Perestroika and the pastoralists: The example of Mongun-Taiga in Tuva ASSR

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Herders of the Mongun-Taiga

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584c8066-28c0-4b7f-acbc-68b50ad61237

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An anthropology article discussing Caroline Humphrey’s observations from a visit to Tuva, conducted during the course of production for the film “Herders of the Mongun Taiga”. Extract from the first page: “This summer and autumn I made two visits to Tuva as advisor for an ethnographic documentary. Tuva is remote, on the western border of Mongolia, and it only entered the Soviet Union in 1944. It is still difficult to get to, and not just for Westerners: there is no railway, the road crosses a high mountain pass which is snowy even in midsummer, and plane tickets, unless booked months in advance, are obtainable only on a who-you-know basis. With its party leadership recently castigated in Pravda for maintaining a backward economy heavily in debt to Moscow, Tuva might seem the last place to look for advanced implementation of perestroika. Actually, the reforms are happening, and the difficulties which beset them are not so much due to Tuva’s isolation or cultural peculiarities as to pervasive all-Union economic structures and endemic mistrust. I hoped to see economic results in the capital, Kyzyl, as it is the centre of an agricultural region. The town was a Russian hamlet, re-named after the revolution in 1921, and built up from the 1940s onwards. Now its population of 70,000 is about one third Tuvinian and two-thirds Russian. The Tuvinians are descendants of Turkic-speaking tribes, natives of the region for at least a thousand years, with varied hunting, agricultural, pastoralist economies, patrilineal localized clans, and shamanist cultures, in some places thinly overlaid with Buddhism. For centuries Tuva was part of the Manchu Empire. But none of this is apparent in Kyzyl. Its small ministries, police headquarters, clinics, etc. are to be found in Chekhovian villas, whose porticos and verandas can be seen behind curtains of leaves, the result of devoted tree-planting by Russian settlers. Dusty wooden suburbs lie beyond. In the centre is the main square, with Party headquarters on one side, the Soviet building facing it. The statue of Lenin, the post-office and a gigantic new theatre make up the standard whole. Where are the results of the economic reforms, the burgeoning enterprise, to be seen? Where a society places things is indicative of its values. The central square is huge, though not as vast as the windswept equivalent in Ulan-Bator where in certain weather conditions it is barely possible to see the other side, but it is clearly sacrosanct. A monumental slab, which must have born many slogans in its time, tells people of the necessity of perestroika [illus., page 8]. With the old guard still in place here, despite Pravda, the changing balance of power between the Party and the Soviets envisaged by Gorbachev is something of a mystery. The results of the economic reforms so far have a temporary, inconsequential feel in Kyzyl. The market is not full of local producers selling basic products to eager buyers. It is a muddy compound down a side-street, many of its booths empty. The sellers are mostly elderly, sitting patiently by small piles of astronomically expensive apples or berries, salted cucumbers, knitted hats, or vaguely ethnic (but certainly not Tuvinian) children’s clothes. A Russian with a large reference volume sells bundles of grey medicinal herbs. Another has just one item for sale, a pair of hairy boots made from dog skin. The only commercially active moment I saw in several visits was when some Tuvinian lads drove in a lorry from which they sold meat, butchered on the spot. There was a town festival during our visit and on this occasion there were some lorries displaying home-made nick-nacks and one or two Armenians appeared selling pork shashlyks on street-corners. None did a roaring trade and by afternoon it was as though they had never been there. Tuvinians generally do not like pork nor roasted meat and the opinion seemed to be that the shashlyks were expensive and insanitary. The lack of interest was not because the capital is well-supplied. On the contrary, meat is rationed to one kilo per person per month, as are some other basic products such as sugar and butter. So what is going wrong? Part of the answer can be seen from the progress of the reforms in the rural meat-producing region which is where we made our film. We stayed in Mongun-Taiga district, where two livestock state farms provide virtually all employment. The population is entirely Tuvinian. This is a bare wind-swept land, suitable for yaks and hardy sheep, where the herders live in yurts and move several times during the year. At issue is the effect of the reforms on pastoralists, in both the USSR and Mongolia, but it will be evident that many of the problems apply to rural society in general. The reforms were explained to farmers during 1986 and made law in January 1987. The major innovation is the ‘contract team’ (podryad). This is intended to replace the old system of production by monolithic collective and state farms. The aim is to provide a framework for work groups of various sizes, which will correspond to the optimum types of cooperation for given tasks. At the same time, the replacement of orders from above by a contract is intended to give the team more independence and initiative. The second major reform, at least as far as Tuva is concerned, is the abolition of all limits to the private ownership of livestock. A third reform, the creation of a single administrative hierarchy for agriculture in place of various ministerial departments (at district level known as the RAPO), is, as far as I can tell, experienced as old wine in new bottles and will not be further discussed here.”

An anthropology article discussing Humphrey, Caroline’s observations from a visit to Tuva, conducted during the course of production for the film “Herders of the Mongun Taiga”. Extract from the first page: “This summer and autumn I made two visits to Tuva as advisor for an ethnographic documentary. Tuva is remote, on the western border of Mongolia, and it only entered the Soviet Union in 1944. It is still difficult to get to, and not just for Westerners: there is no railway, the road crosses a high mountain pass which is snowy even in midsummer, and plane tickets, unless booked months in advance, are obtainable only on a who-you-know basis. With its party leadership recently castigated in Pravda for maintaining a backward economy heavily in debt to Moscow, Tuva might seem the last place to look for advanced implementation of perestroika. Actually, the reforms are happening, and the difficulties which beset them are not so much due to Tuva’s isolation or cultural peculiarities as to pervasive all-Union economic structures and endemic mistrust. I hoped to see economic results in the capital, Kyzyl, as it is the centre of an agricultural region. The town was a Russian hamlet, re-named after the revolution in 1921, and built up from the 1940s onwards. Now its population of 70,000 is about one third Tuvinian and two-thirds Russian. The Tuvinians are descendants of Turkic-speaking tribes, natives of the region for at least a thousand years, with varied hunting, agricultural, pastoralist economies, patrilineal localized clans, and shamanist cultures, in some places thinly overlaid with Buddhism. For centuries Tuva was part of the Manchu Empire. But none of this is apparent in Kyzyl. Its small ministries, police headquarters, clinics, etc. are to be found in Chekhovian villas, whose porticos and verandas can be seen behind curtains of leaves, the result of devoted tree-planting by Russian settlers. Dusty wooden suburbs lie beyond. In the centre is the main square, with Party headquarters on one side, the Soviet building facing it. The statue of Lenin, the post-office and a gigantic new theatre make up the standard whole. Where are the results of the economic reforms, the burgeoning enterprise, to be seen? Where a society places things is indicative of its values. The central square is huge, though not as vast as the windswept equivalent in Ulan-Bator where in certain weather conditions it is barely possible to see the other side, but it is clearly sacrosanct. A monumental slab, which must have born many slogans in its time, tells people of the necessity of perestroika [illus., page 8]. With the old guard still in place here, despite Pravda, the changing balance of power between the Party and the Soviets envisaged by Gorbachev is something of a mystery. The results of the economic reforms so far have a temporary, inconsequential feel in Kyzyl. The market is not full of local producers selling basic products to eager buyers. It is a muddy compound down a side-street, many of its booths empty. The sellers are mostly elderly, sitting patiently by small piles of astronomically expensive apples or berries, salted cucumbers, knitted hats, or vaguely ethnic (but certainly not Tuvinian) children’s clothes. A Russian with a large reference volume sells bundles of grey medicinal herbs. Another has just one item for sale, a pair of hairy boots made from dog skin. The only commercially active moment I saw in several visits was when some Tuvinian lads drove in a lorry from which they sold meat, butchered on the spot. There was a town festival during our visit and on this occasion there were some lorries displaying home-made nick-nacks and one or two Armenians appeared selling pork shashlyks on street-corners. None did a roaring trade and by afternoon it was as though they had never been there. Tuvinians generally do not like pork nor roasted meat and the opinion seemed to be that the shashlyks were expensive and insanitary. The lack of interest was not because the capital is well-supplied. On the contrary, meat is rationed to one kilo per person per month, as are some other basic products such as sugar and butter. So what is going wrong? Part of the answer can be seen from the progress of the reforms in the rural meat-producing region which is where we made our film. We stayed in Mongun-Taiga district, where two livestock state farms provide virtually all employment. The population is entirely Tuvinian. This is a bare wind-swept land, suitable for yaks and hardy sheep, where the herders live in yurts and move several times during the year. At issue is the effect of the reforms on pastoralists, in both the USSR and Mongolia, but it will be evident that many of the problems apply to rural society in general. The reforms were explained to farmers during 1986 and made law in January 1987. The major innovation is the ‘contract team’ (podryad). This is intended to replace the old system of production by monolithic collective and state farms. The aim is to provide a framework for work groups of various sizes, which will correspond to the optimum types of cooperation for given tasks. At the same time, the replacement of orders from above by a contract is intended to give the team more independence and initiative. The second major reform, at least as far as Tuva is concerned, is the abolition of all limits to the private ownership of livestock. A third reform, the creation of a single administrative hierarchy for agriculture in place of various ministerial departments (at district level known as the RAPO), is, as far as I can tell, experienced as old wine in new bottles and will not be further discussed here.”