The Soviet Modernization of Deer Breeding in Remote Northern Regions (the Case of the Anadyr Region of Chukotka)

Abstract

The author discusses the social and economic aspects of the transformation of deer breeding in the Anadyr region of Chukotka during the Soviet period. She traces different stages of socialist modernization of this economic branch from the initial “sovietization” through cooperation and collectivization to the economic optimum of the first half of the 1960s to the systemic crisis of the 1970-80s that ensued as a result of low efficiency and high expenses of work. She argues that the Soviet model of development of deer breeding in the North had exhausted itself by the 1970s. The strategy toward continually increasing the number of livestock at the expense of high material and social costs was not grounded economically and ran contrary to the tendency to abandon agrarian activities as the major occupation, which was pronounced among the native population.