Print, power and personhood: Newspapers and ethnic identity in East Siberia
type: CreativeWork
description: This PhD research investigates the relevance of non-Russian Siberian culture and identity both for the state institutions in the regions concerned, and for the Russian Federation’s central government. As the first chapter describes, Sovietera policy towards the Soviet Union’s non-Russian peoples brought about a massive cultural change, in the process generating a new awareness of nonRussian ethnic identity. Current ethnographic and sociological research on the former Soviet Union indicates that this awareness continues to develop, while remaining subject to politically motivated attempts at interference. Politicians, academics and journalists have pointed out the capacity of strong ethnic identities to hinder a popular identification with a multi-ethnic federal state, even as other commentators have accused politicians of deliberately encouraging personal ethnic affiliations. The interaction between political propaganda and personal perception within the changing awareness of ethnic identity in the Russian Federation has not yet been clarified, and neither has its significance for post-Soviet Russia’s state-building project. The introductory chapter explains the comparison of two Siberian nonRussian peoples, the Buryat and Sakha, and their respective territorial administrations, the Republics of Buryatia and Sakha (Yakutia), which is intended to isolate general trends in the development of non-Russian ethnicity. This comparison is based on the assumption that culture itself is a network of collectively held ideas that determines social practice, as it changes in tandem with the course of events. The perceptions of non-Russian identity that appeared over the Soviet period are thus understood to arise from changes in the collective understanding of cultural difference. Hence, this study identifies and then compares contemporary formulations of the Soviet-era terms connected to cultural difference in Buryatia and Sakha (Yakutia). The research method is a combined conte…
abstract: This PhD research investigates the relevance of non-Russian Siberian culture and identity both for the state institutions in the regions concerned, and for the Russian Federation’s central government. As the first chapter describes, Sovietera policy towards the Soviet Union’s non-Russian peoples brought about a massive cultural change, in the process generating a new awareness of nonRussian ethnic identity. Current ethnographic and sociological research on the former Soviet Union indicates that this awareness continues to develop, while remaining subject to politically motivated attempts at interference. Politicians, academics and journalists have pointed out the capacity of strong ethnic identities to hinder a popular identification with a multi-ethnic federal state, even as other commentators have accused politicians of deliberately encouraging personal ethnic affiliations. The interaction between political propaganda and personal perception within the changing awareness of ethnic identity in the Russian Federation has not yet been clarified, and neither has its significance for post-Soviet Russia’s state-building project. The introductory chapter explains the comparison of two Siberian nonRussian peoples, the Buryat and Sakha, and their respective territorial administrations, the Republics of Buryatia and Sakha (Yakutia), which is intended to isolate general trends in the development of non-Russian ethnicity. This comparison is based on the assumption that culture itself is a network of collectively held ideas that determines social practice, as it changes in tandem with the course of events. The perceptions of non-Russian identity that appeared over the Soviet period are thus understood to arise from changes in the collective understanding of cultural difference. Hence, this study identifies and then compares contemporary formulations of the Soviet-era terms connected to cultural difference in Buryatia and Sakha (Yakutia). The research method is a combined conte…
author: Peers, Eleanor
language: en
keywords: Siberian, culture, Russian
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/20ecc307-4927-43e0-9290-6020dd3ca36a/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2008-12
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:27Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.64951