Elder Knowledge and Sustainable Livelihoods in Post-Soviet Russia: Finding Dialogue across the Generations

• Published in: Arctic anthropology 2006-01, Vol.43 (1), p.40-51
• Main Author: Crate, Susan A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aged; Cognitive problems, arts and sciences, folk traditions, folklore; Communities; Cultural identity; Ecological sustainability; Elders; Environment; Ethnology; Family. Family relations; Food Supply - economics; Food Supply - history; History of medicine; History, 20th Century; History, 21st Century; Humans; Intergenerational Relations - ethnology; Land use; Life Change Events - history; Life cycle an individual status; Old age. Death; Population Dynamics - history; Population Groups - education; Population Groups - ethnology; Population Groups - history; Population Groups - legislation & jurisprudence; Population Groups - psychology; Russia - ethnology; Social Change - history; Social structure and social relations; Socioeconomic Factors - history; Survival - physiology; Survival - psychology; Sustainable agriculture; Sustainable communities; Sustainable economies; Traditional knowledge; Traditional sciences and medicine; Villages
• ISSN: 0066-6939; 1933-8139
• DOI: 10.1353/arc.2011.0030

Russia's indigenous peoples have been struggling with economic, environmental, and socio-cultural dislocation since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In northern rural areas, the end of the Soviet Union most often meant the end of agro-industrial state farm operations that employed and fed surrounding rural populations. Most communities adapted to this loss by reinstating some form of pre-Soviet household-level food production based on hunting, fishing, and/or herding. However, mass media, globalization, and modernity challenge the intergenerational knowledge exchange that grounds subsistence practices. Parts of the circumpolar north have been relatively successful in valuing and integrating elder knowledge within their communities. This has not been the case in Russia. This article presents results of an elder knowledge project in northeast Siberia, Russia that shows how rural communities can both document and use elder knowledge to bolster local definitions of sustainability and, at the same time, initiate new modes of communication between village youth and elders.