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ABSTRACT
This paper examines the history of the Soviet human acclimatization project in the North and Siberia, which spanned from medical experiments in Stalin’s forced labor camps to the subsequent wave of industrialization in the region. The author argues that human acclimatization in the North was a settler colonial science project aimed at facilitating Russian administrators and engineers in asserting control over the territory and its resources, while creating a new homogeneous ‘indigenous population’ in Siberia and the North. This envisioned population, referred to as Homo Polaris by the author, was intended to emerge through a two-way transformation: the adaptation of Indigenous peoples into Soviet ideologies and practices, and the acclimatization of settlers coming from the European part of the country to the Arctic environment. Although the administrators and medical doctors were unable to achieve this biopolitical objective, the complexities and dialogues surrounding these transformations shed light on the late Soviet settler-colonial ideologies and their impact on social life in Siberia from the 1950s to the 1980s. The research is based on a comprehensive analysis of both published and archival works by scholars involved in the project.
Acknowledgements
This article could not have been completed without the invaluable assistance of my friend Mikhail Solonenko, who helped by copying essential texts for this project during the challenging time of lockdown and the second Russian invasion in Ukraine. I am deeply grateful to Alla Bolotova, Andy Bruno, Roman Khandozhko, Laura Siragusa, Mikhail Nakonechnyi, and Igor Stas’ for our discussions, their comments, and advice. I would also like to express my gratitude to Nadezhda M. Klemberg of the Norilsk City Archive, as well as the archivists of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Central State Archive of Science and Technological Documentation of Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk State Archive, and Novosibirsk State Regional Science Library for their invaluable assistance with my archival research. Furthermore, I would like to extend my thanks to Irina Sandomirskaja and Myram Adjam, as well as all the participants of the Advanced Seminar at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University. I am thankful to Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov and his kruzhok for their thoughtful discussions on my paper, and to Alexey Golubev for carefully reading one of the final drafts of the article and providing useful advice on accommodating diverse intellectual traditions in writing about human acclimatization. I am especially grateful to Peder Roberts for his advice and moral support throughout my doctoral studies and afterwards. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism and recommendations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 J.R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Andy Bruno, The Nature of Soviet Power: An Arctic Environmental History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Andy Bruno, ‘Studying the Siberian Anthropocene: An Introduction’, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 48, no. 3 (November 12, 2021): 257–61, https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-bja10044.
2 Lit. Chief Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps. See Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps (London: Penguin Books, 2012). On the legacy of GULag in the North see Alan Barenberg, Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014); Yuri V. Kanev, Vaĭgachskiĭ tranzit (Nar’i͡an-Mar, 2008).
3 On the legacy of early Soviet colonization see in Tatiana V. Naumova, ‘Kulʹtbazy kak ochagi sovetskoĭ kulʹtury v tundre’, Nauchnyi vestnik I͡Amalo-Nenet͡skogo avtonomnogo okruga, no. 1(78) (2013): 73–8; Eva Toulouze, Laur Vallikivi, and Art Leete, ‘The Cultural Bases in the North. Sovietisation and Indigenous Resistance’, in Ethnic and Religious Minorities in Stalin’s Soviet Union: New Dimensions of Research, ed. Andrej Kotljarchuk and Olle Sundström, vol. 5, Northern Studies Monographs (Stockholm: Södertörns högskola, 2017), 199–224.
4 See Ivan Sablin and Maria Savelyeva, ‘Mapping Indigenous Siberia: Spatial Changes and Ethnic Realities, 1900–2010’, Settler Colonial Studies 1, no. 1 (January 1, 2011): 77–110, https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2011.10648802; Vladimir A. Isupov, ed., Demograficheskai͡a istorii͡a Zapadnoĭ Sibiri (konet͡s XIX – XX vv.) (Novosibirsk: Izdatel’stvo SO RAN, 2017).
5 The terms acclimatization and adaptation were often used interchangeably. I use them interchangeably in the present paper as well, although scholars in North America preferred to make a distinction specifically in the context of genetics, while considering them synonymous in cultural and social contexts. ‘Adaption’ often refers to ‘genetic adaptation in which an adaptive genotype has emerged through the process of natural selection’, while ‘acclimatization’ refers to ‘nongenetic adjustments to the environment during the lifetime of the individual’. See Joseph K. So, ‘Human Biological Adaptation to Arctic and Subarctic Zones’, Annual Review of Anthropology 9, no. 1 (1980): 64.
6 See John McCannon, Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Paul R. Josephson, The Conquest of the Russian Arctic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).
7 See Per Högselius, Red Gas: Russia and the Origins of European Energy Dependence (New York: Springer, 2012).
8 See a brief ethnographic account on the human acclimatization project in the Russian North today in Rémy Rouillard, ‘Foreign Bodies in the Russian North: On the Physiological and Psychological Adaptation of Soviet Settlers and “Oil Nomads” to the Oil-Rich Arctic’, in Northern Sustainabilities: Understanding and Addressing Change in the Circumpolar World, ed. Gail Fondahl and Gary N. Wilson, Springer Polar Sciences (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017), 163–76, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46150-2_13.
9 In the history of Soviet medical sciences, that pressure became entwined with the social hygiene project actively promoted in the early years of Soviet power. See Susan Gross Solomon and John F. Hutchinson, eds., Health and Society in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990).
10 It is worth mentioning that Soviet scholars, engineers, and medical doctors also actively got involved in the Antarctic geopolitical competition. See Simone Turchetti et al., ‘On Thick Ice: Scientific Internationalism and Antarctic Affairs, 1957–1980’, History and Technology 24, no. 4 (December 1, 2008): 351–76, https://doi.org/10.1080/07341510802357419.
11 Referring to the settler colonizers from the European part of Russia, I aim to avoid the ethnic connotation of the word ‘Russians’ (R. russkie) and instead emphasize the multiethnic composition of the new migrants, who primarily relocated from the European regions and republics of the Soviet Union.
12 See about the relations between the environment and subjectivity in the Soviet North in Andy Bruno, ‘Environmental Subjectivities from the Soviet North’, Slavic Review 78, no. 1 (2019): 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1017/slr.2019.7.
13 See about that politics in Yuri Slezkine, ‘The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism’, Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (1994): 414–52, https://doi.org/10.2307/2501300. See also about the identity politics in North Siberia in David G. Anderson, Identity and Ecology in Arctic Siberia: The Number One Reindeer Brigade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
14 Grigoriy M. Danishevskiy, Patologii͡a cheloveka i profilaktika zabolevaniĭ na Severe (Moscow: Medit͡sina, 1968), 115. Some acclimatization scholars called it a model or a benchmark (R. ėtalon). See Vlail’ P. Kaznacheev, Sovremennye aspekty adaptat͡sii (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1980), 145.
15 V.F. Puzanova, ed., Materialy rasshirennogo plenuma Mezhduvedomstvennoĭ Komissii po problemam Severa, vol. 5. Kratkoe soderzhanie vystupleniĭ i reshenie plenuma (Moscow: SOPS, 1970), 115.
16 See about the notion of settler colonialism in Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Lorenzo Veracini, ‘“Settler Colonialism”: Career of a Concept’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 41, no. 2 (June 1, 2013): 313–33, https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2013.768099. As historians of science remind us, the human acclimatization projects inherited colonial disparities and biopolitical ideologies that can be traced back to eighteenth-century discussions and practices in metropolitan France, Britain, and their colonies. See David N. Livingstone, ‘Human Acclimatization: Perspectives on a Contested Field of Inquiry in Science, Medicine and Geography’, History of Science 25, no. 4 (1987): 359–94; Michael A. Osborne, ‘Acclimatizing the World: A History of the Paradigmatic Colonial Science’, Osiris 15 (2000): 135–51; Hans Pols, ‘Notes from Batavia, the Europeans’ Graveyard: The Nineteenth-Century Debate on Acclimatization in the Dutch East Indies’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 67, no. 1 (2012): 120–48.
17 As Patrik Chakrabarti indicates, the shift from ‘colonial medicine’ as carrying the bodies of colonizers to the ‘civilizing mission’ of medicine occurred in the late nineteenth century. See Pratik Chakrabarti, Medicine and Empire: 1600–1960 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014).
18 Alexander Morrison, ‘Russian Settler Colonialism’, in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, ed. Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 313–26. Interestingly, the leaders of the late 19th-century Siberian regionalism movement (R. Oblastniki) highlighted the historical significance of ‘mixing’ peoples (R. smeshenie narodov) in the process of colonization. See Nikolai M. Yadrintsev, Sibir’ kak kolonii͡a v geograficheskom, ėtnograficheskom i istoricheskom otnoshenii, 2nd ed. (Saint Petersburg: Izdanie I. M. Sibiri͡akova, 1892). See also about the Oblastniki David Rainbow, ‘Siberian Patriots: Participatory Autocracy and the Cohesion of the Russian Imperial State, 1858–1920’ (PhD thesis, New York, New York University, 2013). In the tweentieth century, field ethnographers and linguists, in turn, documented the lives and languages of numerous mixed communities in Siberia and the Far East (Peter P. Schweitzer, Evgeniy V. Golovko, and Nikolai B. Vakhtin, ‘Mixed Communities in the Russian North; Or, Why Are There No “Creoles” In Siberia?’, Ethnohistory 60, no. 3 (July 1, 2013): 419–38, https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-2140749.). However, it is known that the dominant state-sponsored ethnographic discourse has reduced the cultural, language, and ethnic diversity of the region to the list of officially recognized ethnic groups, thereby making the mixed communities invisible (David G. Anderson and Dmitry V. Arzyutov, ‘The Construction of Soviet Ethnography and “The Peoples of Siberia”’, History and Anthropology 27, no. 2 (March 14, 2016): 183–209, https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2016.1140159; See also Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge & the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).)
19 Alexey Golubev, ‘No Natural Colonization: The Early Soviet School of Historical Anti-Colonialism’, Canadian Slavonic Papers 65, no. 2 (May 25, 2023): 190–204, https://doi.org/10.1080/00085006.2023.2199556.
20 In the Soviet North, the politics of Indigenization (R. korenizat͡sii͡a) was replaced by the hierarchical model in the late 1930s. Yuri Slezkine ironically phrases that shift as putting Indigenous peoples to be ‘last among equals’. Yuri Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).
21 See Terry D. Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001).
22 Bruce Grant, In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
23 See Igor’ Stas’, ‘Vozrozhdennye narody: nat͡sional’noe grazhdanstvo indigennogo naselenii͡a Severa v pozdnem stalinizme’, Ab Imperio 2020, no. 3 (2020): 157–88, https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2020.0060. An anthropological account on the life of Russian settler colonial communities in the Far East: see Niobe Thompson, Settlers on the Edge: Identity and Modernization on Russia’s Arctic Frontier (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009).
24 See Maksym Sviezhentsev, ‘“Phantom Limb”: Russian Settler Colonialism in the Post-Soviet Crimea (1991–1997)’ (Ph.D. dissertation in History, London, ON, The University of Western Ontario, 2020).
25 Veracini, ‘“Settler Colonialism”’, 313–14.
26 Travis Hay, Inventing the Thrifty Gene: The Science of Settler Colonialism (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2021).
27 M. Trakman, Perspektivy razvitii͡a zdravookhranenii͡a v Sibiri (1928/29–1932/33 g.) (Novosibirsk, 1929).
28 See journalist notes of Russian anthropologist Waldemar Bogoras about the Far East: Vladimir G. Bogoraz, ‘Russkie na reke Kolyme’, Zhiznʹ 6 (1899): 121.
29 Here I should refer to the classic social history understanding of the concept of making as an active process, ‘which owes as much to agency as to conditioning’: Edward P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), 9.
30 See its history in Kathleen E. Smith, Moscow 1956: The Silenced Spring (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2017).
31 V. Gurevich, ed., XX s”ezd Kommunisticheskoĭ Partii Sovetskogo Soi͡uza. 14–25 fevrali͡a 1956 g. Stenograficheskiĭ otchet, vol. I (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelʹstvo politicheskoĭ literatury, 1956), 52.
32 See Kristen E. Edwards, ‘Fleeing to Siberia The Wartime Relocation of Evacuees to Novosibirsk, 1941–1943’ (Ph.D. Dissertation in History, Palo Alto, Stanford University, 1996).
33 See the discussions among ‘civil’ medical doctors about the Arctic experimental medicine in the 1930s. A. Bliumenfelʹd, ‘Igarka - poli͡arnai͡a baza Vsesoi͡uznogo Instituta ėksperimentalʹnoĭ medit͡siny pri SNK SSSR’, Severnai͡a stroĭka, September 10, 1934.
34 Asif Siddiqi, ‘Scientists and Specialists in the Gulag: Life and Death in Stalin’s Sharashka’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 16, no. 3 (2015): 557–88.
35 See about the Pechorlag clinics in Svetlana Terent’eva and Tatiana Afanas’eva, Vremena ne vybirai͡ut … Iz istorii zdravookhranenii͡a Pechorskogo Krai͡a (Syktyvkar: Komi respublikanskai͡a tipografii͡a, 2012), 19–40. The historian of GULag medical service Boris Nakhapetov points out that the Pechorlag was one of the most terrifying in the whole GULag archipelago Boris A. Nakhapetov, Ocherki Istorii Sanitarnoĭ Sluzhby GULAGA (Moscow: ROSSPĖN, 2009), 23–24. On the connections between GULag and non-GULag worlds see Oleg Khlevniuk, ‘The Gulag and the Non-Gulag as One Interrelated Whole’, trans. Simon Belokowsky, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 16, no. 3 (2015): 479–98.
36 These are his books based on the data collected during those years: Grigoriy M. Danishevskiy, Gipovitaminozy na Severe: ranni͡ai͡a diagnostika, profilaktika i lechenie (Pechora, 1944); Grigoriy M. Danishevskiy, Akklimatizat͡sii͡a cheloveka na Severe (s ocherkom kraevoĭ patologii i gigieny) (Moscow: Medgiz, 1955). See also the official list of diseases of GULag prisoners compiled by the head of GULag medical service in 1942: Nakhapetov, Ocherki istorii sanitarnoĭ sluzhby GULAGA, 134–39.
37 It is worth mentioning that the project of polar/Arctic agriculture was actively developed throughout the Soviet North from the early 1930s until the end of the Soviet era.
38 Golfo Alexopoulos, ‘Medical Research in Stalin’s Gulag’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 90, no. 3 (October 27, 2016): 368, https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2016.0070; See also Dan Healey, ‘Lives in the Balance: Weak and Disabled Prisoners and the Biopolitics of the Gulag’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 16, no. 3 (2015): 527–56, https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2015.0047; Oxana Ermolaeva, ‘Health Care, the Circulation of Medical Knowledge, and Research in the Soviet Gulag in the 1930s’, East Central Europe 40, no. 3 (2013): 341–65, https://doi.org/10.1163/18763308-04003008.
39 For example, Lev Zil’ber (1894–1966), a colleague of Grigoriy Danishevskiy, invented an ‘anti-pellagrin’ made from yeast and tundra lichen that saved hundreds of human lives in prisons during the 1930s and later in the Second World War. It is worth mentioning that the official certificate credited the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the major Soviet repressive authority from 1934 to 1946) rather than Zil’ber as the preparator inventor. See Lev L. Kiselev and Elena S. Levina, Lev Aleksandrovich Zil’ber (1894–1966). Zhizn’ v nauke (Moscow: Nauka, 2004), 244–49.
40 Danishevskiy, Akklimatizat͡sii͡a cheloveka na Severe (s ocherkom kraevoĭ patologii i gigieny), 143.
41 Ibid., 85–87. See also V.L. Vasil’ev, K.A. Turkovskaia, and M.M. Khrennikova, Prodvizhenie ovoshcheĭ na Kraĭniĭ Sever (Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo kolkhoznoĭ i sovkhoznoĭ literatury, 1935).
42 Applebaum, Gulag, 369–79; Golfo Alexopoulos, Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017), 62–84.
43 Danishevskiy, Akklimatizat͡sii͡a cheloveka na Severe (s ocherkom kraevoĭ patologii i gigieny), 88–92.
44 See Irina V. Il’ina, Tradit͡sionnai͡a medit͡sinskai͡a kulʹtura narodov Evropeĭskogo Severo-Vostoka (konet͡s XIX - XX vv.) (Syktyvkar, 2008); Boris I. Vasilenko, Narodnai͡a medit͡sina nent͡sev I͡Amala (Salekhard: Krasnyĭ Sever, 1997).
45 It is worth comparing the Russian/Soviet carceral genealogy to observations made by historians of medicine and environmental historians who write about ‘social’ diseases such as smallpox, typhus, or tuberculosis as legacies of European colonialism. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900, 2nd ed. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Chakrabarti, Medicine and Empire.
46 Vladimir N. Davydov and Veronika V. Simonova, ‘Sobachʹe serdt͡se: antropologii͡a sobakoedenii͡a v postsovetskoĭ ėvenkiĭskoĭ derevne’, Izvestii͡a laboratorii drevnikh tekhnologiĭ, no. 6 (2008): 218–19. [Evenkis]
47 Vladimir N. Adaev, ‘Nenet͡skie olenegonnye laĭki Tazovskoĭ tundry’, in Ab Originale. Arkheologo-ėtnograficheskiĭ sbornik Ti͡umenskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, ed. Natalʹi͡a P. Matveeva, vol. 5 (Ti͡umenʹ: Ti͡umenskiĭ gosudarstvennyĭ universitet, 2013), 130. [Nenetses]
48 Olga Ulturgasheva, ‘Ghosts of the Gulag in the Eveny World of the Dead’, The Polar Journal 7, no. 1 (January 2, 2017): 26–45, https://doi.org/10.1080/2154896X.2017.1329256.
49 Terent’eva and Afanas’eva, Vremena ne vybirai͡ut … Iz Istorii zdravookhranenii͡a Pechorskogo krai͡a, 41–48.
50 See Ivan A. Perfil’ev, Kak obespechit’ sebi͡a vitaminami (Arkhangel’sk: OGIZ Arkhangel’skoe izdatel’stvo, 1941); Aleksandr F. Nikitin, ‘Nauchnye osnovy pitanii͡a v Arktike’, Priroda, no. 1–2 (1942): 70–80; Aleksandr F. Nikitin, ‘Arktika i Kraĭniĭ Sever kak moshchnyĭ istochnik pishchevykh resursov dli͡a SSSR’, Priroda, no. 5–6 (1942): 70–76. One could also mention some Soviet films on the topic, one of which depicted wartime school expeditions to the Novaya Zemlya archipelago for collecting wild bird eggs: Letni͡ai͡a poezdka k mori͡u, 1978, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1733166/. See about those expeditions: Vladimir N. Bulatov, ‘Shkolʹnai͡a arkticheskai͡a ėkspedit͡sii͡a’, in Poli͡arnyĭ krug, ed. A.V. Shumilov (Moscow: Myslʹ, 1986), 175–81.
51 See V. Ya. Chekin, ‘Chto predokhrani͡aet narodnosti kraĭnego severa ot t͡syngi’, Priroda, no. 10 (1950): 53. Interestingly, the author advocated for the acceptance of Indigenous culture, specifically the Nenets, regarding the consumption of raw meat and fish (Tundra Nenets ngay¡a¦bad°). See about the Nenets food culture Elena T. Pushkareva, Gastronomicheskie vstrechi : ėtnograficheskie ocherki o kukhne nent͡sev i ne tolʹko … , 2nd ed. (Salekhard: I͡Amal-Media, 2022). See also Danishevskiy, Akklimatizat͡sii͡a cheloveka na Severe (s ocherkom kraevoĭ patologii i gigieny), 95. To draw a historical parallel, I would like to mention the works of Vilhjálmur Stefánsson on the Inuit exclusively-meat diet, which is also known as the ‘ketogenic diet’. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Not by Bread Alone (New York: Macmillan, 1946); see also Gísli Pálsson, Travelling Passions: The Hidden Life of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, trans. Keneva Kunz (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England [for] Dartmouth College, 2005). A decade later, the recommendations to consume raw meat and fish were criticized as a potential threat for helminthiasis. See Iosif A. Arnol’di, Akklimatizat͡sii͡a cheloveka na Severe i I͡Uge (Moscow: Medgiz, 1962), 43.
52 P.E. Terletskiy. ‘Problema zaselenii͡a Kraĭnego Severa’, 24 March 1945, Central State Archive of Science and Technological Documentation of Saint Petersburg (hereafter cited as T͡SGANTD SPb) R-369/1-4/24.
53 ‘Programma konferent͡sii po voprosam akklimatizat͡sii naselenii͡a v Arktike’, 6 March 1950, T͡SGANTD SPb R-369/1-4/217/154-155 (unclassified). It is worth mentioning that until the late 1960s the Arctic medicine was strongly associated with the Soviet military (‘Plan provedenii͡a nauchnoĭ konferent͡sii po izuchenii͡u medit͡sinskikh problem v Arktike’, T͡SGANTD SPb R-369/1-4/367/236-239 (unclassified)) similar as its North American counterparts. See Matthew Farish, ‘The Lab and the Land: Overcoming the Arctic in Cold War Alaska’, Isis 104, no. 1 (March 2013): 1–29, https://doi.org/10.1086/669881; Matthew Wiseman, ‘Unlocking the “Eskimo Secret”: Defence Science in the Cold War Canadian Arctic, 1947–1954’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de La Société Historique Du Canada 26, no. 1 (2015): 191–223, https://doi.org/10.7202/1037202ar; Matthew S. Wiseman, ‘The Development of Cold War Soldiery: Acclimatisation Research and Military Indoctrination in the Canadian Arctic, 1947–1953’, Canadian Military History 24, no. 2 (November 23, 2015): 127–55.
54 As part of the post-war interest in human acclimatization studies in the North, several expeditions were sent to various parts of the Soviet Arctic under the leadership of Iosif A. Arnol’di. See Grigoriy M. Danishevskiy, Patologii͡a cheloveka i profilaktika zabolevaniĭ na Severe (Moscow: Medit͡sina, 1968), 20.
55 Cassandra Cavanaugh, ‘Acclimatization, the Shifting Sciences of Settlement’, in Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History, eds. Nicholas Breyfogle, Abby Schrader, and Willard Sunderland (Routledge, 2007), 169–88.
56 Vladimir L. Naidin, ‘Proveri͡ai͡a gipotezu’, Znanie-sila, no. 7 (1968): 34–37. That optimization was made possible due to the establishment of the Commission on Acclimatization and Regional Pathology in the North as early as 1958. See Danishevskiĭ, Patologii͡a cheloveka i profilaktika zabolevaniĭ na Severe, 22. This commission was closely linked to the powerful inter-agency Commission on the Problems of the North, which was established in 1954 and was responsible for administering Northern development in the Soviet Union. (See Ekaterina A. Kalemeneva, ‘Smena modeleĭ osvoenii͡a sovetskogo Severa v 1950-e gg. Sluchaĭ Komissii po problemam Severa’, Sibirskie istoricheskie issledovanii͡a, no. 2 (2018): 181–200.
57 Alexopoulos, Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag, 62.
58 Ibid., 63–6.
59 Danishevskiy, Akklimatizat͡sii͡a cheloveka na Severe (s ocherkom kraevoĭ patologii i gigieny).
60 Alan C. Burton and Otto G. Edholm, Man in a Cold Environment: Physiological and Pathological Effects of Exposure to Low Temperatures (London: Edward Arnold Ltd., 1955); Alan Barton and Otto Edkholm, Chelovek v uslovii͡akh kholoda (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo inostrannoĭ literatury, 1957). See also Iosif S. Kandror, ed., Medit͡sina i zdravookhranenie v Arktike i Antarktike. Izbrannye Materialy Konferent͡sii, vol. 18, Tetradi Obshchestvennogo Zdravookhranenii͡a (Moscow; Geneva, 1962).
61 See Brian Roberts, ‘The Study of Man’s Reaction to a Polar Climate’, Polar Record 4, no. 26 (1943): 63–9; MacDonald Critchley, ‘Problems of Naval Warfare Under Climatic Extremes’, The Military Surgeon 98, no. 2 (1946): 94–106; Macdonald Critchley, ‘Effects of Climatic Extremes: Critical Review’, British Journal of Industrial Medicine 4, no. 3 (1947): 164–90; N. H. Mackworth, ‘Local Cold Acclimatization in Man’, Polar Record 8, no. 52 (1956): 13–21.
62 The 1960 Moscow conference marked the first official gathering of all the leading scholars of Arctic acclimatization. See Trudy nauchnogo soveshchanii͡a po problemam akklimatizat͡sii i pitanii͡a naselenii͡a na Severe, vol. 6, Problema Severa (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo AN SSSR, 1962). It was followed by three regional conferences held in Murmansk (22–24 June 1961), Archangelsk (14–16 March 1963), and Norilsk (5–8 June 1965). See Klimat i zdorov’e cheloveka na Kraĭnem Severe: Tezisy dokladov nauchnoĭ sessii Akademii Medit͡sinskikh Nauk SSSR i Ministerstva zdravookhranenii͡a RSFSR v Murmanske. 22–24 Ii͡uni͡a 1961 g. (Moscow: Medgiz, 1961); S.P. Speranskiy, ed., Nauchnai͡a konferent͡sii͡a po probleme ‘akklimatizat͡sii͡a i klimatopatologii͡a cheloveka na Severe’ (14–16 Marta 1963 g.). (Arkhangel’sk, 1963); Nauchnai͡a sessii͡a, posvi͡ashchennai͡a probleme ‘Trud i zdorov’e cheloveka na Kraĭnem Severe’ (5–8 Ii͡uli͡a 1965 g.). Materialy k nauchnoĭ sessii (Noril’sk, 1965).
63 Danishevskiy, Akklimatizat͡sii͡a cheloveka na Severe (s ocherkom kraevoĭ patologii i gigieny), 225.
64 The Red Corner (R. Krasnyĭ ugolok) in the early Soviet Union referred to a section of public space dedicated to likbez (short for ‘likvidat͡sii͡a bezgramotnosti’, meaning ‘elimination of illiteracy’) through the use of visual and textual propaganda materials.
65 Here, he is most likely referring to the Nenets or Komi peoples, whose traditional nomadic dwelling is called a ‘chum’ in Russian.
66 Danishevskiy, Patologii͡a cheloveka i profilaktika zabolevaniĭ na Severe, 81, 114.
67 See Ibid., 90–114. See also about the notion of kul’turnost’ in the Soviet public discourse Vadim Volkov, ‘The Concept of Kul’turnost’: Notes on the Stalinist Civilizing Process’, in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (London: Routledge, 2000), 210–30.
68 Iosif A. Arnol’di, Akklimatizat͡sii͡a cheloveka na severe i i͡uge (Moscow: Medgiz, 1962), 40.
69 Ibid., 5.
70 For example, the Institute for Polar Agriculture based in Norilsk provided its field researchers with equipment that included partially Indigenous fur garments such as the malitsa (Nenets maly°cya), a fur overcoat, or the unty (Evenki's unta), fur footwear. See Norilsk City Archive, Norilsk (hereafter cited as NCA), R-12/1/8: 93.
71 Iosif S. Kandror, Ocherki po fiziologii i gigiene cheloveka na Kraĭnem Severe (Moscow: Medit͡sina, 1968), 84, 248.
72 Nataliia A. Saprykina, Mobil’noe zhilishche dli͡a Severa (Leningrad: Stroĭizdat, 1986). See about vakhtoviki in the Russian North in Natalya N. Simonova, Adaptat͡sii͡a k rabote vakhtovym metodom v ėkstremalʹnykh uslovii͡akh Kraĭnego Severa (Arkhangelsk: Severnyĭ (Arkticheskiĭ) federalʹnyĭ universitet imeni M.V. Lomonosova, 2014); Mattias Spies, ‘Potentials for Migration and Mobility among Oil Workers in the Russian North’, Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 91, no. 3 (2009): 257–73.
73 Kandror, Ocherki po fiziologii i gigiene cheloveka na Kraĭnem Severe, 255.
74 Ibid., 264.
75 See Zoia P. Sokolova and Elena A. Pivneva, eds., Ėtnologicheskai͡a ėkspertiza: narody Severa Rossii: 1956–1958 gody (Moscow: Institut ėtnologii i antropologii im. N.N. Miklukho-Maklai͡a RAN, 2004); Zoia P. Sokolova and Elena A. Pivneva, eds., Ėtnologicheskai͡a ėkspertiza: narody Severa Rossii: 1959–1962 gody (Moscow: Institut ėtnologii i antropologii im. N.N. Miklukho-Maklai͡a RAN, 2005); Zoia P. Sokolova and Elena A. Pivneva, eds., Ėtnologicheskai͡a ėkspertiza: narody Severa Rossii (Moscow: Institut ėtnologii i antropologii im. N.N. Miklukho-Maklai͡a RAN, 2006).
76 Vladimir P. Pashchenko, Problemna laboratorii͡a po izuchenii͡u akklimatizat͡sii cheloveka na Kraĭnem Severe. Iz istorii nauchnykh podrazdeleniĭ AGMI-AGMA-SGMU (Arkhangelsk, 2001).
77 See the history of Novosibirsk Akademgorodok Paul R. Josephson, New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, the Siberian City of Science (Princeton University Press, 1997).
78 Vlail’ P. Kaznacheev, ‘Mysli i chuvstva na zakate intellektual’no t͡sentra t͡sivilizat͡sii’, in Gorodok.Ru: Novosibirskiĭ akademgorodok na poroge tret’ego tysi͡acheletii͡a. Vospominanii͡a, razmyshlenii͡a, proekty. (Novosibirsk, 2003), 228–29. See also Ksenia Tatarchenko, ‘Calculating a Showcase: Mikhail Lavrentiev, the Politics of Expertise, and the International Life of the Siberian Science-City’, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 46, no. 5 (2016): 592–632. Lavrent’ev's technocratic settler colonial utopia in Siberia was situated within a broader context of cybernetics and later system theory. See about Soviet cybernetics in Slava Gerovitch, From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2002).
79 V.P. Kaznacheev, ‘30 let Akademii Medit͡sinskikh nauk SSSR’, 23–24 April 1975, State Archive of Novosibirsk Region, Novosibirsk (hereafter cited as GANO), R-2063/1/116/23.
80 Kaznacheev’s audio recording, 26 May 2007, Kaznacheev Papers, NGONB.
81 Watch the following documentaries, Chelovek i Sever, Documentary, 1982, https://www.net-film.ru/en/film-48896/; Chelovek i Sever, Documentary, 1985, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At4bOlN0ljo; Zemli͡a rodnai͡a, Documentary, 1986, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4lx0kW1ZqU; Akademik Vlailʹ Kaznacheev. Monologi, Documentary, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KPVuyhIYuA.
82 It is worth noting that at the same time, the concept of techno-geological ‘oases’ as socio-techno-geological hubs gained popularity not only among scholars but also among engineers and administrators in both metropolitan and Siberian regions. See about it, Samuil V. Slavin, Promyshlennoe i transportnoe osvoenie Severa SSSR (Moscow: Ėkonomizdat, 1961).
83 See Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin, The Environment: A History of the Idea (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).
84 It is worth mentioning that Vlail’ Kaznacheev actively promoted his research through international collaborations with various Western scholars. In 1976, his Institute hosted the 4th Symposium for Circumpolar Health. See Neil J. Murphy, ‘The Roundtrip to Fairbanks: The Circumpolar Health Movement Comes Full Circle, Part II’, International Journal of Circumpolar Health 72, no. 1 (January 31, 2013): 21608, https://doi.org/10.3402/ijch.v72i0.21608.
85 Simone Schleper, ‘Conservation Compromises: The MAB and the Legacy of the International Biological Program, 1964–1974’, Journal of the History of Biology 50, no. 1 (2017): 133–67.
86 ‘Problemy fundamental’nyĭ issledovaniĭ biosfery Evropeĭskogo Severa i Sibiri’, [1979], Archive of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow (ARAN) 2092/1/1/116. Moreover, Vlail’ Kaznacheev was aware of the work done within the preceding International Biological Program (IBP, 1964–1974), which included a Human Adaptability Project with strong links to ecosystem ecology and some epigenetic ideas. The Soviet group of the Project was led by Zoi͡a I. Barbashova who worked in the Archangelsk acclimatization laboratory.
87 So, ‘Human Biological Adaptation to Arctic and Subarctic Zones’. Vlail’ Kaznacheev’s colleagues also recollected that the terminology he had used remained quite vague to them. See Ol’ga Loshkareva, ‘Akademik V.I. Konenkov: “Immunitet u kazhdogo svoĭ”’, Nauka iz pervykh ruk, July 12, 2022, http://scfh.ru/news/akademik-v-i-konenkov-immunitet-u-kazhdogo-svoy/.
88 Eglė Rindzevičiūtė points out the links between the epistemic design of system theory and its political implications, which she refers to as system-cybernetic governmentality. See Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, The Power of Systems: How Policy Sciences Opened Up the Cold War World (Cornell University Press, 2016).
89 Vlail’ P. Kaznacheev, Biosistema i adaptat͡sii͡a (Novosibirsk, 1973), 52; Kaznacheev, Sovremennye aspekty adaptat͡sii, 41.
90 J. Oldfield and D. J. B. Shaw, ‘V.I. Vernadsky and the Noosphere Concept: Russian Understandings of Society-Nature Interaction’, Geoforum 37, no. 1 (2006): 145–54; George M. Young, The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 163–71.
91 See Douglas R Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999), 386–99.
92 V.I. Khasnulin, ‘Vyi͡asnenie roli klimato-geograficheskikh faktorov v prot͡sesse adaptat͡sii i v vozniknovenii ri͡ada zabolevaniĭ v uslovii͡akh Zapoli͡ar’i͡a’, 1980, NCA, R-56/3/4/48; V.I. Khasnulin, ‘Vyi͡avlenie spet͡sificheskikh osobennosteĭ vozniknovenii͡a i techenii͡a ostrykh i khronicheskikh infekt͡sionnykh zabolevaniĭ v sisteme organov dykhanii͡a u korennogo i prishlogo naselenii͡a Kraĭnego Severa … ’, 14 May 1979, NCA, R-56/3/5.
93 An overview of the collection ‘Laboratorii͡a poli͡arnoĭ medit͡siny SO AMN SSSR’, NCA, R-56. Kaznacheev also actively collaborated with Archangelsk laboratory. See Pashchenko, Problemna laboratorii͡a po izuchenii͡u akklimatizat͡sii cheloveka na Kraĭnem Severe. Iz Istorii nauchnykh podrazdeleniĭ AGMI-AGMA-SGMU, 15.
94 B.S. Yudin, ‘Zoologo-parazitologicheskie aspekty adaptat͡siĭ cheloveka k uslovii͡am Severa’, 26 February 1979, NCA, R-56/3/3; V. I. Khasnulin, ‘Vyi͡asnenie roli klimato-geograficheskikh faktorov v prot͡sesse adaptat͡sii i v vozniknovenii ri͡ada zabolevaniĭ v uslovii͡akh Zapoli͡ar'i͡a’, 1980, NCA, R-56/3/4; V.I. Khasnulin, ‘Vyi͡avlenie spet͡sificheskikh osobennosteĭ vozniknovenii͡a i techenii͡a ostrykh i khronicheskikh infekt͡sionnykh zabolevaniĭ v sisteme organov dykhanii͡a u korennogo i prishlogo naselenii͡a Kraĭnego Severa … ’, 14 May 1979, NCA, R-56/3/5; V.N. Nikolaev, et al. Vlii͡anie geofizicheskikh i meteorologicheskikh faktorov vneshneĭ sredy na organizm cheloveka v uslovii͡akh Zapadnoĭ Sibiri (programma Globėks-80), 1980, NCA, R-56/3/6.
95 Helen Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870–1950 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 171.
96 V.I. Khasnulin, ‘Vyi͡avlenie spet͡sificheskikh osobennosteĭ vozniknovenii͡a i techenii͡a ostrykh i khronicheskikh infekt͡sionnykh zabolevaniĭ v sisteme organov dykhanii͡a u korennogo i prishlogo naselenii͡a Kraĭnego Severa … ’, 14 May 1979, NCA, R-56/3/5; V.N. Nikolaev, et al. Vlii͡anie geofizicheskikh i meteorologicheskikh faktorov vneshneĭ sredy na organizm cheloveka v uslovii͡akh Zapadnoĭ Sibiri (programma Globėks-80), 1980, NCA, R-56/3/6.
97 Kaznacheev; Vlail’ P. Kaznacheev and Sergeĭ V. Kaznacheev, ‘Problemy adptat͡sii i konstitut͡sii cheloveka na Kraĭne Severe’, in Klinicheskie aspekty poli͡arnoĭ medit͡siny, ed. Vlail’ P. Kaznacheev (Moscow: Medit͡sina, 1986), 10–15 and other works.
98 Kaznacheev, Sovremennye aspekty adaptat͡sii, 145.
99 While building on the legacy of Grigoriy Danishevskiy, Vlail’ Kaznacheev took acclimatization studies in new directions. He re-designated Grigoriy Danishevskiy’s disadaptational meteoneuroses as ‘polar tension syndrome’ (sindrom poli͡arnogo napri͡azhenii͡a). By this term, Vlail’ Kaznacheev referred to a combination of geophysical, climatic, corporeal, and psychophysiological factors that affected migrants from non-Arctic regions.
100 Similar ideas were proposed in the 1930s, but they did not receive much enthusiasm from Soviet citizens at that time. See A. Bliumenfelʹd, ‘Zapoli͡arnyĭ kurort (lechebnai͡a arkticheskai͡a problema)’, Vestnik znanii͡a, no. 1 (1934): 37–43. This approach was repeated in the 1960s and was considered to be one of the most promising methods for acclimatizing settlers in the North. See Arnol’di, Akklimatizat͡sii͡a cheloveka na severe i i͡uge.
101 In the following publications, he openly acknowledges the impossibility of applying Indigenous knowledge to the development of the Siberian acclimatization project, Kaznacheev, Sovremennye aspekty adaptat͡sii, 26; Vlail’ P. Kaznacheev and Vladimir M. Strigin, Problema adaptat͡sii cheloveka. Nekotorye itogi i perspektivy issledovaniĭ (Novosibirsk: Sovetskai͡a Sibir’, 1978), 26.
102 See Iosif V. Davydov, Triumf i tragedii͡a sovetskoĭ kosmonavtiki. Glazami ispytateli͡a (Moscow: Globus, 2000).
103 See Vasiliy V. Boriskin, Zhiznʹ cheloveka v Arktike i Antarktike (Leningrad: Medit͡sina, 1973); Aleksandr L. Matusov, Uslovii͡a zhizni i sostoi͡anie zdorovʹi͡a uchastnikov poli͡arnykh ėkspedit͡siĭ (Leningrad: Gidrometeoizdat, 1979).
104 Correspondence between Vlail’ P. Kaznacheev and Yuri I. Borodin, 1986, GANO R-2063/1/858.
105 The last experiment Vlail’ Kaznacheev conducted was with a pseudo-scientific device also known as the Kozyrev mirrors. See: Prostranstvo Kozyreva, Documentary, 2001, https://youtu.be/l4aL--OG880. interestingly, the history of those experiments were known even to the Central Intelligence Agency (or CIA): CIA 24090-91JUL22/17.06.01/A10. See also Lauren Aratani, ‘CIA File on Russian ESP Experiments Released – but You Knew That, Didn’t You?’, The Guardian, January 27, 2021, sec. US news, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/27/russian-esp-experiments-cia-memo.
106 See some rare publications of modern scholars in Russia: Yuri G. Solonin and Evgeniy R. Boyko, ‘Mediko-fiziologicheskie aspekty zhiznedei͡atelʹnosti v Arktike’, Arktika: ėkologii͡a i ėkonomika 1, no. 17 (2015): 70–5.
107 See Alla Bolotova and Florian Stammler, ‘How the North Became Home: Attachment to Place among Industrial Migrants in Murmansk Region’, in Migration in the Circumpolar North: New Concepts and Patterns, eds. Chris Southcott and Lee Huskey (Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press and University of Alberta, 2010), 193–220.
108 Thompson, Settlers on the Edge.
109 Field ethnographers document intricate models of economic exchanges between shift workers and Indigenous communities: Elena Liarskaya, ‘“Where Do You Get Fish?”: Practices of Individual Supplies in Yamal as an Indicator of Social Processes’, Sibirica 16, no. 3 (December 1, 2017): 124–49, https://doi.org/10.3167/sib.2017.160306; Dmitry V. Arzyutov, ‘Oleni i/ili benzin: ėsse ob obmenakh v severo-i͡amal’skoĭ tundre’, in Sot͡sial’nye otnoshenii͡a v istoriko-kul’turnom landshafte Sibiri, ed. Vladimir N. Davydov (Saint Petersburg: MAĖ RAN, 2017), 314–48.
110 Rouillard, ‘Foreign Bodies in the Russian North’.