Sibirica

I wish to point out that Roy Chan’s article in the issue 3 of volume 10 (“Broken Tongues: Race, Sacrifice, and Geopolitics in the Far East in Vsevolod Ivanov’s Bronepoezd No. 14-69”) may present some ambiguity for readers as he omitted Ivanov’s patronymic Viacheslavovich. The other literary Vsevolod Ivanov, who lived in China (1922–1945), was named Vsevolod Nikanorovich Ivanov, and he was not the author discussed by Dr. Chan. Thanks to Patricia Polansky for pointing this out to me.

Thermokarst depressions in the permafrost environment of Yakutia (northeastern Siberia) provide fertile hayfields for Sakha cattle economy. These areas of open land in the boreal forest are called alaas in Sakha language. At this northern latitude cattle breeding is particularly in demand of nutritious fodder, because cows spend nine months on average in winter stables. Therefore alaases are the focus of Sakha environmental perception. Sakhas not only dwell in alaases, but through their economic activities, they modify and maintain them. This process is based on control and domination rather than on procurement of food by a “giving“ environment. Villagers in Tobuluk (central Yakutia) consider the areas surrounding their village as controlled islands of alaases (hayfields) in a sea of uncontrolled forest. This article examines Sakha environmental perception in which landscapes and cardinal directions evoke and define each other, and characterize those who reside there. Due to the subsequent transformations of Sakha economy and lifestyle by the Soviet and Russian state administration in the last 100 years (collectivization, centralization, and decollectivization) the way that Sakhas interact with their surroundings has transformed radically within the four generations causing profound differences in the way generations relate to, interact with, and understand alaases.

Genre differentiation is possible by external factors (function, communicative situation) and internal factors (grammar, theme). As the external factors for all 18 texts of the corpus are the same, the article relies on internal factors. The cohesive means of genre identification in this corpus are recurrence, time structure, connectivity, grounding, and lexis. The peculiarity of Koriak genre differentiation consists in a preponderance of narrative structures, which are characterized by a sequential time line with passages in scenic present tense and structures of a theme with a following exemplification.

Gustavo Lins Ribiero and Arturo Escobar, eds., World Anthropologies: Disciplinary Transformations within Systems of Power David G. Anderson

Juhani Nourluoto, ed., The Slavicization of the Russian North Lenore A. Grenoble

Andrew A. Gentes, Exile, Murder and Madness in Siberia, 1823-61 Anna Bara

Harvard Ayers, Dave Harman, and Landon Pennington, Arctic Gardens: Voices from an Abundant Land Jennifer Fagen

Kuklick, Henrika, ed., A New History of Anthropology David G. Anderson

Laurence C. Smith, The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future Alex Blake

Andrzej Weber and Hugh McKenzie, eds., Prehistoric Foragers of the Cis-Baikal, Siberia. Proceedings of the First Conference of the Baikal Archaeology Project Dennis H. O'Rourke

Books Received for Review