N Vakhtin
Biographic Data
| ID | 40692 |
|---|---|
| NAME | N Vakhtin |
| GIVEN NAMES | N |
| FAMILY NAME | Vakhtin |
| SIGNATURE | VAKHTIN N |
| AFFILIATIONS | European University at Saint Petersburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4011-2141 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Language ecology of minority languages of Sakha (Yakutia) in the mirror of the All-Russian Census 2020-2021
This study applies the framework of the ecology of language, defined by Einar Haugen as the study of interactions between a language and its environment, to evaluate the reliability of population census data for sociolinguistic analysis. Focusing on the 2020-2021 Russian Census, the paper investigates its usefulness in describing language situations among indigenous minorities in the north-east of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia). The study adopts a …
The Tundra Yukaghir Language in a Multilingual Environment: A Longitudinal Research
The article presents the results of a longitudinal study of the language situation in a multilingual village of Andryushkino (northeast of the Sakha Republic). It is one of two localities where the endangered Tundra Yukaghir ( TY ) language is still used. Data on TY proficiency were collected in this village by one of the authors in 1987 and then, 35 years later, by the other author in 2022. In both cases, the same methodology for assessing the d…
The Fate of a Person and the Fate of a Book: "Nikolai Schnakenburg and the Volume "The Soviet Eskimos
The article describes the biography of the young ethnographer Nikolai Borisovich Schnakenburg (1907-1941), a student of Vladimir Bogoras, who worked in Chukotka in 1930-1933 and was killed at the war frontlines near Leningrad in 1941. Until now, his life and work remained understudied. The article further examines the question of the authorship of an unpublished manuscript "The Soviet Eskimos", the first comprehensive report on the Siberian Yupik…
Roman Jakobson and the Aleut materials collected by Waldemar Jochelson
This paper presents the text of a 1941 work by Roman Jakobson, which has never been fully published, — his description of Vladimir (Waldemar) Jochelson’s Aleut materials (the materials, as well as Jakobson’s description, are stored at the New York Public Library). The publication is provided with a detailed commentary
Forum 52: The Humanities and Social Sciences and Covid-19: Pros and Cons
For the past two years, research groups and universities have been exposed to the novel and unpredictable conditions of life during the viral pandemic, and to the constantly shifting restrictions on normal academic activities that have accompanied it. In particular, personal contacts—between teachers and students and between colleagues—have to a large extent been difficult or impossible. For some, the social restrictions have been a disaster, whi…
On Domestication, Permanent and Temporary: Qoraŋә, Ǝlwelu, and Akwәqor
In this paper, I analyze a Yupik folklore plot represented by two stories. Both were recorded in 1940-41 by Ekaterina Rubtsova from two Ungazighmiit storytellers: Nalugyaq (1888–1942) and Tatko (ca. 1875–ca. 1944). The plot is as follows: A man abandons his older wife and two sons and leaves with his younger wife, taking away the herd and apparently leaving the old family to die. But they survive; the boys grow up, start to hunt, and finally come…
Transformations in Siberian Anthropology
Siberian anthropology was particularly reinforced by the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, intellectually designed and led by Franz Boas. Siberian anthropology has once again become internationalized through fieldwork done in Siberia by scores of Western anthropologists, as well as by intensive academic contacts. This new development has revealed interesting discrepancies between the two traditions, such as different approaches to the object of stu…
Yukaghir Pictographic Letters from the Collection of the Russian Museum of Ethnography
The Yukaghir pictography, letters on birch bark, so-called tos (lit. ‘birch bark’) includes letters of two types: those written by men, mostly descriptions of hunting routes, and those written by young women, mostly love letters. While the first type is quite widespread, the second one is very unusual, to the extent that researchers who deal with the history of writing have to single them out into a separate classification category. Almost everyt…
Sovetskaya Arktika journal as a source for the history of the Northern Sea Route
This paper is about reading and using the Soviet texts published in the 1930s on the Northern sea route (NSR) and the Arctic in general. The history of the NSR exploration and exploitation and its current potential as a round-the-year transportation waterway connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic is outlined. Specific features of the 1930s’ sources for the study of the NSR are explored using the example of the journal Sovetskaya Arktika (The Sov…
Ethnological Expert Assessment: A Continuation of the Discussion
In Memoriam: Michael Krauss (1934–2019)
Notes and Reviews. The Concept of Work in Yupik Eskimo Society Before and After the Russian Influx: A Linguist’s Perspective
Sciendo provides publishing services and solutions to academic and professional organizations and individual authors. We publish journals, books, conference proceedings and a variety of other publications.
Mobility and Infrastructure in the Russian Arctic
This special issue approaches the interrelated themes of mobility and infrastructure in the Russian Arctic. I will discuss the general topics covered in this set of articles and how these contributions help us understand the lives of people in northern Siberia today, and I will give some context on how these articles came about in the first place. Does being determine consciousness? Or does consciousness determine being? This special issue looks …
Public Debate in Russia: Matters of (Dis)order
An interdisciplinary study of Russian public debate past and present Can we trace attempts taken in Russian history to overcome the inability to speak publicly? How do different social groups in modern Russia cope with situations when they have to participate in a public discussion and arrive at a compromise? What historic, sociological, linguistic, and psychological reasons underlie intolerance towards different opinions? Can this situation be c…
Indigenous minorities of Siberia and Russian sociolinguistics of the 1920s: A life apart
In the 1920s, two strong intellectual trends were simultaneously developing in Russia: the studies of languages and cultures of the indigenous population of Siberia and the Far North (led by Vladimir Bogoras, Leo Shternberg, and others), and sociolinguistic studies (led by Evgeniy Polivanov, Afanasiy Selischev, Rosaliya Shor, and others). Sociolinguistics as a new and fashionable branch of knowledge included many topics (sociolinguistic theory, s…
Mixed Communities in the Russian North; Or, Why Are There No "Creoles" In Siberia
This article deals with "Old-Settler" communities in northeastern Siberia that were founded by Russian settlers in the course of the seventeenth century. Left to their own devices by a distant colonial administration, many of them married native women and adopted local subsistence techniques and other elements of spiritual and material culture. These processes led to the emergence of new group identities, that is to communities that distinguished…
European University at St. Petersburg: New Program on Arctic/Siberian Studies
Who owns Siberian ethnography? A critical assessment of a re-internationalized field
Although Siberian ethnography was an open and international field at the turn of the twentieth century, from about 1930 until the late 1980s Siberia was for the most part closed to foreigners and therefore to Western ethnographers. This allowed Soviet ethnographers to establish a virtual monopoly on Siberian field sites. Soviet and Western anthropology developed during that period in relative isolation from one another, allowing methodologies and…
Indigenous people of the Russian far north: Land rights and the environment 1
The author presents a major review of the evolution and current status of land rights of the indigenous peoples of the Far North of Russia. Special emphasis is devoted to the historical relationship between the exercise of political jurisdiction over the indigenous peoples by the Russian state and the existence (or lack of same) of special areas designated for the traditional economic activities of these peoples. The paper also focuses on the cha…
Toward a Typology of Language Situations in the Far North: Preliminary Research Results
During the course of a number of years, work has been conducted at the St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences [RAN] (formerly the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Linguistics, USSR Academy of Sciences) on the gathering of data on the contemporary language situation in the regions of the Far North. At the basis of this work is a linguo-ethnographic program developed by the author of the present articl…
Sirinek eskimo: The available data and possible approaches
Aleut in contact: The cia enigma
The purpose of this work is to analyse certain facts of Copper Island Aleut (CIA) which shows, in a sense, a unique example of language interference: the formation of a “hybrid language”, “a curious mixture”, as Knut Bergs-land once called it, that borrowed grammatical elements from two contacting languages: Aleut and Russian.
Mobility and Infrastructure in the Russian Arctic
This special issue approaches the interrelated themes of mobility and infrastructure in the Russian Arctic. I will discuss the general topics covered in this set of articles and how these contributions help us understand the lives of people in northern Siberia today, and I will give some context on how these articles came about in the first place. Does being determine consciousness? Or does consciousness determine being? This special issue looks …
Who owns Siberian ethnography? A critical assessment of a re-internationalized field
Although Siberian ethnography was an open and international field at the turn of the twentieth century, from about 1930 until the late 1980s Siberia was for the most part closed to foreigners and therefore to Western ethnographers. This allowed Soviet ethnographers to establish a virtual monopoly on Siberian field sites. Soviet and Western anthropology developed during that period in relative isolation from one another, allowing methodologies and…
European University at St. Petersburg: New Program on Arctic/Siberian Studies
Mixed Communities in the Russian North; Or, Why Are There No "Creoles" In Siberia
This article deals with "Old-Settler" communities in northeastern Siberia that were founded by Russian settlers in the course of the seventeenth century. Left to their own devices by a distant colonial administration, many of them married native women and adopted local subsistence techniques and other elements of spiritual and material culture. These processes led to the emergence of new group identities, that is to communities that distinguished…
Toward a Typology of Language Situations in the Far North: Preliminary Research Results
During the course of a number of years, work has been conducted at the St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences [RAN] (formerly the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Linguistics, USSR Academy of Sciences) on the gathering of data on the contemporary language situation in the regions of the Far North. At the basis of this work is a linguo-ethnographic program developed by the author of the present articl…
Sirinek eskimo: The available data and possible approaches
Aleut in contact: The cia enigma
The purpose of this work is to analyse certain facts of Copper Island Aleut (CIA) which shows, in a sense, a unique example of language interference: the formation of a “hybrid language”, “a curious mixture”, as Knut Bergs-land once called it, that borrowed grammatical elements from two contacting languages: Aleut and Russian.
Sirinek eskimo: The available data and possible approaches
Toward a Typology of Language Situations in the Far North: Preliminary Research Results
During the course of a number of years, work has been conducted at the St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences [RAN] (formerly the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Linguistics, USSR Academy of Sciences) on the gathering of data on the contemporary language situation in the regions of the Far North. At the basis of this work is a linguo-ethnographic program developed by the author of the present articl…
Indigenous people of the Russian far north: Land rights and the environment 1
The author presents a major review of the evolution and current status of land rights of the indigenous peoples of the Far North of Russia. Special emphasis is devoted to the historical relationship between the exercise of political jurisdiction over the indigenous peoples by the Russian state and the existence (or lack of same) of special areas designated for the traditional economic activities of these peoples. The paper also focuses on the cha…
Who owns Siberian ethnography? A critical assessment of a re-internationalized field
Although Siberian ethnography was an open and international field at the turn of the twentieth century, from about 1930 until the late 1980s Siberia was for the most part closed to foreigners and therefore to Western ethnographers. This allowed Soviet ethnographers to establish a virtual monopoly on Siberian field sites. Soviet and Western anthropology developed during that period in relative isolation from one another, allowing methodologies and…
European University at St. Petersburg: New Program on Arctic/Siberian Studies
Mixed Communities in the Russian North; Or, Why Are There No "Creoles" In Siberia
This article deals with "Old-Settler" communities in northeastern Siberia that were founded by Russian settlers in the course of the seventeenth century. Left to their own devices by a distant colonial administration, many of them married native women and adopted local subsistence techniques and other elements of spiritual and material culture. These processes led to the emergence of new group identities, that is to communities that distinguished…
Indigenous minorities of Siberia and Russian sociolinguistics of the 1920s: A life apart
In the 1920s, two strong intellectual trends were simultaneously developing in Russia: the studies of languages and cultures of the indigenous population of Siberia and the Far North (led by Vladimir Bogoras, Leo Shternberg, and others), and sociolinguistic studies (led by Evgeniy Polivanov, Afanasiy Selischev, Rosaliya Shor, and others). Sociolinguistics as a new and fashionable branch of knowledge included many topics (sociolinguistic theory, s…
Public Debate in Russia: Matters of (Dis)order
An interdisciplinary study of Russian public debate past and present Can we trace attempts taken in Russian history to overcome the inability to speak publicly? How do different social groups in modern Russia cope with situations when they have to participate in a public discussion and arrive at a compromise? What historic, sociological, linguistic, and psychological reasons underlie intolerance towards different opinions? Can this situation be c…
Notes and Reviews. The Concept of Work in Yupik Eskimo Society Before and After the Russian Influx: A Linguist’s Perspective
Sciendo provides publishing services and solutions to academic and professional organizations and individual authors. We publish journals, books, conference proceedings and a variety of other publications.
Mobility and Infrastructure in the Russian Arctic
This special issue approaches the interrelated themes of mobility and infrastructure in the Russian Arctic. I will discuss the general topics covered in this set of articles and how these contributions help us understand the lives of people in northern Siberia today, and I will give some context on how these articles came about in the first place. Does being determine consciousness? Or does consciousness determine being? This special issue looks …
Sovetskaya Arktika journal as a source for the history of the Northern Sea Route
This paper is about reading and using the Soviet texts published in the 1930s on the Northern sea route (NSR) and the Arctic in general. The history of the NSR exploration and exploitation and its current potential as a round-the-year transportation waterway connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic is outlined. Specific features of the 1930s’ sources for the study of the NSR are explored using the example of the journal Sovetskaya Arktika (The Sov…
Ethnological Expert Assessment: A Continuation of the Discussion
In Memoriam: Michael Krauss (1934–2019)
Transformations in Siberian Anthropology
Siberian anthropology was particularly reinforced by the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, intellectually designed and led by Franz Boas. Siberian anthropology has once again become internationalized through fieldwork done in Siberia by scores of Western anthropologists, as well as by intensive academic contacts. This new development has revealed interesting discrepancies between the two traditions, such as different approaches to the object of stu…
Yukaghir Pictographic Letters from the Collection of the Russian Museum of Ethnography
The Yukaghir pictography, letters on birch bark, so-called tos (lit. ‘birch bark’) includes letters of two types: those written by men, mostly descriptions of hunting routes, and those written by young women, mostly love letters. While the first type is quite widespread, the second one is very unusual, to the extent that researchers who deal with the history of writing have to single them out into a separate classification category. Almost everyt…
On Domestication, Permanent and Temporary: Qoraŋә, Ǝlwelu, and Akwәqor
In this paper, I analyze a Yupik folklore plot represented by two stories. Both were recorded in 1940-41 by Ekaterina Rubtsova from two Ungazighmiit storytellers: Nalugyaq (1888–1942) and Tatko (ca. 1875–ca. 1944). The plot is as follows: A man abandons his older wife and two sons and leaves with his younger wife, taking away the herd and apparently leaving the old family to die. But they survive; the boys grow up, start to hunt, and finally come…
Forum 52: The Humanities and Social Sciences and Covid-19: Pros and Cons
For the past two years, research groups and universities have been exposed to the novel and unpredictable conditions of life during the viral pandemic, and to the constantly shifting restrictions on normal academic activities that have accompanied it. In particular, personal contacts—between teachers and students and between colleagues—have to a large extent been difficult or impossible. For some, the social restrictions have been a disaster, whi…
Roman Jakobson and the Aleut materials collected by Waldemar Jochelson
This paper presents the text of a 1941 work by Roman Jakobson, which has never been fully published, — his description of Vladimir (Waldemar) Jochelson’s Aleut materials (the materials, as well as Jakobson’s description, are stored at the New York Public Library). The publication is provided with a detailed commentary
The Tundra Yukaghir Language in a Multilingual Environment: A Longitudinal Research
The article presents the results of a longitudinal study of the language situation in a multilingual village of Andryushkino (northeast of the Sakha Republic). It is one of two localities where the endangered Tundra Yukaghir ( TY ) language is still used. Data on TY proficiency were collected in this village by one of the authors in 1987 and then, 35 years later, by the other author in 2022. In both cases, the same methodology for assessing the d…
The Fate of a Person and the Fate of a Book: "Nikolai Schnakenburg and the Volume "The Soviet Eskimos
The article describes the biography of the young ethnographer Nikolai Borisovich Schnakenburg (1907-1941), a student of Vladimir Bogoras, who worked in Chukotka in 1930-1933 and was killed at the war frontlines near Leningrad in 1941. Until now, his life and work remained understudied. The article further examines the question of the authorship of an unpublished manuscript "The Soviet Eskimos", the first comprehensive report on the Siberian Yupik…
Language ecology of minority languages of Sakha (Yakutia) in the mirror of the All-Russian Census 2020-2021
This study applies the framework of the ecology of language, defined by Einar Haugen as the study of interactions between a language and its environment, to evaluate the reliability of population census data for sociolinguistic analysis. Focusing on the 2020-2021 Russian Census, the paper investigates its usefulness in describing language situations among indigenous minorities in the north-east of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia). The study adopts a …
History (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Indigenous Studies and Ecology (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · History (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Arctic and Russian Policy Studies (5 works)