 The second school of though is that it is derived from Chukchi meaning "coming alive", in reference to the fact that although the island is covered in ice and snow during the winter, in the summer, this melts and the island provides a good pasture for reindeer herds as well as being the home to swarms of midges and gadflies.Following the rise of communism in the Soviet Union in the first part of the twentieth century, the native herds were collectivised in 1933 into a group called "Enmitagino".Such collectivisation was very successful on the island and in 1950, the collective in Ayon was turned into a formal Kolkhoz that would eventually have around 22,000 reindeer under its control.