Decollectivization in Rural Russia: A Perspective from the Far North

The project I carried out as part of the Siberia project group at Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology was concerned with how the decollectivization of state farms in Russia and attendant changes in property relations were affecting the lived experience of rural residents. I conducted the bulk of my field research in reindeer-herding villages of Chukotka, a region in the Russian Far North. I also made an exploratory comparative field trip in 2001 to a farming village in the Republic of Mari El, in the Volga region. Scholars typically treat the Russian Far North and the Volga region as entirely separate frames of reference, but I wanted to demonstrate the similarities the two regions shared on the basis of their having experienced processes of collectivization and decollectivization that were remarkably uniform throughout Russia