Politics and Imagination in Chukotka, Russian Far East
This article analyzes the imagination of one group of native activists in the Chukotka Peninsula in the Russian Far East to find ways to create political initiatives that are meaningful to the region’s indigenous peoples. Since the beginning of the 1990s in Chukotka, indigenous political possibilities were severely limited by Western-style political restructuring and market reforms. This article asks how political possibilities can be crated and shaped. It is set within the context of a social dream. To appreciate its promise and force, readers must follow me through Russia’s current political and economic transformations, including state-sponsored uses of indigenous traditions, rhetorics and practices of salvation and assistance, and the dilemmas of cultural rights organizing. Through these prisms I examine how one particular dream comes to mean something to people caught in particular dilemmas.