Regional Problems and Local Solutions in the Post-Soviet Transition: An Ethnographic Study of Reindeer Herding Communities in the Chuckota Autonomous Okrug

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Abstract 9726308 Schweitzer This pilot project investigates the social, economic, political and cultural aspects of reindeer herding during the post-Soviet period of transition ill the Chukotka Autonomous 0krug. Reindeer herding in the Russian has perhaps never been faced with such rapid and sweeping changes as in this unstable time. With the abrupt withdrawal of the large government subsidies that kept reindeer state farms operational, they must now adapt to the changing political and economic conditions or risk failure -- not merely economic failure, but failure in their ability to provide the basic social service that rural Northern communities have come to depend on for their very survival. A variety of restructuring options have been put into effect at different reindeer herding operations, but they have experienced dramatically varying outcomes. Why are some thriving while others are struggling to survive, or even dissolving? Reindeer herding is treated by administrators as just one of the many branches of the former Soviet economy that must now become privatized; but is reindeer herding as practiced today an enterprise that can deliver a product to market and a profit to its owner? And is that the most important reason for its existence, from the point of view of those who practice it? This research examines why reindeer herders and administrators choose the options they do, and evaluates the consequences of those choices. The Chukotakan case provides valuable comparative data on the ways in which privatization and agricultural reform are implemented in the regions of the Russian Federation and the kinds of responses that are emerging to the rapid social change resulting from the post-Soviet transition.