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Book review. Krupnik Igor, Chlenov Michael. Yupik Transitions: Change and Survival at Bering Strait, 1900-1960. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2014 // Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore № 63, pp. 145-147
The fundamental treatise Yupik Transitions, written by Washington-based anthropologist Igor Krupnik and his Moscow coauthor anthropologist Michael Chlenov, is devoted to the history of the Asian Yupik society in the 20th century, more precisely 1900-1960. The book is mostly based on the research conducted by the authors in Soviet Chukotka between 1971 and 1990. Igor Krupnik and Michael Chlenov interviewed elders who remembered the 1910s-1950s. These informants had been actors and observers of crucial changes in coastal Chukotka. It is impossible to overestimate the value of the memories of these Yupik elders, enabling the anthropologists to reconstruct not only such historic events as the onset of collectivization, establishment of the Soviet socio-cultural system and relocations of the 1950s, but also the complicated cultural traits of a so-called contact-traditional society. An abundant collection of Yupik accounts gathered by Igor Krupnik was published in Russian in 2000[1]. Here the authors draw a fascinating picture of the pre-relocation society based on the interviews published in the former book.
[1] Igor Krupnik. Pust’ govoriat nashi stariki. Rasskazy aziatskikh eskimosov-yupik. Zapisi 1975–1987 gg. (‘Let Our Elders Speak. Stories of the Yupik Eskimo, 1975-1987’), Moscow, 2000.