On the issue of paradise among the nenets and ob ugrians (the XIX–XXI centuries)

• Main Author: Samson, Dominique
• Other Authors: Centre de recherches Europes-Eurasie (CREE EA 4513), Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Inalco)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Russian
• Published: HAL CCSD 2017
• Subjects: [SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences; Arctic; Yamal Peninsula; nenets; samoyed*; Tundra; Siberia
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04100645; https://hal.science/hal-04100645/document; https://hal.science/hal-04100645/file/Du_paradis_chez_les_nenetses_et_les_ougriens_de_l_Ob_Tomsk_2017.pdf

International audience The author of the article sets the task to perform the notions of Nenets and Ob Ugrians on “Paradise” as their real and symbolic living space in the context of religious and political interaction of Aboriginal and Russian worlds. The concept of “Paradise” in the communities of the Siberian Arctic is highlighted on the material of preaching literature, ethnography, oral folklore of Ostyak, Voguls, Samoyeds of the times of the Russian Empire, and the information of representatives of the modern Nenets intelligentsia in Yamal as well. The author’s position is primarily to give voice to indigenous peoples and this idea became the scientific and ideological platform of the Colloquium “Siberia as Paradise” that was organized at the Paris Institute for Political Studies. Held on a comprehensive database study reveals the complex contradictions at the level of vital realities, where the indigenous population of (Sub) Arctic Siberia lives in two different social spaces, two languages, and two cultures. Sometimes these worlds complement each other and sometimes they are entirely opposite. Adaptation to the outside world requires from the natives to learn how to travel between the large world, where you have to develop a sedentary lifestyle, to go to school, first turn to Christianity, and then to militant atheism, and a small community with a narrow circle of relatives and friends. Another tier of contradiction is between the real world and ideal concepts about the “paradise” on earth, where once Ugric gods lived, everything was abundant, and everyone was rich and happy up to the moment when the people with firearms and incendiary mixture suddenly appeared. For the Ostyaks of the XIX century, the lost Paradise embodies the idea of the “third heaven with no diseases, taxes and with no Russians”. For the Nenets woman Anna, who lives on the Yamal Peninsula, the land of hope – the New Jerusalem is located in the Siberian tundra itself, where there is all that a man needs to survive, and the freedom ...