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The Formation of Tunka National Park: Revitalization and Autonomy in Late Socialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Katherine Metzo
Katherine Metzo*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Charlotte
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Abstract

In this article, Katherine Metzo examines the creation of Tunka National Park in Russia's Lake Baikal region. Formed in the last days of the Soviet Union, the park represents the efforts of local indigenous elite to manipulate state policies on conservation to return control over natural resources to the local population. Metzo sees the formation of the park as part of a cultural revitalization movement through its ties to a broader Buriat national-cultural movement that emerged in late socialism. Movement leaders were vnye, in Alexei Yurchak's sense of the word, as they promoted their personal as well as the national-cultural agenda through the inbetween spaces created in the discussion of nature conservation.

Type
Nature, Culture, and Power
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , Spring 2009 , pp. 50 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2009

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References

The research that resulted in this paper took place in 2000 and 2001 and was funded by a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board Individual Advanced Research Opportunities program, a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, and an Indiana University Grant-in-Aid. A research fellowship at the Siberian Studies Centre of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany, supported the writing of this article. I wish to’ thank Chaizu Kyrgys for conversations that prompted me to revisit an earlier incarnation of this paper presented at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, in 2003 and Patrick Heady and Brian Donahoe for comments on a draft presentation at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in May 2007. Special thanks go to John Eidson for comments on a full draft of the paper. Additional thanks to Zsuzsa Gille, Mark D. Steinberg, and the anonymous reviewers at Slavic Review for valuable comments and suggestions. The epigraph from Ardan Angarkhaev is taken from Panorama Sibir, 2006, no. 6: 16. All translations from Russian are my own. In addition to its more common meaning of land designated for public use, the word park has the specific meaning of “a broad, fairly level valley between mountain ranges.” See the entry for “park,” at Dictionary.com. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (Boston, 2004) at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/park (last consulted 30 November 2008).

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41. Even in the Buriat Republic, though, Buriats did not constitute a majority of the population. At the time of writing, referenda had passed in both autonomous okrugs to merge these units with the oblasts within which they were located, a process that occurred on 1 January 2008 for Ust-Ordinsk Buriat Autonomous Okrug, which is now part of Irkutsk oblast.

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62. Wallace, Anthony, “Revitalization Movements,” American Anthropologist 58, no. 2 (April 1956): 264-81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The model has been used predominantly in reference to religious movements in North America, but Balzer has used it constructively in a recent study of shamanism as well. See Balzer, “Healing Failed Faith?“

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66. Tsing, Friction, 175. Like Yurchak's concept of “being vnye,” “gaps” for Tsing are discursive spaces, but they might also be physical places where western concepts do not map, even for westerners who visit them.

67. Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom; Yurchak, Everything Was Forever.

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70. Here I follow Thomas J. Csordas's explanation of charisma as rooted in the resources deployed during interactions between a leader and the participants in ritual and as actually created by the actions that might be said to indicate recognition of charisma, such as applause. Csordas, Thomas J., Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement (Berkeley, 1997)Google Scholar.

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73. Ardan Angarkhaev, interview, Ulan-Ude, 19 July 2001.

74. Vladimir Syrenov, interview, Kyren, 31 March 2000.

75. See Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom.

76. Tsing, Friction, 148.

77. Ibid., 123.

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89. Trusov, “Les, beskhoziaistvennost'.“

90. Quote from Aija Melluma, a planner at Gauja National Park in Latvia, cited in Schwartz, Nature and National Identity, 120. The concerns of Tunka residents often center on fears that if the focus is on preserving the past interactions of man and nature, current activities might be limited.

91. Anatolii Bobkov, “Prirodu okhranit', no o liudiakh ne zabyvat',” Saiany, 1991, 3.

92. Aiusheev, “Proiekt dolzhen izmenitsia,” Saiany, 1989, 2-3.

93. Quote from Syrenov, Saiany, 31 May 1991.

94. Agrawal, Environmentality.

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96. Metzo, Katherine, “Civil Society and the Debate over Pipelines in Tunka National Park, Russia,” in Agyeman, Julian and Ogneva-Himmelberger, Yelena, eds., Environmental Justice and Sustainability in theFormer Soviet Union (Boston, 2008), 209-46Google Scholar.

97. Metzo, “Adapting Capitalism.“

98. Metzo, “Whither Peasants in Siberia?“

99. Wallace, “Revitalization Movements.” What is interesting to observe in the present operation of the park is the degree to which Angarkhaev's vision of living “in the midst of” nature as a matter of national character resonates with the international discourse of sustainable development that is coming to dominate the region's economy.

100. Agrawal, Environmentality.