Our colleague Konstantin Kuksin is a geographer and ethnographer, director of the Museum of  Nomadic Culture in Moscow. We are drinking tea and talk in the visitors' yurt of the museum just before, we have caught an excursion about the traditions and way of life of the Kirgiz, which Konstantin conducted for schoolchildren. The schedule of the museum is very busy, and the fact that schoolchildren come here, to Aviamotornaya, all the way from Krylatskoye, is in itself an indicator.

Nomadic peoples with their way of life - that is not just an echo of long-ago centuries. They live in 21^st century together with us, and have preserved their modest existence, while many mighty empires have disintegrated, and only their chronicles and monuments of architecture are left for us.

So they "nomadized" into the globalization epoch not in the form of "rare and disappearing species" living on some tiny "specially protected territories":  in Russia, nomads are not at all some sort of exotic phenomenon from overseas.

Our co-citizens - Russians who have preserved their nomadic way of life - count in hundreds of thousands, if not millions. It is a proportion of the native peoples of the North, Siberia, Far East, and around the Caspian Sea.

Our closet neighbors and partners in SNG, at one time in Russian Empire and  USSR, have their areas of nomadic culture in the steppes and mountains of Kazakhstan and Middle Asia.

The area of the lands traveled by the nomads during their seasonal moves also covers millions of square kilometers. In Russia, it is fair to say  that it is half of the country.

And in the rest of the world, the numbers of nomads and the area of the lands they travel over is even higher. Nomadic people live on huge expanses of land in Mongolia and Western China, Africa and Near East, North America, and communities of itinerant hunters exist in Australia, Central Africa and Amazonia.

This speaks in itself about the inner power of nomadic culture and about the fact that somehow it is necessary for the Earth and for humanity even now.

We talk with Konstantin touching on various themes, even though they all relate to the same logic:

Ÿ        Why nomads and their culture are needed by contemporary world;

Ÿ        About problems of nomadic peoples in Russia and in the world, how to arrange mutual relations between them and technogenic  civilization of our time;

Ÿ        About traditional economy, its possibilities and perspectives in contemporary market;

Ÿ        How various specialists could help in solving these tasks - geographers, ethnographers and others, and how government officials could make informed administrative decisions, based on the experience of these experts;

Ÿ        Finally, what the Russian Geographic Society is doing and what it could do for the study and solution to the problems of nomadic peoples, and of the matters of their interactions with contemporary civilization.

Nomadic Civilization is the "RESERVE" of mankind

-  What can we, contemporary inhabitants of megalopolises, learn from the nomads?

-  This question is asked often - what have they given us, what can they give us? They have given us very much…In their time - many objects of daily use: saddles, stirrups, bows, and other things. But the main thing is their careful and caring approach to the world, to their environment. When, for example, an old Khanty man, before he chops down a tree, he asks its permission. When an old Mongol (we have observed this in Mongolia on an expedition this year), after digging up a wild onion, sows new seeds in that same spot. It is not possible to kill an extra animal, an extra bird. It is not possible to simply take things, without giving back.

The nomads, you could say, are fully the children of this world - really the highest link in the chain of the biocenosis. They are constantly subjected to effects of the climate. To this day their herds can die. For example, this past winter there was dzut in Mongolia, and a quarter of all the livestock died. They are not protected from this, that is why the serious, careful and caring, relationship to their environment is preserved.

And the most important, the nomads are, quite possibly, in its way a reserve for the future. It is because nomadic civilizations have kept their ability to live in difficult conditions. Let's say in the extreme North: where the Russians can barely survive, Chukchi or Nenets live with complete comfort.. And my friends among the Nenets and Khanty laugh, even though a bit sadly, when we proudly speak about our pioneering journeys. By this time, they have been living there already for a thousand years. "We live here, it is our house, and to you it is a brave deed if you simply manage to pass through."

Anyway, nobody really knows where the western civilization is going, and what possible effects globalization might lead to. And if the world is overtaken by a catastrophe, then, most likely, it will be precisely the nomads who will survive. They are the reserve of human civilization, and it is a very strong reserve indeed.

-  How could one tune-up the mutual relations between "contemporary" civilization and nomads, while utilizing their original lands? It was often done thoughtlessly; one characteristic example is the ploughing up of all the virgin lands in 1950's.

-  I would let them live as they live, especially in the North. Yes, we have to drill for oil and gas anyway, but it has to be done with intelligence, and with taking into account the interests of the native peoples; there is some movement in that direction, including by Gazprom.

The production of the peoples of the North should be in use, that is, reindeer meat and skins from the Nenets, and fish from  Khanty, who are fishermen. They should be able to live by their work. Production centers for working these up as well as and infrastructure are needed.

Mongolia figured out a successful approach. The country lives by the natural production, and at the same time even sends meat for export - to China, Russia, Canada, USA.

Here, well, we threw out the baby with the bath water. Collectivization and ploughing up of all the land undermined the culture and traditional economy of the nomadic peoples. As a result, for example, when we want to study the traditional culture of Kazakhs, we have to go to Western Mongolia and Western China, where they have gone to, at first to get away from czarist Russia and later from the Soviet authorities.

-  There are very many quite different nomadic peoples. Mongols, Chukchi, Nenets, Bedouins - they are not all the same. What do they have in common, why do you put them all together under one category "nomadic culture"?

-  They are different peoples, but I would view all the nomads of the planet as a single nomadic civilization. Chukchi and Mongol in real life will probably hardly have a chance to meet face to face, but if it happens, they will find a lot in common - in their games, rituals, attitude to the world. Both are animal herders. On expeditions, I tell the Nenets about the Chukchi, the Chukchi about the Nenets, to the Mongols - about Eskimos and Chukchi…They listen with great interest, and give advice about techniques and organization of the ways: "but I would do it like that…". They ask why the other people do things a certain way, I explain it, and they quickly understand it.

Children are the most interesting of all. They play games, and they are very similar, the world of children unites the nomads of the entire planet.

The various nomadic peoples have a very similar mentality, similar consciousness. They think widely, they have a concept of the Way, of the endlessness of the world, of the cyclic nature of time - they perceive time moving like a spot of sunlight through a yurt, in a circle, and they do not see time as linear, which is characteristic of western civilizations.

And you can sense this connection with the world, especially in the North, when in the spring you set off on the seasonal journey with them, and everything alive strives  to the north - birds fly there from the south, grass breaks though, reindeer "grunt" and run - also to the north, to the ocean. You become filled with all of that, the energy charges through you, and you are simply drawn forward with all of them, and you go, too. In the fall it is the other way around. You follow the stream of life. And all the nomads are united  together with this life force, and that is where their strength lies.

-  What would you advise to read on this theme, to find out more about the world of the nomads?

-  Start with L. N. Gumilev. Whether you accept his theory of passionarity and ethnogenesis or not, he scrupulously collected the entire history of steppe peoples. You can use his books about the Great Steppe like reference books. Finally, there is his positive attitude to the nomads as to people, and that he deposed the myth about the nomads being "outside of history", as the English historian Toynbee used to write. Gumilev overturned the image of nomads as people who have no history.

And further - there are experts who specialize in every nation and every direction. For example, Nenets and Khanty - Golovnev, Zhukovskaya and Mongols, Tan-Bogoraz and Chukotka; he also participated in an American expedition and wrote a proportion of his works in English.

There is no more detailed description of Chukotka culture than what Tan-Bogoraz wrote. As a matter of fact, it is a shame for us and a hint to the Russian Geographic Society, that one of  Tan-Bogoraz's volumes has never been translated and is kept in America. It is the most interesting volume - "Beliefs of the Chukchi",

We are prepared to translate it, but we need help in getting hold of the original in some form for the translation.

From artistic literature, of course the Chukotka author Yuri Rytkheu ("Time of thaw", "A dream in early fog"), Tikhon Semushkin ("Alitet is leaving for the mountains"), but  I personally love Chingiz Aitmatov most of all. If you want to find out more about the Kazakhs, read Abai, even though, of course, akyns(?) are best listened to live.

Contemporary and traditional economy - equal partnership is necessary, and not subsidies for "invalids"

-  You said that the nomadic peoples represent the upper link of the chain of biocenosis. That sounds like the stage of homeostasis  in the evolution of an ethnic system in Lev Gumilev.

-  Exactly true. It is that very same homeostasis, when they achieved harmony with the world, and established more or less stable conditions, which, if nothing disturbs them artificially, are able to exist for quite a long time. Many think of nomads as "relic" ethnoses. Those same Northern peoples preserved their way of life  which has existed for thousands of years back. Reindeer herding, for example, originated 20 thousand years ago. And they keep it all, they are in homeostasis.

But homeostasis is a very fragile condition. Especially in the Extreme North of Russia and North America. Any sort of  intervention can easily disrupt it. That means that especially in the North, it is necessary to give it a lot of thought before one intervenes in ways of life that have existed for millennia. But the farther South, the more stable the society. But that is a general law, all of us geographers understand that.

Especially in the North, many problems originate because of that. The first problem is that nomadic economies are treated as relicts of prehistoric past.  It is 21^st  century, villages are being built, there is drilling for gas and oil, and there they are, traveling around in their  fur and leather clothing, speak to trees, worship idols…All this is seen as relicts of the past by many of those who arrive from Russia. It is funny: "Chukchi in a choom is waiting for the dawn" and so on.

Many of our people, Russians, can't see that this is a priceless treasure house of history, culture and traditions. All that goes right past them. That is the main problem - we don't see people. That is why I work at the museum - to teach kids to see people, ant to see a human being in every human being.

The second problem is that their economy can't withstand competition - the transportation network is bad, there is no infrastructure. They have nowhere to bring the meat and skins. There is enough for them, but what next?

As a result they can't secure a higher standard of living for themselves. Yes, they can live just like before, in the stone age, but maybe they could have a TV set, a snowmobile, a generator…Money is needed for that, and it can be done.

But never by subsidies! I am an opponent of any type of subsidies - to invalids, or to the people of the North. They have to be given a possibility to earn money. I say this because I spent many years working with disabled children. One must not engender a "disability complex" in people, and that is what happens with subsidies. They are no worse than us and it is not necessary to convince them about the opposite…

-  That means that you are for partner relationships between nomads and "contemporary" civilization?

 

-  Yes, I want them to be equal partners - full value and equal, with equal right. So that a reindeer herder would be a respected profession, no worse, for example, than an oil driller.

There is another problem, of course, with violation of human rights. Which is obvious from everything we talked about before. They simply do not notice them(the nomads). Yes, there are no more cases of genocide like before. But what does happen, is this: a family lives, and they simply "move" them. They talk to the family for a long time, trying to convince them, give them money, then move them into a settlement; but in that settlement they have no work  and they just drink and die.

It is called "Brocade genocide".  It looks like they mean well and do the best, but they destroyed the family.

- And there is no work for them in the settlement?

- What kind of work can he do in  the settlement? Let's say it is somebody of my age (Konstantin is 32). Are they going to go to school? With three grades of general education… Yes, maybe he is a virtuoso reindeer herder and a hunter, but in the settlement nobody needs his skills, and it is a foreign world to him.

-  Are there many cases that a Nenets or Khanty goes to school for a worker or engineering specialty and goes to work, let's say, for the oil industry?

- Few, but there are some cases like that. For example I have a friend, he works for a gas company. It is not bad. Such people can become the intermediaries between technogenic civilization and traditional culture, and can offer many useful suggestions. If, of course, somebody will listen to them.

The problem is also in that many get higher education, and then they can't get a job at home. By law,  Siberian natives have to be paid extra. Naturally, the employers do not want to do that, and prefer to hire people who are from the area but are not Nenets or Khanty who got their higher education in Peterburg or Moscow and came back home. They will find a thousand excuses, but they won't hire him.

Even though, in principle, everything is not that bad. In Yamal it is not bad at all, and in Chukotka - a little bit worse. Despite Abramovich's work - he has done a lot in Chukotka, but there are still many problems.

-  Why?

-  First and foremost, because of the absence of a transportation system. In Yamal there are highways and railroads, but so far, Chukotka is "white silence".

And because of the horrible climate in Chukotka, airplanes won't save the day. You can sit in Anadyr  for weeks waiting for a plane.

- Well and how does it reflect on the local people if they are, to some extent, self-sufficient?

-  They are self-sufficient, and can live, heating their dwellings with animal fat lamps. Just like in the stone age. I will tell you a story. I came to a yaranga (native dwelling), and met the brigade headman's family.  His wife, with Russian name Lena, is lighting this animal fat lamp, and sits there in her fur overall - stone age all the way. But the girl was very well educated.

And she tells me: "You know, Kostya, at school they told me, that our Chukotka has traveled all the way from a fat lamp to a nuclear  power plant in Bilibino. And now we have taken that entire trip backwards."

Such sad humor…

It is sad, because in that very same Yamal they have had electricity in the chooms for a long time, generators, television… It is extremely important - to give the people the chance to live a nomadic life, yet to be able to use some of the advantages, which should be available to everyone in 21st century.

Satellite phones - now, that is useful. Even if you give just one satellite phone for a brigade - it costs pennies. But children won't die, and rescue will show up in time if something happens.

Now they still have those prehistoric contraptions with a turn-handle, which sometimes work, but sometimes don't.

So it turns out that what is needed is really very little. But nobody is doing it, because nobody notices it. They don't see the person. Here it is in general an omnipresent problem - nobody notices the "little guy". Great Russia does not notice the little people. It is very sad.

-  And what is the situation with birth rate, death rate, population growth, etc. in the Northern nations?  Different sources say completely different things - that they are dying out, and the opposite - that the population is increasing. What should one believe?

-  After all, the population is increasing. They are not dying out. We have 45 native minority peoples. There are also large ones - Nenets, Khanty, Zyryan, Chukchi, and Evenks.  So far they are not threatened, and their numbers are growing, the families have many children.  Infant mortality rate is higher than the average in Russia, but, in principle, not critical. Not like it used to be. After all, the Soviet system of medical care has been working for many decades. Now they make sure that, for example, women would not give birth in chooms, but in obstetric stations, etc.

But there are peoples of whom only 100-200 individuals remain. Nothing can help them, they will be assimilated, and the task here is to preserve at least some element s of their culture and language, and let them live with dignity. The nation won't exist anymore, but people should not perish.

That is also a very sad, tragic moment - "the last of the Udegei", "the last of the Mohicans"… But, in any case, they have to be given a chance to live the way they want.

 Under no circumstances is it necessary to set up some "preserves" or reservations for them, and then take tourists there. Let them come to the cities, if they feel like it, and get assimilated, but their blood will live on somewhere.

Well, and where it is possible to preserve the people, it has to be done. Together, they have much more of a chance. Their ethnic self-identification, which is very strong in the peoples of the North, supports them and helps them to survive during hard times.

The alcoholism is also not so completely horrible. It is far from everybody who drinks. Those in the settlements drink, but so do the Russians who live there. But those who are living a nomadic existence do not drink, because in the tundra it is deadly.

What often happens - a guy gets drunk in the settlement, and his wife loads him, unconscious, on a sled, hitches the reindeer, and runs off with him into the tundra some 100-200 kilometers away to some relatives. The drunk will wake up already in a yaranga. And there is nothing to drink, and he can't run away on foot. What is he to do? He starts working and comes to his senses. It is a great way to fight drunkenness.

- So among them, also, the women are more sensible and do not drink so much? And when the woman deals with her drunk husband - is it just like with the Russians - the usual situation?

-  Yes that is exactly like that.

The question may not be relevant now, but, if we dream about better times... Let's say the Chukchi, Nenets, and others are doing fine, and there are more and more of them. Then sooner or later the tundra economy…

-  Will stop feeding them?

-  Yes. And then parts of these peoples will have to be "re-classified"…

-  I understand the question. I have written about that quite a few times in my articles. How were these situations solved before?  Before, a war would start. It is because nomadic economy needs extensive, huge expanses of land, which feed only a few people. So after some good years the population would grow, and conflicts would start. Nomadic empires originated like that - from the Xiongnu to Genghis-Khan. In the North, there were always wars.

 

The North American Indians also fought like that. The Europeans could not understand their wars. But the war was waged  to decrease the population density. In a way, war was a natural means for limiting population growth.

-  And with our northern peoples it was the same?

-  Yes, of course.  They used to travel on their war sleds, can you imagine, from Salekhard to Novosibirsk - across the entire Western Siberia. I can't imagine at all how somebody would repeat a trip like that - across all those endless swamps and bogs and impassable taiga.

The Voguls (Mansi) regularly raided Russia with their war sleds. But now they are practically assimilated.

-  So what is described in Alexei Ivanov's "Heart of Parma" corresponds to reality?

-  Yes, it is historically accurate.

Now they can find a place for themselves in the cities. Very many of them are talented people, they study, and leave…

Mongolia solved this matter. Already traditionally, for the past 100-200 years, what do the Mongols do? They give their children a choice. One goes to a Buddhist monastery, another goes to the city, becomes a scientist or a worker or a servant, and helps his parents from there, and somebody else stays in the steppe. So there is a solution.

-  We asked similar guestions at the "Arctic Forum" - about the northern peoples, their problems, and how to arrange the relationships between them and  "civilization" - there were representatives form Alaska, Denmark, Finland. Partially they managed to solve these problems, but they still are there, even in the West. But according to your information - to what extent is the western experience successful, to what extent were they able to solve the problems of the northern minorities? How is the situation different here, and, for example, in Alaska?

-   To tell the truth, these problems have not been solved anywhere. What goes on in Finland and Norway is not a bad variant, but only very few representatives of the Saami people are left. And everything is being done for them. Industry is making special arkans for reindeer herders, color-coded for different kinds of weather, from special plastic; they make special light plastic chooms for them, etc.

But that is an artificial support for the Saami ethnos. Yes, they are great, our Nenets went there several times to learn from them. But still, it is an artificial support of a culture, even though it is not the saddest scenario.

What happened in America - it is known that they still have reservations, and the genocide continues… ("America is the land of freedom, as we understand", - sarcastically adds Konstantin).

In Alaska and in Canada things are comparatively not too bad - the culture was preserved, and things are generally softer. But it is not our model.

There is nowhere else, where the culture of the northern peoples has been preserved better than here, in Russia. We have a unique chance to fully preserve the culture of some of the northern peoples. For example, at this moment the Nenets culture is 100% complete - language, traditions and everything else.

The Americans destroyed everything, and only then started preserving; suddenly they became ashamed:  "Oh, the first nation; oh, we killed off all the buffaloes!" and it was specifically an American idea to pay subsidies to the Indians. And what does it lead to? The Indians live in reservations, get large subsidies,, but the older generations drink, and the younger, who do not drink yet, fill the gangs in large cities.

That is a "brocade genocide". Everything is done for them,  but the results get worse.

A Ruler and a Sage, The Government and Geographers

-  Konstantin, and you, as a specialist in the se problems, could you act, for example in a capacity of a consultant for our government structures to help work out an intelligent, informed national policy?

-  Yes, of course, I am prepared to do that, and I am already doing it. As the representative of these peoples, as their "voice" in the 'great land". They have entrusted me with that. We wrote an open letter to Medvedev (it was published in ("Nezavisimaya Gazeta"), elucidating these problems. Many fishermen and reindeer herders have my phone number, they call me, and we try to solve their problems from Moscow.

It is because the local administrations and local press tend to cover up the problems of the native peoples; and just show a beautiful picture to the central authorities.

The only one who can see the problems is a scientist or a traveler, who lives with them and knows them well. The local people will not talk about their problems with just any Russian. They are often afraid of punishment by the authorities, and won't trust the first guy they meet.

-  Do the organs of administration listen to you? I would like also to enlarge on the question. In your experience, to what extent is the interaction between specialists - geographers, ethnographers, and the government organs, who make administrative decisions,  tuned up?

-  I am thinking of some history. When Genghis Khan in early 13^th century conquered the capital of  the Chinese empire, a young man named Ye-lu  Ch'u-ts'ai became his captive; he was a Buddhist monk with excellent education. And he told Genghis Khan: "Great Khan! It is possible to conquer an empire from the saddle, but it is not possible to rule an empire from the saddle!"

And after these words, Genghis Khan listened to the advice of various people - scholars, sages, and clergymen of various religions, and based his decisions on their advice.

I think that our government should do the same thing. Of course, the president can't know everything, and he needs good independent specialists, who would help their country with pure heart.

Let's take an ordinary geographer who is doing his scientific work. First, the government should be aware that such specialists exist. It is probably necessary to set up a corresponding electronic data base.

So that, let's say, the president could see who does what, to call the necessary man, and ask him: "Ivan Ivanovich, and what do you think about this matter?"

That would be the ideal scenario.

But so far, our government is far from the people. It is necessary to get closer, and here the "scholar in a worn jacket" can help, who works at his institute on his problem, digs in it through and through and knows every detail. He is independent and realistically can offer a useful advice. A council of several scholars and scientists could be put together, so that they could work out a collegial solution. Otherwise - what is the use of scholars? To write dissertations?

-  Konstantin, as a member of Russian Geographic Society, would you wish something for it?  What does the Russian Geographic Society give you?

-  I can say with pride that I am a member of the Russian Geographic Society. This "cover" helps me on expeditions, and the local people, for example, in Kirgizia, treat me with respect, as "one who continues the work of Przewalski and Semyonov Tian-Shanskiy". It serves as a "pass" even somewhere where a stranger  would be treated with distrust.

-  We heard that Przewalski did not leave, to put it gently, the best of impressions in Mongolia and China…

-  Military reconnaissance is military reconnaissance with its specifics, nevertheless, in Mongolia they have respect for him.

-  Konstantin, and are there any matters that you would like to discuss, that we have not asked about? What, from your point of view, is important but was not mentioned in our interview?

-  Well, I would like to say that the Russian Geographic Society should become a more active power, which would realistically participate in the life of the country, even in political life, and in solutions of economic problems. It could be a kind of independent expert entity, where the authorities could go for advice. Earlier, during Czarist era, this is what it was for, and membership in the Society was very prestigious.

I would like our government and officials to listen to the geographers. After all, we live here on the earth, and aren't somewhere off flying in the air, even though the air is also one of the objects of study in geography.