On the Individual’s Role in Ethnohistory: Alexei Mametiev and the Ethnic Construction of the Nagaibaks

Abstract

The Nagaibaks, people of the South Urals, have a relatively short (about three centuries long) ethnic history and impressive successes in the current ethnic construction. To what extent do the Nagaibaks, who had been called in various times “Newly-Baptized”, “Cossacks”, or “Tatars”, rely today on old traditions, react to political impetuses, or follow the ideas of their leader – all these issues are in the focus of the article which is drawn on materials of the authors’ fieldwork. Mametiev’s unpublished memoirs as well as evidences supplied by his relatives and friends, companions and rivals allow us to disclose the motives and circumstances which turned the former officer and party-functionary into the ethnic leader of the Nagaibaks. The observations point to a key personal role of the leader in the life course of the people, particularly noticeable in a critical episode of the ethnic history when the Nagaibaks succeeded in gaining the status of small-numbered indigenous people of Russia.