Neotraditionalism in the Russian North

The advent of perestroika and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union have had an enormous impact on indigenous peoples in the Russian Arctic. This book illuminates many of the cultural, political, and economic issues guiding Russian state policy toward Siberian indigenous peoples. Growing from a report submitted to the Russian parliament, it became a major building block for new legislation on the treatment of Northern minority peoples in post-Soviet Russia. Seven translators in North America, under the coordination of Bruce Grant, have edited and annotated the original Russian text, published in 1994. They have added translations of selected recent legislation affecting Siberian indigenous peoples, a guide to Russian and Siberian terms, and photographs taken by Pika on his trips to Siberia. Boris Prokhorov addresses the changing conditions for post-Soviet research in a moving new Afterword. Aleksandr Pika, who died in 1995, was one of Russia's leading anthropologists. Bruce Grant is associate professor of anthropology at Swarthmore College.
Boris Prokhorov is head of the Center for Demography and Human Ecology at the Institute of National Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences.