Introduction

In anthropological studies of arctic peoples, the Komi reindeer herders always occupied a very marginal place. Their position as part of an ethnographic group inside the Komi people, which are not supposed to be a northern nation, very often excluded them from the field of northern researching activities. Despite this fact, the influence of the Komi reindeer herders upon the culture of other reindeer herding traditions is quite obvious. This influence was often seen as an impact from outside the world of circumpolar reindeer herding cultures and attributed to the impact of modernistic "European" cultures. This prevented many researchers of the northern reindeer herding nations from studying the Komi reindeer herding tradition. On the other hand, the Komi ethnographers trying to produce the general image of Komi culture usually ignored its local variations. Even in the most basic of Komi ethnographies, the Izhma Komi ethnographic group and the Komi reindeer herding practised by part of its representatives is described in a few paragraphs and the descriptions do not contain even the most important details. Therefore, a paradoxical situation has come into existence: now we know much more about the impact Komi reindeer herders made upon other peoples than about Komi reindeer herding itself.

On the other hand, the culture of the Izhma Komi contains a set of peculiarities which, if carefully studied, can contribute to our understanding of the world's cultural diversity. Indeed, the Komi reindeer herding system and the ethnographic group practising it are unique in many ways. First of all, this is a very new phenomenon: it was not until the end of 16^th century, when the Izhma Komi ethnographic group came into existence. However, the introduction of the reindeer herding into their culture took place some 150–200 years later. The core of the predecessors of this group was compiled from migrants from the more southern regions of the Komi cultural area. Therefore, Komi reindeer herding is the only reindeer herding systems in the world formed not on the base of extracting economy (hunting, fishing and gathering), but on the basis of highly developed producing economy including cow breeding and agriculture. There are some other peculiarities making this system different from the reindeer herders of neighboring populations. First of all, Komi reindeer herders are semi-nomads. This semi-nomadic character of the Komi reindeer herding pre-supposes the existence of large permanent settlements where the relatives of reindeer herders lived and where the reindeer herders themselves returned every year. This is a unique peculiarity of Komi reindeer herding. The Izhma Komi is the only group of people who can have reindeer herders, cow breeders and agriculturists, not even in one village, but in one household. The market character of Komi reindeer herding allows some scholars to refer to it as "tundra capitalism" (see for example Kercelli 1911). This does not have analogues in the world either.

Among the peculiarities of the Komi reindeer herding are the social relations. Komi culture during the emergence of reindeer herding activity did not already have clans like many other arctic peoples. Questions about how regarding Komi herding groups were formed and the mechanisms and questioning of their integrity are still not well researched. Almost completely unknown are the relations between Komi reindeer herding and their non-migrating fellows in the village and even relatives in households. The processes of modernisation including the impact of such experiments by Soviet communist government as collectivisation and raskulachivaniye upon the Komi are also almost completely enigmatic. Now, we have some case-studies about the impact of these processes on other northern peoples (for example the Nenets, see Tuisku 1998) but not the Komi. At the same time, the semi-nomadic and "capitalistic" character of Komi reindeer herding made this group of the northern population especially sensitive to these processes and the research of their impact would be especially valuable for the further development of the theory of cultural change. Izhma Komi were always supposed to be the most educated among the northern peoples (see Babushkin 1930; Maksimov 1987). The situation seemingly has not changed now: all Komi reindeer herders have at least 4 years of education and more than 70% – 8 years of education. All children of the reindeer herders attend a school. This fact should have quite a significant impact upon the traditional economy and way of life. However, this impact has also not been researched despite the valuable information such a research could provide for fundamental theoretical studies.

All these facts show that the need to alter the present-day situation in the Komi studies is obvious. The author of this article hopes that this paper will be the first (but not the last) attempt to study the modern position of Komi reindeer herding and the Komi reindeer herding tradition. This article is devoted to the problems presented above within the social structure of the Komi reindeer herders and the personal behavioural strategies employed by them in order to cope with each other and the surrounding world. Of course, I do not pretend to give complete answers to the problems posed above. My aim here, rather, is to pose questions and to provide my colleagues with factual material which may stimulate further considerations.

The article is based mainly on fieldwork I carried out among the Komi reindeer herders in the summer of 2000 (with a short preliminary trip to the field in January, 2000). The fieldwork was done in the biggest co-operative organisation of the Komi reindeer herders, the sovkhoz Izhemsky olenevod (Izhma reindeer herder), joining the reindeer herders from the original area of the Komi reindeer herding – the Izhma region. The fieldwork lasted 7 weeks and covered June and the beginning of July. It is especially important, that the fieldwork could be done in the native language of the reindeer herders, the Komi language, which is also my mother tongue. Thanks mainly to this fact, the reindeer herders accepted me without much reservation and essentially their behaviour seemed not to be altered in my presence. Because of these facts I was in a position which allowed me to gather more information than it would otherwise be possible.

The fieldwork consisted of two stages. In the first stage, I joined the reindeer herding brigade number 1, Sizyabsk division of the Izhemsky olenevod sovkhoz on its migrating route from the spring area to the summer pastures. I migrated with the brigade for about two weeks and gathered factual information about every-day life, social relations and the personal strategies within this herding unit. The interviews done in this stage were of a formal, as well as of informal, nature and included 1 to 4 participants. All the members of the brigade expressed a strong will to participate in my work and some of them were so interested in this, that they expressed their wish to continue the work themselves and to supply me with its results later. Unfortunately, since I was prevented from using a tape-recorder in his work, the only way of recording the information was by taking field notes. On the other hand, the photo-camera was not met with such caution. The reindeer herders even encouraged me to take pictures of them and their everyday activity wishing only to have copies of the pictures for themselves.

At the end of June, the brigade reached the reindeer herding corral on the southern bank of the Laya-to lake, the place where all the brigades of the division come in order to vaccinate their reindeer and mark the new-born calves. Here, I was asked to leave the brigade in order to provide help in these operations to other brigades going to come to the corral. Considering the huge size of the Komi reindeer herds, the lack of working hands is the main problem in these operations and every extra man is needed. Being unable to deny the call for help, I went to corral. In the course of the next four weeks, I worked in the corral simultaneously gathering information from the arriving reindeer herding brigades. Since the brigade number 1 was the first to come to the corral this summer, I had a possibility to gather the information from all the brigades in the division (totalling 7), which allowed me to make comparisons between the brigades and differentiate the general cultural elements from the particular. The reindeer herders, seeing me working as one of them, usually abandoned all their suspicions and more willfully provided information. The interviews were mostly informal, but some formal interviews were also conducted.

After all the brigades had gone, two reindeer herders who worked in the corral and I made an 80-kilometre trek to another corral belonging to the Bakur division of the same sovkhoz. Here, I had the possibility to work with two other reindeer herding brigades, this time from the Bakur division. Since the social surroundings of brigades in this division of the sovkhoz were a bit different from that in the Sizyabsk division (the Bakur reindeer herders have frequent contacts with Nenets in their summer and autumn places), this last stage of work gave quite valuable comparative information.

Altogether, about 30 reindeer herders (individually as well as in groups) were interviewed and 9 brigades of reindeer herders from two kolkhoz divisions were qualitatively studied. This information describes the main details of the present-day social relations in the reindeer herding brigades. Some of this data will be presented in this article.

The second source of information used in this article includes the reports of outsiders and scholars who studied the region of Izhma Komi at the end of the 19^th – beginning of the 20^th centuries. The comparison of this data with the information of the present-day Komi provides a basis for historical perspective upon the existing system of the social relations and personal strategies. Although this article, as was mentioned above, is of a preliminary, descriptive nature, rather than of an analytical nature, some interesting ideas about the origin and essence of social norms possibly appeared to be formed on the basis of this comparison. These ideas will be also presented here.

In my presentation of the material, I wanted to preserve its systematic character. Every phenomenon is shown, when possible, in its relation to others. It seemed quite logical to start with a characteristic of the basic herding unit of the modern Komi reindeer herders – the reindeer herding brigade. Since this unit is relatively young in the reindeer herding system and its introduction into this system was deliberate, special attention was paid to the historical peculiarities belonging to previous types of Komi herding units which survived in brigade life. These peculiarities seem impossible to understand without a historical background. Some attention was also paid to the social modeling of the inner space of the Komi reindeer herding movable shelter (the chum). This modeling is important for the understanding of functioning and re-producing of the social relations inside a brigade. In discussion of the personal behavioural strategies inside a brigade, the strategies of women are described in more detail. This is reasonable, due to the fact that the female behavioural strategies seem to be more culturally defined than male ones.

At the end of this introduction, I want to express my gratefulness to those who supplied information, Komi reindeer herders of Sizyabsk and Bakur divisions of the Izhemsky olenevod sovkhoz. Special thanks should be sent to the head of the Sizyabsk division, experienced reindeer herder Prokopi Terentyev, whose help was vital for the fieldwork. I also want to thank the members of the 1^st reindeer herding brigade of the Sizyabsk devision, who accepted me, treated me well, and supplied the most valuable information.

1. The Chum and the brigade

Officially, Komi reindeer herders are now placed in seven large economic enterprises which have their origin in former sovkhozes and kolkhozes of the Soviet time. Since the beginning of Russian economic reforms, all these enterprises have more or less changed their status and have become free from state owership. In fact, it possible for some of them exclude the term sovkhoz (from Russian sovetskoye khozaystvo – soviet (e.g. state) enterprise) from their names¹. However, the actual structure and official relationships inside the enterprises have only slightly changed and the difference between reindeer herders' life in modern sovkhozes and one in enterprises having abandoned this adjective in their names is minimal if any².

Members of each sovkhoz (obviously excluding its administration) are divided into 6–7 brigades of 8–10 reindeer herders in each, responsible for some part of the sovkhoz's joint reindeer stock. Besides that, a brigade's reindeer herd includes reindeer belonging to the reindeer herders themselves as private property. The proportion of private/sovkhoz reindeer is different in different brigades depending on the number of private reindeer, but the total amount of reindeer in a brigade is quite stable (2000–3000 reindeer) responding to the traditional Komi strategy of pasturing. The only exception from this scheme is the Izhemsky Olenevod sovkhoz, where the additional level of divisions (otdeleniye) is added. Each division, which originally was an independent sovkhoz included in the enterprise in the period of "magnification" (ukrupneniye) in the 1970s, includes 6–7 brigades and, therefore, repeats the structure of the smaller sovkhozes. Therefore, the reindeer herding brigade appears to be the smallest reindeer herding unit in modern Komi reindeer herding.

The administration of the enterprises, or (in the case of the Izhemsky olenevod sovkhoz) divisions, usually treats the brigades as basic economic units (producers and consumers). The food and other supplies (for example: guns, bullets and gasoline for gasoline lamps) which an enterprise is obligated to provide for reindeer herders are given to a brigade, leaving the members of a brigade to decide about their distribution themselves. Similarly, the amount of money reindeer herders get for pasturing the sovkhoz reindeer (which depends on the number of reindeer in the herd minus the price of the supplies provided) is also given to the brigade in general and its further redistribution is supposed to be up to the brigade members. On the other hand, the members of a brigade officially keep common responsibility for the obedience of the rules of pasturing and pastures management. Each brigade is given its own migrating pass inside 7 so-called reindeer herding corridors, which are given to the Komi reindeer herders in the Bolshezemelskaya tundra. A violation of the pass borders, if proved, is punishable by the payment of certain fines (in cash or private reindeer) to the encroached brigade and a violation of the corridor borders means an even bigger fine paid to the owner of the neighboring territory. All these fines are officially taken from the money given to the punished brigade or the brigade is obligated to provide reindeer from private stock. It is also up to the brigade members to decide whose reindeer should be given away or who should be deprived of his share of the money (Ustav… 1993).

It is easy to agree, that the rules described are almost the only possible ones for the administration of the enterprise to devise in the conditions of the existing structure and economic relations. Indeed, a herd of 2000 reindeer is presupposed by the Komi traditional pasturing ecology to be the average standard for separate herding, but could not be managed by an individual herder. A common force of at least 6 herders is needed for its management. On the other hand in the deep tundra, where the reindeer herders spend most of the year, the administration lacks the means to control their work and to measure the individual share of each worker in the group's common work or guilt. Therefore, the only possibility is to abandon the system of individual rewards and punishments and to accept group responsibility. At the same time, it is difficult to deny, that a group which is capable of taking common rewards and responsibilities has to be something more than simply a company of persons working together. This group has to have a certain social structure and mechanisms making it possible to regulate the behaviour of its members, in order that their common work would be most effective. The group also should have some mechanisms to prevent or solve conflicts among the group members. It should be capable of redistributing the income and punishment among its members. In other words, the group should have mechanisms making it possible to subordinate the will of everyone of its members to the will of the group. All this shows that the reindeer herding brigade cannot be a purely administrative unit. The mechanisms it must have (and actually has) can only be a part of long lasting cultural tradition, which is probably much older then the kolkhoz system and the brigades connected to it. It is logically easier to infer, that these mechanisms were inherited from the older type of herding units and have somehow been adapted to the brigades.

Let's try to discover what these mechanisms are and what their origin can be. As the interviews with the Komi reindeer herders clearly show, the basic trait of a brigade in their conciseness is the common place of living – the movable reindeer herding house chum (chom in Komi). All members of a brigade are living in one chum and therefore belong to one social unit. This can be supported by the clear fact, that the words chom and brigade are often used synonymously in the every-day speech of the reindeer herders. A reindeer herder of Sizyabsk division can for example say "Krasnobor chomys loktis" (the Krasnobor chum has come, i.e. the third brigade has reached the corral place) or "möd chomsa körjas tydalöny" (the reindeer of the second chum (i.e. brigade) have become visible). Giving a characteristic of somebody, a reindeer herder always employs phrases like "sijö medvodza chomys'" (he is from the first chum, i.e. he works in the brigade number 1) or "Sa öd Bakur chomjasys'" (he is from the Bakur chums, i.e. works in the Bakur division). It is also worth mentioning, that the first thing Komi reindeer herders mention when asked to show the difference between their's and the Nenets culture is the brigade's common living in one chum: "The Nenets have several little chums standing in line in a brigade. Every family or even non-married persons have their own chum. That is their way, which is different from ours." It should be said here, that this opinion hardly corresponds to present-day life. After the collectivisation, most Nenets reindeer herders were forced to adopt the Komi system of common living as it was more economically practical. Therefore, the difference mentioned refers rather to traditional culture than to present-day conditions.

The most striking fact, which the interviews show, is that the concept of chum clearly includes a wider range of people than officially included in a brigade. When asked to count people belonging to his chum, the head of one of the brigades replied like this: "Besides the people you see, we have one man who is ill and have left in the village and one women who was this spring replaced by Lusya (the second female chum-worker of the brigade). They migrate in line one after the other. We also have her three children, who have been left in the village this year, because their mother is there." The "people I saw" included, by the way, also five children who came to migrate with their parents. I got similar responses from most other brigades. Everywhere, not only present but also absent, people and their children were said to be members of chums. Furthermore, in one of the brigades, there was an old man who was officially retired from the sovkhoz. Nevertheless, he was not only classed as a member of his chum, but also participated in reindeer-horn selling which took place in the corral and got his share in the money received from this.³ These prove two important facts about the domain of chum in the reindeer herder's conciseness. First of all, the concept of chum as a social unit and the official concept of brigade only partly coincide. In no doubt, the children cannot be official members of the brigade (the official minimum age limit for the sovkhoz workers is 15 – Ustav… 1993), but this fact does not prevent them from being members of their chum. The same relates to the retired person. Secondly, the concept of chum as a social unit refers not to an actual social group but rather to a cultural category in the terminology of Keesing (1981). That means, that it does not describe the actual group of people living in chum, but rather the group eligible to live there and to have their share in the groups common income or punishment according to some procedure of redistribution. This is the reason why the chum also included absent people.

The notion about the chum as a cultural category allows us to suppose, that it is this unit that traditionally was the elementary herding group in Komi reindeer herding and has been adopted (not completely) to the sovkhoz system as analogue to the brigade. In order to prove this fact, let us try to find some evidence about this phenomena in sources written before the introduction of the sovkhoz system. This search is quite difficult, because the scholars of the 19^th – beginning of the 20^th centuries were more interested in the technology and economy of the "tundra capitalism" than in its social organisation. However, some evidence, about the topic we are interested in, can be found, for example, in the work of Kercelli (1911). He tells us the following facts about the social organisation of the Komi reindeer herders: 1. Komi do not make "sites" (stoibishe, i.e. the clusters of chums) as Nenets do. 2. Their chums migrate separately and independently. 3. Every chum herds its own herd. 4. When chums come to the taiga zone, a reindeer meat selling from the reindeer herds is organised. These quotations show, that Kercelli clearly employed the word chum to designate some social unit. Indeed, a physical chum hardly can migrate, let alone herding a herd. They also show, that the chum was an economic or at least productive unit. It herded its herd separately and independently. Unfortunately, the evidence does not show if the chum was a cultural category or just a social group. However, the existence of such a concept and its economic role is obvious. Therefore we can think, that if even the transition of the concept of chum into a cultural category is relatively young, the economical grouping on the basis of the common living in one chum is traditional for the Komi reindeer herding and it is this grouping that forms the basic economical herding unit.

Therefore, the basic cultural social category in Komi reindeer herding is the category of chum including, as its basic trait, the people living in one movable herding house or eligible to live there. Although this category was adapted to the sovkhoz system and corresponds to the official working unit (brigade), this adaptation was neither complete. Still, the chum includes more people than the brigade does. However, the principle of common reward and responsibility employed by the administration of sovkhozes allowed the category to exist and devise its mechanisms of work consolidation and redistribution. It is this category, its structure and the mechanisms, that will be discussed in the few following paragraphs.

2. The structure of Chum, actual and social

As in the previous chapter, let's start with the officially presupposed structure of a brigade as it is mirrored in the sovkhoz documents. In accordance with these documents, a brigade must consist of 6–8 reindeer herders depending on the size of a herd. Although it is not officially said, that all of them must be males, this is clearly presupposed by the document. One of these reindeer herders (supposedly the most experienced) elected by the members of brigade becomes the head of the unit. His appointment must be confirmed by the administration of the sovkhoz. The head of the brigade has the right to decide about the ongoing activity of the brigade, to govern the brigade's work and to solve conflicts in the brigade. He also represents the brigade in relations with the administration. Every brigade also includes two women, whose duty is to take care of the order and cleanliness in the chum, to prepare food, to sew clothes for reindeer herders and to help in procedures of maintaining and taking down the chum. These women are officially named "chum-workers" (chumrabotnitsy). They are also ruled, up to some degree, by the head of brigade. However, their relation to the brigade is slightly different than that of one of the male reindeer herders. The amount of money they get from the sovkhoz depends on the size of the brigade (not the size of the brigade's herd) and it cannot be taken out for fines (Ustav… 1993).

Officially, every man applying to the sovkhoz can become a member of a brigade. However, the administration of the enterprise has to admit, that in the existing conditions, when the members of the brigade should work and live together for a long time, the problem of trust and psychological reciprocity has crucial importance. Therefore, the members of a brigade, and especially its head, have the right of final decision about the acceptance of each new member. In fact, this means that the Komi reindeer herders are free to devise the traditional mechanisms of forming their herding groups. Let's try now to trace, what these mechanisms are and how the actual structure of the herding group is different and adapted to the official one.

In his already cited work, Kercelli tells us only one clear evidence about the internal structure and content of the Komi reindeer herding group in the beginning of 20^th century. He writes, that in contrast to the Nenets, a separately migrating Komi chum is usually inhabited not by one but by two families (Kercelli 1911). Slightly more specific is Babushkin, who studied the Komi reindeer herders in 1927–1929, that is just on the eve of collectivisation. He mentions, that a Komi reindeer herding chum was usually inhabited by two elementary families including husband, wife and their unmarried children. In poorer chums, these families most often were relatives and sometimes formed a big undivided family (that is, the second family was one of a married son of the first pair). In richer chums, the connection between the families was more often economical. Here, the second family was one of a worker hired by the first family. In this case, the second family even could be (and often was) of different ethnic origin (Nenets). Babushkin believed, that this way of living was traditional for the Komi and its origin is "hidden by the shadow of centuries" (Babushkin 1930). However, this way of grouping could have its reasons in the peculiarities of the Komi reindeer herding of the time. As it was already stated, Komi reindeer herding presupposes pasturing reindeers in groups of about 2500–3000. An average Komi elementary family could provide about 3–4 male reindeer herders of working age, which was not enough for managing such a big herd. On the other hand, the labor force of two elementary families was quite optimal for this. It is surely not by accident, that it completely corresponds to the official size of the modern brigade. In poorer families having, from the data of the same Babushkin, less then 1000 reindeer, this consolidation of work was made by following the channels of "blood". A union of two relative families provided the optimum herd of reindeer as well as the optimum working force. On the other hand in richer families having up to 10 000 reindeer, it was more reasonable to divide the herd between relatives, for example married sons, and to hire a worker providing the rest of the labor force for each of them.

Whatever the origin of this structure of the group actually was, the notion about chum consisting of two families strongly persists among the modern Komi reindeer herders. This notion was consistently expressed by all of my information givers. But the most important point is that this notion is clearly imprinted in the construction and the internal spatial structure of the "physical" chum – the movable house of the reindeer herders.

The reindeer herding chum is a conical house made of wooden sticks. One end of each stick (öv) is placed on the ground and slightly pushed into it. The other end is installed into a cord-ring about 4 meters over the ground. This construction is covered by two large pieces of tart (pon'uche) each covering a half of the chum and, in winter, also by two conical covers made of reindeer skins (n'uk) placed on the linen. The covers are placed so, that their side edges can be opened like a curtain in one particular place leaving an entry to the chum (photograph 1).

The internal structure of a chum is planned around the line connecting the "door" and the point on the other side of the chum in front of it (drawing 1). Along this line, several wooden boards (latayas) are laid on the ground forming a floor cover in the central part of the chum. A metal oven (kört pach) is placed in the center of the floor. The back (i.e. the opposite to the "door") part of the chum behind the oven is separated by a linen curtain. This curtain hides a wooden shelve called yen mesta (God place). Originally it was a place for icons, but the communist struggle against religion made it work even in the tundra. There are no icons in chums now. However, the place is used for storing documents, brigade maps (if there are any) and other valuable things usually stored behind icons in Komi villages.

The line, mentioned in the previous paragraph, divides the chum into two halves (chom bök) absolutely similar in their structure. Each half has a little table and 3–4 wooden chairs or boxes used for sitting as well as for storing little things. These chairs "belong" to the half and can never be taken across the dividing line. When I tried to take a chair with me going to the opposite half in my first days in the chum, I was asked not to do this, because "there are own chairs here". The sides of the chum not covered by the boards are covered by reindeer skins and used for sleeping. These parts are divided from the rest of the chum by curtains (bölögan) serving two functions: they protect the sleeping people from mosquitoes and maintain their privacy. Every part of the chum has its own sleeping place and not one reindeer skin from it (not to say about other elements) can be taken to the other part. The space between the oven and the icon place is occupied by the pottery used for food preparing and eating. Each half of the chum has its own set of pottery and the rules for its transportation in the chum are the same as for chairs.

Therefore, the internal space of the chum has a clear dual structure. Both halves of it have the separate set of all items needed in life excluding the oven and, in the past, religious items can be viewed as separate sections (photograph 3). These are really the separate "houses" supposed for two elementary social cells, the families. The duality is further proved by the order of chum transportation during migrations. In a migration, every Komi herding group forms 4–5 lines of reindeer sledges connected to each other (argish) plus several separate reindeer sledges for individual reindeer herders (dad'). Two of the lines are loaded with the chum items and called chom böka argish). The striking fact is, that each of these lines is loaded only with items belonging to the corresponding chum section and all the items belonging to a section (including the elements of chum construction) are loaded onto the corresponding line. Thus, each line is loaded with the half of sticks needed for chum construction, one tart chum cover, one reindeer skin cover, half of the boards forming the floor, the table, all the chairs standing in the section and so on. The reindeer herders are very careful about sorting the items during loading. Once I saw that a metal tea cup was taken by a reindeer herder into his private sledge just because it belonged to the section of the line already gone. The reindeer herder preferred to keep the cup with him rather then to put it into the sledge of the line of the other section just being loaded.

The model of a reindeer herding group consisting of two families and living in a two-sectioned chum is realised in the modern Komi reindeer herding brigade along the lines of its official structure. An ideal brigade, as the reindeer herders have it, consists of two elementary families, ideally related to each other by the ties of blood. Both families consist of a man, his wife working as a chum-worker and his children including 2 or 3 grown-up unmarried sons. The older of the married men becomes the head of the group. His power, however, is somehow restricted by the second married man, with whom he should consult in all his important decisions. The rest of the group obey the decisions of these leaders as heads of their families. The official structure of the brigade, pre-supposing the existence of two chum-workers and 6–8 reindeer herders, gives a good possibility for this system to exist.

A good example of this life-style can be the first brigade of the Sizyabsk division of the Izhemsky Olenevod sovkhoz. The structure of this brigade, as the reindeer herders themselves insist, is quite near the ideal structure of a herding group. The core of the brigade consists of two families, whose heads are cousins. The older cousin is the official head of the brigade. Each family possesses one section of the chum. The chum-workers, who are also the wives of the cousins, take care of the cleanliness and order in their sections and rarely cross the "dividing line" between the halves. They also prepare food for the members of their families. The families sleep and eat separately, each in its section of the chum.

All the official income of the members of the families is divided equally between the families. Thus, the supplies given by the enterprise in the beginning of the migration were chosen in the enterprise store-house by both chum-workers and divided between them. The chum-worker further decides about spending the supplies she got in favor of the members of her families. Every reindeer killed by the members of the brigade for food is cut in longitudinal section and every family gets half. The meat is given to the chum-worker, who decides about its further distribution. Respectively, a punishment fine is taken from the property of the family, of which the member was guilty.

Most of the items usually stored in the chum belong to one or the other family's property. During migrations, these items are transported in one of the chum lines of sledges (chom böka argish). On the other hand, the items stored outside the chum are the common property of the brigade. These usually include the working tools, the hunting and fishing equipment (excluding guns), some materials (wood and iron are the most valuable) and rubber boats. In migrations, the brigade forms five lines of sledges. The first line, loaded with the tools and fishing equipment, is led by the head of the brigade. This line moves in the vanguard of all of the migrating brigade. It is followed by the chom böka argish of the head's chum half. This line is led by the head's wife. The second chom böka argish led by the wife of the second cousin follows the first. The cousin himself leads the fourth line loaded with the rest of tools, boats and equipment. The last line with the materials is led by the older son of the head of the brigade. The rest of the reindeer herders travels in their private sledges (dad').

As it can be clearly seen, here we deal with binary hierarchical system based on blood ties and mutual economic union between two families. The system seems to be quite efficient in organisation of work and redistribution of rewards and punishments. The heads of the families can easily find consensus in the important topic of the group life, even more so, because they are relatives and the younger accepts the authority of the older. Being in agreement with each other, the cousins can further co-ordinate the work and behaviour of the members of their families using the rights of father and husband. Therefore, the common activity of the group members is easily directed towards the goals put forward by the cousins.

Unfortunately, the brigade described is a quite rare example of the almost ideal herding group structure. The decrease in the birth rate among the Komi population and, most importantly, the mass flow of the Komi population away from reindeer herding in the last few decades have created the situation when an elementary family often cannot provide the needed labor force for the dual family system to work and for all the working places supposed by the official structure of a brigade to be occupied. It is also very difficult for a family to find a relative counterpart for the classical dual organisation. In fact, the brigade described above was the only one among the studied units where the two member families were related to each other. The most important thing, however, is that a herding unit has to include people, who are not members of the two basic families. These people, of course, decrease the integrity of the group and threaten the classical mechanisms of work consolidation and redistribution. One way to solve the problem is to include unmarried relatives in the group. Although not members of the elementary families, they are nevertheless related to one of them and can be somehow governed by the head of a family. However, this way is not always possible because of a lack of relatives eager to practice reindeer herding or to obey to the head of one of the elementary families. In fact, almost every contemporary Komi herding group includes some number of people completely unrelated to both of the families. These unrelated members of a group are called bökövöy yöz (side-people), and their existing in chums is perceived as a big problem by almost all reindeer herders, including the side-people themselves. It is commonly supposed, that a big number of side-people is a factor reducing the efficiency of brigade work and quality of life of the brigade members. As one of my informants put it "Chomys öd kyk böka. Koimöd böktö nekytchö on s'uy" (A chum has two halves. The third one cannot be installed into it). Nevertheless, the side-people are a reality to which the social mechanisms of the chum have to adapt themselves.

In fact, even the most ideal brigade described above actually had two side-men. These men, however, were included in the classic structure of the brigade by the mechanism I would call "integration". The men simply behaved and were treated as members of one of the elementary families of the brigade. They slept on its side and ate at its table. They referred to the chum-worker who fed them as their "master" and called her husband directly "father". This "step-relativeness", however, was possible only because both side-men were quite young and inexperienced and their age really was approximately the same as one of actual sons of their "step-father". Other herding groups employ other, some times quite exotic ways of integration of their side-people. For example, the brigade mentioned in the previous chapter has as side-men two brothers. One of them is married and his wife works as a chum-worker in the same brigade for half of the period of its migration. After that, she is replaced by the other chum-worker, who is the wife of the other reindeer herder. Therefore, one of the elementary families constituting this herding group is unstable: for half of the migration, the brother and his wife constitute it, and the husband of the second "half-time" chum-worker and his son constitute the side-people. For the second half of the same migration, the brothers become the side-people and the former side-people's part of the brigade plus the newly-come chum-worker become the second elementary family. Accordingly, the adviser of the head of brigade also changes and so does the leader of one of the brigade argishes (lines of sledges). The head of this brigade told, that this order of life helps the unit to save its integrity and well-being of its members: "The men understand, that if one of them will not work with the other today, the other will not do this tomorrow. The women understand, that if one of them will not care about food and clothes for the husband of the other, the other will behave in the same way after her arrival. Besides that, both have the chance to be with their husband or wife for a part of the migration period." Of course, this order has a disadvantage, that each chum-worker gets two times less money for her work. However, the reindeer herders involved believe, that advantages outweigh.

Unfortunately, not all herding groups are so lucky to involve mechanisms like this. In many brigades, especially those having many side-people, the traditional order is deeply undermined. Of course, even in these brigades, the side people have to choose a side of the chum to sleep in, a table to eat at and a chum-worker to be fed by. However, their relations with the head of brigade and the head of their "host-family" (the family living in the same side of the chum as they) are difficult. The head of the brigade has particular problems with mobilizsing them for common work, with distribution of the brigade income among them and extracting punishment fines from them. As I was told, the general rule is, that the side people should pay a part of their family expenses used for brigade supplies. Their refuseal to do this is a sufficient reason for the brigade to exclude them from its members. However, the distribution of income and extracting of the fines always provoke problems and conflicts which are very difficult to be solved by the traditional mechanism.

A quite unusual type of herding groups, created by some brigades, appeared in the last decades due to the unwillingness of many women to become chum-workers. In these brigades, there is only one real family and, correspondingly, only one chum-worker. All the people who are not members of this family (more than a half of the brigade) are the side-people. These brigades are named öti böka (one-sided) by the reindeer herders and, fortunately, are still quite rare, at least in the Izhemsky Olenevod sovkhoz. The Sizyabsk division includes only one such brigade and the total number of such brigades in the sovkhoz is 4 (out of 23). However, there is evidence, that such brigades are more common in other Komi reindeer herding enterprises. In the only one-sided brigade I had a chance to study in the Sizyabsk division, all the side people lived in one side of the chum while the other side was occupied by the members of the elementary family. The chum-worker had to take the responsibility to prepare food for their table. As a repayment, the side-people had to pay for the larger part of the supplies the chum-worker got from the enterprise store-house. They also paid the chum-worker for clothes they asked her to make for them. The brigade's income was divided equally between all the members of the brigade (including the members of the elementary family) by the head of the brigade (the husband of the chum-worker). Unfortunately, I could not get reliable information about the ways of decision-making and work-organisation in this brigade. It should be mentioned, however, that the head of the brigade seems to be quite a powerful personality able to dictate his will to others. Further research is also needed to find out if the order described is common for herding groups of this type.

Whatever the deviations can be, the ideal structure of a Komi reindeer herding group presupposes the system of two families. According to this structure, there are defined appropriate social roles and behaviour. It is these roles and behaviour we should discuss now.

3. The personal aims and personal behaviour

As it could be already seen from the previous discussion, a Komi reindeer herding group has a clear gender labor division. Now it is time to discuss this division in more details, for it is one of basic points structuring the behaviour of the members of a chum.

Generally, the labor division inside the chum can be described in spatial terms. Females do all the work inside the chum while the working place of males is outside the movable house. A labor division of this type is brilliantly described by Golovnev for Nenets (1995), and those interested in its detailed analysis can refer to his work. The Komi division of work has, however, one important difference compared to the Nenets one. This difference is connected to the two-sideness of a Komi chum and the existence of two full-rights women in it. Therefore, a Komi woman is not a "master of the chum" (using the words of Golovnev 1995), but a master of a half of the chum. On the other hand, the men are masters of the undivided space outside the chum just in the Nenets manner. This fact determines the striking difference in aims and behaviour of males and females to be described in this chapter.

A major part of the life of a male Komi reindeer herder is spent outside the chum. Every morning, two reindeer herders are leaving the chum site to herd the brigade herd pasturing usually at some distance from the chum. They spend there twenty-four hours and are replaced by the next two reindeer herders next morning. The rest of the male part of the group stay near the chum and do their work there. Their duty is to take care of herding and travelling equipment, reindeer harness and the small herd of castrated reindeer (bulls) pastured near the chum. They fix reindeer sledges, plait fishing nets, prepare boats for river-crossing and make ropes and ribbons for reindeer harness. Sometimes some of them leave for hunting, fuel collecting or fresh water. Once per day, the herd of bulls must be driven to the chum to change the reindeer harnessed in sledges by new ones (jortas'öm). This is quite a time and work consuming operation. Two or three reindeer herders with sledges and several herding dogs drive the herd into some sort of round fence made of empty sledges. Then the other reindeer herders close the entering hole of the fence by long rope. The new reindeer must be captured in the fence by the strongest reindeer herders while the others guard the entrance and the side of the "corral" preventing reindeer from escaping.

The main point is that almost all the described operations pre-suppose some amount of common work of at least a part of the herding group. Even those activities which do not pre-suppose the group work (for example fuel or water collecting) are performed in the interest of the whole brigade. Therefore, a Komi male reindeer herder always work collectively or at least in interest of the collective. This peculiarity is strengthened by the fact, that there is no further division of functions among the male reindeer herders in the group (with the exception of the function of decision-making which is performed by the head of brigade). As my informants regularly put it, "The real reindeer herder has to be able to do everything." This multi-functionalism is quite understandable in the small isolated group unable to find a replacement for every member who could be incapable of performing his function due to illness or some other disaster. However, it does not mean, that reindeer herders can manage separately. On the contrary, it can be said, that the reindeer herders indeed can do everything but only in a group. A really skillful person can make a reindeer sledge alone, but he cannot be similarly skillful in everything. A person not so skillful can make the same sledge only with help of others, but his skills can be much more varied. The latter peculiarity can be completely applied to the Komi reindeer herders.

By coming inside the chum, one finds himself in a completely different world. This is a kingdom of women, a space of the master of a half of the chum. Her duties are not less divorced and time consuming. As it was already said, a woman must take care regarding her family food and clothes and about her side of the chum and property stored in it. In migrations, she is leading the line of sledges loaded with this property and the elements of the chum construction. After the migration, she maintains her side of the chum, that is, places the sticks, the covers on her side and the boards and skins producing the floor and the sleeping-place in her side of the chum. She also is responsible for buying, storage and spending of the supplies needed for her family and people living in her side of the chum. She, together with her counterpart (the second woman) makes decisions about spending of the part of the brigade's income given for payment for the supplies. In this respect, her control over the group's resources is nearly the same or even more than that of the head of her family: she controls all the spending excepts the punishment fines. However, she also takes full responsibility for the consequences of her decisions.

The "world of woman" is very different from the world of men. The border between them is marked by various cultural habits and prohibitions. A woman cannot travel in a separate sledge (dad'), her place is in the line of sledges loaded with the equipment she takes care of. She should not touch hunting and fishing equipment. She does not participate in reindeer harnessing. On the other hand, the chum maintenance is the women's activity, and the help of men in this process (if any) is very limited and often unwelcome.⁴ But the most important difference between these worlds is the character of the work. While the work of men is collective, the work of woman is completely individual. This means, that there are no operations the two women of the brigade would do together and there is no product they could refer to as common.

Each woman cares only about her own side of the chum, about her own table and her own part of the brigade and she is the only one who can care about them. Although they perform absolutely similar functions, the objects of these functions are different. Two examples can help to imagine the degree of this separation of objects. In a Komi chum, there is a custom to keep a warm water and tea base all day long so that every man coming to the chum for a short rest could have a cup of tea. In order to provide these luxuries, each chum-worker has two tea pots, one for the water and the other for the tea base. All these tea pots are always on the oven but a reindeer herder can use only those belonging to his half of the chum (photograph 4). If one of the tea pots is empty, the reindeer herder should wait while the chum-worker will refill it and heat it again, but cannot use the tea-pot of the other side. The second example is the chum-maintaining. Each chum-worker maintains only her own side of chum. The custom prevents her from helping the other in maintaining the other side even if her side is already complete. In fact, the other chum-worker would rather accept the help of males than of the second female. The only activity the chum-workers perform together is the buying of the brigade supplies in spring and summer during horn-selling. However, even here it takes a lot of time for them to reach a consensus about the content of goods to buy.

These differences determine the system of values and the strategies of behaviour employed by males and females. Among Komi reindeer herders, just as among many other societies, the prestige of an individual is determined by his success in performing his work, that is, in the final instance, by the results of his work. Since the Komi male reindeer herders pasture the common herd, the results they reach are also common. Therefore, the prestige they obtain as a measure of these results is given to the every member of the group. This does not mean, that individual prestige is unknown among the Komi reindeer herders. A skillful and experienced reindeer herder is respected by others whatever the condition of reindeer of his chum are. A member of a family having a lot of reindeer is respected more then the person or family having a small individual herd, even if both are living in one chum. However, the fact of being from "a good chum" considerably adds to the personal prestige of an individual. This fact is a good mechanism of the group consolidation among the men. The value of the group prestige causes them to choose the strategy of mutual help and avoidance of conflicts inside the brigade. Of course, every reindeer herder also pursues personal prestige, but he cares not to disturb the prestige of group in this. He understands, that a rich reindeer herder from a bad chum would gain less prestige than one from a good chum. Actually, such a reindeer herder would gain a display of caution in relations rather then respect.

On the other hand, a woman can gain only personal prestige. Besides that in opinion of the Komi, a woman cannot have prosperity, that is cannot be rich or poor. The prosperity of her family including the private reindeers belongs to her husband and will be inherited by his son after his death whether his mother is alive or not. Of course, both father and son take care of the woman, but this does not add to her prestige. The group's prestige does not add to that of the woman either. In the tundra, one often can hear phrases like "the chum is OK but one of their women is crap". Therefore, the only source of respect for a woman is the quality of her work, the title of a good master. The peculiarity of the situation is that this status is usually given in comparison with the other, bad or at least not so good a master as to who is the second woman in the group. This creates permanent competition between the chum-workers. This competition makes up one of the main elements of the woman's behaviour. The spheres of the competition are various and include the speed of chum-maintaining, the quality of food, the wisdom of resource spending, the cleanliness of their chum-side, the speed and quality of clothes sewing and so on. Since the competition must be fair, the women are usually unwilling to accept any help in their work. The most striking example of the competition is, perhaps, the bread baking. The ability to bake a good bread is, perhaps, the most basic for the Komi chum-master. The pot of bread-base and the duck wing used in the bread baking are supposed to be the most "female" things in the chum and are carefully stored in proximity to the God place. In migrations, a chum-worker carries the pot under her clothes to prevent the base yeast from dying. But the most important fact is that bread is the only thing a chum-worker can present for the members of the other side of the chum for tasting. The bread baking occurs usually in early morning. The oven is carefully heated and the both women insert their fill of dough baking shapes into it. Both should do this at the same moment "for none could later say, that the oven was differently heated for one of us". After that, each woman can do whatever she wants with her bread with three exceptions. It is prohibited to touch the bread of the other chum-worker, to fix the coils and to add new fuel into the oven. After the first portion is baked, the agreed portion of fuel is added to the oven and at the agreed moment the operation is repeated.

The female competition surely has an adaptive significance. It considerably increases the quality of work of a woman. The desire for respect also makes it possible to effectively expand the work of women upon the side-people. However, it does not add friendly feelings to the relations between the chum-workers. These relations are usually polite, but full of caution. It is supposed to be unfair to employ cursing in the relationship. However, the women neither tell jokes to each other.

The relations between men are totally different. It is supposed, that all of them should express friendly feeling to each other, even if they do not have them in reality. The absence of any competition is specially emphasised here. A good reindeer herder should not be proud of doing something better then others and especially speak about that. The most appropriate way conversation between the male reindeer herders is light, not insulting or joking. The topics capable of provoking uneasiness and conflict are completely excluded from the conversation. For example, it is supposed to be inappropriate to speak of sexual topics in the tundra. "Such topics are to be discussed in the village, not here" – explained one of the reindeer herders to me, "the village is a place to express pride and to curse each other. The tundra is a place to respect each other." Therefore, the main peculiarity of the male behavioural strategies is the deliberate avoidance of conflicts and competition and strenthening the friendly relationships in the group.

Conclusions

Now, as the basic facts about the Komi social relations and behavioural strategies have been outlined, it's time to make some general conclusions about them. As the previous analysis has shown, the Komi reindeer herding group is a quite complex structure. Furthermore, this structure is unique in many aspects. Its dual organisation and the dual structure of relationships (male and female) employed in it makes it totally different from the social groups common among the neighboring population.

In its present-day form, the Komi reindeer herding group can be seen as a product of a long-lasting development having, in itself, some kind of mixture of traits emerging in different times and situations. Some of these traits including the most basic ones, such as the two-family structure, do not have a clear function in the modern situation. However, as I tried to show in this paper, this does not mean that they did not have some functions in the past. Some other traits are still functional today. The main point is, however, that all these traits create a coherent system being able to adapt itself to such basic changes in the surrounding social reality as the collectivisation and the raskulachivaniye. The fact of this adaptation shows, that the system is not only quite flexible, but also sufficient enough to satisfy the changing needs of the Komi population.

The reason of the uniqueness of the Komi social system can be easily found, if we would remember the history of Komi reindeer herding. Actually, this system is a product of adaptation of formerly settled collectives of agriculturalists and hunters already lacking clear clan relations and perhaps even classical large undivided families (the standard ways of grouping among the nomadic peoples) to the nomadic way of life. The adaptation of this kind posed some serious problems connected to the recruiting of the labor force, fixing conflicts and so on. The salvation the Komi reindeer herders found is as simple as all geniuses do. If the minimum labor force could be provided only by two elementary families, these families should be united into a coherent structure. The common living place could be the best way to reach this coherency. The specific male and female relationships could make this system the most effective. The result responded to all the challenges the situation posed. The Komi cannot help that they already did not have something and had to live with what they had.

However, the modern situation, as it seems, poses the problems that the salvation of these are on the limit of the power of the Komi reindeer herder's social system. What the communist reformations were unable to do is done by the unavoidable processes of modernisation and changing demographic situation. Now nobody can say if the Komi social system will be able to adapt to the changes as it did once, will it be transformed to something new or collapse. The examples of successful accommodation of the side-people tend to show, that transformation is the most possible scenario. However, further research is needed before we can make justified conclusions about that.

At the end of this paper, I would like to remind the reader, that this work is of preliminary character. Further research can change some statements of this work or even prove it completely mistaken. I would like only, that this further research will be done and I am ready to accept any corrections they could make to my picture.

^***

¹ The names of the modern Komi reindeer herding enterprises are sovkhoz Izhemsky Olenevod, sovkhoz Severnyj, sovkhoz Ust-Usinsky, stock-company Bolshaya Inta, municipal enterprise Intinsky, sovkhoz Fion, sovkhoz Olenevod.

² The reason for the persisting of the sovkhoz term may be in the fact that the Komi reindeer herders actually do not know the exact meaning of this abbreviation. In fact, only one of my informants could determine this meaning.

³ The horn-selling is a relatively new phenomenon connected to the development of pharmaceutics. The reindeer horns are used as the raw material for the production of pantocrinum and are quite valuable on the international market. In the tundra, reindeer horns are bought by special agents in some sort of a barter operation.

⁴ To be sure, these rules are necessary to be obeyed only by married women. Girls (daughters of the chum-workers) are free from many such prohibitions. They can travel in separate sledges and even help men in their male work.

References