Property and Economy among reindeer herders in Yamal, Northwest Siberia

The tundra as a place of living is still attractive for young natives. The knowledge how to survive in such an environment is transmitted from the older to the younger generation.

The tundra as a place of living is still attractive for young natives. The knowledge how to survive in such an environment is transmitted from the older to the younger generation.

An uninterrupted experience in herding and living of their own reindeer, a common use of pastures allowing them flexibly to adapt their migration routes to ecological as well as social pressures and a clever sense of negotiation and finding their niche within a centralized state systems were the factors that enabled the Yamal reindeer herders to preserve their pastoral lifestyle to such an extent, that they are called today as being the most ‘traditional’. At the other hand, the findings also show, that this has only become possible within the Soviet Union, because the state in its regional behavior was not so strict and oppressive as the ideology and Moscow orders let it assume. As reported for Hungary by Hann, the Socialist state and the local population came to informal agreements to satisfy both needs: Reindeer herders were allowed to have their own ‘supplementary economy’, and the state could use the surplus of this economy to fulfill the centrally prescribed quota.
Having in mind this background, it becomes less of a miracle, why Yamal herders soon after the breakdown of the planned economy succeeded rather well in marketing their reindeer meat and antlers (panty) to various competitors. In the first decade after the Soviet Union, reindeer herding was the most stable branch of the local economy, so that more and more families opt for a live on the tundra rather than in the villages with material and social problems common throughout the whole former Soviet bloc.

References

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Dyson-Hudson, Rada; Smith, Eric Alden 1978. Human territoriality: an ecological reassessment, in: American Anthropologist 80: pp 21-41.

Gray, Patty 2001. The Obshchina in Chukotka: Land, Property and Local Autonomy. Working Paper No. 29, MPI Halle.

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Hardin, Garett 1968. The tragedy of the Commons, in: Science 162:pp. 1243-1248.