Materials on Russia and Siberian Peoples


Materials specific to Kamchatka and Chukotka are on a separate page.

Linguistic materialsare listed in a separate bibliography.

Archeology of North-East Asia is mostly in Russian, but there are some things in English.

Sibirskii Khronograf Publishing House has a catalog of some related materials for purchase in Russian.

Main Page


Akaha, Tsuneo, editor
1997  Politics and Economics in the Russian Far East: Changing Ties with Asia-Pacific. Routledge.

Anderson, David
2000  Identity and Ecology in Arctic Siberia - The Number One Reindeer Brigade. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Arctic Bibliography. Prepared for and in Cooperation with the Department of Defense under the Direction of the Arctic Institute of North America. Washington, 1953 - ?.

Balzer, Majorie Mandelstam
1999  The Tenacity of Ethnicity: A Siberian Saga in Global Perspective. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
1996  "Homelands, Leadership and Self Rule: Interethnic Relations in the Russian Federation North." Polar Geography.
1993  "Two Urban Shamans: Unmasking Leadership in Fin-de-Soviet Siberia." Perilous States: Conversations on Culture, Politics, and Nation. George E. Marcus, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp131-64.

Balzer, Majorie Mandelstam, editor
1997  Shamanic Worlds: Rituals and Lore of Siveria and Central Asia. Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe.
1995  Culture Incarnate: Native Anthropology from Russia. Armond, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
1992  Russian Traditional Culture: Religion, Gender, and Customary Law. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. (DK 510.32.R87)
1990  Shamanism:Soviet Studies of Tradition Religion in Siberian and Central Asia. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Balzer, Marjorie Mandelstam and Uliana A. Vinokurova
1996  Nationalism, Interethnic Relations, and Federalism. Europe-Asia Studies 48(1):101-120.

Barbeau, Charles Marius
1934  "The Siberian Origin of Our Northwestern Indians." Pacific Science Congress, 5th, Victoria and Vancouver, B.C. 1933. Proceedings, Vol. IV, Toronto. pp 2777-2789.

Black, Lydia
1973  The Nivkh (Gilyak) of Sakhalin and the Lower Amur. Arctic Anthropology. 10: 1-110.

Bremmer, Ian A. and Ray Taras, editors
1993  Nation and Politics in the Soviet Successor States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (JN 6520.R43.N38)

Brower, Daniel R. and Edward J. Lazzerini, editors.
1997   Russias's Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Buttino, Marco, editor
1993  "In a Collapsing Empire: Underdevelopment, Ethnic Conflicts and Nationalisms in the Soviet Union." Annali, Anno Ventottesimo 1992; Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Milano: Feltrinelli Editore. (DK33.I53 1993)
Revised essays presented at a conference with the same title. Siberia is not addressed, but there is a lot of good stuff here on nationalism and the USSR, and Russians in all partf of the FSU.

Casanowicz, Immanuel Moses
1925  "Shamanism of the Natives of Siberia." Smithsonian Institution. Annual Report for 1924. Washington. pp 415-434. (also separately).

Chichlo, Boris
1985  "The cult of the bear and Soviet ideology in Siberia. C. Burch, trans. Religion in Communist Lands. 13: 166-181 Summer.

Christiansen, Reidar Thoralf
1953  "Ecstasy and Arctic Religion." Studia Septentrionalia, Vol. IV. Part 1. pp 19-92.

Collins, David N., editor
1991  Siberia and the Soviet Far East. World Bibliographical Series v. 127 Santa Barbara, CA: Clio Press. (Ref Z3401.C65)

Czaplicka, Maria Antoinette
1914  Aboriginal Siberia, a Study in Social Anthropology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
1914b "The Influence of Environment upon the Religious Ideas and Practices of the Aborigines of Northern Asia." Folk-Lore, vol. 25. pp 34-54.
1921  "Siberia, Sibiriaks, Siberians." In: Hastings, James, ed. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. vol. 11. pp 488-496.

Davidson, Daniel Sutherland
1937  Snowshoes. American Philosophical Society. Memoirs. Vol. VI.

Dioszegi, Vilmos, Mihaly Hoppál, editors
1978  Shamanism in Siberia. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado. (BL2370.S5 S49)

Dmytryshyn, Basil, E.A.P. Crownhart-Vaughan, and Thomas Vaughn
1985-88  To Siberia and Russian America: Three Centuries of Russian Eastward Expansion, 1558-1867. 3 vols.   Three volumes of documentary records., titled Russia’s Conquest of Siberia, 1558-1700,:Russian Penetration of the North Pacific Ocean, 1700-1799; The Russian American Colonies, 1799-1867.

Dolgikh, B. O. and M. G. Levin
1962  Transition from Kinship to Territorial Relationships in the History of the Peoples of Northern Siberia. In Studies in Siberian Ethnogenesis. H. N. Michael, ed. Toronto: U Toronto P. [1951].

Fitzhugh, William W. and Valérie Chaussonnet
1993  Anthropology of the North Pacific Rim. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian.

Fitzhugh, Willliam W. and Aron Crowell
1988  Crossroads of the Continents. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian.

Flakierski, Henryk
1993  Income Inequalities in the Former Soviet Union and Its Republics. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Also as International Journal of Sociology, 22 (3). (HC 340.I5 F56 1993)

Fondahl, Gail
1999  Autonomous Regions and Indigenous Rights in Northern Russia, in: Dependency, Autonomy and Sustainability in the Arctic, Hanne Petersen and Birger Poppel (eds.), 55-63. Aldershot: Ashgate
1998  Gaining Ground? Evenkis, Land and Reform in Southeastern Siberia, Wilton, CT: Allyn and Bacon.
1997  Environmental Degradation and Indigenous Land Claims in Russia's North. In Contested Arctic. Indigenous Peoples, Industrial States, and the Circumpolar Environment, Eric Alden Smith and Joan McCarter (eds.), 68-87. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
1997  Freezing the Frontier: Territories of Traditional Nature Use in Northern Russia, Progress in Planning 47(4):307-319. (Special issue on Frontiers and Indigenous Peoples)
1997  Siberia: Assimilation and Its Discontents. In New Nations, New Politics. Building the Post-Soviet Nations, Ian Bremmer and Raymond Taras (eds.), 190-232. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1997  [with Mangataeva, Darima D] Traditsionnoe khozyaystvovanie kak osnova ustoychivogo razvitiya korennykh narodov Zabaykal'skogo Severa [Traditional economic activities as the basis of sustainable development of the peoples of the Transbaykal North], Geografiya i Prirodnye Resursy 1:138-145.
1996  Contested Terrain: Changing Boundaries and Identities in Southeastern Siberia, Post-Soviet Geography 37(1):3-15.
1995  Legacies of Territorial Restructuring for Indigenous Land Claims in Northern Russia, Polar Geography and Geology 19(1):1-21.
1995  The Status of Indigenous Peoples in the Russian North, Post-Soviet Geography 36(4):215-224

Forsyth, James
1992  A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony, 1581-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (DK 758.F67)

Funk, Dmitriy A. and Lennard Sillanpää, editors
1999  The Small INdigenous Nations of Northern Russia: A Guide for Researchers.Vaasa, Finland: Åbo Akademi University, Social Science Research Unit Publication No. 29.

Golder, Frank A.
1960  Russian Expansion of the Pacific, 1641-1850:An Account of the Earliest and Later Expeditions Made by the Russians Along the Pacific Coast of Asia and North American, Including some Related Expeditions to the Artic Regions. Gloucester, Mas s: Peter Smith. [Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co. 1914.]

Goldhagen, Erich
1968  Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union.

Graburn, Nelson H. H. and B. Stephen Strong
1973  Circumpolar Peoples: An Anthropological Perspective (Pacific Palisades, Ca.: Goodyear Publishing). [GN673.G72]

Grant, Bruce
1995  In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
1993a  "Siberia Hot and Cold: Reconstructing the Image of Siberian Indigenous Peoples" In Between Heavan and Hell: The Myth of Siberia in Russian Culture. G. Diment and Y. Slezkine, eds. pp. 227-54. (New York: St. Martin's Press).
1993c  "Nivkhi of the Russian Federation." In State of the Peoples: A Global Human Rights Report on Societies in Danger. Marc Miller, Project Director. Boston: Beacon Press and Cultural Survival.

Gray, Patty
2001 The obshchina in Chukotka: Land, property and local autonomy. Working Paper No. 29 of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.
2000 "Chukotkan Reindeer Husbandry in the Post-Socialist Transition," Polar Research, Vol.19, No.1, pp. 31-38..
2000  "The Chukchi and Siberian Yupiit of the Russian Far East" (with Peter Schweitzer). In: Endangered Peoples: Struggles to Sustain Cultural Survival (Arctic volume), edited by Milton Freeman. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
1997  "Snezhnoe: Where East and West Collide," Transitions: Changes in Post-Communist Societies, Vol.4, No. 6.
1994  "Mednyj Aleut: Language Contact in the North Pacific," Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages Vol.9, No.1.

Hallowell, A. I.
1940  "Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere." American Anthropologist, N. S. 28: 1-175.

Harris, Chaency D.
1993  "The new Russian Minorities: A Statistical Overview." Post-Soviet Geography. 34 (1): 1-28.

Hoppál, M., editor
1995  Shamanism in Performing Arts. Budapest: Academy of Sciences.
1984   Shamanism in Siberia, part 2.

Horak, Stephan M., editor 1982  Guide to the study of the Soviet Nationalities: Non-Russian Peoples of the USSR. Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited. (Z2517.E85. G84)

Humphrey, Caroline
1983  Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society, and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. Hull, N. Humberside: Barmarick Publications. (HM 1.I562)

Irimoto, Takashi and Takako Yamada, editors
1994  Circumpolar Relgion and Ecology: An Anthropology of the North. Tokoyo: University of Tokoyo Press. (GN 673.C57)

Jakobson, Roman, Gerta Hüttl-Worth, John Fred Beebe
1957  Paleosiberian Peoples and Languages: A Bibliographical Guide. New Haven. HRAF Press. (GN673.J3).
  Most of the sources are in Russian, but if it was written before 1957, it is in here. Many unpublished and archival sources documented.

Jochelson, Waldemar (Vladimir Ilyich)
1928  Peoples of Asiatic Russia. American Musem of Natural History. (DK750 .J6)

Journal of Soviet Nationalites (Z2517.E85.G84; DK 33.J68)

(Journal) Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. (GN 1.S66)

(Journal) Current Digest of Post-Soviet Press

(Journal) Europe-Asia Studies [Soviet Studies]

(Journal) Nationalities Papers (esp v 22).

(Journal) Russian [Soviet] Social Science Review. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. (DK 1.S59)

(Journal) Russian [Soviet] Studies in History. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. (D 1.S67).

(Journal) [Russian] Sociological Research. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. (HM 1.S82)

Kabuzan, V. M.
1991  "The Settlement of Siberia and the Far East from the late 18th to the early 20th Century." James R. Gibson, trans. Soviet Geography. 32 (9): 616-632.

Karklins, Rasma
1985  Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from Below. Winchester: Allen & Unwin.

Kappeler, Andreas
1992  Russland als Vielvoelkerreich Entstehung, Geschichte, Zerfall. München: Beck. (DK33.K357)

Karlowich, Robert A.
1990  A Guide to Scholarly Resources on the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union in the New York Metropolitan Area. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. (Z2491.G86)

Katz, Zev
1975  Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities.

Kirby, E. Stuart
1971  The Soviet Far East. New York: Macmillan. (DK771.D3K55)

Kobtzeff, Oleg
1986  "Ruling Siberia: The Imperial Power, the Othodox Church and the Native People." Saint Vladimir's Theological Quaterly. 30 (3): 269-280.

Komarov, Boris (see also Wolfson)
1980  The Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Kort, Michael
1993  The Soviet Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the USSR. 3rd ed. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. (DK 246.K64 1993)

Kotkin, Stephen and David Wolff
1995  Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. (DK 761.R43)

Krupnik, Igor
1993  Arctic Adaptations: Native Whalers and Reindeer Herders of Northern Eurasia. Hanover: University Press of New England. (GF 891.K7813)

Levin, M. G. and L. P. Potapov, editors
1964  The Peoples of Siberia. Dunn S., trans. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (DK758.A4813)
  Good general introduction to all of the ethnographic groups of Siberia and the Far East, it presents a consistent Marxist-Leninist picture.

Leaver, Betty Lou
1989  "Research Materials: Bibliography of Siberian Dialiects of Russian. Slavic and East European Journal. 33 (1) pp 112-117.

Marks, Steven G.
1991  Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850-1917. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Michael, Henry N., editor
1963  Studies in Siberian Shamanism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
1964  The Archaeology and Geomorphology of Northern Asia: Selected Works. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
1962  Studies in Siberian Ethnogenesis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.   (GN 4.A54)
Series by the Arctic Institute of North American, Anthrology of the North: Translations from Russian Sources.

Murdoch, John
1888  On the Siberian Origin of some Customs of the Western Eskimo . American Anthropologist. 1:328-336.

Pika, Aleksander, editor
1999  Neotraditionalism in the Russian North, edited in the English by Bruce Grant. Edmonton and Seattle: Canadian Circumpoloar Institute and the University of Washington Press.

Pika, Aleksander and Boris Prokhorov
1989  "Soviet Union: The Big Problems of Small Ethnic Groups." IWGIA Newsletter. No. 57. pp123-35.

Rogers, Allan, editor
1990  The Soviet far East: Geographical Perspectives on Development. New York: Routledge.

Russian news abstracts.
1992-  Montpelier, VT: Russian Information Services. (HC 340.12.R87 1993)

Rywkin, Michael
1993  Moscow’s Lost Empire. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
1989  Soviet Society Today. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. (HN 523.5.R98)
1988  Russian Colonial Expansion to 1917. New York: Mansell. (DK 43.R84)

Schindler, Debra L.
1994  "Competing for Resources: First Nation Rights and Economic Development in the Russian Far East." In Who Pays the Price? The Sociocultural Context of Environmental Crisis., B. Johnston, ed. (Island Press) pp 99-109.
1991  "Theory, Policy, and the Narody Severa." Anthropological Quarterly 64(2): 68-79.
1990  The Political Economy of Ethnic Discourse in the Soviet Union. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massechusets.

Shimkin, Demitri B.
1990  "Siberian Ethnography: Historical Sketch and Evaluation." Arctic Anthropology. 27 (1): 36-51.

Shirokogoroff, Sergei Mikhailovich
1929  Social Organization of the Northern Tungus with Introductory Chapters Concerning Geographical Distribution and History of these Groups. Shanghai: Commercial Press.

Shlapentokh, Vladimir, Munir Sendich, Emil Payin, editors.
1994  The New Russian Diaspora: Russian Minorities in the Former Soviet Republics. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Siikala, Anna-Leena
1989  "The Interpretation of Siberian and Central Asian Shamanistic Phenomena." In Atti del Convergno su Tema. Mircea Eliade, G. Gnoli, eds. pp 103-118.

Slezkine, Yuri
1994a  Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
1994b  "The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethic Particularism." Slavic Review 53(2):414-52.

Shternberg, Lev
1999  The Social Organization of the Gilyak. Edited by Bruce Grant. New York and Seattle: Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Washington Press.

Thom, Françoise
1989  Newspeak: The Language of Soviet Communism. Ken Connelly, trans. London: Claridge.

Thomas, Nicholas, Caroline Humphrey, editors
1994  Shamanism, History, and the State. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.    (GN 470.2.S53)

Vainshtein, Sevyan
1980  Nomads of South Siberia: The Pastoral Economies of Tuva. C. Humphrey, ed. M. Colenso, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Vakhtin, Nikolai
1998  Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Far North: Land Rights and the Environment. Polar Geography, Vol. 22, No 2, pp. 79-104.

Vakhtin, Nikolai and Igor Krupnik
2000  Power, Politics, and Heritage: Undercurrent Transformations in the Post-Soviet Arctic (the case of Chukotka). Proceedings of ICASS-3 [Copenhagen, 1998]
1997  Indigenous Knowledge in Modern Culture: Siberian Yupik Ecological Legacy in Transition. Arctic Anthropology, vol.34, No 1

Van Deusen, Kira
1999  Raven and the Rock: Storytelling in Chukotka. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Van Deusen, Kira
1999  Raven and the Rock: Storytelling in Chukotka. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
1999  Storytelling as a Shamanic Art: The Udegei People of the Amur Region. Shamanism and other Indigenous Beliefs and Practices. Moscow: Academy of Sciences
1999  Women's Stories among Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Far East" in MacDonald, MR, ed. Traditional Storytelling Today Chicago: Fitzroy-Dearborn.
1999  In Black and White: Contemporary Buriat Shamanism. Shaman 7 no 2
1999  Epic Telling in Khakassia" BC Folklore: Bulletin of the British Columbia Folklore Society # 12
1998  "Shamanism and Music in Tuva and Khakassia" Shaman's Drum, No 47: 22-29
1997  Power of Words and Music in Tuvan Shamanism. Shamanism vol 10, No 2: 9-13
1997  Buriat Shamans and their Stories and Shamanism in Khakassia Today. Shamanism vol 10, No 1: 7-15
1997  Ulchi Shamans. Shaman 5 no. 2: 155-64
1996  "The Flying Tiger: Aboriginal Women Shamans, Storytellers and Embroidery Artists in the Russian Far East." Shaman 4 no. 1-2:45-78.
1996  Protection and Empowerment: Clothing Symbolism in the Amur River Region of the Russian Far East". In Braving the Cold: Continuity and Change in Arctic Clothing. Leiden, The Netherlands: National Museum of Ethnology
1996  Shyaan Am! Tuvan Folk Tales. Udagan Books, Bellingham, WA

     Translations:
1998  Kyalundzyuga, Valentina. The Ice Mountain. Vancouver BC: Udagan Books
1998  Khodzher, Anna. Fox Mischief. Vancouver BC: Udagan Books

Vinogradov, Vladimir Alekseevich, Blair A. Ruble, Mark Teeter, V.G. Osinov
1993  A Scholars' Guide to Humanities and Social Sciences in the Soviet Successor States: The Academies of Sciences of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaidshan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakstan, Kirghizstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tadzhikistan, Tu rkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. (AS 258.S36).

Wolfson, Ze'ev (Boris Komarov)
1994  The Geography of Survival: Ecology in the Post-Soviet Era. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Wood, Alan, editor
1991  The History of Siberia: from Russian Conquest to Revolution. New York: Routledge. (DK761.H57)

Wixman, Ronald
1984  The Peoples of the USSR: An Ethnographic Handbook. London: Macmillan. (Ref DK33.W59)

Ziker, John

2002  Peoples of the Tundra: Northern Siberians in the Post-Communist Transition. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Znamenski, Andrei A.
1998  Shamanism and Christianity on the Russian Siberian Borderland: Altaian Responses to Orthodox Missionaries (1830-1917). INTINERARIO.Europeam Journal of Overseas History 22 (1): 107-130.
1996  'Athapskan Church, Russian Orthodox,' Tanania Encounters with Russian Missionaries, 1893-1917. Alaska History, 11(2).

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Page Date: July 18, 2002


Alexander King, WEBMASTER (at) KORYAKS (dot) NET, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK