Chukchi people

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"Chukcha" redirects here. For the breed of dog, see Siberian Husky.
Chukchi
, '

Chukchi family

Total population

(15,938 (2002 Census))

Regions with significant populations

Chukotka Autonomous Okrug (Russia)

Russia

15,908[1]

Ukraine

30[2]

Languages

Russian, Chukchi

Religion

Shamanism, Russian Orthodoxy

Related ethnic groups

other Chukotko-Kamchatkan peoples

The Chukchi, Eskimos of Western Chukotka (Russian: (plural), (singular)) are

an indigenous people inhabiting theChukchi Peninsula and the shores of the Chukchi Sea and
the Bering Sea region of the Arctic Ocean within the Russian Federation. They speak the Chukchi
language. The Chukchi originated from the people living around the Okhotsk Sea.
Contents
[hide]

1Cultural history

2Subsistence

3Relations with Russians

3.1Soviet Period

4See also

5Notes

6References

7External links

Cultural history[edit]
The majority of Chukchi reside within Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, but some also reside in the
neighboring Sakha Republic to the west, Magadan Oblast to the southwest, and Koryak Autonomous
Okrug to the south. Some Chukchi also reside in other parts of Russia, as well as
in Europe and North America. The total number of Chukchi in the world slightly exceeds 16,000.
The Chukchi are traditionally divided into the Maritime Chukchi, who had settled homes on the coast
and lived primarily from sea mammal hunting, and the Reindeer Chukchi, who lived as nomads in
the inland tundra region, migrating seasonally with their herds of reindeer. The Russian name
"Chukchi" is derived from the Chukchi word Chauchu ("rich in reindeer"), which was used by the
'Reindeer Chukchi' to distinguish themselves from the 'Maritime Chukchi,' called Anqallyt ("the sea
people"). Their name for a member of the Chukchi ethnic group as a whole is Luoravetlan (literally
'true person').

In Chukchi religion, every object, whether animate or inanimate, is assigned a spirit. This spirit can
be either harmful or beneficial. Some of Chukchi myths reveal a dualistic cosmology.[3][4] In the 1920s,
the Soviet Union prohibited Chukchi religious practices and tried to suppress their religion. [citation needed].
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the state-run farms were reorganized and nominally
privatized. This process was ultimately destructive to the village-based economy in Chukotka. The
region has still not fully recovered. Many rural Chukchi, as well as Russians in Chukotka's villages,
have survived in recent years only with the help of direct humanitarian aid. Some Chukchi have
attained university degrees, becoming poets, writers, politicians, teachers, and doctors.

Subsistence[edit]

Representation of a Chukchi family by Louis Choris (1816)

In prehistoric times, the Chukchi engaged in nomadic hunter gatherer modes of existence. In current
times, there continue to be some elements of subsistence hunting, including that of polar bears,
[5]
marine mammals and reindeer. Beginning in the 1920s, the Soviets organized the economic
activities of both coastal and inland Chukchi and eventually established 28 collectively run, stateowned enterprises in Chukotka. All of these were based on reindeer herding, with the addition of sea
mammal hunting and walrus ivory carving in the coastal areas. Chukchi were educated in Soviet
schools and today are almost 100% literate and fluent in the Russian language. Only a portion of
them today work directly in reindeer herding or sea mammal hunting, and continue to live a nomadic
lifestyle inyaranga tents.[6]

Relations with Russians[edit]

Russians first began contacting the Chukchi when they reached the Kolyma River (1643) and
the Anadyr River(1649).[7] The route from Nizhnekolymsk to the fort at Anadyrsk along the southwest
of the main Chukchi area became a major trade route. The overland journey from Yakutsk to
Anadyrsk took about six months.

Newlyweds Meet the Sun. Painting of Chukchi by Nikolai Getman

The Chukchi were generally ignored for the next 50 years because they were warlike and had few
furs. Fighting flared up around 1700 when the Russians began operating in the Kamchatka
Peninsula and needed to protect their communications from the Chukchi and Koryak. The first
attempt to conquer them was made in 1701. Other expeditions were sent out in 1708, 1709 and
1711 with considerable bloodshed but little success. War was renewed in 1729, when the Chukchi
defeated an expedition from Okhotsk and killed its commander. Command passed to Major Dmitry
Pavlutsky, who adopted very destructive tactics, burning, killing, driving off reindeer, and capturing
women and children.[8] In 1742, the government at Saint Petersburg ordered another war in which the
Chukchi and Koryak were to be "totally extirpated". The war (17447) was conducted with similar
brutality and ended when Pavlutsky was killed in March 1747. [8] It is said that the Chukchi kept his
head as a trophy for a number of years. The Russians waged war again in the 1750s.
In 1762, Saint Petersburg adopted a different policy. Maintaining the fort at Anadyrsk had cost some
1,380,000 rubles, but the area had returned only 29,150 rubles in taxes. The government
abandoned Anadyrsk in 1764. The Chukchi, no longer provoked, began to trade peacefully with the
Russians. From 1788, they participated in an annual trade fair on the lower Kolyma. Another was
established in 1775 on the Angarka, a tributary of the Bolshoy Anyuy River. This trade declined in
the late 19th century when American whalers and others began landing goods on the coast. The first
Orthodox missionaries entered Chukchi territory some time after 1815.

Soviet Period[edit]
Apart from four Orthodox schools, there were no schools in the Chukchi land until the late 1920s. In
1926, there were 72 literate Chukchis. The Soviets introduced a Latin alphabet in 1932, replacing it
with Cyrillic in 1937. In 1934, 71% of the Chukchis were nomadic. In 1941, 90% of the reindeer were
still privately owned. So-called kulaks roamed with their private herds up into the 1950s. After 1990
and the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a major exodus of Russians from the area.
Population estimates from Forsyth:

1700: 6,000

1800: 8,0009,000

1926: 13,100

1930s: 12,000

1939: 13,900

1959: 11,700

1979: at least 13,169.

See also[edit]

Tenevil - a man who made Chukchi's hieroglyphs

Kutkh

Russian Jokes: Chukchi

Notes[edit]
1.

Jump up^ 2010 .

2010

2.

Jump up^ State statistics committee of Ukraine National composition of population, 2001
census (Ukrainian)

3.

Jump up^ Zolotarjov 1980: 4041

4.

Jump up^ Anyiszimov 1981: 9298

5.

Jump up^ C.M. Hogan, 2008

6.

Jump up^ "Amazing Life Of Chukchi". English Russia. Archived from the original on 7 May 2011.
Retrieved 7 May 2011.

7.

Jump up^ Forsyth, James, A History of the Peoples of Siberia, 1992, for this and the next section

8.

^ Jump up to:a b Shentalinskaia, Tatiana (Spring 2002). "Major Pavlutskii: From History to
Folklore" (PDF). Slavic and East European Folklore Association Journal. 7 (1): 321. Retrieved 2009-07-18.

References[edit]

Forsyth, James, 'A History of the Peoples of Siberia', 1992.

Anyiszimov, A. F. (1981). Az skzssgi trsadalom szellemi lete (in Hungarian).
Budapest: Kossuth Knyvkiad. ISBN 963-09-1843-9. Title means: "The spiritual life of primitive
society". The book is composed out of the translations of the following two originals: ,
. . (1966). (in Russian). :
. The other one: , . . (1971).
(in Russian). : .

Patty A. Gray (2005). The Predicament of Chukotka's Indigenous Movement: Post-Soviet

Activism in the Russian Far North. Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-82346-3.

C. Michael Hogan (2008) Polar Bear: Ursus maritimus, Globaltwitcher.com, ed. Nicklas
Stromberg

Anna Kerttula (2000). Antler on the Sea. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-3681-8.

"The Chukchis". The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire.

"All Things Arctic". Archived from the original on 15 May 2013.

Zolotarjov, A.M. (1980). "Trsadalomszervezet s dualisztikus teremtsmtoszok

Szibriban". In Hoppl, Mihly. A Tejt fiai. Tanulmnyok a finnugor npek hitvilgrl (in
Hungarian). Budapest: Eurpa Knyvkiad. pp. 2958. ISBN 963-07-2187-2. Chapter means:
"Social structure and dualistic creation myths in Siberia"; title means: "The sons of Milky Way.
Studies on the belief systems of Finno-Ugric peoples".

uk, Even, Jukaghir. Kolyma: Chants de nature et d'animaux. Sibrie 3. Musique du

monde.