Masters of the Spoken Word of Russia’s Ugric- Samoyedic Peoples

The article systematically defines and analyzes the project initiatives by the masters of the spoken word among three generations of the Mansi, Nents, and Khanty peoples. The first generation includes those born in the 1910s (Ivan Istomin — Nenets; Anna Konkova — Mansi; Taisiya Chuchelina — Khanty), the second one — those born in the 1930s (Yuvan Shestalov and Andrey Tarkhanov — Mansi; Leonid Laptsuy — Nenets; Mariya Vagatova and Roman Rugin — Khanty), and the third one — those born at the turn of the 1940s–1950s (Anna Nerkagi and Yuriy Vella — Nenets; Yeremey Aypin — Khanty). The authors of the article describe motivational environment for the creative endeavor of the spiritual leaders of indigenous minorities within the historical and cultural dynamics of the region they are biographically related to. In addition, the semiotic foundations of syncretism and traditionalism of the ethnosubjects’ fiction are presented in all the diversity of their written and action projects. This article indicates the transformation in the identities of the masters of the spoken word during the country’s transition from the Soviet to the post-Soviet experience, as well as difficulties and nature of their presence in writers’ associations among Russian authors. Along the historical axis, one can see growing creative endeavor, initiative, and national identity of the representatives of the indigenous minorities of the northern regions. The authors of the article consider Ugric-Samoyedic writers’ experience within the framework of contemporary understanding of historical poetics of Russian philology

Archaeology · Art · Ethnic group · Indigenous · Linguistics · Literature · Philology · Poetics · Poetry · Sociology · Anthropology · Discourse Analysis and Cultural Communication · Gender Studies · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia