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Indigenous People, Vulnerability and the Security Dilemma: Sámi School Education on the Kola Peninsula, 1917–1991

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Sámi Educational History in a Comparative International Perspective

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the political aspects of vulnerability in the context of the Sámi school education system. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the Russian Sámi had no native-language school system or native textbooks. The Soviet regime was established on the Kola peninsula only in 1920, three years after the 1917 revolution. The politics of self-determination, the so-called korenizatsiya (indigenization), became a tool for Bolsheviks pursuing a nationalist agenda for the “oppressed” Sámi people. The Soviet policy of indigenization collapsed in 1937 when the secret police NKVD fabricated the formation of a Sámi underground rebel organization. In 1938 all the Sámi schools were closed, and the Sámi-language textbooks were confiscated. The promotion of Sámi education in Russia was then completely suspended until the establishment of Perestroika.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Calculated by the author from the 1926 All-Soviet census: http://demoscope.ru (accessed 1 October 2018).

  2. 2.

    Vasiliy Alymov (1883–1938) was born in Ingria to a working-class family. A typographer by occupation, he joined the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1905. From 1924 to 1935, he was the head of the Murmansk branch of the Committee of the North. He was arrested by the NKVD on 27 March 1938, accused of being “a President of the Sámi underground government” and shot on 22 October 1938 in Leningrad.

  3. 3.

    Calculated by the author from the 1937 to 1939 All-Soviet censuses: http://demoscope.ru (accessed 1 October 2018).

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies as part of the research project Nordic Minorities and Ethnic Cleansing on the Kola Peninsula.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The School of Historical and Contemporary Studies, Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden

    Andrej Kotljarchuk

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  1. Andrej Kotljarchuk
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Correspondence to Andrej Kotljarchuk .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

    Otso Kortekangas

  2. Department of History, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Otso Kortekangas

  3. Department of Education, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland

    Pigga Keskitalo

  4. The Arctic University Museum of Norway, UiT—The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

    Jukka Nyyssönen

  5. Department of History, Södertörn University, Huddinge, Stockholms Län, Sweden

    Andrej Kotljarchuk

  6. Department of Education, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland

    Merja Paksuniemi

  7. Department of Education, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    David Sjögren

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Kotljarchuk, A. (2019). Indigenous People, Vulnerability and the Security Dilemma: Sámi School Education on the Kola Peninsula, 1917–1991. In: Kortekangas, O., Keskitalo, P., Nyyssönen, J., Kotljarchuk, A., Paksuniemi, M., Sjögren, D. (eds) Sámi Educational History in a Comparative International Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24112-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24112-4_5

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