Debating Colonization of the North and Postcolonial Optics

Abstract

This publication presents a critical discussion of the arguments put forward in the article on “Collectivization as Colonial Mimicry: Indigenous Population and the Creation of Modernity in the Yenisei North in the 1930s” [Kollektivizatsiia kak kolonial’naia mimikriia: indigennoe naselenie i sozdanie modernosti na Eniseiskom Severe v 1930-e gody], where the author, Igor Stas, explores the colonial discourse which arguably took the form of “colonial mimicry” in the process of collectivization of indigenous farms in the North of Russia. The contributors – Dmitry Verhovtsev (“Mimicry of Coloniality”), Alima Bissenova (“Mimicry or Assimilation: Could It Be That Nomadic Kolkhozes Existed on Paper Only?”), Slava Kovalsky (“Who Is It That We Are Studying in the Yenisei North?”), and the author of the original article, Igor Stas – expound their own points of view on the historical process of development of the Russian North.