Peoples and cultures of the Eurasian Arctic and subarctic
Ethnic composition

In northern Eurasia there is no division corresponding to that in northern North America between the exclusively tundra- and coastal-dwelling Yupik, Aleut, and Inuit and the Indian groups that dwell partially or wholly within the taiga, or boreal forest. With the exception of the inhabitants of the coastal regions around the Bering Strait (Siberian Yupik and coastal Chukchi and Koryak), the indigenous peoples of northern Eurasia either inhabit the taiga year-round or migrate annually between the taiga margins and the tundra. In that respect they are more comparable to the peoples of the North American subarctic region than to those of the Arctic. Strictly speaking, the Eurasian Arctic region includes only those peoples whose lives and livelihood are principally confined to the tundra; however, for the purposes of this article, a number of other, forest-dwelling groups, which have conventionally fallen within the general rubric of “circumpolar peoples,” will be included. Inevitably, the criteria for inclusion within this category are somewhat arbitrary, but they include a traditional dependence on hunting, trapping, and fishing and/or the herding of reindeer (rather than other domestic livestock) and the absence or relative insignificance of agriculture.

In common with circumpolar peoples generally, those of northern Eurasia do not constitute clearly demarcated “tribes.” Ethnic and territorial boundaries, insofar as they are recognized at all, are ill-defined and fluid. Moreover, the enumeration of ethnic groups is further complicated by the many different names by which these groups may be known. Some names are broadly inclusive, designating populations of tens or even hundreds of thousands, whereas others apply to particular local groups of no more than a few hundred individuals. Some names are indigenous (self-designations); others are of foreign origin and have been applied by neighbouring peoples, conquering peoples, or anthropologists. In many cases, the indigenous designation is simply the term in the local language or dialect meaning “person” or “human being.” Bearing in mind these reservations, the following ethnic groups may be distinguished (with one or two exceptions, indigenous names are used throughout; where names of foreign origin have been in common ethnological use, these are placed in parentheses).

Peoples of Fennoscandia and northwestern Siberia

The Sami (Lapps) are the indigenous inhabitants of northern Fennoscandia. They were originally scattered throughout the forests of Finland, Karelia, and the Kola Peninsula and along the margins of the Scandinavian mountain chain, pursuing a livelihood based on hunting, trapping, and fishing. Reindeer were kept principally for transport. Among the Kola Sami and the so-called Skolt Sami of northeastern Finland, this way of life persisted until the end of the 19th century. In other areas, however, the expansion of Finnish and Scandinavian agricultural settlement led to the gradual contraction of the Sami homeland to the northernmost districts. Many Sami took up the life of their colonist neighbours, as small farmers and fishermen, but in the mountainous areas there developed in the 17th century a form of nomadic reindeer pastoralism, which is often taken to be the hallmark of Sami distinctiveness and ethnic identity.

The Komi-Zyryan inhabit the region between the Pechora and Vychegda rivers, to the west of the Ural Mountains; this area, roughly corresponding to Komi republic, enjoys a degree of autonomy within Russia. The Komi have long had contact with Russian settlers, and the majority are farmers and cattle keepers. In the northern part of their region, however, the Komi continue to practice reindeer herding and have traditionally enjoyed a reputation as traders.

The Nenets (Samoyed) form the largest of the indigenous groups of northwestern Siberia and are distributed over an area of taiga and tundra that extends from the White Sea in the west to the Yenisey River in the east. They were traditionally divided into the tundra Nenets, reindeer pastoralists who migrated with their herds between the tundra and taiga margins, and the much less numerous taiga, or forest, Nenets, with an economy based on hunting and fishing combined with small-scale and intensive reindeer husbandry. Closely related to the Nenets are the Nganasan (Tavgi Samoyed), inhabitants of the Taymyr Peninsula to the east of the Yenisey; and the Enets (Yenisey Samoyed), who occupy the basins of the Taz and Turukhan rivers and the lower reaches of the Yenisey. The Nganasan are notable for having preserved well into the 20th century a mode of livelihood focused on the hunting of wild reindeer, while they also kept herds of domestic deer for transport and for use in the chase. The Enets also traditionally combined wild reindeer hunting, domestic reindeer husbandry, and fishing.

The Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi (Vogul) are closely related groups that inhabit the low-lying swamp and forest country around the Ob River and its tributaries. Their economy was traditionally based on hunting and fishing, but they adopted reindeer husbandry from the Nenets about the 15th century. The Selkup (Ostyak Samoyed), though related to the Nenets in language, were in their traditional economy very similar to their Khanty neighbours. They were hunters and fishermen living within the forested regions of the Ob basin. In the 17th century some Selkup migrated northward to the Taz and Turukhan rivers. Only this latter group, the so-called “northern Selkup,” kept domestic reindeer, which were used solely for transport. The Ket (Yenisey Ostyak) were once distributed throughout the Yenisey basin, but contact with Russians and other groups during the 18th and 19th centuries led to widespread assimilation, leaving only the most northerly group intact. Their traditional livelihood was based on hunting, fishing, and trapping for fur; only a minority kept small reindeer herds.

North-central and northeastern Siberian groups

East of the Yenisey, the dominant and most numerous ethnic group is that of the Sakha. They are distributed over a large area centred on the Lena River, roughly corresponding to Sakha republic (Yakutia), founded in 1922. Though the precise origins of the Sakha are obscure, their ancestors are believed to have been forced northward under pressure from Mongolic Buryats in the 13th and 14th centuries, either mixing with or displacing the indigenous populations along the Lena. The more southerly Sakha have retained an economy based on the husbandry of cattle and horses supplemented, only after contact with Russian settlers, with agriculture. Farther north, however, the Sakha adopted the hunting, fishing, and reindeer-herding economy of their neighbours. Like the Komi, they also had a reputation as traders.

The principal indigenous population of the mountainous taiga country stretching eastward from the Yenisey River as far as the Sea of Okhotsk are the Evenk (formerly called Tungus). Their territory is vast, including about a quarter of the whole area of Siberia. The southern Evenk, inhabiting the regions of Transbaikal and the upper Amur basin, are principally horse- and cattle-keeping pastoralists. A small number live a semisedentary life as fishermen and hunters of sea mammals on the Okhotsk coast. Otherwise, the forest-dwelling Evenk were traditionally reindeer-keeping hunters and trappers. Domestic reindeer were used primarily for transport and were both milked and ridden; however, unlike the Nenets and other western Siberian groups, the Evenk did not employ herding dogs. Closely related to the Evenk are the Dolgan and the Even (Lamut). The Dolgan inhabit the taiga and tundra south of the Taymyr Peninsula. Though of Evenk origin, they have adopted many of the reindeer hunting and herding practices of their northern neighbours, the Nganasan, and their language is a dialect of Sakha. The Even live interspersed with the Evenk over a wide area from the Lena River to the Sea of Okhotsk. They differ only in minor cultural detail from the Evenk and have often been included within the latter category. Most Even groups have, however, been heavily influenced by the Sakha or, farther east, by the Koryak.

The far northeastern region of Siberia is the home of the so-called Paleo-Siberian (Paleo-Asiatic, or Hyperborean) peoples, including the Chukchi, Koryak, Itelmen, and Yukaghir. The Chukchi inhabit the tundras and coasts of the Chukchi Peninsula and Anadyr Plateau, and the Koryak inhabit the Koryak plateau southward into the Kamchatka Peninsula. The Chukchi are ethnically homogeneous, the Koryak much less so—indeed, the Koryak lacked any term by which to designate their ethnic group as a whole (the term Koryak was applied by Russian settlers). In other respects, the Chukchi and Koryak are similar. Both are divided between inland groups practicing reindeer pastoralism (an economic form that developed among them in the 18th and 19th centuries) and coastal, sedentary groups with an economy of maritime hunting and fishing. The latter kept no reindeer and used only dogs for transport. Traditionally, inland and coastal groups were closely linked by regular trading partnerships.

The Itelmen are the indigenous inhabitants of Kamchatka. They were traditionally sedentary fishermen who made relatively little use of maritime and coastal resources. They also depended to an unusual extent, for a subarctic people, on the gathering of wild plant foods. Russian settlers began to arrive in Kamchatka in the 18th century and absorbed much of the indigenous population to form an ethnically mixed group known as the Kamchadal. By the end of the 19th century, most people of Itelmen ancestry were practicing a way of life indistinguishable from that of the settlers, which included horticulture and the husbandry of horses and cattle.

The Yukaghir have no general term for themselves—the designation, probably of Tungusic origin, was applied by Russian settlers who had borrowed the term from the Sakha. In earlier times, the Yukaghir inhabited a wide expanse of northeastern Siberia, living primarily as hunters and fishermen (they appear to have adopted reindeer husbandry not long ago from the Evenk). Their numbers have been severely depleted, however, especially during the 19th century, and only two groups (designated Kolyma Yukaghir and Tundra Yukaghir) have survived to recent times. The former group inhabits the forest margins between the Kolyma and Alazeya rivers, the latter the upper reaches of the Kolyma. A third group, known as the Chuvan, which occupied the Anadyr River basin, has been absorbed into the surrounding Chukchi.

Interspersed with Chukchi settlements along the Bering Sea coast and on Wrangel Island are communities of Siberian Yupik (Eskimo). Like the coastal Chukchi, to whom they are closely linked by history and tradition, they were primarily hunters of sea mammals: walrus, seals, and whales (though whale hunting declined sharply toward the end of the 19th century). A few hundred Aleut, who locally call themselves Unangan, live on Bering Island, one of the Komandor Islands off the coast of Kamchatka. Their ancestors had lived as maritime hunters on the islands of the Aleutian chain but were transported to the Komandor Islands in 1825–26 by the Russian-American Company in order to exploit the islands’ fur-bearing resources. The Aleut population of the islands has since become thoroughly mixed with other settlers of Russian, Komi, and Yupik descent.

Linguistic affiliations

The fluidity of settlement throughout Eurasia during prehistoric and historical times has left an extremely complex distribution of languages. Broadly speaking, however, the languages of the indigenous peoples of the Eurasian Arctic and subarctic can be grouped into four classes: Uralic, Manchu-Tungus, Turkic, and Paleo-Siberian.

The Uralic family of languages is split into two main branches, Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic. Finno-Ugric languages are spoken by the Sami, Komi, Khanty, and Mansi. The Sami languages, which are mutually unintelligible, are sometimes considered dialects of one language. Although they share many features with Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, and the other languages of the Baltic-Finnic subgroup, they are not closely related to any of these. Komi-Zyryan and Permyak (Komi-Permyak) are assigned to the Permic division, to which also belongs the language of the Udmurt (Votyak). The languages of the Khanty and Mansi, of which there are several distinct dialectal variants, are assigned to the Ugric division. This division also includes the Hungarian language, although its relationship to Khanty and Mansi is fairly distant.


East of the Yenisey River, languages of the Tungusic type predominate. These languages, each with several dialect divisions, are spoken by the Evenk and the Even. They represent the northern branch of the so-called Manchu-Tungus language group. Languages of this group share a common agglutinative structure with the Mongolian languages (which include Mongol, OyratOirat, Buryat, Kalmyk, and several outlying languages) and the Turkic languages, which are widely spoken by the peoples of southwestern Siberia. The Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus language families together compose the Altaic family. In the Siberian north, languages of the Turkic type are represented only by the Sakha and by surrounding peoples such as the Dolgan who—though of Tungusic origin—have adopted the Sakha (Yakut) language. Apart from slight regional differences, there are no distinct Sakha dialects, and this linguistic homogeneity, together with the affinity of Sakha with other eastern Turkic languages such as those of the Shors and the Tuvans, supports the theory of a relatively recent incursion of the Sakha into northern Siberia.

The languages currently classified as Paleo-Siberian are thought to be the remnants of languages once spoken much more widely among the indigenous populations of the Siberian north, prior to the spread of the Samoyedic languages from the Sayan Mountains in the west and the Tungusic languages from Transbaikal in the east. In northeastern Siberia, Paleo-Siberian languages are spoken by the Chukchi, Koryak, and Itelmen, as well as by the Nivkh (Gilyak) of the lower Amur basin and Sakhalin Island. The Yukaghir language, which has a probable relationship to Early Uralic, is often grouped with the Paleo-Siberian languages. The languages of the Chukchi and Koryak are so closely related as to be mutually intelligible, both belonging to the Luorawetlan language family, as do the Itelmen languages. Extensive contact and borrowing between the Koryak and Itelmen has reduced the divergence between them. The Yukaghir language has survived into recent times as two distinct and mutually unintelligible dialects, and only a few hundred speakers remain. However, prior to the spread of Tungusic—and subsequently Sakha—influence, it may have been spoken over a wide area of northeastern Siberia. The Ket languages of western Siberia remain an enigma, since they appear to bear no relation to those of any surrounding peoples. They may be the only Paleo-Siberian languages to have survived in this region.

The languages of the Yupik, Inuit, and Aleut belong to the Eskimo-Aleut language family. Two mutually intelligible dialects of Aleut survive in Alaska and on several islands of Russia. The Eskimo languages fall into two divisions: Inuit, consisting of an interconnected series of dialects spoken across the New World Arctic from North Alaska to Greenland, and Yupik, which includes several Yupik languages spoken on both sides of the Bering Strait.


The indigenous peoples of northern Eurasia are everywhere outnumbered by immigrant populations—Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns in Lapland and Russians and other exogenous ethnic groups in Siberia. It is estimated that, in Siberia, the ratio of immigrants to native people was reversed from a minority of one to four to a majority of four to one within the period 1926–59. In Lapland the transition of the Sami from being a majority to a minority in their own homeland has taken place over a longer period but is no less marked. On account of the admixture of indigenous and immigrant peoples and the steady pressure of linguistic assimilation, there can be no accurate and objective measures of indigenous population numbers. Estimates of the total Sami numbers, for example, range from 35,000 to 60,000, depending on the criteria of inclusion. The figures published by the Swedish Saami Association in 1987, however, gave the number of Sami in Norway as 17,000, in Sweden as 8,500, and in Finland as 4,000. Adding a further 2,000 in Russia gives an estimated Sami population at that time in all four nations of 31,500.

Listed in the table are population numbers for indigenous peoples of northern Russia and much of Siberia, derived from the censuses of 1926, 1959, 1970, 1979, and 1989. These figures too, especially the earlier ones, must be treated with some caution; nevertheless, they give some idea of the relative sizes of these populations and the changes they underwent in the 20th century.

The Komi and the Sakha stand out by a large margin as the two most numerous indigenous groups in the Eurasian Arctic and subarctic. At the other end of the spectrum, small populations such as those of the Enets, Ket, and Yukaghir are highly vulnerable to absorption by surrounding peoples, as well as to the effects of epidemics, although their resistance to disease was greater than among the indigenous peoples of the New World when exposed to European contact. Thus the Enets, who have all but disappeared, were some 3,000 strong at the beginning of the 17th century, but most were subsequently absorbed by the Nenets, Selkup, and Dolgan. Likewise, the Yukaghir numbered about 5,000 in the 1750s but were gradually reduced in number to a mere 443 in 1926. Smallpox, measles, and syphilis were largely responsible for the decline, as were wars with the Chukchi and economic destitution brought on by involvement in the fur trade, the introduction of firearms, and the resulting depletion of wild animal resources.

Indigenous numbers in the Eurasian north are continuing to increase but at a rate much slower than in northern North America. Between 1959 and 1970 the average increase was about 15 percent, compared with the 40 percent increase over the same period in the Inuit population of Canada. The reasons for this contrast are not clear, but it may be due to higher rates of assimilation among indigenous peoples in Russia.

History of settlement


Meanwhile, agricultural economies involving the use of domestic animals were expanding from their centres of origin into Southwest and Central Asia. It was this expansion that eventually led to the domestication of the horse and, in the 1st millennium BC, to the rise of mobile, equestrian pastoralism in the Central Asian steppes. Moving north into the Siberian taiga, these pastoralists were probably the first to domesticate the reindeer. They were the ancestors of the present Samoyedic- and Tungusic-speaking peoples. With their gradual dispersion northward, local hunting and fishing cultures were progressively absorbed. This process of absorption was still apparent in recent times in the spread of Evenk and Even pastoralism into Yukaghir country, though it was somewhat overtaken by the subsequent northward expansion of the Sakha. Where the domestic reindeer appeared on the northern margin of the taiga, as among the tundra Nenets and Chukchi, it eventually led to the emergence of full-blown pastoralism. The same occurred in Lapland, though the initial domestication of the reindeer by the Sami also owed something to the influence of Finnish and Scandinavian peasants.

West of the Ural Mountains, contacts between European settlers and indigenous hunters and fishermen date back more than 1,000 years. Throughout the Middle Ages, trading and raiding forays were made into Sami country—later in the name of the Danish, Swedish, and Russian crowns—to tap the rich reserves of furs and foodstuffs. From roughly the 16th century, this commercial penetration was followed by a concerted movement of agricultural colonization, as rival kingdoms competed for control over the territory of Lapland. Some Sami found themselves obliged to pay taxes to representatives of three different states. Farther east, Russian merchant seafarers had colonized the White Sea coasts by the 9th century, and by the 11th century they had reached the mouth of the Ob River. A parallel movement overland, initially out of Novgorod, was given added impetus by the demand for fur. Cossacks and fur traders had penetrated the region east of the Urals by the 16th century and proceeded to advance across the entire breadth of Siberia, from the Urals to the Pacific coast, in the space of 60 years, 1580–1640. Kamchatka was annexed in 1697. In what is now the Chukchi region of the Russian Far East, however, the Russians encountered fierce resistance: in 1789 the Chukchi were the last indigenous group to be subjugated. Having established its presence across Siberia, Russia could maintain control without much difficulty, despite the vast expanse of territory and sparse immigrant population, for it did not have to contend with any competing external threat.

During the 20th century the human settlement of Arctic and subarctic Eurasia has been completely transformed. The development of industrial fishing, forestry, mining, oil and natural gas exploration, and military installations, along with the necessary transport, communication, and administrative infrastructure, has required the introduction of a large immigrant population. In Siberia many of these immigrants were originally brought in under constraint from other parts of the former Soviet Union, but they or their descendants have since remained. These nonnative groups form a predominantly urban population, inhabiting the new towns around industrial centres. The indigenous populations, by contrast, continue to live primarily in the rural areas.

Traditional culture

With the exception of the Pacific coast, the Eurasian Arctic and subarctic correspond fairly precisely with the distribution of the reindeer. More than any other factor, the reindeer and its domestication lend some cultural unity to the region as a whole, as well as distinguish the region from the North American Arctic and subarctic, where the reindeer (or caribou) remains wild.

The two types of reindeer husbandry are defined by the two predominant ecosystems, the taiga and the tundra. The open terrain of the tundra permits the supervision of large herds, and these generally migrate with their herdsmen between winter pastures within the margins of the taiga and summer pastures out on the tundra. Such pastoralism therefore entails fairly extended nomadic movements, sometimes across hundreds of miles. Peoples that practice this form of husbandry include the mountain Sami and tundra Nenets in the west and the inland Chukchi and Koryak in the east. The Sami and Nenets, however, use herding dogs, whereas the eastern groups do not. Techniques of herding that involve the use of drift nets and surrounds are clearly derived from the pre-pastoral hunting of wild reindeer (still practiced in the 20th century by the Nganasan). A few trained animals are kept for transport purposes, the reindeer being harnessed to the sledge in place of the dog. But the majority of animals are kept for their meat, fat, and hides and are scarcely tame.

The taiga form of reindeer husbandry occurs on a much smaller scale, since it is impossible to supervise large herds in a forest environment. The reindeer themselves are of a larger stature and can be ridden and used as pack animals. Indeed, their primary use is for transport in an economy that is otherwise based on hunting, trapping, and fishing. The animals are therefore much more tame and are slaughtered only in case of emergency. With such a form of husbandry, the pattern of movement tends to be seminomadic. Peoples practicing this form include the forest and Skolt Sami, forest Nenets, Selkup, Ket, Evenk, and Even.

The cultures of the North Pacific coast, on both the Asian and the American sides, have a quite different economic basis. Among the coastal Asian peoples the reindeer plays no part, although reindeer products may be obtained in trade from inland peoples. Maritime hunting and fishing support relatively large, sedentary settlements, and the only domestic animals are dogs, which are harnessed in teams to pull sledges. Siberian peoples with this kind of coastal economy include the coastal Chukchi and Koryak, the Yupik, and some Evenk and Even communities on the Okhotsk coast.

Other features of traditional cultural adaptation, such as housing and clothing, can be linked to this tripartite division between taiga, tundra, and coast. Winter dwellings in the taiga were often semi-subterranean. They were lined with timber, with walls and roof also of timber, and were often insulated with earthen sods. At temporary hunting and fishing sites, occupied in the summer months, taiga dwellers would build pyramidal or conical tents covered with birch bark (in western regions) or larch bark (in the east). The nomadic herders of the tundra lived year-round in conical tents covered with reindeer hide. Because tent poles and covers had to be carried during migrations, the size of the tent was constrained by the number of draft reindeer at a household’s disposal. Thus the tents of wealthy reindeer owners could be large and numerous, whereas poorer peoples had to be content with more meagre dwellings. In northeastern Siberia, among the reindeer-keeping Chukchi, Koryak, Yukaghir, and Even, a different type of tent was in use. This had a low, circular (but vertical) wall capped by a gently sloping, conical roof section. The covering of reindeer skin or larch bark was stretched over a frame of wooden poles. In former times, the coastal Chukchi and Yupik lived in semi-subterranean dwellings roofed with a structure made of the jaw and rib bones of the whale and covered with earthen sods. More recently, they have lived in tents similar to those of the inland peoples, except that they may be covered with walrus hide rather than reindeer skin. The permanent dwellings of the coastal Koryak and the Itelmen are remarkable semi-subterranean structures octagonal in plan, lined with timber, and with a side entrance along a corridor for summer use and an entrance through the centre of the roof for use in winter.

Throughout the Eurasian Arctic and subarctic, the main items of clothing were made from hides and furs. The forest-dwelling peoples drew on a wide range of fur-bearing species, whereas the clothes of the tundra dwellers were made almost exclusively from reindeer hide. On the northern Pacific coast, clothes were made both from sealskin and from reindeer hide obtained in trade from the inland herding people.

Information on kinship patterns and social organization among the peoples of the Eurasian Arctic and subarctic is rather patchy. Sami kinship has been well studied and has been shown to have a bilateral structure in which equal significance is attached to relationships on both maternal and paternal sides. Local communities or camps tend to take the form of a bilateral kindred centred on a group of siblings and their spouses. This kind of community organization appears to be widespread across the Eurasian north from Lapland to the Bering Strait, and the flexibility it affords for residential affiliation holds clear adaptive advantages in an uncertain environment. Nevertheless, ethnographers have claimed to detect vestiges of patrilineal clan organization among such peoples as the Nenets, Khanty, Mansi, Nganasan, Evenk, Even, and Sakha. The origins of the clan system may lie with the pastoral peoples of the southern Siberian steppes, but with the transition to taiga and tundra environments the significance of clans appears to fade out. With the significant exception of the Sakha, all northern Eurasian peoples are politically egalitarian, and, despite individual differences in wealth and influence, there are no formal chiefly offices or institutionalized hierarchies. As for Arctic and subarctic peoples generally, a strong emphasis is placed on the value of personal autonomy.

Traditional religious belief and practice throughout the Eurasian north was shamanistic in form (indeed, the term “shaman” is of Evenk derivation). According to the shamanistic worldview, the cosmos is divided into many layers, and the shaman, who is helped or hindered by various spirits, is thought to be able to travel in trance between them and, in so doing, to achieve an integration that is essential both to the health of individuals and to the well-being of the community. The animal counterpart of the human shaman was the bear, which throughout northern Eurasia has been the object of a special cult. The various species of wild animals were believed to be controlled by spirit masters or guardians, which would “give” animals to hunters who treated them with proper respect. Domestic reindeer (and dogs, on the Pacific coast) were vehicles of propitiatory sacrifice.

The Skolt Sami were among the first of the indigenous peoples of the north to be converted to Christianity, which was brought by the legendary Orthodox saint Trifon in 1532. Subsequently, from the 17th century, the Sami living farther to the west were subjected to Lutheran missionary influence, and their shamanistic beliefs and practices were violently eradicated. In Siberia the Eastern Orthodox church spread eastward along with Russian settlement, but Eastern Orthodoxy often secured only nominal adherence among native populations, who continued to practice their traditional religion. In the 20th century, shamanistic practices had been more rigorously suppressed but were showing signs of revival.

In modern times, the Sami of Norway, Sweden, and Finland have fared very differently from the indigenous peoples of Russia. Although the aspirations of the Sami toward nationhood have been frustrated by their citizenship of three different states (or four, including Russia), vigorous ethnopolitical organizations have been established which have fought effectively to reverse the stigma that once was attached to Sami identity, to secure respect for their language and cultural traditions, and to assert their rights—on the basis of prior occupancy—to land and water. Materially, the Sami can enjoy the benefits, in terms of raised living standards, of their citizenship of relatively affluent welfare states; however, the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986, which spread radioactive material over much of northwestern Lapland, dealt a blow from which the reindeer economy may be slow to recover.

Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, many of the minority peoples of the northern U.S.S.R. were given formal recognition in its administrative structure. Post-Soviet Russia retains to a large degree the recognition and rights to limited autonomy of certain minorities, including the Komi, Sakha, Nenets, Khanty, Mansi, Evenk, Chukchi, and Koryak. During the Soviet era, however, all political and economic direction came from the centre. Reindeer husbandry, hunting, fishing, and trapping were all reorganized on the principles of collectivization.

The growth of mining and of oil and gas exploration in Russia has caused grave problems of environmental pollution, posing a major threat to the livelihood of indigenous peoples. Since the late 1980s, however, with the advent of the policy of perestroika (“restructuring”) and the breakup of the Soviet Union itself, these peoples are finding a new voice with which to express their concerns and ethnic aspirations, in solidarity with other peoples of the so-called Fourth World.