Traditional economy and society

The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia): between Turkestan and North Asia.

Bruno De Cordier

As big as India and as empty and remote as Iceland. That could be a good summary of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The country is by far the largest of the autonomous republics of the Russian Federation. And besides that, it is very rich in natural resources and much closer to North Asia than to European Russia. But if the Sakha republic is named that way, its is because it is the homeland of the Sakha, who form the vast majority of its indigenous population. Confronted with the legacy of centuries of Russian colonization, the Sakhas find themselves with the challenge of asserting themselves in a changed international environment.

Historical background

Origins

The Sakhas are currently the second largest indigenous people of Siberia, after the Buryats. Despite their rather hazy origins, it is quite sure that they descend from Turkic nomads who were related to the Uighurs and the Kyrghyz, and origi-nally came form the Baikal lake region. From 1410 onwards, during the turbulent times following the crumbling of the Mongol empire, the forebears of the Sakhas were pushed northward by the invading Buryat Mongols, and eventually ended up in the southern basin of the river Lena. Once there, they subjugated Siberian peoples like the Evenks and Yukagirs, and gradually mixed up with other incum-bent Siberian aboriginals. This ethnic fusion eventually yielded the Sakha people as they exist today. The Sakha language belongs to the Turkic language group, making Sakha the geographically most remote offspring of the Turkic stem. And within the Turkic languages, Sakha belongs to the northeastern branch, which comprises also Uighur, Tuvan, Khakass and Altai Turkic. But even with regard to those languages, Sakha is an odd man out. This is mainly due to the relatively large amount of aboriginal Siberian language components in the Sakha language, as well as to the remoteness of the region in which Sakha

developed. Hence its hardly intelligible for speakers of 'mainstream' Turkic languages like Kazakh or Tatar.

Traditional economy and society

Another distinctive feature of the Sakhas is the character of their traditional society, which is based on three fundamental elements. The first was an economy based on nomadic horse and reindeer breeding, hunting and fishing. While horse breeding may be quite common among Turkic peoples, in this part of Siberia it is rather unique. The deteriorating of nomadic lifestyle of the Sakhas started after 1850, when a part of the Sakha tribes in the south started to shift towards agriculture, on the demand of the Russian colonists in the southern Lena valley. And the collectivization between 1930 and 1933 gave the death blow to the traditional economy. The large majority of the

Sakha nomads were either settled by force, deported of forced to work for state farms, while large scale exploitation of raw materials and the importing of heavy industry severely disrupted the environment of the Sakha nomads.

The second fundamental element of traditional Sakha society was the authority of the tojon or tribal chiefs, which emphasizes the tribal character of Sakha society. That means that there was rarely such a thing as one Sakha chief of khan, only a council of tojon and the predominance of the main Khangala tribe. In this respect, Sakha society much ressembles that of the Turkmens, whose tribal socie-ty is also dominated by the main Tekke tribe. The tojon were completely autonomous until 1782, when the Russians established administrative units in Sakha and often coopted tojon to govern the new tribal ulus. During the collectivization and the purges, the tojon institution was completely destroyed or once more coopted in the nomenclatura.

And the third element of Sakha society is the highly developed animistic religion of the Sakha. The core of this religion is a cult of heaven, based on the worshipping of the 'white creator' Er Toyen. Along with the Sakha language, this tengri religion was actually the sole binding agent between all the nomadic tribes, thus making a nation of the Sakhas. Moreover, it distinguishes the Sakhas once more from the large majority of Turkic peoples who profess Islam. As happened with native peoples all over Siberia, Russian missionaries succeeded in converting a part of the Sakhas to Orthodox Christianity between the seventeenth and nineteenth century. In some cases, the conversion happened forcibly. But in many others, local tojon voluntarily adopted Christianity. This was not because of affinity to Christianity, but mainly because Christians were extempted from paying the yassak or tribute to the Russian rulers. In practice, animism and Christianity tied up with each other, or were professed side by side. Animistic practices, however, got a severe blow when Joseph Stalin had most Sakha shamans executed or deported after 1931.

Present situation

But what are the Sakhas up today ? Today, there are about 440,000 Sakhas living in East Siberia and the Russian Far East, almost all of them in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). This republic was established in 1922 as the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) of the Russian Federation (the then RSFSR), and lays in the Russian Far East economic region. Its present name was adopted in the beginning of 1992, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Containing an enormous taiga area of more than 3.1 million square kilometres, cut in half by the mighty Lena river, the Republic of Sakha comprises a little more than 1 million inhabitants. To say the least, overpopulation will not be a real problem for some time to come. This does not mean however, that it will the same with ethnic tensions. The republic may be named after the Sakhas, the Sakhas themselves do not form a majority in their own titular area any more, on the contrary. This is actually more rule that exception with Siberian and Far Eastern natives. The following table gives a detailed view of the ethnic distribution since the founding of the republic as such (in % of the population). *These are mainly Ukrainians, and also indigenous Siberian peoples (Evenks, Dolgans, Evens, Yukagir and Chukchi), who today number 2.1% of the population.

Now what is the relevance of these figures ? The most striking fact is, that since the founding of the Soviet Union, the proportion of Sakhas in their own national territory ever declined in favour of Russians, who now form two thirds of the population. In a way, this symbolizes the entire recent history as well as the economic importance of the area.

Russian penetration of Sakha lands began in 1632, when Russian explorers build a fort which they called Yakutsk, a place which is still the capital of the republic. Its main importance the control over the Lena (the main transport artery of the entire region), as well as over the rich fur, gold and log territories in its vicinity. This did not meant however, that full scale Russian settlement occurred in Sakha territories, for the area was too remote and too harsh in climate for the settlement of Russian peasants. Even during the gold rush of 1850, the numbers of Russian traders, gold diggers, exiles and hunters were far too limited to numerically dominate the natives. And especially the Sakhas, who still formed an absolute majority in their area in 1917. This drasctically changed after 1934, when the frenetic collectivization and industrialization programmes of Stalin aimed, among other things, at the exploitation of the Lena gold reserves in the south of the republic. Like happened in the north of Kazakhstan under the Virgin Lands programme some twenty years later, large numbers of Russians and Ukrainians were either deported or attracted with interesting wages to work in the mining industry. In 1939, they made up more than one third of the population of the republic. And when the extraction of diamont, coal, lead and, to a lesser degree, oil and gas started in earnest after 1951, the Sakhas were gradually outnumbered by Russian immigrant workers.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1010