Indigenous Siberians in the Context of War

Russia has entered a new period of instability, made especially precarious due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. From the Arctic to Lake Baikal and the magnificent Altai mountains, Indigenous peoples are striving for degrees of self-determination. Despite curtailment of civil society under President Putin, many are defending their lands and rights without being secessionist. Some have fled into exile and formed politicized diasporas.

In this talk, Dr. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer will explore critical questions about the survival of Russia in its nominally federal form in the context of Russia's war in Ukraine. Will Russia fall apart along the lines of its internal republics, as did the Soviet Union? Why have non-Russians been mobilized in numbers higher than their ethnic proportions? Are non-Russian peoples of Turkic and Mongolian backgrounds, far from Moscow, protesting?
This discussion builds on and updates Dr. Mandelstam Balzer's monograph Galvanizing Nostalgia? Indigeneity and Sovereignty in Siberia (Cornell U. Press, 2021), which is based on cultural anthropology field and historical research in major republics of Eastern Siberia-Sakha (Yakutia), Buryatia, and Tyva (Tuva), and will explore similar themes addressed in her recent article for Russia.Post, "Polarization in Siberia: Thwarted Indigeneity and Sovereignty."

[@jakef.7126]

This is really great!! Thank you and I pray for freedom of the peoples occupied by Muscovy. I want the Sakha to have a nation that I can visit, they have an amazing culture, same with Chechnya!