The Performative Machine: Transfer of Ownership in a Northwest Russian Reindeer Herding Community (Kola Peninsula)

• Published in: Nomadic Peoples
• Main Authors: Konstantinov, Yulian, Vladimirova, Vladislava
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: White Horse Press 2006
• Subjects: Demography; Kola Peninsula; Lovozero; kola peninsula; Northwest Russia; Tundra
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/np.2006.100210; https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/whp/nomp/2006/00000010/00000002/art00010

The article is based on longitudinal fieldwork with reindeer herders in the Kola Peninsula, northwest Russia. Its main ethnographic focus is SKhPK 'Tundra' ( sel'sko khoziastvennaia proizvoditel'naia kooperatsiia – agricultural producing cooperative) of Lovozero. The main argument is that a state of communal affairs under the dominance of the state farm ( sovkhoz ), during the Soviet period, privileged domestic economies of the farm workers to be supported by the collective assets of the farm. The authors see this state of 'private-in-the-collective' arrangement as 'sovkhoism' and view the present variety of rural organisational forms in Russia as greater or lesser departures from it.