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SUMMARY:The Fractured North: International Research and People in the Russ
 ian Arctic - Piers Vitebsky (University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20250304T163000Z
DTEND:20250304T180000Z
UID:TALK222940@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:48016
DESCRIPTION:“... Let the climate here be determined by the warm Gulf Str
 eam of the European process and not by the Polar chill of accumulated susp
 icions and prejudices. Let us prevent the North of the planet from ever ag
 ain becoming an arena of war\, by forming there a genuine zone of peace an
 d fruitful cooperation.” (Mikhail Gorbachev’s “Murmansk speech”\, 
 October 1987)\n\nFrom the 1920s to the 1980s\, anthropology and related so
 cial science in the Russian and non-Russian Arctic developed in separate w
 orlds\, pursuing quite different theoretical questions and ideological age
 ndas. Siberia was virtually closed to non-Soviet researchers\, and Soviet 
 researchers very rarely reached other parts of the Arctic.\n\nGorbachev’
 s astounding opening up of the Soviet Union suddenly made the obscure dete
 ctive work of Western Kremlinologists obsolete and uninteresting. Politica
 l science careers based on grimness were washed away in a wave of hope. No
 w the grimness is back\, but the detective work is more nuanced. For nearl
 y forty years\, foreign researchers and residents of the Russian Arctic ha
 ve shared lives and projects\, stayed in each other’s homes and mingled 
 with each other’s families\, reaching to the furthest\, most closed regi
 ons of Russia as never before.\n\nI shall explore the unique international
  role played in this process by Cambridge researchers\, largely through lo
 ng-term ethnographic fieldwork\; the impact of the new ice curtain which d
 escended in February 2022\; and possible futures as we wait for the next (
 possible) thaw.
LOCATION:Scott Polar Research Institute\, Lecture Theatre
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