Paper short abstract:

Soviet Indigenous politics have to be considered through the concept of land dispossession (Coulthard 2014). This will allow us to understand why a numerical approach in determining Indigenous status was especially important to the state both in the Soviet times and in contemporary Russia.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I consider Soviet Indigenous politics through the concept of land and territorial dispossession (Coulthard 2014) to understand why a numerical approach was used to determine Indigenous status. In Soviet times, a special category was created: small peoples of the North. This numerical approach was applied exclusively to the peoples of the North and Siberia (Sokolovskiy 1998). Soviet Indigenous politics specifically focused on peoples who led a nomadic and semi-nomadic lifestyle, and who conducted their economies in vast territories. I argue that the Soviet state was interested not only in their lands, but it was also important for the state to make these peoples legible (Scott 1998). The result of this policy was the forced sedentarization and resettlement of the Indigenous peoples, and the creation of residential schools.

At present, the categorization of Indigenous peoples in Russia is based on the definition of "Indigenous small-numbered peoples." As in the Soviet period, the Russian policy toward Indigenous peoples is constructed around a numerical approach. Currently, only those ethnic groups whose number is less than 50 thousand people have Indigenous status in Russia. Two factors continue to play a key role in the determination of Indigenous status: number of population and place of residence (Donahoe et al. 2008, etc.). In order to understand contemporary Russian politics in relation to Indigenous peoples, it is necessary to address the Soviet Indigenous politics and to understand the continuities and ruptures in State-Indigenous relations from the Soviet period to today.