Siberianists often lament that the anthropology of Siberia is still on the periphery of mainstream anthropological thought. While ethnographies of regions with longer and more established traditions of Western scholarship such as Africa, southeast Asia, Australia, and Oceania are read for their contributions to general anthropological theory as well as for their ethnographic detail, Siberian ethnography thus far has remained somewhat ghettoized, unjustly assumed to be of interest only to those interested in the ethnographic specifics of the peoples of Siberia. The Social Life of the State in Subarctic Siberia, Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov's impressive and theoretically sophisticated monograph, represents an important step in bringing Siberian ethnography and anthropology out of the cold, so to speak, and into the mainstream of anthropological thought.
Ssorin-Chaikov sets out to demonstrate that, despite discourses to the contrary, the administrative influence of the tsarist empire and the Soviet Union managed to penetrate early and deeply into even the most remote Siberian taiga. Using the Evenki of the Podkamennaia Tunguska River basin as his ethnographic springboard, the author shows that, somewhat paradoxically, the influence of Russian and Soviet state policies created "indigenous" cultural practices and invented traditions (the "ethnographic present-perfect") that then became inscribed as outside the reach of the state. As Ssorin-Chaikov puts it, "The more the state administration shaped aboriginal identities, the more it defined them in terms of pure ecological constraints and structural properties of stateless social formations" (p.22).
State construction of presumably primordial identities, whether national, indigenous, or gendered, is in and of itself not a novel insight. The Soviet state's role in constructing indigenous identities in Siberia has been well documented in much of the recent literature (see, inter alia, Anderson 2000; Brower and Lazzerini 1997; Grant 1997, 1995; Hirsch 1997; Slezkine 1994; Sokolovski 2001). Ssorin-Chaikov's contribution is his novel interpretation of how the Soviet state managed to pull off this discursive sleight of hand. By continually deferring official recognition of the first intervention of the Soviet state into the lives of Evenkis, the state was able to blame the failure of its own reforms on either the residual influence of the capitalist "old regime" or a pre-contact "stateless" social organization. As an example, Ssorin-Chaikov discusses a food-shortage crisis of the early 1920s that officials blamed on the Civil War (1918-1921), but which Ssorin-Chaikov asserts was in fact the result of early Soviet reforms: "[T]he causes of the crisis were displaced in Soviet historiography to the period before the reforms actually started. Blaming this economic crisis on the Civil War and on the absence of statehood, rather than on the specific policies of the Soviet state, was a discursive strategy important for understanding the structures of representation (political and analytical) of Siberian aborigines throughout the Soviet period" (86). This displacement in time pushed people's recollections of when "Soviet power" first reached the Evenki forward in time, creating a "very long 1917 (the date of the Revolution)" (92). It likewise had the corollary effect of moving forward in time what is considered "traditional" so that now, "From the post-Soviet vantage point, the 1940s and 1950s easily appear to have been 'the golden age' of traditional economies" (119).
Ssorin-Chaikov presents what he dubs "the poetics of unfinished construction" in a similar fashion. The disorder inherent in the perpetual "mess of construction" (137) exemplifies yet another failure of the state, but it gets recast as a timeless and recurring "snapshot boundary between tradition and modernity" (139) that simultaneously showcases the state's development initiatives and demonstrates the need for its continued intervention.
The displacement of the state through discourses of failure and unfinished construction had certain "instrument effects." Each successive failure justified a new reform effort that was again presented as the "first" intervention of the Soviet state into the lives of the Evenki. Through such "power technologies" the state was able to succeed even as it failed. Despite its reputation as a highly centralized, monolithic Leviathan, the Soviet state's true power lay not in its centralizing tendencies, but rather in its ability to expand and penetrate even into places where it was perceived not to exist. As Ssorin-Chaikov puts it, "[T]he state follows the scholastic definition of God as a sphere 'whose surface is everywhere and center is nowhere.' This all-penetrating surface, I argue, constitutes a decentered process of governance. . . ." (115).
Indigenous Siberians for their part have internalized the state-created "indigenous" practices and invented tradition, along with assumptions of their own stateless social formation. Their identities both as indigenous peoples and as subject-citizens have thus been constructed not outside of the state, but rather in dialogue with the state and its representatives. This occurred despite the inaccessibility of indigenous peoples as reported by missionaries, tax collectors, and ethnographers, and the presumed antinomy between the state and "wild," "backward" and "irrational" indigenous peoples.
Ssorin-Chaikov provides an extended example of the cultural production of invented tradition in his explication of the present-day gender traditionalism among the Evenki, in which "politics is 'redefined as a distinctly masculine endeavor' and new pressures for domesticity for women are created" (172). The paradox is that the indigenous intelligentsia who express this point of view are for the most part professional women who do not conform to this image of the ideal traditional Evenki woman. Ssorin-Chaikov recounts a meeting with the female head of an Evenki cultural revival movement whose "traditionalism was more evident in dialogue with ethnographers and traditionalist publications than with forest Evenki" (197). This story contains an implicit critique of the current politics of indigeneity. The distance between this indigenous leader, with her traditionalist publications and "iconic images of traditional hunters and herders," and the people who are supposed to be represented by these images, highlights the problems inherent in naively and uncritically assuming that the native intelligentsia, simply by virtue of being indigenous, represent the best interests of an entire indigenous group (197).
Ssorin-Chaikov's compelling exposé of "neotraditionalism" and the obshchina movement that it has spawned is a more explicit critique of contemporary indigenous politics in Russia. Obshchinas are clan-based communities that were assumed to be the basic unit of social organization in pre-Soviet times. The revival of these "traditional" obshchinas became the clarion call for both native and non-native activists in the nascent indigenous politics of the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period. Even though there were practically no people who knew their own national traditions, activists blithely assumed that there would be "a spontaneous reemergence of traditional culture - 'neo-traditionalism' - that is grounded in this generation's 'intuitive ecologism,' if not in deep knowledge of the old ways" (166). Ssorin-Chaikov outlines three important contradictions inherent in the obshchina concept that should serve as caveats for anyone involved in indigenous politics: 1) "It simultaneously draws on both the neoliberal language of privatization and the collectivist notion of clan"; 2) indigenous leaders invoke the clan-based obshchina to solve problems caused by Soviet indigenous policies, but they do not acknowledge the role that those policies played in constructing the very ideas of the indigenous clan, community, and ethnicity; and 3) the obshchina idea privileges anthropological over indigenous categories, and it empowers elite images of communal identity rather than more common understandings (167).
The Social Life of the State in Subarctic Siberia is driven by theory and argument rather than by ethnography, and herein lies both its considerable strengths and its minor weaknesses. Readers hoping for an ethnography of the Evenki are likely to be disappointed, while those looking for theoretical meat to chew on should be more than satisfied. Ssorin-Chaikov elaborates an elegant and nuanced theoretical framework that explicates how discourses of failure and the "poetics of unfinished construction" allowed the state to take on a "social life," even in those "settings defined by difference from the state - such as the domestic sphere or 'stateless society'" (p.9). As such, this monograph makes an important contribution not only to understanding the "power technologies" employed by the Soviet regime, but also more generally to theories of the state.
However, Ssorin-Chaikov is a bit too enamored of trendy theory and post-structuralist jargon. The second half of the introduction (the 'theory chapter') is a good example. The reader gets trapped in a labyrinth of theoretical constructs, much of which Ssorin-Chaikov never returns to and never explicitly links to the rest of the book. The beginning of Chapter 4 is another good example. Ssorin-Chaikov's compulsion to see everything as a construction within a construction within a construction risks devolving into a post-modern exercise in infinite reflexive regression, reminiscent of Orson Welles's endlessly reduplicated reflection in the mirrored hallway in "Citizen Kane."
Rather than referring back to the elaborate theoretical framework he has constructed in the first chapter, Ssorin-Chaikov instead invents a new theoretical framework for every chapter. As a result, the links between chapters are often tenuous and vague, and the chapters at times read as independent papers that have been stitched together ex post facto. However, the trope of "the social life of the state," as the common thread running through all of the chapters, is quite apt and goes a long way toward salvaging the integrity of the monograph.
While Ssorin-Chaikov sprinkles in anecdotes from his fieldwork to support his assertions, the monograph is based predominantly on historical and archival materials. This dearth of ethnography and, where ethnographic detail is called upon, the lack of ethnographic context, open Ssorin-Chaikov up to the criticism of selectively choosing and taking out of context only those details and anecdotes that support his position and offer entrée into his flights of theoretical fancy. He runs the risk of being accused of doing what he so convincingly exposes Russian and Soviet ethnographers and administrators of having done - decontextualizing ethnographic detail in order to construct a certain reality, and then presenting it as "Reality."
Ssorin-Chaikov writes with clarity and authority from his vantage point as someone with training in both Soviet and Western anthropological traditions, equally at home with the Russian- and English-language literatures. The author's important contribution to understanding the mechanisms employed by the Soviet state to construct, manipulate, and control indigenous identities far outweighs the minor flaws mentioned above. The Social Life of the State in Subarctic Siberia is the most recent in a burgeoning body of insightful literature on Siberia, and deserves serious consideration from scholars and activists involved with indigenous peoples in Siberia and beyond, and from those interested in theories of the state.
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