2 percent in 1917, but it should be notedthat these figures included the Chukchi and Tun-gus, Yukagirs and Lamuts, among whom literacyscarcely existed. The literacy figure for the entireRussian Empire in 1917 was only 21 percent.

Commercially, the country was also developing.The Yakuts were proving themselves keen traderseven in competition with the Russians. The lucra-tive carrying trade by pack-horse across the Yaku-tian tracks linking Siberia with the Pacific via Ya-kutsk was largely in their hands, and we hear ofYakut merchants sending representatives to Chinato buy tea, which was imported via the ports ofAyan and Okhotsk. They also imported goods fromAmerica and elsewhere via Ayan and Nelkan in the1880's—because it was cheaper to import by thesesea routes thin overland from Russia—and in spiteof the miserable state of the roads leading fromthese ports to the interior of the country, trade withChina and America was brisk.12 Thus, Yakutia atthe end of the 19th century was less isolated fromthe outside world than it is today.

From the early years of the 20th century, therewas evidence among the young Yakut intelligentsiaof a growth of national consciousness, which ex-pressed itself in native literature and poetry and inwidespread hostility to the iniquities of Russiantaxation, land tenure, and undemocratically electedinstitutions. The establishment in 1905 of the"Union of Yakuts" embracing many different in-digenous groups—princelings (toyony), merchants,intelligentsia, and businessmen—was a sign of thetimes. Its aims were to establish the civil and eco-nomic rights of its members; to obtain recognitionof all native lands occupied by the state, monas-teries, churches, and deportees without the agree-ment of the indigenous owners as being nativeproperty; and to secure separate Yakut representa-tion in the State Duma, the removal of police con-

trol over native social institutions, and the urgentenforcement of the statute on local self-govern-ment.13 The Tsarist government arrested the leadersof the Union but were unable to stifle nationalistsentiment in Yakutsk and the chief Yakut settle-ments. This was a genuine native movement, notinfluenced to any significant extent by Bolshevikemigres. Contemporary Soviet historians are in-clined to dismiss the Yakut Union as a "bourgeois-liberal" movement which did not have the "supportof the broad national masses." The charge has littlesubstance. It is like accusing Ireland's Charles Par-nell, John Dillon or John Redmond of not havingbeen "national leaders" because they did not belongto the working class.

Yakutia Under Soviet Rule

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 found Yakutiaadvancing socially, culturally and economically inspite of immense problems still awaiting solution.Four years of bitter civil war had to be fought outbefore Soviet power was firmly established and theremnants of the White (Kolchak) forces routed in1922-23. A Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Re-public (YASSR) was then set up within roughly thesame frontiers as the old Tsarist Yakutsk oblast, andits constitution was approved by the Supreme Sovietin 1923.

The new governmental setup in Yakutia was basedon Soviets and local party organs and was thus asimulacrum of government administration through-out the Soviet Union, taking no account of peculiarlocal conditions. This remains the form of govern-ment obtaining in Yakutia today. The YASSR is aconstituent part of the Russian Socialist FederatedSoviet Republic (RSFSR), and according to thehierarachical principle of Soviet government, allYakut laws and regulations are subject to the con-trol of both the governing bodies of the RSFSR andthe highest all-Union state organs. Thus, the term"autonomous," in the Soviet usage, is not to beidentified with the Oxford Dictionary definition of"self-governing," with which it has little in com-mon. The Soviet "autonomous republics" represent,in effect, a second-class type of political unit de-vised by the Bolsheviks to compensate the smallernational groups, such as the Tatars, Bashkirs, andKarelians (there are now 16 such groups in all),which were not raised to full republican status on a

12 Ibid., pp. 278-79. 13 Ibid., pp. 380-83.

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par with the Russians or the Ukrainians. ProfessorLeonard Schapiro has denned the constitutionalstatus of the autonomous republics as follows:

Within the Union republics there is a farther division,that of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, whichis subordinated to the Union republic of the territory ofwhich it forms part. . . . Autonomous republics are notawarded the "right" of secession by the Constitution.Nor do autonomous republics enjoy, even on paper, theright to conduct their own foreign relations or to main-tain their own armed forces. Each autonomous republichas its own Constitution which requires approval by theUnion republic to which it is subordinated.14

Accordingly, the YASSR must submit all its legis-lation, including budget and taxation arrangements,to the RSFSR for approval. Economically, it isdependent on Moscow for capital to develop its re-sources, and decisions regarding specific capital al-locations for one project or another are also highlycentralized. Development of Yakutia's major nat-ural resources under the Soviet regime has alwaysbeen directed from "without"—first, by the notori-ous Dalstroi of NKVD (Moscow's concentrationcamp system in the Far East), and latterly by theall-Union or RSFSR economic ministries in Moscow.

The inhabitants of the YASSR, as Soviet citizens,are represented in the bicameral Supreme Soviet ofthe USSR, electing one deputy for every 300,000 ofthe population to the Council of the Union, and asone of the Soviet autonomous republics they alsosend eleven deputies to the Soviet of Nationalities.Owing to the fact that many Yakuts have adoptedRussian family names, it is usually impossible todistinguish Russians from Yakuts in the lists ofmembers of these delegations. However, a recentlypublished list of the YASSR delegation to the all-Union Council of Nationalities in 1966 specifies thenationalities of the delegates, showing that five wereRussians, four were Yakuts, and two were Evenkis(Tungus).15 At the local government level, accord-ing to visitors to Yakutsk during 1965-67, Yakutswere in charge of many important posts. Thus, themayor of Yakutsk was a Yakut in 1965, as were thePresident of the Republic (a woman), the Rectorof the University, and some of the chief soviet offi-cials.

Most important of all the instruments of rulingpower is the highly centralized apparatus of theCPSU, represented in the YASSR by the Yakut

Obkom or Provincial Committee. The national (orautonomous) republics do not have their own na-tional party organizations, but only branches of theall-Union party; thus, officials of any nationalitychosen by the party can be switched from one re-public to another. In fact, many of the most impor-tant posts in republican party organs are frequentlyoccupied by Great Russians from Moscow with littleor no local connections. All this indicates that thedegree of self-government allowed to the YASSR isextremely limited.

The Population

The Yakuts form the largest and most compactnative ethnic group in the Soviet Far East today,though their number is relatively minute comparedto the Russians. They are still the only northernpeople not outnumbered by the Russians on theirown home ground; however, at the present rate ofRussian immigration, they also should soon be over-taken, as so many of the other small national minori-ties in the USSR have been. This trend is clearlyshown in the accompanying table of populationchanges between the 1926 and 1959 censuses.

In 1926, the Yakuts constituted 82.3 percent ofthe population of the republic; the Russians, 10.43percent; the Evenki and Eveni, 4.08 percent; andthe remaining 3 percent consisted of scatteredgroups of nomadic Yukagirs, Chukchi, and smallpockets of Chinese and Koreans. By the time ofthe last census in 1959, however, the situation had

Population of the YASSR

1926 1959

TotalYakutsRussiansPeoples of the North:

Evenki (Tungus)\Eveni j

UkrainiansTatarsBelorussians

289,000235,926"30,000b

13,000

—

487,343226,053 a

215,32813,6919,5053,537

12,1825,1722,548

14 Leonard Schapiro, Government and Politics of the SovietUnion, London, 1965, p. 104.

16 Deputaty Verkhovnovo Soveta SSSR. Sedmoi Sozyv.Deputaty Soveta Soiuza i Soveta Natsionalostei, Moscow, 1966.

a The 1926 and 1959 figures for the Yakuts are not entirelycomparable owing to minor changes in the YASSR boundariesduring this period. In the northwest some territory was trans-ferred to the Irkutsk oblast, while the YASSR gained otherterritory in the Olekminsk area.

b This figure includes Ukrainians and Belorussians.

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radically changed. As a result of the immigrationof large numbers of Russians to man the new miningsettlements and other enterprises, the Yakut propor-tion had fallen to 46.4 percent, while that of theRussians had risen to 44.2 percent. Official statisticsno longer mention Chinese or Koreans in Yakutia.They have most likely been deported or, if not So-viet citizens, were expelled during the transfer ofboth groups from the southern areas of the SovietFar East before and during the last war.

The Yakuts are very unevenly distributed through-out the territory of the republic. About nine-tenthsof them are concentrated in the central areas, chieflyin the Yakutsk and Viliui districts, while the popu-lation is very thinly spread in the north.16 Thegrowth of the urban population has been consider-able in the last forty years: official Soviet statisticsshow a rise from two percent in 1926 to 17 percentin 1959, and this trend continues. It is most strik-ingly reflected in the population of Yakutsk, whichgrew from 11,000 in 1926 to 74,000 in 1959 and100,000 in 1966, and which now represents aboutone-seventh of the total population of the republic.The former tiny hamlet of Nezametnyi (now Al-dan ), which is the center of the southern Yakut gold-mining industry, is also growing rapidly (thepopulation had reached 12,000 by the 1959 censusand has probably risen since by several thousand).

Education and Culture

The Soviet period in Yakutia has seen a big leapforward in literacy, the spread of schools, and theestablishment of many new cultural-scientific bodies.There has also been a considerable development ofYakut art and literature, albeit within the restric-tions imposed by Marxist ideology and the rules of"socialist realism." Soviet sources dealing withthese developments tend to obscure the national-cultural level already reached by the Yakuts priorto the Bolshevik Revolution and to depict them ashaving been wholly illiterate—a picture which, asindicated earlier, misrepresents the actual situation.Though literacy was indeed very low and concen-trated among the higher social classes, the develop-ment of Yakut culture certainly antedates the Sovietperiod.

The Yakut language is now written in Cyrillicletters. Soviet scholars originally devised a special

form of writing for it in 1923, but this was arbitrar-ily replaced by the Latin alphabet for both Yakutand the other Turkish languages of the Soviet Unionin 1929, and an equally arbitrary switch was madeto Cyrillic in 1937. The Yakuts in 1959 were 96.3percent literate, and a creditable percentage of thepopulation—164 per 1,000—could boast secondaryor higher education. Boarding schools or "inter-nats" have been established to meet the needs of thenomadic reindeer-breeding and trapping people ofthe northern areas (some 412 were reported to existin 1954 1 |) and no doubt serve a useful purpose inproviding education where this would otherwise bevery difficult. In the beginning, however, parentsstrongly objected to parting with their children, feel-ing that they would thus lose touch with their tra-ditional way of life and skills and be brought up inan alien ideological atmosphere.

Primary education is now given entirely in Yakutand secondary education in Yakut and Russian.There is an increasing trend among the smallernationalities of the Soviet Union to regard Russianas their mother tongue, and this trend is apparentamong the Yakuts, though it is still relatively slight.Thus, only 0.5 percent of the Yakuts had adoptedRussian instead of Yakut by 1939, whereas theproportion rose to 2.4 percent by 1959. The trendis more marked among Yakuts living outside theirhomeland in other areas of the RSFSR where Rus-sian influence is paramount.18

Although only a rudimentary Yakut written lan-guage and literature existed before 1917, there isnow a growing volume of creative literary work inthe native tongue. Two daily newspapers are pub-lished in Yakut, and a literary magazine, Poliarnaiazvezda, appears every two months in both Yakutand Russian. The Russian edition, which is avail-able in the West, contrives to express, in poetry andliterary articles, a genuine feeling of Yakut nationalpride in the country's legends and natural beauty,though its pages are also well filled with "partyline" pieces and obsequious tributes to Lenin.

I-n Yakutia, as in other national minority areas ofthe Soviet Union, nationalist ideas and sentimentscan be given expression only at the risk of harshpolitical reprisal. After a period of relative toler-

16 Narody Sibirii, op. cit., pp. 267-68.

17 V. V. Pokshishevski, Yakutiia, priroda-liudi-khoziaistvo(Yakutia, Nature-People-Economy), Moscow, 1957, pp. 91-92.

1 8 Isupov. op. cit., pp. 33-34.

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ance towards nationalism during the early and mid-dle 1920's, the Bolshevik regime drove this lessonhome to the Yakuts by purging various local partyand literary figures between 1928 and 1938. In1928 the members of the Yakut Obkom were de-posed and replaced by more amenable men, andthere was a concurrent purge of native writers, itsmore notable victims including the poet and ethnog-rapher, A. Kulakovski, who used his poetry as avehicle for warning against Russian domination,and Altan Saryn, an advocate of pan-Turkismamong the Yakuts. The new Obkom subsequentlydisbanded the Sakha Omuk, a Yakut cultural organ-ization, and imposed curbs on the country's onlynationalist literary journal. What were officiallydescribed as "the most fanatical representatives" ofthe Yakut national intelligentsia were deported, andit is probable that some of them wound up in the"national minority brigades" which built the WhiteSea Canal in the appalling conditions of the 1930's.These reprisals against the native intelligentsia fur-ther weakened the natural leadership of the country—a process which had started with the destructionof the Yakut aristocracy in the immediate aftermathof the Revolution.19

The tendency to introduce Russian words intothe Yakut vocabulary to convey ideas outside itsrange of expression, especially terms related to tech-nical-industrial administration, is increasing. Thisis a trend found in many "developing countries"where new terms are borrowed from more advancedsocieties to meet the needs of modernization. Theofficial Soviet line is that the "Russian language doesnot drive out the national languages and does notdiminish their roles. The Russian language spreadswith the flowering of the national languages." 20 Butthis reassurance must be weighed against the factthat an increasing number of people of the smallnationalities gave Russian as their chosen languagein the 1959 census, and that one of the aims of theCommunist Party Program is "the fusion of cul-tures" and "the formation of a single universal cul-ture of Communist society." If such a "fusion" isrealized, it is obvious from the present trend that theRussian language and culture will inevitably domi-nate and the minority national cultures eventuallybe driven to the wall.

Many higher educational, technical and researchinstitutions are now established in Yakutsk, and a

special mining institute in Aldan works in connec-tion with the gold industry. Yakutia's first univer-sity, which grew out of the old teachers' trainingcollege, was established in 1956. Earlier, in 1947,the Yakutsk branch of the all-Union Academy ofSciences was founded and attached to the SiberianDivision of the Academy at Novosibirsk. It em-braces a number of research institutes for geology,biology, etc. The important Permafrost Institute,which is attached directly to the Academy at Novosi-birsk, has a staff of over 250 persons and maintainsout-stations at Igarka and Chulman. It is engagedin both purely scientific work and the solution ofpractical problems of mining, construction, etc., inthe permafrost areas of the country. Visiting ex-perts have reported the scientific staff of the Insti-tute to be of high quality. Soviet ethnographers,geologists and other scientists have done a greatdeal of work on Yakut problems, and some ex-tremely interesting and original research studieshave been published.

The Institute of Language, Literature and Historyis mainly concerned with research into the Yakutand other languages of the republic and is directedby a Yakut woman. However, the treatment givenin 1951 to the distinguished Yakut literary historianand member of the Institute, G. P. Basharin, standsas a warning to all Yakut scholars to watch theirstep even today. In a book published in 1944, Bash-arin had dared to defend some of the pioneers ofYakut literature, Kulakovski in particular, who hadbeen purged for their nationalist views. For this, hewas violently denounced by Pravda, in an articlepublished on December 10, 1951, and written byAleksei Surkhov and L. I. Klimovich, for harbor-ing "erroneous and anti-Marxist" ideas and seekingto justify the reactionary, "bourgeois-nationalist"character of Kulakovski.21 Although Basharin hassince been able to publish several important worksduring the Khrushchev period (including a historyof agrarian relations in Yakutia), he still does notappear to have a position at the Institute com-mensurate with his scholarship.

Yakutia's pool of trained professional personnelis growing rapidly as a result of the increased facili-ties for higher and especially technical training inYakutsk. The number of doctors, for example, al-most tripled between 1939 and 1959, while that ofelectricians and grid supervisers grew 12 times.22

19 Wal ter Kolarz, The Peoples of the Soviet Far East, Lon-don, 1954, pp. 106-8.

20 Isupov, op. cit., p . 36.

21 For details of the "Basharin incident ," see K o l a n , op. cit.,pp. 109-10.

22 Isupov, op. cit., p . 49.

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Despite this, the great majority of managerial andtechnical personnel in Yakutia are still Slav andprimarily Russian immigrants, and there is a con-tinuing and acute lack of qualified people to meetthe growing demands of the new mining and otherindustries of the country.

Economic Development

Over the last five decades, Yakutia has beeneconomically transformed by geological prospectingwhich has led to the development of valuable newmining sites, many in remote, roadless and inhos-pitable areas. These natural obstacles greatly in-creased the cost and difficulty of exploiting thecountry's mineral resources. Soviet capital invest-ment in Yakutia, which has shown a sharp upwardcurve during this period, has been primarily con-centrated in branches of heavy industry designedto strengthen the economic might of the USSR, andin the mining of gold, mica (phlogopite), diamondsand tin.

A Yakut prospector discovered the large Aldangoldfields in southern Yakutia in 1922-23 (in anarea of small older workings of a primitive nature),and extraction operations here and in the adjacentmica mines have been greatly expanded since thewar through mechanization. The supply situationhas also been improved by the construction of theAmur-Yakutsk main motor road, which links theAldan mining district with Bolshoi Never on thetrans-Siberian railway to the south and also servesas a winter road connection between Aldan andYakutsk.

Aldan, now the administrative center of thegold mining industry, is reported by travellers to bea relatively well-appointed town with good publicbuildings. It lies in a valley in the permafrost areaand has an airport. Some processing of the ore isdone in two local refineries, but final processing iscarried on outside the republic. The majority of thelocal inhabitants are Russians, but Yakuts are alsobeing drawn into the mining industry.

Gold is also found in northern Yakutia, in theIndigirka, Yana and Kolyma river basins, but theAldan gold mines remain the most important pro-ducer. A new gold processing plant is believed tohave been completed recently at Nizhnii Kuranakhand should increase output. No precise figures ofcurrent gold production are published in the SovietUnion. In the 1930's Yakut gold output was statedby several Soviet sources to be 20-25 percent of

total Soviet gold production.23 There is no doubtthat output from the Aldan and other Yakutian goldmines is much higher now as a result of increasedmechanization, the opening of new deposits, and theliquidation of the former concentration camp laborforce with the abolition of Dalstroi in 1957.

The diamond resources of the Soviet Union weresharply increased by the discovery in the 1950's ofthree rich kimberlite pipes in the wilds of northwestYakutia at Mirnii and Aikhal, and further north atUdachnaia-Vostochnaia, following earlier finds ofalluvial diamonds in the Viliui basin. These depositsare regarded by geologists as among the richest (ifnot the richest) in the world, comparable to thosein South Africa. They are difficult and expensive towork owing to labor and supply problems caused bytheir remoteness from inhabited centers and theharsh climate. Their importance to the Soviet econ-omy is indicated by the fact that they now accountfor about 90 percent of annual Soviet diamond pro-duction, estimated in international trade journalsat between 3 and 6 million carats. Some naturaldiamonds still have to be imported for special pur-poses, but Yakutian output is thought to be sufficientfor normal Soviet requirements. A diamond insti-tute has been established at Mirnii, and an interest-ing experiment is in progress looking toward thebuilding of a completely enclosed town at Aikhal,with a micro-climate to shield the workers from theextremes of the local weather (plans for this projectwere to be shown at the Soviet pavillion duringExpo 67 at Montreal).24

The tin mines at Ese-Khaiia and Bagatai and themore recently opened Deputatski mine in northernYakutia, together with the piesoquartz and phlogo-pite mica workings at Aldan, are other Yakut re-sources of all-Union importance. The tin depositsare especially valuable because of the scarcity ofthis mineral in the Soviet Union, which has necessi-tated large imports from Malaya to make good thedeficit.

A sharp criticism of the central government'sfailure to act more energetically to develop thenatural resources of Yakutia was voiced in 1965 bythe then party First Secretary of the YASSR, S. Z.

2 3 V. V. Pokshishevski , op. cit., p . 105; S. S. Korshuev ( E d . ) ,Yakutiia, Moscow, 1965, p . 396.

2 4 Soviet Life, J une 1965, reported these and other develop-ments in the Soviet d iamond industry.

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Borisov, himself a Yakut in spite of his Russian-sounding name. Complaining of the underdevelop-ment of gold, diamond, tin and mica resources,Borisov declared:

The annual output of minerals in proportion to pros-pected reserves is less than one percent for diamonds,just over one percent for tin, about two percent for mica,and five percent for gold. The rich deposits of high-grade coking coal and iron ore in southern Yakutia,other deposits of non-ferrous and rare metals, and thesalt deposits are not being worked at all and representso much frozen capital, in spite of the fact that theappropriate research for getting the most out of thesedeposits has already been carried out and has proven thegreat profits which can be expected from their exploi-tation.25

Borisov went on to hint that there was oppositionin influential quarters to sinking "much capital ina sparsely-populated region." He pointed out, how-ever, that the diamond industry in Yakutia hadalready more than paid for itself, and that capitalinvestments in the Deputatski tin mining enter-prise, producing the cheapest tin concentrate inthe USSR, were "15-16 times less than comparablecapital investments in tin mining elsewhere in theSoviet Union."

It is impossible for an outsider to judge thevalidity of this possibly exaggerated special plead-ing. There is, however, plenty of evidence in Sovietsources as to the existence in Yakutia of a seriouslabor problem (to which Borisov also referred)which is greatly hampering mining and industrialdevelopment. Owing to poor living conditions, un-reliable food supplies, and inadequate social ameni-ties such as hospitals and creches, it has hithertobeen impossible to attract adequate numbers of im-migrants to settle permanently in Yakutia. Higherwages and bonuses are indeed paid to workers inthe more inhospitable areas of the country, but theyare not enough to compensate for the greatly in-creased cost of living, the irregular supplies of freshfood, and the lack of good housing.26

The Labor Problem

As a consequence of these conditions, laborturnover is exceptionally high in the most importantYakut mining areas. Soviet sources in 1961 gavethe following statistics (which are not regularly pub-lished) for migrants leaving their jobs in these

areas: 51 percent in the Indigirka mining region;51.3 percent in the Yakut diamond trust; 65.1 per-cent in the Aldan mica mines; and 93 percent inthe Deputatski tin mines. The main cause given forthis heavy efflux of mineworkers was the inadequateor non-existent supply of potatoes, vegetables andeggs available at government stores, while these fooditems on the free market were 4-5 times higher inprice.27

Notwithstanding the special difficulties of supply,housing and communications throughout thesenorthern territories, it is suprising that the Sovietgovernment has not made more headway in solvingthe labor-turnover problem there after its long ex-perience in the area. Its record is immeasurably lesssuccessful than that of capitalist countries likeCanada or the United States in overcoming similardifficulties in their Arctic regions. Now that Stalinistrestrictions on the free movement of workers havebeen abolished, Moscow is learning at great costthat free labor will not remain on the job in badconditions any longer than is necessary to accum-mulate a little capital before seeking more attractiveconditions elsewhere. Certainly, the Soviet author-ities will have to devote much more serious thoughtto Yakutia's labor problems if the provisions in thenew draft Five-Year Plan (1966-70) for buildingup the economic potential of the Soviet Far Eastand further increasing the output of gold, tin, wol-fram, mercury, diamonds and mica—all found inYakutia—are to be implemented. Moreover, whenthe new metallurgical plant now planned for the FarEast gets off the ground, the coking-coal deposits atChulman in southern Yakutia will probably bechosen as its fuel base, further heightening the ur-gency of solving the labor problem.

In view of the vast distances and the largely road-less state of much of the country, air transport isthe most convenient means of moving light freightand passenger traffic. Aeroflot runs scheduled flightsto over thirty small towns within Yakutia, as well asfarther east, and through Siberia to Moscow andCentral Russia. The Lena River system is alsoimportant for heavy freight, and supplies reachnortheastern districts via the North Sea route andthe port of Tiksi on the Arctic Ocean.

There are as yet no railways in Yakutia for trans-porting heavy freight, but this situation may even-tually be improved by the projected construction of

2 5 Ekonomicheskaia gazeta, No. 35 ,1965 .2 6 Planovoe khoziaistvo, No. 4, 1966, p . 48.

2 7 "Labor Turnover in the Yakutska ia A S S R , " Polar Record,May 1966. Data based on papers publ i shed in Voprosy geo-grafii Yakutii, No. 1 ,1961.

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a great new rail line (Sevsib) traversing NorthernSiberia and Yakutia and terminating at a Pacificport. This will be a major project comparable inmagnitude to the old Trans-Siberian railway andwill take at least twenty years to complete.

Agriculture

The ill-conceived Soviet attempts in the 1930's tocollectivize the Yakut herds of cattle, horses andreindeer and to settle the nomadic reindeer-herdingpeoples caused much confusion and distress amongthe rural population of Yakutia. The folly of tryingto change the traditional methods of reindeer herd-ing was eventually recognized, and now the reindeerpeoples are classified as "semi-nomadic." Theirreindeer meat and other products find good marketsin the new mining settlements of northeasternYakutia, and their animals are indispensable fortransport in the tundra. There are now some pros-perous mixed reindeer collectives in the Kolyma de-pression, with Chukchi, Evenki, Yakut and Russianmembers.28

Large areas of Yakutia are unsuitable for arablefarming owing to the harsh climate and the perma-frost soil. The best lands for wheat and vegetablesare in central Yakutia and the Olekminsk district.There are large herds of cattle and horses, andYakutsk is now supplied with meat and dairy prod-ucts from the surrounding farms. As a result of in-tensive experimental work in plant breeding, theboundaries of agriculture in Yakutia have beenmoved substantially farther north than was formerlybelieved possible, although the practical results ofthese experiments are still not very substantial.29

In the more inclement areas, some vegetables aregrown in large glass-enclosed nurseries to supplylocal workers, but in far from sufficient quantities.

Conclusion

That a considerable degree of social and economicprogress has been realized in Yakutia under Sovietrule cannot be denied. On the other hand, theseverely limited measure of self-government allowedto the Yakuts and other native peoples of the area

stands out in sharp contrast to the USSR's con-stant agitation in the United Nations on behalf offull independence for all colonial peoples, howeverill-prepared they may be, politically and economi-cally, for self-rule. The Yakuts are now nearly 100percent literate and are making an appreciable con-tribution to local government administration, sci-entific research, and other sophisticated activitiesin their republic. They thus are much more en-titled to genuine self-government than are some ofthe more primitive peoples from Oceania to Africafor whom the Soviets demand independence.

Lined up against the Slav millions, a people sonumerically small as the Yakuts seems insignificant.Yet, even numerically, they appear in a differentlight within their own homeland. There they are thelargest and the dominant group of native peoplesand have given their name to a country almost sixtimes the size of France, with great natural re-sources. These are the significant facts locally.

Notwithstanding the imposition of collectiviza-tion, the destruction of the young Yakut nationalintelligentsia under Stalin, and the continued sub-jection of the YASSR to Moscow's overriding po-litical control, Soviet writers blandly tout the mythof Yakut "autonomy" and "independence." Evena work of the caliber of The Peoples of Siberia,produced by the Soviet Academy of Sciences, canaffirm: "The Yakut people received its nationalindependence from the hands of the Russian pro-letariat directed by the Communist Party." 30 But,as pointed out earlier, the terms "national indepen-dence" and "autonomy" in the Soviet context are afar cry from genuine independence and autonomy inthe accepted Western sense. The Soviet "autono-mous republics" do not represent an intermediatestage in the preparation of a primitive people forself-government; by definition, they are a fixed andpermanent form of political tutelage imposed on thenational minorities of the Soviet Union.

It would, of course, be unrealistic to demand thatthe Russians grant independence to a tiny minoritypeople like the Yakuts occupying a vast rich area ofSiberia. But if the Yakuts were located in someequally rich Western colonial territory in the heartof Africa or Asia, one can imagine the clamor thatwould be heard from Moscow demanding the libera-tion of this small people and its natural resourcesfrom colonial exploitation.

2 8 Pokshishevski, op. cit., pp. 185-86.2 8 Armstrong, op. cit., 141-43,161. 30 Narody Sibirii, op. cit., p. 307.

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The Jews

By Zvi Gitelman

s.K. / oviet policy toward the Jews can best beunderstood when viewed not simply in terms ofspecifically "Jewish policies" but rather in thewider context of general policies that have peculiareffects on Soviet Jewry—a group whose religion istribal rather than ecumenical, whose culture pre-sents unique difficulties for Soviet ideology, andwhose extraterritoriality poses problems differentfrom those posed by any other ethnic groups in theUSSR. This is not to say that there are no policiesspecifically aimed at the Jews; indeed, there isstriking evidence that in some key areas of Sovietlife—notably, politics, culture and education—Jews are denied the rights or opportunities enjoyedby citizens of other nationalities.

This article will examine the three principalaspects of the Jewish problem in the USSR: re-ligion, antisemitism, and assimilation as a key to thefuture of the Soviet Jewish community. Thisapproach, it is hoped, will serve to bring intosharper focus both the similarities and the signifi-cant differences between the status and treatment ofthe Jews on the one hand, and of other ethnic andreligious minorities on the other.

Mr. Gitelman is an Associate in the Department ofGovernment at Columbia College and a JuniorFellow of the Research Institute on CommunistAffairs, Columbia University.

To begin with, there is little question that theJewish religion is on the decline in the USSR, per-haps more rapidly than other religions. While it isdifficult to estimate the number of believing Jews(some Soviet sources have put it as high as500,000), it is a fact that only about 60 synagoguesremain open in the entire Soviet Union whereasthe Belorussian Republic alone had some 500synagogues or houses of study in the late 1920's.1

The overwhelming majority or worshippers are intheir sixties and seventies. There is a lack ofreligious articles and, just as importantly, of re-ligious functionaries. There is no Yeshiva (re-ligious seminary) in Moscow—or anywhere else inthe Soviet Union.

To some extent, the decline of the Jewish faithis part of a general decline of religion in the USSR.A poll conducted by Komsomolskaia pravda'sInstitute of Public Opinion in 1961 revealed thatthe majority of Soviet youth considered adherence

1 This figure is cited in the Minsk Yiddish daily Oktiabr,February 1, 1929. Despite the extremely militant anti-religiouscampaign of the 1920's conducted by the Yevsektsiia, or JewishSection of the Communist Party, the number of synagogueshad declined only from 1,034 in 1917 to 934 in 1929-30. Thenumber of rabbis in the Ukraine had fallen from 1,049 in1914 to 830 in 1929-30. All in all, 646 synagogues had beenseized since the Revolution. American. Jewish Yearbook 5690,Philadelphia, 1930, p. 68-9, and AjYB 5691, p. 118. In contrast,354 of 450 remaining synagogues were seized between 1956 and1963.

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the yakuts - the unz review

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