Review of The 1926/27 Soviet polar census expeditions, by David G. Anderson

Abstract

After the Russian Civil War, in 1925, the new Soviet leaders cast their eyes on the thinly populated and remote northern areas of the Russian Empire to make them active parts of the Soviet project. In 1926-1927, the Soviet administration initiated expeditions to gather data on the whereabouts, economy and living conditions of rural people in the Arctic and sub-Arctic in the young Soviet Union. This turned into a massive ethnological programme that gathered demographic and economic data on almost every household as well as other unique materials such as photographs, maps, kinship charts, narrative transcripts and artefacts. The present book presents a number of analyses from 8 years’ investigations of parts of the collected material by a large, well-qualified team of scientists.

(Published: 24 January 2012)

Citation: Polar Research 2012, 31, 17147, DOI: 10.3402/polar.v31i0.17147