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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the portrayal of Nenets indigenous selves as either colonized or as ambiguously part of the Soviet Union in socialist realist literature. It shows the representations relation to the prevailing memory ideologies and colonialism.

Paper long abstract:

Russian historiography has sometimes highlighted the coloniality of its expansion and sometimes downplayed it, claiming the vastness of the empire to be a historical of faith. The fluctuating nature of the historical interpretations has led to uncertainties or ambiguities in the portrayal of indigenous selves in relation to the state. The representations follow typical Russian trajectories on the one hand, but are highly special in comparison to other indigenous peoples of the world. This poses a methodological challenge to post-colonial or settler colonial studies.

This paper addresses the colonial situation in Russia focusing on the ways in which Nenets selves are represented in Soviet literature. Nenets is an indigenous community living in the Arctic Russia and Western Siberia. I propose that literature was, in addition to staged performances in festivals, one of the main venues to publicly portray indigeneity and hence relation to the state in Soviet Union. Despite the obvious ideological limitations in writing, the writers did treat intricate historical and contemporary issues in their works. Moreover, reading early Soviet novels together with late Soviet ones, one can note changes in the memory ideologies (Savolainen 2019) in which the novels are based. These differences result in the uncertainties in narrating indigenous selves as citizens of Soviet Union. The uncertainties appear as silencing, but more often as denial of imperialism, double voicedness, hybridities and tensions in expression. These tendencies are part of the colonial situation.