The Role of Young People in Resistance against the Soviet Rule among the Northern Peoples in the 1930s–1940s
The Role of Young People in Resistance against the Soviet Rule among the Northern Peoples in the 1930s–1940s

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of the 1930s, the life of the northern peoples in Soviet Russia started to change rapidly. The new way of modernisation which predicted collectivisation, reorganisation of local administrative system, education, and religious life remained rather incomprehensible for the local communities. In many instances, the local groups of the northern peoples resisted these changes. In addition, a few attempts of armed resistance were undertaken. The article analyses some aspects of a prominent uprising which was organised by the Khanty and the Forest Nenets in West Siberia in the early 1930s. This uprising was known among the local indigenous population as Kazym War. The aim is to analyse the limited data that reflects the participation of women and young people in this uprising. As a rule, archival and literary sources do not concentrate on the fate of these groups in the Kazym uprising. However, since life in the northern tundra demands a tight integration of action by all age and gender groups, it may be supposed that men could not be engaged in longterm resistance activities without the support of their family members. While the role of young people seems to be mainly passive in the indigenous resistance of the early Soviet period, some Khanty writers have described in their novels the resistance experience of women and children. I aim to compare the reflections of the young people’s role in the Kazym revolt in various sources.

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