With the development of a new form of culture based on written language, the indigenous peoples of Western Siberia (Khanty, Mansi and Nenets), as well as the other so-called small peoples of the North, underwent a very significant cultural change. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how this transition occurred, because the emergence of a written culture in the 1930s was not a natural process stemming from internal needs and evolution: it has been imported and even imposed, first as a consequence of contact with Russian colonists, then later as an objective of Soviet cultural policy. The development of literacy in the indigenous culture is therefore closely linked to external influences.
It is important not to forget that these people are the first people who were on the Russians' way eastwards. As early as the twelfth century there was fierce opposition to the penetration of merchants from Novgorod by the so-called Samoyeds1 (Nenets). During the Yermak's campaign against Khan Kuchum the Cossacks had to fight not only Turkic but also Ob-Ugric troops. But conflicts were not the only forms of contact with the newcomers: some Khanty and Mansi princes are said to have made alliances with the Russians, even assisting them in their efforts to conquer other groups. Bardak, a Khanty prince, is known to have helped the Russians build the fortress of Surgut (Istoriya II 1968: 34), and the Khanty prince of Kod, Igichei Alychev, helped the Russians defeat the Pelym Mansi on the Tavda in 1594 (Skachko 1931: 67).2 It is clear that relationships with the Russians are old and diverse; however, the area was unequally covered: until this century some regions remained more or less isolated from Western influences, such as the peninsula of Yamal or the Eastern Khanty region.
It has been often emphasised that certain peoples of the North had their own writing and used some written signs. Some (mainly in Eastern areas) used pictographic systems (Alkor 1934: 84); others had just signs whose function was either to identify the clan or to communicate some basic message, e.g., numerals, distances, etc. (Sergeyev 1956: 142). Some of the more Eastern peoples also had more developed forms of pictographic writing.
But the first attempts to codify the language spoken by the indigenous peoples of the North and to create literal languages in Siberia and in the European part of Russia are directly connected with the christianisation policy which accompanied Russian colonisation.
What did the missionary work represent in the Russian expansion towards the East? These military campaigns were not Crusades: converting people to Christianity was not their primary goal, but Christianity arrived in a very natural way with military and civil penetration. The first fortified cities were founded by the end of the 16th century; the first churches were built at the same time and then monasteries followed. For example, the Konda church was built in 1600 (Makarova 1995: 24) and the Kod monastery, officially founded in 1653 (Shashkov 1996: 26), was built in 1657 (Kuzmin 1995: 16).
In the first stage missionary work was not especially active. The native was seen primarily as a source of plenty: the men had to pay a capital tax, called by its Turkish name iasak; their importance was as fur suppliers, not as souls to be saved. After being baptised, iasak men ceased to pay tribute; traders and officials as well as the government in Moscow therefore did not urge missionary work among them (Slezkine 1994: 43). The monasteries worked more for the Russian inhabitants of the cities and for themselves than for the groups living far off in the taiga or in the tundra.
Being that the need for education was a direct consequence of missionary work, the "enlightenment" of indigenous peoples was mostly entrusted to the church. During the 19th century an attempt at the integration of indigenous peoples into Russian Christianity was made. This was done through direct contact with the population in their own tongue, ideally through two mechanisms: schools, and written texts and translations into the vernacular.
As a rule, education in Russia was not popular. It was not any easier in the North. In spite of permanent opposition to this programme during that century (for it was often assumed that indigenous peoples were "naturally" unable to assimilate academic culture (Komanovsky 1977: 102)) various forms were tried, but the results were not satisfactory. As for the structure in which the education was to be given, the choices were limited. There are only isolated examples of migrating schools (øêîëû ïåðåäâèæêè) accompanying the children of the families following reindeer herds (Bazanov 1936: 82-83). Most of the institutions were founded in cities or villages and they were boarding schools, where elementary skills were taught in Russian. By the middle of the 19th century certain state and church officials had already understood that positive results could only be obtained by introducing the children's mother tongue into the curriculum: in 1869 the governor of Arkhangelsk asked for such permission, but in vain; Moscow did not accept the scheme (Belenkin 1973: 35). In 1915 in the North of Western Siberia only four schools had indigenous children (Shumikhin, Borisova 1975: 45) and only 15 Khanty and Nenets children attended them (Budarin 1952: 155). Only by the end of the century were native languages introduced into some schools; alphabet books as well as textbooks were published in church editions (Bazanov 1936: 84-94).
Several forms of recruitment targeting different categories of children were tried if the school's forms could not be diversified:
Life in school. According to witnesses, life in the schools was by no means suitable for children. Instruction was not the only segment that was severe and austere; basic conditions appeared to have been wretched: lack of proper rooms, of food, of hygiene. In addition, the children were submitted to iron discipline including the use of corporal punishment (Bazanov, Kazansky 1939: 47). The use of one's mother tongue was strictly prohibited (ibidem, 46). Statistics show that the mortality rate was in general fairly high, so that even priests were reluctant to put their own children into the schools. But fatalities were especially high for indigenous children4; many of them died due to malnutrition and disease before the end of their studies. The contrast between their natural way of life and the conditions in the boarding schools was too deep.
c) Work on texts and languages
The principles concerning the education of indigenous peoples proposed by Father Ilminsky of Kazan was approved by the minister of education in 1870. According to his technique, indigenous languages had to be introduced into missionary and educational work. His intention was to give the conversion and faith of the indigenous a real meaning and to build a solid base for further russification. This method was used mainly in the Volga region and it obtained some results. There were also attempts to apply it in Siberia, but it must be stressed they were due to personal initiative rather than a wide-spread government or church policy.
The first landmarks concerning written language in Western Siberia date back to the end of the 19th century:
In 1868 the Gospel of Matthew was translated into Khanty by Priest Vologodsky into a mixture of Beryozovo and Obdorsk dialects (Northern Khanty). The first edition used the Cyrillic alphabet, but it also includes some Latin letters, which in the second edition (1880) completely dissappeared (Mozharsky 1959: 460). (The first edition was published in London by the British Bible Society and the second in Saint Petersburg.) Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century an increase in missionary activity seems to have taken place: in 1900 a Holy History appeared in the Obdorsk dialect (Steinitz 1950: 23) and a Cyrillic alphabet book was published, first in the Obdorsk dialect by Father Yegorov (1897-1898) and then later translated into the the Vakh and Vasyugan dialects by Father Tveritin in 1903 (Steinitz 1950: 15-16; Steinitz emphasises that none of these attempts showed any results and that the Khanty population remained illiterate).
There are also some publications in Mansi by missionaries such as Father G. Popov, who translated and published in London "Das Evangelium Matthäi in den Dialekt der Kondischen Wogulen" in 1878 (second edition Helsingfors 1882). As for schoolbooks, Bishop Nikanor wrote a Cyrillic alphabet book for the Ural Mansi, published in Moscow in 1908. He was assisted by N. Bakhtyarov, a Mansi. All of these works were written in the Konda dialect (Kálmán 1962: 128).
Attempts to write and publish in Nenets have also been tried. One division of Nenets (who are spread over a huge territory, from the Kola peninsula up to the Siberian Taimyr) lived in Russia's European regions, thus coming into contact with their Western neighbours sooner. As early as the 1830s there was a Nenets alphabet based on Greek and Cyrillic letters. The creator Archimandrite Venyamin, leader of the mission of Arkhangelsk, used this in his translation of the Gospels into Nenets. (After a period of roughly twenty years, the Holy Synod finally rejected it (Levin, Potapov 1964: 570).) Venyamin is also the author of a Nenets grammar (1842) and of the Vocabulary of Samoyed; both manuscripts were submitted to the Russian Academy which recognised the value of the work but demanded an entire reworking. Because of this, none of them was ever published (Tereshchenko 1959: 390). The first schoolbook for Nenets children was published in the Arkhangelsk region half a century later, in 1895, under the influence of Kazan missionaries (Hajdú 1973: V).
As far as Samoyed languages are concerned, the most valuable documents on the Selkup dialect by a civil servant must be mentioned. One Grigorovsky, who had been sent to the Narym region in 1868, was soon asked to teach the children of a local Selkup elder. Even before he had learnt the language he started to translate prayers and stories from the Bible for them. In 1879 he simultaneously published a schoolbook, a book of grammar and translations of religious and folkloric texts. (A dictionary is known to have been completed, but its manuscript, unfortunately, has not been found.) All of the texts were published in Kazan the same year. The scholars who have analysed Grigorovsky's texts are very sceptical about the accuracy of the language he used; he did not know it very well and he did not always have access to native assistants who could check his forms (Helimski 1983: 10-15). Nevertheless they are rare and precious material about Southern Selkup, a dialect not very well known.
The impact of such works was certainly very limited, as virtually the entire population was illiterate and they could not be directly used by natives. It was possible they were of some help for priests and missionaries, but they could only be used in the area in which the dialect was written. But the Northern languages have a vast number of dialects, and often they are quite distant from one another. As the first attempts to compose these languages in written form originated outside the native world, their empirical and improvisational features condemned them to sterility.
Consequently, neither the school system nor most of the missionary work on languages spoken in the North had any significant outcome. Only some indigenous individuals succeeded in learning the foundations of literacy.
2. A new policy towards the peoples of the North
a) The peoples of the North and tsarism
At the end of the 19th century, observers in Russia noticed that the peoples of the North were fading away: they were the victims of substantial spoliation. As a result of extremely heavy taxes on the native population, the fur game of the Siberian forests had been systematically destroyed by massive hunting. Unable to pay, the natives went deeply into debt with Russian merchants. Even the physical health of the indigenous peoples was threatened, due to massive consumption and abuse of spirits. (Alcohol was also used by the above-mentioned merchants to obtain fur at the cheapest price.) The policy of tsarist Russia towards the northern peoples was without any structure. The state had given them a status, taken its part of the benefit, made them dependent, then abandoned them to their fate. At the end of the 19th century this fact was often italicised by Russian opponents, either intellectuals exiled in Western Siberia (e.g., Shvetsov 1998: 74-79, 86-89; Bartenev 1998 (1896): 149-155) or Siberian regionalists, called oblastniki, whose leaders were concerned with the place of Siberia as a whole in the Russian empire and did not omit the deplorable condition of the indigenous peoples in their analyses (Yadrintsev 1996).
b) The Bolsheviks and the peoples of the North
The ascendant political force in Russia had no specific program on so marginal an issue, being so fully unconnected with the subject of power. Urban Bolsheviks had no particular awareness of issues concerning nationality and they had insufficient experience with remote populations who lived in such a "primitive way". At first they just ignored the problem; between 1918 and 1919 the Soviets used any means necessary for the struggle for survival. As for the rural population as a whole, natives were treated with no consideration, and often with genuine brutality. Moreover, one part of the civil war did concern indigenous territory, as Kolchak's capital was for some time Omsk, where he was arrested in 1919. The natives were certainly lost and could hardly understand the meaning of what was happening around them. This perplexity is well illustrated by the Nenets poet Yuri Vylla in his family remembrances: "My grandfather, in his youth, because of his ignorance and his lack of political training, ran away both from Whites and from Reds" (Vylla 1991: 53). Regardless, during the first years of Soviet rule, state structures were not functional, the economic system was completely chaotic, the populations were inhumanely pressured and their situation became catastrophic.
After the end of the civil war Soviet leadership began to solve the problems that had accumulated. Nationality and minority issues were subordinated to a special judicial authority, the Narkomnats (The People's Commissariat for Nationalities). As far as the Northern area was concerned, there was a void: there were no competent Bolsheviks with experience on interaction with natives, and officials in general usually had no idea and no knowledge on this issue. On the other hand, there were no possible mediators among the natives to assist the policy-makers. Moreover, the classics of Marxism had no prescriptions for constructing socialism with these kind of peoples But the vacuum had to be filled. Soviet leaders turned to the only people well-versed on the Northern area: scholars, ethnologists, researchers, populist opponents exiled into Siberia by the tsarist power - persons who had learnt the local languages and studied the native peoples. These men were sincerely devoted to the people they had been living with and whose fate they were to influence. In slightly less than a decade, they were at liberty to choose the best method of development according to their understanding5.
c) The Committee of the North
After the previous temporary authorities had secured measures of urgency (food provision and tax remittance6), a special authority was created to assume the tasks of the Narkomnats in the Northern area: the Committee of the North. From 1924 to 1934 it was responsible for Soviet policy regarding Arctic populations, and acted primarily on two issues: the judicial and the cultural.
The statute question
With the Revolution and the civil war all previous legislation (including the statute enacted one century earlier by Speransky) had disappeared. No rules existed anymore to regulate the relations between the state and the Northern populations. The first responsibility of the Committee of the North was to fill this gap and to prepare a new statute suitable for the Soviet system. A so-called "Provisional Statute" was ready in 1926. This name was significant, as it was meant to be a statute of transition which took into account the present condition of the Northern peoples and afforded a compromise between tradition and socialist structures. Traditional structures such as clans were then used as a foundation to build upon by the new ruling members, the Soviets. Some privileges of the native peoples were preserved, such as military exemption7. This statute was founded upon a fleeting, ideological basis suggested by the ethnographers: class struggle was not a relevant concept in these societies, where social differences were not supposed to be considerable. Changes in the Provisional Statute were introduced very swiftly in some regions: in the European North and Narym area clan soviets were replaced by national and territorial ones as early as 1927, and by November 1930 the entire territory was completely subdued (Zibarev 1972: 84).
The "cultural construction"
The main problem the new administrators had to face was the lack of cadres. In 1923 the Narkomnats asked the party leadership in Tobolsk for a literate Khanty, and it was answered that "there was one, but he died in the civil war"8 (Skachko 1935: 32). According to central statistics, between 1926 and 1927 5.2% of Khants, 5.6% of Mansi and 0.6% of Nenets were literate, and the overall literacy rate for the peoples of the North was 7.2% (Alkor 1934: 84). The Committee of the North was conscious that as long as there were not any native intermediaries, the Northern peoples would be mere objects and would therefore be deprived of the opportunity to shape their own destiny; consequently, its priority was to train mediators. This new division was supposed to transmit sound information to the state about the real conditions of the peoples, and to promote the values of progress and socialism in their society. Later on they would assume the role of the Committee itself and deal directly with the management of Northern areas. The only way to achieve these objectives was to develop education.
In the very beginning management authorities (even before the foundation of the Committee of the North) turned to their own human resources, mainly students and ethnology graduates from Leningrad University. These schoolteacher/missionaries were sent on the spot to represent progress in general, and more precisely, Soviet power. Their task was extremely difficult: they had to face the lack of material facilities, school stationery and indifference from local Russians as well as natives. The local Russians did not easily accept the enthusiastic newcomers: some, even party bosses, could not understand why so much attention was paid to savages9. Defamation campaigns were organised against both teachers and physicians (Marin 1931: 59). The local population, bearing in mind previous experiences, were no less distrustful. A good illustration of this is a speech by a Khanty elder near Obdorsk in 1921, recorded by the teacher V. Novitsky: "We know fairly well that there are less and less of us. You, the Russians, are called to live, we are condemned to death. To you, literacy is useful, to us, it is damageable: it turns us into thieves, drunkards, it arises our literate's hate and hostility towards us, we have already experienced it. [] Leave us in peace, don't disturb us! If you open here a school, although we have been living here for a long time we will immediately leave this place and go elsewhere" (Belenkin 1973: 14-15).
Most of these teachers did not speak the local languages (Gorodenko 1995: 171) and very few of them were of indigenous origin; the Nenets Petr Hatanzeyev, was an exception. In 1920 he opened a school in a Khanty village which was the first to use the student's mother tongue in its lessons (Ocherki 1965: 138-139). Teachers usually kept close contact with Leningrad, and most soon discovered how difficult it was to teach using a language unknown by the pupils. They relayed the message on to Leningrad: the languages of the indigenous peoples of Siberia must be quickly codified so that there would be a basis for the teaching of literacy. In addition, necessities of modern life spoke in favour of the development of writing in the area: in the 1920's, a Nenets called Yadno presented his application to the collective farm in pictographic form (Sergeyev 1956a: 143) The idea of giving Northern languages a literal form had already been conceived in the Narkomnats in August 1922 (Vdovin 1959: 287), and it received official confirmation in 1926 (Tsintsius 1958: 78). But the situation was not mature, and such a system could not be standardised, although in some instances there was success where teachers learnt their pupils' languages and wrote and copied schoolbooks in order to teach them Russian. This was also done by Georgi Prokofyev (1897-1942) who was sent in 1925 to the boarding school of Yanov-Stan, deep in Selkup territory. He introduced Selkup as a subject in his school, and his experience served as starting point for future programs in schools using native languages (Chernyakov 1975: 187-188).
Much was done to involve native peoples in the educational programs. In the first half of the 1920's even mobile schools are known to have been in use, but in spite of their name they did not really accompany nomads on their migrations: they were light structures (often chums) and were only situated on the route of the nomads (Gorodenko 1995: 16). They merely prepared a model which was to become the main one used in the North, the boarding school. This form brought about very hostile feelings in the native population, and there is abundant evidence of vigorous resistance: the most radical act was the Kazym uprising in 1933, but other cases are also known, such as the opposition of Mansi families in Lombuozhi (Bazanov, Kazansky 1939: 98, 100). Even Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar for Culture, was compelled to recognise the inconvenience of separating children from families (1927: 18), although its dramatic consequences would not be analysed by Soviet authors until the end of the nineties Education did not only affect children; courses for adults were organised and the Committee of the North's cultural policy found its best expression in so-called "cultural bases" and other institutions (such as red chums). These establishments were where all the services meant for the local population (medical and veterinary services, agricultural counsel, native's houses, etc.) met at one point. These centres were supposed to allow contact between the two worlds and to propagate the new Soviet values. Political education was therefore not forgotten.
In 1926, five schools were boarding-schools. At the end of the 1920s there were 32 national schools in the okrug of Tobolsk (between 1925 and 1926 there were 20): 22 were Khanty (280 students), 7 were Mansi (180 students) and one was Nenets (20 students) (Obdorsky 1995: 27). Statistics show that the desired results were not entirely satisfactory: while 40.2% of the Mansis were integrated into the educational system, only 8.7% of Khanty and 1% of Nenets were integrated (Ocherki 1965: 139-140; Sovetskaya 1931: 46). As far as secondary schools were concerned, none of the four functioning between 1930 and 1931 was national; in 1939 native languages were taught in only five secondary schools (Zibarev, Pastushenko 1980: 352).
Work on the spot was necessary but not sufficient. The need of cadres was urgent; it was not possible to wait until the children educated in the new schools became adults. The Committee of the North wanted to immediately train native leaders. Work on the language problem began in Leningrad in 1926 (Vasilyevich 1958: 228), but the first group of 30 students coming from Northern and Eastern Russia had already arrived at the workers' organisation in 192510. There were adults and children, some did not speak Russian at all and some were not literate (Bogoraz-Tan 1927: 52, 62). This experience continued regularly, and every year with new groups. In 1932 a specific unit, the Institute of the Peoples of the North (INS) was founded; its goal was to prepare specialists in humanities, economics and political management11. The creation of literal languages was achieved in this setting.
3. The conditions for the creation of literal languages
The decision did not meet unanimous approval: in the Western regions (Arkhangelsk and the Urals) the issue was actively discussed, for many opposed the creation of literal languages for such small populations and recommended special efforts be made to develop their knowledge of Russian (Alkor 1931: 108). Nevertheless, the supporters of native languages were victorious.
The reactions to this policy have been analysed in divergent ways. Soviet authors have stressed, mechanically and without evidence, that education in the mother tongue provoked enthusiastic reactions. Many authors quote a comment by Stebnitsky, a specialist in Koriak: "Literacy is spreading like epidemics, children educate their parents, husbands their spouses. The students at the school of the Party receive letters only in their languages. The collective farms' presidents and secretaries have the reports and requests made by their brigadiers written only in Koriak"12 But it can be doubted whether enthusiasm was so universal. The analyses of contemporary reports give the impression that journalists and witnesses emphasised every "positive" example and attempted to present it as the general sentiment. But when attentively reading the reports, scepticism and reluctance still seemed dominant in the natives' attitude towards education. The school system was not imposed on the peoples of the North without obstinate resistance. The children's adaptation to the boarding-school system involved a terrible break with the traditional, unconfined life in nature they were used to, so it remained - and remains - one of the most painful moments in the life of tundra or taiga inhabitants. Possibly some have been satisfied with the new opportunities opened by education, but many have only been shocked by its acculturative effect. Finally, there has also been open scepticism towards an education that seemed to isolate indigenous peoples in a ghetto: if children must be educated, it must be useful to them, so let it be in Russian, is one opinion (Slezkine 1994: 243).
Regardless, to introduce native languages into the schools some of the previously mentioned conditions had to be met. First of all, these languages had to be better known than they were: it was impossible to stipulate orthographic and grammatical rules without identifying their phonemic, morphologic and syntactic structures. A graphical system and a basic dialect also had to be chosen.
a) Research on languages
Before the 20th century, the languages spoken in the North had not raised any systematic interest. In Western Siberia, Finnish and Hungarian explorers Matias Aleksanteri Castrén and Antal Reguly studied them. They were not only explorers but universal scholars with a strong linguistic background. Their research was valuable but not adequate for an undertaking whose goals were now practical. Most of this work rested on the INS staff; students and native speakers were also competent advisors with whom the Russian scholars (who often learnt these languages during their exile or their field work) could profitably collaborate. Before World War II, obtaining deep knowledge of these languages was a clearly stated goal in Soviet linguistics. The results of these studies were systematically published in the 1930s as articles in collections such as "Languages and Writings of the People of the North" (ßçûêè è ïèñìåííîñòü íàðîäîâ Ñåâåðà), dedicated in 1934 to the Paleosiberian and in 1937 to the Uralic languages.
b) The choice of a graphical system13
The literation of Northern languages was not a unique enterprise: on the contrary, the whole USSR was working on languages. Most of the languages spoken by its peoples either were not written at all or had an extremely elitarian writing system. The same kind of work was taking place in remote regions, under various political motives and usually with the very active involvement of the local intelligentsia. Some languages, such as the Finno-Ugric family members spoken in the Volga region, already had a tradition in Cyrillic letters.
Among the most significant nationalities, Turkic peoples had a special place in terms of their political influence as well as the number of speakers. A particular cultural movement for latinisation was launched in the early 1920s in Turkic areas, and this later spread over the whole of Russia, parallel to Atatürk's post-1928 reforms in Turkey. Left-wing forces and intellectuals were opposed categorically to the old Arabic alphabet, and their arguments were serious ones: it was not adapted to the phonetics of Turkic languages; it did not allow for the development of mass literacy; its origins were religious; and it represented a very good medium for pan-Islamism. On the other hand, the Cyrillic alphabet was just as unacceptable, for it was reminiscent of the tsarist regime's and the Orthodox Church's attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity. The Latin alphabet seemed both practical and politically correct, as it promoted another kind of internationalism, dear to the Soviet power, facing the Islamic "internationalism". The latinisation movement was launched in 1922 in Azerbaijan; other regions followed in the next years. The supporters of the Arabic alphabet were particularly strong in Tataria, but they submitted after 1928. In 1929, Turkic languages not only began to officially use Latin letters, but were codified according to an alphabet unique for all of them, the so-called New Turkic Alphabet (NTA). The basic principle is that one single letter must correspond to one and to no more than one phoneme. The NTA is thus a kind of grapheme-phoneme bank, where each language finds the letters it needs.
This experience of a rational construction in setting writing rules raised a real enthusiasm among linguists and inspired other "language-makers". Latin letters seemed to be most appropriate for the languages of the North; besides their practical fitness, they were supposed to facilitate contacts with groups living abroad - for some of the peoples, as the Sami, the Eskimos and the Tungus, did not exist only inside the USSR. Specialists of different languages proposed their versions for a Northern Unified Alphabet: K. M. Mylnokova and S. Forstein presented the so-called Khabarovsk version, which did not take into account Uralic languages. The specialist Y. Alkor had his own proposal. In November 1929 the Northern Alphabet is adopted by a special commission (the Commission for Language and National Cultures for the Small People of the North), and it became official on February 23, 1931 (Vdovin 1959: 290).
The final version was aimed at simplification: diacritical signs that complicated typography as well as teaching had mostly been eliminated. The Northern Unified Alphabet contains 39 letters - 29 consonants and 10 vowels (Tsintsius 1958: 81). For the languages we are dealing with, the authors of the project are V. I. Chernetsov for Mansi, N. K. Karger and the native speaker Alachev for Khanty as well as G. N. Prokofyev for Samoyed languages.
c) The choice of a dialect
This was the main problem for the language-makers. The fact is that all the languages are subdivided in many dialects, often substantially different from one another; sometimes they even did not allow mutual comprehension. The creation of literal languages required a choice of a reference dialect. How was this choice to be made? It was necessary to check exactly the situation for each language and to undertake dialect-related research immediately. How many literal languages were to be created considering the multiplicity of the dialects? There were two kinds of dangers: one had been experienced by missionaries, whose texts had been written in a style corresponding very strictly to the local way of speaking; even if they could be understood by the local population, they remained unintelligible for others. Incorporating facets of each dialect into one literal language seemed reasonable, but this could easily be seen as artificial by most of its speakers. This question was relevant for all languages, but it was crucial for idioms spread on a huge territory and spoken in many different ways, as Evenk or Khanty.
4. The creation of literal Khanty, Mansi and Nenets
A conference on the development of languages and literacy of the peoples of the North was held in January 1932 and was attended by higher representatives of central political institutions, research centres, universities, publishing houses as well as by delegates coming from the different regions (Isayev 1979: 222); it decided to create fourteen literal languages: Sami, Mansi, Khanty, Nenets, Selkup, Evenk, Even, Nanai, Udege, Chukchi, Koriak, Nivkh, Ket and Eskimo. It decided also to begin work on Itelmen and Aleut. Two years later, another conference took notice of the fact that among Kets and Itelmens Russian was developed enough to permit education without the use of native language. Some years later the same decision was taken regarding Sami and Udege. The creation of literal Aleut was finally discontinued (Vdovin 1959: 290-291).
In this paper, three different peoples are examined. How did each of them go about creating literal languages?
The Khanty
A first manual is known to have been prepared and copied manually in 1926 by a certain Afanasyev (Obdorsky 1995: 27). The author of the first published schoolbook is the above mentioned P. E. Hatanzeyev14: it was written in 1930, before the official adoption of rules for the literal language, with Latin letters in the Obdorsk dialect (Karshakova 1996: 44). The content of the book is said to have been interesting and lively; its texts dealt with Khanty traditions and everyday life, but it was written in complicated language (Nyomysova 1994: 21). It seems to have been inspired by V. Bogoraz-Tan's Russian-language schoolbook for Northern schools, which was published in 1927 before the teaching in native languages was standardised (Shirshova 1976: 65). But according to Steinitz, "this manual has practically not been in use in Khanty schools, because it was written in a mixture of Obdorsk dialect and southern forms. Another manual was soon needed" (1937: 15-16). Therefore it was soon "translated" and published in Kazym dialect (Mozharsky 1959: 460). In 1933 a Russian, N. Karger, proposed an alphabet book (Domokos 1985: 70) and in 1934, a textbook and a manual of arithmetic were published for the first form (Steinitz 1937: 15-16).
The contradiction is striking: the Northern dialects, fairly different from the languages spoken both by Central and Eastern Khantys, were used by a community still very close to tradition and not deeply touched by progress. It was a matter of urgency for the regime to include them in the new processes through education. But most of the "evolved" Khantys lived in Central regions and pressed the authorities to move the basis for literal languages southwards. This was done in 1940 (Avrorin 1953: 24). But new problems emerged: as the Medium Ob dialect was mostly spoken by russified Khantys, it was not so urgently needed or used, as Russian was fairly adequate for communication purposes. The natives who communicated mainly in their own language spoke other dialects (Avrorin 1952: 428).
Both scholars who participated actively in the creation or the teaching of Khanty literal language, the Nenets P. Y. Hatanzeyev and the German Steinitz were well acquainted with the Northern and Central forms of Khanty. Therefore in the first stage the Eastern Khantys, whose dialects present very specific features, were neglected. Khanty literal language fixation was characterised by permanent hesitations: this is well illustrated by a small reform of Latin alphabet that took place in 1936 and was inspired by Steinitz: new letters were introduced and others eliminated (Steinitz 1950: 25). It is clear that no satisfactory solution could be found in creating one Khanty literal language: at the linguistic conference held in 1952, the Khanty scholar N. Tereshkin denounced the errors made until then and the absurd situation they had led to. The conference decided to create four literal languages (Komanovsky 1977: 35): "To create a written language for Eastern Khantys in Vakh dialect based on the idiom spoken in Bolshoi Laryak. To create a written language in Surgut dialect according to the spoken idiom in Higher Surgut. For Northern Khantys: pass from the Medium Ob to the Kazym dialect. To prepare as an experience an alphabet book in Shuryshkar dialect taking into account its differences with the Kazym dialect and the basic need for this group for education in the mother tongue because of the limited extent of Russian among them."
Nowadays, there are six Khanty languages, based on the following dialects: Obdorsk (1930), Kazym (1933), Medium-Ob (1940), Shuryshkar (1953), Vakh (1958) and Surgut (1959) (Domokos 1985: 70). Nevertheless, no schoolbooks for Khanty schools were published from the beginning of the 1960s up to the middle of the 1970s (Nyomysova 1994: 22). The work started again at the end of the 1970s. Today schoolbooks from the first up to the fourth class are available in the Kazym and Shuryshkar dialects; an alphabet book and some schoolbooks exist in the Surgut dialect, as well as an alphabet book in Vakh dialect, a course on literature in the Kazym dialect for the 5th and 6th grades and other pedagogical tools (Nyomysova 1994: 22).
These circumstances explain, at least partially, why it took so long for a true Khanty literature to develop. The first Khanty books contain texts of folklore, as for example poems and epic songs in "Ine-Hon" (Sverdlovsk 1935), presented by I. Yelantsev (Slovo 1996: 3). True, as early as 1934, students in Khanty-Mansiysk Pedagogical Institute are known to have put on a Khanty-language play called "The Soviet Nest Egg" (Ñîâåòñêàÿ êóáûøêà) (Komanovsky 1977: 68), but no such text has yet been found. Some poems have been written by Grigori Lazarev (1917-1979) as early as 1935, as he was a student in the same institute. His first poems are adaptations from folklore (Sergeyev 1955: 177); soon he started translating, first the "International" (Nyomysova 1996: 9) and, later, such Russian authors as Nekrasov (Sergeyev 1952: 159). Soviet literary critics find even in his first poems "Soviet-patriotic" overtones (Polonsky 1996:152). But the main part of Lazarev's literary career fell into the post-World War II period, when he was a journalist, writer and a playwright working both in Russian and Khanty. He is the author of the first play written and published in Khanty, "Disguised as a Farm Worker"15 (Slovo 1996: 3). Most of his activity was dedicated to the Party. We also know of the existence of another poet, called Dmitri Tebetev, but have little knowledge about his life and poems. His name appears at the bottom of poems published in the local newspaper in 1934. We also know that he was a hunter, that he was born in 1905, and that his dream was to study in Leningrad. At the beginning of the war he wrote a few anti-German poems. He died in 1942 (Severtsev 1997: 14).
1930 is the year the Khanty regional paper "Lenin naty huwat" (`On the way shown by Lenin') was established. In 1931 "Hanty-Mansi shop" was launched (Belenkin 1971: 130). These papers included articles in Khanty. Between 1945 and the end of the 1950s, about ten were published in the Medium-Ob dialect (Mozharsky 1959: 460).
Mansi
The missionaries had translated into the Konda dialect. But literal Mansi is based on the Sosva Dialect, for it was the most widely-spoken dialect, and it was the main communication means in its milieu, which was known for a strong cultural identity (Rombandeyeva 1973: 9). Its alphabet and rules were designed at the Institute of the Peoples of the North in 1930-31 by V. Chernetsov and reaffirmed in 1932 by a schoolbook he also wrote. Before 1941, four schoolbooks were published in Mansi: the language books for preparatory (1932), first (1933) and second grades (1934), as well as an arithmetic book for the first grade (1933); all of them had been written by Chernetsov (Kálmán 1962: 131).
In this first period, three story books will be published in Mansi, one by Chernetsova (1934) and two by Balandin (1938 and 1939) (Kálmán 1962: 132).
The dialect was chosen on scientific criteria by a respected expert. Southern dialects had been excluded since they were spoken actively by only a few families. Nevertheless, the first literary texts published in Mansi are written in the Konda dialect, for this Russified region was traditionally more open to education. The most important of these texts is "Two Hunters" by Panteley Yevrin (Cheymatov was his real name), published in 1940.
Almost fifteen years later, the same can be said about a short novel written by Matra16 Vakhrusheva in Konda Mansi and translated into Russian under the title "On the shores of the Small Yukonda". Although she started writing later, Matra Vakhrusheva had been noticed in INS in the 1930s as an active literatus. Yevrin's novel is surely one of the most interesting examples of these nascent literatures. Mansi and Russian texts are both presented in the same volume. It relates the events of one week between two characters on a hunting trip, an old Mansi and a young Russian. At first, the two men are unable to communicate; during that week, they learn to understand each other. They go together through more or less tragic events and become friends. The novel lacks a schematic approach typical for the period; remarks on national psychology are relevant and precise. Little is known about Yevrin himself, not even the years of his birth or of his death. We know that he studied in Leningrad and was almost expelled, because his relatives were considered kulaks and persecuted. Nevertheless he supported the Soviet regime and volunteered for service at the front, where he was wounded twice. Some time after having returned home, he is known to have provoked a quarrel with tragic consequences, killing his wife's lover. His suicide attempt was unsuccessful. After that, nothing was heard of him (Kalmykov 1997: 14).
The Nenets
The dialect chosen for Nenets was the one spoken in the Tundra of the Big Land, Northeast of European Russia, close to the Yamal dialect and in between the two extremes of the huge territory covered by the Nenets, from the Kola peninsula up to the Taimyr in Siberia. Even when speaking in different dialects, the Nenets understand each other17 (Tereshchenko 1990: 6); on the other hand, as the main language developer emphasised, this dialect was the form spoken by the most evolved groups of Nenets (Prokofyev 1936: 6), by those who occupied a key position because of transport facilities. Some years later, Yamal Nenets will obtain some changes in literal language in the sense of their own way of speaking (Tereshchenko 1990: 6-7). The first Nenets schoolbook "New Word"18 was published in 1932. The author was G. N. Prokofyev, who also published in 1936 a teach-yourself-Nenets manual for adults. He was assisted in his task by two of his students, N. I. Tereshchenko and the Nenets Anton P. Pyrerka (1905-1941). The latter was the first true Nenets intellectual: he was a linguist (specialising in lexicography), folklorist19 and writer. He was the vice-president of the Committee for the New Alphabet of the North (Tereshchenko 1982: 293-295). He died on the front in 1941. He had explored most of the Nenets areas, the Little Land, the Big Land tundras and the Taimyr areas when working on the constitution of the literal language (Lebedeva 1958: 237).
The Nenets were spread over a very wide area. In some regions, they had been mostly isolated from contacts with Russians and with European civilisation - as in the Yamal and the Taimyr. But in the European part of Russia, the Nenets had already been submitted for a long time to cultural shocks. It is not surprising therefore that the first attempts to use literal language came from the European Nenets and were published in Naryan Mar. In 1935, the local Russian journalists and writers published a collection of texts, including several short stories by Nenets newcomers S. Nogo and E. Taleyev, whose texts were translated into Russian: the 70-page book called "Zapolyarye" was greeted by "Pravda" as a real event, though it was clear to the critics that Nenets writers used a language "they still know badly..." (Popov 1936: 27-28). In 1936, the second "Zapolyarye" presented five Nenets writers, and added to the former the names of G. Sufkin, S. Ardeyeva and E. Sobolev (Sergeyev 1956: 141). This group, including local Russian writers, functioned in close contact with the local paper, "Naryan Vynder" (Popov 1936: 27). Nothing is unfortunately known about these five young authors, who did not go on to write anything else noteworthy.
The first important Nenets writer came from a well-known family in Novaya Zemlya: the Vylkas. Tyko Vylka the elder is an extraordinary personality. As a young man, he had been noticed by Russian explorers for his qualities as a guide on his island and as a gifted artist. Thanks to the initiative of one of them, Vladimir Rusanov, Tyko was given the opportunity of spending one year in Moscow in 1910, studying language, literature, mathematics, natural sciences and art under private instructors. He went back home to marry his widowed sister-in-law as custom required, and had to hide from tsarist police until 1917. Afterwards, until the 1960s, he was president of the Soviet of Novaya Zemlya in an uninterrupted stretch. He painted, wrote and collected folklore. Although his own texts were published only in the 1960s, his influence on his nephew Nikolai (1911-1942) led the latter to go to Leningrad and get educated. Like his uncle, Nikolai Vylka was a writer as well as an artist (he sculpted and painted). He was still a student when he published, both in Nenets and in Russian, his first story, "Vylka on the island" (later published also with the title "On the island"). This text was awarded a prize by the publishing house and gave the author official recognition as a writer by becoming member of the Writers' Union - being the second writer from the small peoples of the North to get into this organisation20 (Sergeyev 1955: 178). In 1938, his most popular story, "Maria", was published. At the same time, Anton Pyrerka received a publisher's prize for his short novel "The younger Vedo" (Slovo 1996: 5).
In more remote areas the evolution was slower but no less real. In the Yamal a student of the local Pedagogical Institute, Ivan Nogo (1891-1947), a very active Party member and a political journalist, contributed to the foundation of the journal "Iskra Yamala" (`Yamal Spark' in Russian) (Sergeyev 1956: 142); he is the first Nenets playwright, with at least two of his dramas staged and published (in Nenets as well as in Russian): "The Shaman", based on the experience of a students' play, published in Salehard in 1937 and staged in January 1938, and "Vauli Nenyang", played in 1940 (Komanovsky 1977: 71-72). Some war prose is also mentioned by scholars (ibidem: 89-91). In every respect, the Pedagogical Institute of Salehard played an important role in the development of a local intelligentsia with its literary circles where young people such as Ivan Istomin, one of the main names in later Nenets literature, wrote poems, short stories, and translated Pushkin and other Russian authors (Istomin 1958: 144-145).
The local press developed too, initially in Russian: for example, "Naryan Wu" (`Red Tundra' in Nenets), the organ of the cultural base of Yamal (Belenkin 1968: 137). Later pages in Nenets were added. In the Western areas, besides the already mentioned "Naryan Vynder" (`Red Inhabitant of Tundra' in Nenets) (1930-34) and "Yugorsky Shar" published regularly in Naryan Mar, an entire journal, "Yasovey" (`The Accompanist' in Nenets), was published entirely in Nenets in 1933-34 (Komanovsky 1977: 26). It was meant mainly for the reindeer-herder members of the first collective reindeer-herding farm, and the staff living in the tundra with them (Belenkin 1971: 123). In spite of its Nenets name, "Naryan Vynder" was written mainly in Russian: the first materials in Nenets were published on April 17, 1930. Monthly publication ensued. In the Yamal "Naryan Ngerm"(`Red North' in Nenets) began life in April 1930, and the first pages in Nenets were published from November 1932 on (Naumov 1969: 8).
The Selkup
There was also an attempt to write in Selkup. The first group to get a literal language was the Northern Selkup, reindeer-herders in a fairly compact area on the Eastern part of Yamal-Nenets region and on the Turukhansk River. Concretely, the literal language was based on the Taz dialect (Künnap 1992: 142). But this literal language is said to have been poorly used, because of the small number of speakers and of the dialectal differences (Musayev 1965: 48). Some schoolbooks were published nevertheless in Selkup until 1960. Afterwards not only publishing but also teaching in Selkup was halted (Künnap 1992: 142). In 1985, Selkup was presented as a idiom, the literal language of which was created "in the last few years" (Gurvich and Taksami 1985: 63). The southern dialects, spoken in the Tomsk area, in which Grigorovsky wrote his translations, are only now being codified by Tomsk scholars, according to whom it is not realistic to have one single Selkup literal language (Morev 1995: 156). It is interesting to note that a conversation book in Southern Selkup was published in Szombathely (Hungary) in 1993, the acknowledged aim of which is "to attempt to activate the knowledge of Selkup among the middle generation, even before its introduction in school programmes" (Kuper, Pusztay 1993: 2).
It is not possible to speak about Selkup literature. In the 1960s a Selkup name - Taisya Pyrshina - appears in a prose collection (Ot Moskvy 1961: 478), for the first and the last time. Later, Valentina Kudryavtseva published poetry and one short novel (Slovo 1996: 3), but mainly Selkup writing seems to still be at the stage of transcribing folk tales.
Conclusion
In 1937 all the literal languages of the North went under serious reconstruction: the Latin alphabet, which was used in creating them, was over a very short time replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet. This change is due to several reasons, on different levels.
Specific reasons
From the theoretical and technical point of view, the Latin alphabet was ideal. It marked strictly all the phonemes at least for the languages best known. It presented nevertheless some practical disadvantages:
