SUMMARY:

The article discusses the early Soviet colonization of the Arctic. Initially, the Soviet government continued and even expanded the policy of the imperial regime that ascribed the status of inorodtsy (those of alien origin) to Siberian indigenous peoples. This status protected them from political and economic mobilization but also reinforced their quite racial otherness in Russian society. Advised by populist ethnographers, many of whom had lived among the Northern peoples as political exiles, the Soviet authorities agreed to secure special status for the indigenous peoples of the North. Inspired by the example of American Indian reservations, Soviet ethnographers essentially advanced a benevolent racializing approach within the model of “affirmative action empire.” They envisioned isolated territories preserving a complex of distinct nature and culture, subsidized by the government and inaccessible to outsiders. The predatory industrialization of the first five-year plans accompanied by cultural intervention and the economic exploitation of local peoples became the main factors countering their isolation. Beginning in the mid-1930s, the task of developing the “indigenous proletariat” in the Far North became the ultimate political priority. Turning inorodtsy into indigenous proletarians involved some institutional experimentation and the rearrangement of local power relations, which are carefully reconstructed in the article. The practical results of this bold social engineering were more visible in the transformation of the discursive sphere and the language of otherness regarding the indigenous population of the Far North, than in genuine socioeconomic transformation. Regardless of the actual colonial policies on the ground, the normalization of the Northern peoples as proletarians became a necessary step for proclaiming them members of socialist nations and in this respect no different from other Soviet citizens.