Authors

Karina Lukin¹;  ¹ University of Helsinki, Finland

Discussion

In the late Soviet decades, several northern indigenous authors published retrospective works that critically assessed the Stalinist modernization projects and their results. In this, the indigenous writers shared the general tendencies with the Russian authors in several respects. However, the urge to discuss the indigeneity in relation not only to the dominant Russians but also to other non-indigenous agents tends to be specific to indigenous works only.
This paper discusses the indigeneity in the short stories of Vasili Ledkov (1933-2002), whose auto fictional texts (povest’) work in the literary space provided by the authoritative form and the late Soviet context. I follow recent research that has emphasized the tight relationship of the Soviet northern indigeneity to the state together with the discussions that have highlighted the autobiographical mode’s meaning for Soviet subjectivity. My paper will read Ledkov’s short stories as public texts that not only reproduce but also critically reflect on Soviet indigeneity opening up possibilities for different sense of being both for Nenets and their neighbors.