The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire. Margus Kolga
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Margus Kolga, Igor Tõnurist, Lembit Vaba, Jüri Viikberg
THE RED BOOK OF THE PEOPLES OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
Consultants
Ants Viires
Lauri Vahtre
Translated by
Sirje Ainsaar
Heli Greenbaum
Krista Kaer
Lembit Liivak
Krista Mits
Erkki Sivonen
Triin Tobber
Viivi Verrev
Edited by
Andrew Humpreys, Krista Mits
ISBN 9985-9369-2-2
ISBN 978-9949-33-098-0 (epub)
ISBN 978-9949-33-099-7 (kindle)
All rights reserved 1993 - 2013.
To the Publisher
My congratulations and admiration on publication of the Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire. I am convinced of the huge role the book will have in publicising the situation of oppressed nations. Undoubtedly it will set an example for compiling the publisher of a similar book with regard to of the book for the whole world. UNPO is looking forward to early publication of translations.
Linnart Mäll
Deputy Secretary-General Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation
Address on the publication of the Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire in Estonian
On behalf of the Republic of Estonia I thank the publisher of the book. It is the duty of Estonia to inform the world of the situation of the small nations in Russia.
Mart Laar,
Prime Minister of the Republic of Estonia
On presentation of the book, in Estonian
The idea of the publication of the book is to make the world concious of the dangers of living in the neighbourhood or among an imperialistically aggressive large nation.
Toomas Niimann,
publisher of the book
On presentation of the book in Estonian
FOREWORD
In the early 1930s, Vladimir Bogoraz wrote an ABC-book for the Chukchi language and called it The Red Book. Unfortunately, the ensuing 60 years have brought the Chukchi — and many other nations — to a deplorable position of being candidates for the pages of another Red Book, the one usually associated with rare plants and animals. The necessity of a book detailing endangered peoples has been recognized for some time, though mostly in the form of rhetorical questions musing whether the time has really come for the Mordvins, for example, or for all the minorities of Siberia, or of the whole former Soviet Union, to be entered in a Red Book. The present volume represents the first major attempt to draw public attention to those peoples whose existence is truly marked by the threat of extinction. The public at large may have heard at least something of the Khatyn mass murder and of the MolotovRibbentrop Pact, but there is still little awareness of an even greater crime of Russian chauvinism: veiled with slogans promising everybody a brighter future, this chauvinism has been working methodically towards the elimination of ethnic entities and cultures. This is a crime against the whole of humanity.
Setting out to compile such a book, one first has to define the conditions under which a people could be classified as an endangered people. The cultural revolution and the gigantic economic projects have inflicted serious damage on all national cultures, the Russians included, by severing their roots, forcing enormous crowds to migrate from place to place, and tearing the life-web of cultural contacts between generations. In laying down their criteria of selection the authors of this book decided to include only those peoples who
a. are not yet extinct,
b. whose main area of settlement is on ex-Soviet territory,
c. whose numbers are below 30,000,
d. of whom less than 70% speak their mother tongue,
e. who form a minority on their ancient territory,
f. whose settlement is scattered rather than compact,
g. who have no vernacular school, literature or media.
These criteria disqualify those peoples already extinct (like the Meryans, Motors and Koibals) as well as those whose main territory lies elsewhere (like the Germans and Koreans). The other criteria are less strictly observed, particularly in regard to the population. A combination of several features were generally to be considered, some of which tended to show mutual correlation (for example, scattered settlement and being in the minority on their own territory, or lack of vernacular schooling and poor competence in their mother tongue). As a result, the final decision on inclusion was usually based on our assessment of the general situation rather than on individual criterion. Of the 96 peoples on the original list, the book now contains data on only 85. In several cases a decision had to be made whether a possible entry was indeed a separate nation or simply a dialect group (for example, the Solons were treated as part of the Evenks, but the Khufis and the Roshanis separately). In some cases it was impossible to find any written material at all (the Modern Assyrians are one example). There were also some exceptions made due to other circumstances: the Karelians were included (unlike other nations having their own autonomous republic) out of consideration for the rapidly diminishing proportion they make up in the population of their own ancient aboriginal territory, and also because of their extremely unfavourable demographic and linguistic situation.
The Soviet Union was, until recently, a huge place, which, unfortunately, made it impossible for the authors to bear eyewitness to the situation of every single ethnic group included in this book. This volume then, cannot claim to contain the whole and absolute truth, rather, it may be the opening part of a long-term research project. We truly hope that the forthcoming issues will be excluded from future editions, either for a joyous or a sad reason.
The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire is being compiled in complicated times: the borders and names of administrative units are changing, the whole national doctrine of the central power is being reconsidered, and entire nations are awakening from apathy. By the time you read this book some of the above processes will have led to new and perhaps unexpected developments that may shed new light on the story of some of the included peoples. It was not the authors aim to foretell future developments but just to attempt to characterize the situation of the endangered peoples living in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s.
The changing times are also reflected in the title of the book. What was begun as a description of the peoples living in the Soviet empire has become an overview of nationalities who have — throughout centuries — been living in the Russian empire, the Soviet period being but one period in the history of Russian expansion.
What is especially valuable about this book is that it discusses different manifestations of Russian and Soviet national policies and their impact on peoples of very different cultures. The detrimental effects of sovietization are illustrated on civilized nations with their own well established literary traditions (like the Ingrians) as well as on people living in their natural state (like the Saame Lapps of the Kola peninsula). Entries show that the disappearance of a people can be slow and relatively smooth (as with the metamorphosis of the Itelmens into the Kamchadals), but also sudden and all the more brutal (the Siberian Eskimo). Usually, a clear point or period of breakdown can be discerned. The turning- point tends to be especially noticeable in the case of primitive peoples as their self-image differs from that of nations with a literary tradition. The identity of a primitive tribe can be extinguished by the mere destruction