Tunguska: A Siberian Mystery and Its Environmental Legacy Andy Bruno (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 305 pp. ISBN 978-1-108-84091-0.

For the uninitiated, the Tunguska meteorite (also known as the Tunguska phenomenon, the Tunguska explosion, the Tunguska cosmic event, and many other names) was an explosion that occurred over central Siberia in June of 1908. The event flattened around 2,000 square kilometers of the Taiga and sparked major fires. While it left behind a bizarre landscape of flattened trees, it did not leave behind a crater or any material immediately identifiable as meteorite debris. Within popular culture, the Tunguska explosion (and, as Bruno's subtitle reminds us, the mystery it left behind) remains a significant point of reference for Siberia. Perhaps in response to this reality, Tunguska does not shy away from the popular mythos of alien visitations and antimatter explosions which surrounds the probable 1908 meteorite strike, but instead examines the central theme of mystery in the landscape of Tunguska and uses it to tell a story that is simultaneously cultural and environmental. By doing so, Bruno has produced a sober yet intriguing account of the 1908 explosion that will satisfy both the historian of Siberia and a popular audience that has long deserved a serious yet accessible book on this important subject.

Bruno's narrative begins with a summary of the Tunguska explosion and a brief survey of existing literature that frames his central idea of Tunguska as a “landscape of mystery.” In addition to his rigorous work to interrogate the available source materials and oral testimonies of the explosion itself, Bruno's early chapters also work to frame the Tunguska explosion as a cosmic disaster which took place in a human context. The second chapter, “Destruction from the Sky,” centers the indigenous Evenki accounts of the explosion, a strategy which pushes back against popular narratives of Tunguska that frequently minimize or obscure the loss of life. Instead, Bruno immerses the reader in the sensory experience of the explosion and its aftermath, and situates the many rumors about the event's causes in the cultural and historical setting of early twentieth-century Siberia.

In his third and fourth chapters, Bruno explores the role of the Siberian environment in hampering and informing attempts to understand the Tunguska explosion. Through the story of the earliest expeditions of Leonid Kulik to locate the site of the Tunguska blast, Bruno contrasts the difficulty scientific agents had in accessing the explosion site due to limited resources, lack of cartographic data, and the challenges of the Siberian landscape, with the growing popular interest in the Tunguska explosion in Soviet society. These chapters also chronicle the emergence of the Tunguska explosion as a “mystery” within Soviet culture, and connects this development with the subsequent decades of expeditions bent on solving this mystery. This creation of a mystery and the subsequent drive to solve it, Bruno argues, produced a distinctive pattern of interacting with the Siberian landscape among Soviet explorers.

Chapter five explores the origins of the fantastical theories behind the Tunguska explosion following decades of assumption that the event had been caused by a meteorite. Through the career of science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev, Bruno positions the theory that the Tunguska explosion was caused by an atomic-powered alien spacecraft within the emerging ideas of cosmism, the growing global fascination with UFO phenomena, and the advent of atomic energy. By keeping his focus on the lives of the literary figures responsible for these theories, Bruno effectively cuts through decades of speculation and confusion to the cultural quick of the Tunguska mystery.

In chapters six and seven Bruno provides an original vision of the Tunguska's lingering legacy through the work of volunteer expeditions of young Soviets, including a group called the Complex Amateur Expedition, whose views of the natural world, Tunguska, and the Soviet Union were shaped by their expeditions to the site of the explosion. Here, too, Bruno provides a look at the role of Evenki people and ideas in shaping Soviet popular understanding of the Tunguska explosion through student writings about the spirit Ogdy, described by some sources as the cause of the destruction. These chapters also highlight the slow disaster the Tunguska explosion brought to Evenki homelands, as those trekking to the site would sometimes dig up and desecrate Evenki graves to look for signs of radiation.

Chapters 8, 9, and 10 examine the history of nature conservation in Tunguska, give a brief overview of subsequent inquiries into the explosion, and position the meaning of the explosion as a way to help comprehend the other environmental challenges that face Siberia at a planetary scale. The chapter concerning nature protection tells the story of the establishment of a zakaznik and subsequently a zapovednik at the Tunguska site, and stands out for its contribution to the small but growing body of literature on Soviet and post-Soviet nature protection. If anything, the book's concluding thoughts on the implications of the Tunguska explosion for helping to bridge the vastness of scale in conceiving of a planetary environmental history could stand to be expanded in these later chapters.

Beyond its broad potential for popular appeal, Tunguska is also a solid contribution both to the environmental history of Siberia and the history of disasters. Indeed, it is quite remarkable that such a book had not already been written given the scale of the event, and it is all the more interesting to read given the author's visits to the sites he discusses. In Tunguska, Bruno has taken an important event from the heart of Siberian myth and history and traced its environmental and cultural connections not only to the broader history of the Soviet Union, but to the environmental history of the planet at large.

Spencer Abbe

University of Oregon

Galvanizing Nostalgia? Indigeneity and Sovereignty in Siberia Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021), 270 pp. ISBN: 978-1501761317.

In Galvanizing Nostalgia? Indigeneity and Sovereignty in Siberia, Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer offers an impressive contribution to scholarship on social and political anthropology. Examining three of Siberia's larger Indigenous communities, the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), the Buryat Republic (Buryatia), and the Tyva Republic (Tuva), the book unfolds over five acts that reflect on different aspects of Indigeneity, sovereignty, environmental activism, and the issues of federal-local power relations. These three communities are most interesting because the Indigenous population in the Sakha Republic and the Buryat Republic is quite large compared to other Siberian communities, while in the Tyva Republic the Indigenous population is even more strongly predominant. Although Slavic Russians are officially recognized as the “titular nation” in the Russian Federation, these three ethnicities—Sakha, Buryat, and Tyva—are officially recognized as minorities, yet are often referred as the “titular nations” (titular ethnicities) of their own republics. The book addresses many acute local problems that affect the entire populations living in these republics. This is a rich, accessible, and engaging text that includes lifelong research, and the multi-sited comparative fieldwork will resonate with anyone who is interested in colonial-Indigenous relations, cultural and language revitalization, spiritual practices, and Siberian Indigenous communities.

Balzer's strongest analytical work on the debate between development and conservation in the Sakha Republic and the Buryatia Republic involves both Indigenous ways of knowing and social justice as well as the utilitarian ideology of the federal government toward Siberian valuable resources. Given the intensity of threats to the environment and the impact of climate change for the last thirty years, escalating inequalities between developed urban regions and poor rural regions, and the growing influence of federal government ministries and agencies on environmental policies and practice, it is inappropriate to expect that relatively powerless Indigenous communities would be able to stop the politically powerful forces behind industrial environmental degradation. This brings us to the issue of centralized vertical power. Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and Western sanctions imposed on Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed that Russia would become stronger. “His reasoning is that Russia's domestic industries can be supported and flourish, without Western imports” (p.41). Despite intensified attacks by Indigenous environmental activists against the centralized power as they fight for a shift in environmental policy and biodiversity preservation, commercial intrusion will increase. The Russian government is planning to develop more industries in Siberia, including several oil refineries and a gas processing plant in the Sakha Republic. Considering numerous international sanctions that have been imposed against Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, intensified industrial pressures on ecosystems may be greater than we expect.

This is a thorough, lucid, and well-argued book, but a few weaknesses can be noted. First, a little more insight into Indigenous small-numbered peoples (korennye malochislennye narody Severa, or KMNS) would strengthen the book's arguments—especially the claim for Indigenous viewpoints on sovereignty and federalism. Balzer relies on a definition of “Indigenous” that is based on self-determination and bonds to homeland. The expressions of Indigenous small-numbered peoples would be crucial reading to understand the way nested Indigenous sovereignty has developed in those republics in the post-Soviet era, particularly for the chapter devoted to the Sakha Republic, where five small-numbered Indigenous groups reside (Evenki, Evens, Dolgans, Yukaghir, and Chukchi). It would have been valuable to examine relations between Sakha and Indigenous small-numbered peoples, which represents one of the important layers of Indigeneity, from their own perspectives. Second, in theory, political anthropology provides a useful framework for looking at proximal causes of contemporary colonialism and state-Indigenous issues. The book describes both practices of state sovereignty and Indigenous politics. Views are presented fairly for the most part; however, I do find some critical viewpoints omitted. In the chapter devoted to the Tyva Republic, for example, Balzer introduces readers to the opinion of only one politician, and a quite controversial one: Kadyr-ool Bicheldey. The political perspective on the topic under discussion requires diverse opinions from other prominent figures in the political arena, such as, Kan-ool Davaa, Sherig-ool Oorzhak, Chimit-Dorzhu Ondar, and Sholban Kara-ool.

One of the many narratives in the final chapter of Galvanizing Nostalgia? that caught this reader's eye is that of a Sakha “warrior shaman,” Alexander Gabyshev, and his famous protest journey from Siberia to Moscow in 2018–2019. Suffering a great amount of misfortune, ranging from the death of his beloved wife to two or three years of spiritual and physical testing in challenging taiga conditions, Gabyshev strove to achieve his goal of introducing his shamanic beliefs, as well as to expel a demon, President Putin, from the Kremlin. He announced that he would perform a purification ritual by making a fire on Red Square and feeding it with kymys (fermented mare's milk) and horsehair to expel the powerful demon. Gabyshev created political resonance, attracting many well-wishes on his journey, although some people considered him to be naïve or psychologically unstable. Is Gabyshev a true shaman? According to Sakha shamanic traditions, an individual after age 40 who goes through the process of enduring suffering can become a true, wise, and powerful shaman. Also, in the tradition of Siberian Indigenous cultures it is recommended for a person who is under stress to travel far away from home. However, some readers with a Christian background might interpret his shamanic journey as the Way of the Cross, a road of suffering, a life full of steadfastly endured disasters.

Balzer relates Gabyshev case to the concept “new new religious movements (NNRM).” Balzer's analysis succinctly couples the shamanic movement with political protest, which is an interesting difference to other studies of Indigenous NNRM in Siberia. One finishes reading Galvanizing Nostalgia? knowing to the core that the challenges and hopes of those whom Balzer met will be widely heard, and positive changes will be made in Indigenous sovereignty.

The book is an excellent addition to studies in Indigenous politics in the Arctic, such as Karena Shaw's Sovereignty and Political Theory: Sovereignty and the Limits of the Political and Jessica Shadian's The Politics of Arctic Sovereignty: Oil, Ice, and Inuit Governance. Balzer has created an engaging, accessible, and well-researched ethnography sure to arouse interest in readers.

Tayana Arakchaa

Tuvan Research Center, the Tyva Republic, Russia

Prikladnaia etnologiia Chukotki: Narodnye znaniia, muzei, kul'turnoe nasledie (K 125-letiiu poezdki N.L. Gondatti na Chukotskii poluostrov v 1895 godu): Kollektivnaia monografiia [Applied ethnology in Chukotka: Indigenous knowledge, museums, cultural heritage (Celebrating 125th Anniversary of N.L. Gondatti's Trip to the Chukchi Peninsula in 1895)] O. P. Kolomiets and I. I. Krupnik, eds. (Moscow: PressPass, 2020), 468 pp.

This is the fifth time over the past ten years I have been honored with the opportunity to comment on an effort led by Igor Krupnik that resulted in a landmark volume on regional Arctic scholarship focusing on Chukotka and the Bering Strait. Of the works I have helped review (Yamin-Pasternak 2014a, 2014b, 2018; Yashchenko et al. 2012), four, including the current one, are edited volumes published in Russian that bring together superbly captivating works of academic and community-based scholarship. It happens that of those four collections, three are dedicated to an extraordinary individual whose contributions are paramount for our field. Two of the aforementioned volumes honor the legacies of contemporary senior scholars Sergei Arutiunov (Yashchenko et al. 2012) and Liudmila Bogoslovskaya (Yamin-Pasternak 2018). By contrast, the one being reviewed here is dedicated to Nikolai L. Gondatti and the occasion of the quasquicentennial of his journey between the village of Markovo in the contemporary Anadyr district of Chukotka and through the Chukchi Peninsula to the village of Uelen. Krupnik is the compiler of the volume; he is also a coeditor, together with the Chukotkan historian Oksana Kolomiets.

Overwhelmingly, the book's contributors are researchers based in Chukotka, living today in Anadyr and Provideniya. Among the contributors are several Indigenous scholars who grew up in in the communities of Uelen, Nunyamo, and Vaegi and are Yupik and Chukchi language and culture bearers. They are Valentina Itevtegina, Valentina Leonova, Vladislav Nuvano, and Nadezhda Vukvukai, and the chapters authored or coauthored by these scholars are featured in all four sections—“Indigenous and Local Knowledge” (part 1), “Museums and Collections” (part 2), “Local Communities and Cultural Heritage” (part 3), and “Chukotka‘s Golden Fund” (part 4). The rather enigmatic title of the last part alludes to the human intellectual capital represented by the revered luminaries of Chukotka and Chukotka-focused scholarship: Yupik scholar and leader-extraordinaire Ainana (also known as Liudmila Ainana; chapter author Dmitry Oparin); Chukchi writer and composer Vek'et (also known as Valentina Itevtegina; chapter author Nadezhda Vukvukai); American linguist and renown language genius Michael Krauss (chapter author Igor Krupnik); educator and documentarian of Yupik language and lore Ekaterina Rubtsova (chapter author Igor Krupnik); the chapter on the volume's main hero Nikolai Gondatti also recognizes the Russian ethnographer Alexander Pika (1951–1995) (chapter authors Oksana Kolomiets and Igor Krupnik). Krupnik credits the collaboration between the Russian Academy of Sciences Northeastern Branch's Division of History and Economics and Chukotka Heritage Museum Center as the core effort that made the book possible.

Readers troubled by the fact of this being the first time they hear of Nikolai Gondatti will not feel alone; part of the biographical narrative coauthored by Kolomiets and Krupnik is a section titled “The Unknown Gondatti,” a reference to the relative (underserved) obscurity of the book's main hero and his legacy in the emergence of the ethnographic portrait of Chukotka in the decades after. As a case in point, Kolomiets and Krupnik evoke the limelight enjoyed by Waldemar Bogoras. Often regarded as pioneer of the ethnographic research in the region, Bogoras had many notable predecessors (Sarychev, Wrangle, Argentov, and Nelson are among the listed in the chapter). Kolomiets and Krupnik identify Gondatti as a near-contemporary predecessor of Bogoras, relating that much of the former's 1895 travel route was repeated by the latter during his research in1900–1901. The authors draw a provocative relational portrait of the two men's fates and (mis)fortunes, zooming in on the intersections of the Russian-Soviet history and the life trajectories of Gondatti and Bogoras. Although their experience as field ethnographers were to a great extent similar and driven by a common intellectual goal, Gondatti pursued his as a tsar-appointed government official, and Bogoras was living and working in Chukotka as an exiled revolutionary.

The words “applied ethnology” in the title allude not to the possibilities of the book's contents to inform contemporary policy, technology, or business decisions—an expectation some readers may associate with such a title or generally with applied science. Rather, it is a tribute to Gondatti's efforts of gathering ethnographic insight that was to inform governance at the time. One of the descriptions of Gondatti's methods details his scrupulous efforts to verify the pronunciation and meaning of the Chukchi and Yupik words he had documented by seeking multiple consultations on each term from different individuals. I shall strive to think of that before my next round of attempts to consult dictionaries and—nervously, postfieldwork—take advantage of email or messaging applications to connect with a language bearer in order to confirm the proper spelling of an insufficiently documented vernacular term. Thus, I hope that some of Gondatti's methods will also become an applied component of my learnings as the volume's reader!

The title also refers to the usefulness of Gondatti's materials for modern-day museologists, ethnographers, and ethnohistorians. For the readers looking to implement some of these materials, the chapter titled “Nikolai Gondatti's Chukotka Diaries as Historical and Ethnographic Sources” by Kolomiets et al. can serve as a guide. Beyond connecting to the work of Gondatti directly, the theme of applying ethnological insight and Indigenous knowledge is threaded through several chapters that take up historical subjects. For example, the chapter titled “Indigenous Knowledge and Its Use by Polar Hydrographers in the Interest of the Region” by Koblentz documents many challenges of winter-time travel by the all-terrain tank-like track vehicle vezdekhod, a successful (life-saving) overcoming of which relies on the knowledge of indigenous hunters. I am certain that during their vezdekhod travels in the Soviet/Russian North, many of my colleagues experienced moments of immense gratitude when such knowledge was being put to practice, as well as the treacherous moments of wishing to see such knowledge shared, understood, respected, and applied more thoroughly. Koblentz is a hydrological engineer who has dedicated his life's work to the Russian Arctic. In the same section of the book—titled “Indigenous and Local Knowledge”—Ekaterina Bogoslovskaya (an artist, filmmaker, dog musher, and scholar in her own right, who since young age has participated in the field research in Chukokta, led by her mother Liudmila Bogoslovskaya [see Yamin-Pasternak 2014a, 2018])—presents a 1975–1982 correspondence between captain of the whaling ship Zvesdnyi Leonard Votrogov and indigenous hunters from different communities; in the chapter's afterward Krupnik notes that the correspondence marks a crucial phase in the history of Chukotka—the beginning of mutual learning exchanges between local and Indigenous knowledge bearers and specialists from outside.

Reading the book was not only an intellectually and professionally enriching, but also a deeply personal experience for me. I was a graduate student, when nearly twenty years ago I was browsing photographs in the archives of the Provideniya Museum during the early stages of my fieldwork. Sitting in the room with me was curator Igor Zagrebin, who has dedicated most of his working life to the study and development of the local archives and the archaeological and ethnological collections. Looking out of the window facing the frozen-white splendor of Emma Bay, Zagrebin was pondering exactly the questions he discusses in the current volume's chapter: the origins of the geographic titles of the fiords around Provideniya, including that of Emma. Later that year, one of my summer foraging outings in the endless and generously giving Chukotka tundra was graced by the company of an enchanted young teacher Oksana Yashchenko, who has since worked as an educator and community liaison at a number of Chukotka-based organizations, completed a graduate degree in anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and made the current volume's chapter about the village of Akkani part of her impressive resume. Not long after, back at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I met Dasha (Daria Morgounova-Schwalbe), who at that time was a visiting student from the University of Copenhagen, working on her dissertation on the contemporary dynamics of Yupik language use in the region of the Bering Strait; her richly illustrated chapter in the current volume relates a great part of that effort. For the intricate understanding of the crossroads of the Bering Strait cultures and languages that Dasha, Oksana, and I were gaining during our studies at University of Alaska Fairbanks, we—like so many others mentioned in the book's “Uncle Misha” chapter by Krupnik—are indebted to the late great Professor Michael Krauss (1934–2019). Krauss, in turn, was a many-decades admirer of the diversely reaching pedagogical, research, and Indigenous leadership efforts of Liudmila Ainana (1934–2021); both are recognized by an individually dedicated chapter in the aforementioned Chukotka “Golden Fund”). Born in the same year in Ukig'yarak (a settlement near Cape Chaplin) and in Cleveland, Ohio, respectively, Krauss and Ainana were part of various collaborations in language documentation during the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods. I believe the featured group photograph taken at the Beringia Days conference in Anadyr in 2013 (443), was the last time the two got to meet in person.

Of the 468-pages volume, the English-language content of the book are a translation of the table of contents (7–8) and a two-page summary that is the book's final section (466–467). The visual materials speak to life histories of Chukotka's indigenous and settler residents from different periods (numerous photographs are portraits, some are landscape shots capturing panoramas of settlements and important landmarks); there are documents of historical cartography and various kinds of letters and ledgers; there are photographs of museum objects; some chapters feature appended commentary and publication lists compiled around a specific theme. Although it is my hope and recommendation that the entire volume is reproduced in English, I urge the non-Russian-reading enthusiasts of Chukotka, museums, local and indigenous scholarship, and history of the Russian North not to hold off getting to know the book until a possibly-someday release of an English-speaking tome. Using the table of contents as a guide, one can draw useful insight (and experience sheer enjoyment) browsing the close to 200 featured photographs. The bibliographic entries and thematic literature lists can undoubtedly provide useful leads. More than anything, all readers—whatever regional or subject area may interest them the most—can indulge in pondering what it means to be a research community, diversely and strongly vested in keeping its fire of coproduction and collaboration burning over many time zones and generations, with the emerging and senior scholars working side by side to grant the spotlight to pioneers like Gondatti, all while honoring their own mentors and predecessors, bringing together different communities and institutions, and making room for the aspiring colleagues newly entering the field. We can look to Krupnik for the sense of connectedness and commitment that it takes to keep making it happen.

Author's note: I requested that this pre-publication note is included with the review, written prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. I condemn the scholars and institutions in Chukotka, and elsewhere in the Russian Federation, who have since emerged as supporters and propagandists of Putin's murderous regime, responsible for the mass-scale suffering in Ukraine, and for the detrimental impact to Russia's indigenous communities where men (hunters, herders, caregivers, providers) are being disproportionately targeted through mobilization and misinformation. Slava Ukrayini!

Sveta Yamin-Pasternak

University of Alaska Fairbanks