Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Cornell Paperbacks)
Description:
For over five hundred years the Russians wondered what kind of people their Arctic and sub-Arctic subjects were. "They have mouths between their shoulders and eyes in their chests," reported a fifteenth-century tale. "They rove around, live of their own free will, and beat the Russian people," complained a seventeenth-century Cossack. "Their actions are exceedingly rude. They do not take off their hats and do not bow to each other," huffed an eighteenth-century scholar. They are "children of nature" and "guardians of ecological balance," rhapsodized early nineteenth-century and late twentieth-century romantics. Even the Bolsheviks, who categorized the circumpolar foragers as "authentic proletarians," were repeatedly puzzled by the "peoples from the late Neolithic period who, by virtue of their extreme backwardness, cannot keep up either economically or culturally with the furious speed of the emerging socialist society."Whether described as brutes, aliens, or endangered indigenous populations, the so-called small peoples of the north have consistently remained a point of contrast for speculations on Russian identity and a convenient testing ground for policies and images that grew out of these speculations. In Arctic Mirrors, a vividly rendered history of circumpolar peoples in the Russian empire and the Russian mind, Yuri Slezkine offers the first in-depth interpretation of this relationship. No other book in any language links the history of a colonized non-Russian people to the full sweep of Russian intellectual and cultural history. Enhancing his account with vintage prints and photographs, Slezkine reenacts the procession of Russian fur traders, missionaries, tsarist bureaucrats, radical intellectuals, professional ethnographers, and commissars who struggled to reform and conceptualize this most "alien" of their subject populations.Slezkine reconstructs from a vast range of sources the successive official policies and prevailing attitudes toward the northern peoples, interweaving the resonant narratives of Russian and indigenous contemporaries with the extravagant images of popular Russian fiction. As he examines the many ironies and ambivalences involved in successive Russian attempts to overcome northern―and hence their own―otherness, Slezkine explores the wider issues of ethnic identity, cultural change, nationalist rhetoric, and not-so European colonialism.
Best prices to buy, sell, or rent ISBN 9780801481789
Frequently Asked Questions about Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Cornell Paperbacks)
The price for the book starts from $12.87 on Amazon and is available from 23 sellers at the moment.
At BookScouter, the prices for the book start at $9.34. Feel free to explore the offers for the book in used or new condition from various booksellers, aggregated on our website.
If you’re interested in selling back the Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Cornell Paperbacks) book, you can always look up BookScouter for the best deal. BookScouter checks 30+ buyback vendors with a single search and gives you actual information on buyback pricing instantly.
As for the Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Cornell Paperbacks) book, the best buyback offer comes from and is $ for the book in good condition.
The Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Cornell Paperbacks) book is in very low demand now as the rank for the book is 1,670,730 at the moment. A rank of 1,000,000 means the last copy sold approximately a month ago.
The highest price to sell back the Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Cornell Paperbacks) book within the last three months was on October 26 and it was $0.96.