Vadim Turaev, Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology of the Peoples of the Far East, FEB RAS, Vladivostok, Russia.
The paper examines the features of the transformation of the hunting industry of the indigenous peoples of the Far East during the formation of market economy. The author analyzes the transition process of hunting from traditional economy, as it was during the years of Soviet power, into private enterprise. The regional features of this process, the specifics of hunting in new conditions, the current state of hunting farms of various organizational and legal forms, and the problems faced by the indigenous peoples are shown. As a result of ill-conceived reform, hunting enterprises ceased to exist, the number of professional hunters and the volume of financing decreased, illegal hunting increased, many indigenous hunters lost their field areas, and hunting industry was no longer perceived as a branch of material production together with its social and economic issues. The paper evaluates modern Russian legislation in the field of hunting as well as the provisions of the law “On Hunting and Preservation of Hunting Resources” passed by the State Duma in 2009. Based on the analysis, it was concluded that due to the reforms the hunting activities as a branch of the traditional economy of the indigenous peoples became impossible. The new hunting conditions conflict with the vital needs of the indigenous peoples and deprive their ability to carry out traditional economic activity in the field of hunting.
Keywords: indigenous peoples, the Far East, hunting farm, federal law “On Hunting and Preservation of Hunting Resources”.

Lidiya Fetisova, Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology of the Peoples of the Far East, FEB RAS, Vladivostok, Russia. E-mail: lefet@yandex.ru.
The paper is devoted to the folklore of the Evenks of the Amur-Sakhalin region, which are a part of the Far Eastern Evenks. This part of the Evenk ethnic group was singled out by V.A. Turaev as a separate object of research. Following his concept, the author of this paper considered the regional specific character of the Evenk epic heritage, which deep layers go back to the mythology of the common Ural-Altaic substrate. The system of images and the main motives are based on the mythological perception of reality, which is characteristic of archaic forms of artistic creativity of the peoples of the world. The study showed that in general terms the Evenk heroic epics has similarities with the epic traditions of not only closely related (Tungus-Manchu peoples), but also unrelated groups (Yakuts, Nivkhs, Russians). The use of constant mythopoetic formulas contributed to the preservation of the connection with the general Evenk folklore which led to the strengthening of ethnic self-consciousness. At the same time, it was noted that the oral tradition of the Amur Region is characterized by special productivity and the ability to self-development. This is proved by the texts recorded in the second half of the 20th century. In the heroic epic of the Amur Evenks the tendency to cycle the plots related to the activities of the most popular characters became more popular. Using traditional plots and images, the narrators created new versions of popular texts that reflected the transformation of folklore thinking generated by changes in modern reality. The peculiar epic folklore of the Amur-Sakhalin Region is their contribution to the Evenk spiritual culture.
Keywords: Far Eastern Evenks, Amur-Sakhalin Region, mythopoetic heritage, epic folklore, culture interaction, transformation of traditions.

Elena Maklashova, Institute for Humanities Research and Indigenous Studies of the North, SB RAS, Yakutsk, Russia. E-mail: maklashova@mail.ru.
The paper is devoted to the establishment and definition of the significance of ethnocultural factors in modern conditions for the indigenous peoples of the North of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The results of the qualitative and quantitative sociological studies in the places of traditional living and economic activity of the indigenous peoples of the North of the Republic of Sakha in 2021 are shown. Basing on the results of previous mass surveys of the population of Yakutia, the dynamics of the change of ethnic identity among indigenous peoples is defined and shows that this factor has become more important for them. The significance of such ethnocultural factors as earth and nature, reindeer husbandry, national traditions and customs influence the adaptation and social well-being of the indigenous peoples of the North of the Republic of Sakha. The analysis of life activities of the Evenks of South Yakutia allows to conclude that the level of support and preservation of ethnocultural factors for the indigenous peoples of the North determines the strategies of their adaptation in modern conditions. The in-depth interviews set the models of living space of the indigenous peoples of the North of the Republic of Sakha where reindeer herding is a dominant type of the economic activity and the base of the traditional lifestyle. The author concludes that ethnocultural factors must be taken into consideration for analyzing the social well-being of the indigenous peoples of Russia as well as for ethnological monitoring of the sustainable development of the indigenous peoples of the North in Yakutia.
Keywords: Evenks, indigenous peoples of the North, ethnocultural markers, reindeer husbandry, ethnic identity, adaptation, social well-being, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

Liudmila Khakhovskaya, North-East Interdisciplinary Scientific Research Institute n.a. N.A. Shilo, Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (NEISRI FEB RAS), Magadan, Russia. E-mail: hahovskaya@mail.ru.
The author traces the dynamics of the administrative and territorial division of the region during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, reveals the ratio of ethnospecific and general social forms. The methodological approach is based on some aspects of the theories by M. Foucault, J. Deleuze and F. Guattari, and M. Archer. The author believes that the manifestations of ethnicity at the grassroots level are conditioned and limited by the framework of the established structures. The dominant power plays a leading role in creating a social and administrative space, while intra-ethnic movements master already equipped institutions and infrastructures. During the initial Soviet period, the administrative and territorial arrangement of the Far North-East had ethno-supporting character (the creation of ethnically marked districts). The author defines this process as the territorialization of ethnicity. The transition from ethno-specific to general social forms of administrative and territorial structure occurred later. The current processes of migration, economic development, and interaction of local authorities played a major role. In the Okhotsk-Kolyma Region the central government abandoned the ethnic principle of zoning due to the intensive development of gold deposits. In general, the Soviet era is characterized by a strong vertical transformation of the administrative and territorial structure. During perestroika, the ethnic factor in public and everyday life intensified. The representatives of local administrative elites, ethnic activists and ordinary residents of Chukotka launched a struggle to separate the Chukotka National District from the Magadan Region. The author sees the elements of the horizontal transformation of ethnic processes in this social movement as the central bodies reacted to the local demands. In recent decades, ethnic activists have been striving to include the city of Magadan in the list of areas of compact residence of native population. This social movement is an example of a truly horizontal transformation of the administrative and territorial system. The author indicates this social shift as a transition from the territorialization of ethnicity to the ethnicization of territories.
Keywords: indigenous peoples of the North, Okhotsk-Kolyma Region, Okhotsk-Evensky District, Chukotka District, Magadan Region, ethnic transformations, autonomy, places of compact residence, social movements.

Natalya Novikova, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. E-mail: natinovikova@gmail.com.
The paper is devoted to the analysis of regional identity based on field studies of the social aspects of two types of business on Sakhalin: the activities of an oil company and indigenous entrepreneurship. The basis for writing the paper was the author’s field materials collected on Sakhalin between 2000 and 2019 as well as the materials from corporate surveys of the international oil company Sakhalin Energy. As a main research issue, the role of social policy of the state and business for the ontological definition of identity at the individual and collective level is highlighted. Reduction of fish resources requires a change in the organization of work increasing its manufacturability and efficiency. One of the ways out of this critical situation was the development of aboriginal entrepreneurship, which is aimed primarily not at making a profit but at solving social problems. It is in this area that successful alliances with both Russians and Sakhalin Koreans are created in the first place. The transformations of aboriginal identity under the influence of legal, social, and cultural processes in the region are considered. In recent years, the number of local workers has been growing in the international oil company Sakhalin Energy. The paper analyzes the materials of corporate surveys that indicate the formation of their regional identity. Cultural, ethnic, professional, and organizational interactions are regarded as socially oriented leading to the formation of the island Sakhalin identity.
Keywords: Sakhalin, island identity, socially responsible business, oil company, aboriginal entrepreneurship, indigenous peoples of the North, Koreans.

Yulia Din, Sakhalin Regional Museum, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia. E-mail: din.iuliia@gmail.com.
The paper is devoted to the topical issue of the post-war history of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands — the circumstances of the departure or repatriation of one of the indigenous peoples — the Sakhalin Ainu. They lived on the islands for centuries, during the period of Japanese rule they underwent strong Japanization; however, they retained their culture, language, and ideas about their people. After World War II and the transition of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands from Japan to the Soviet Union, they could become one of the Soviet peoples possibly getting a new impetus for development. However, the Soviet administration, initially determined to preserve the Ainu in South Sakhalin, eventually changed its opinion on this issue. Almost all Sakhalin Ainu left the island to Hokkaido with the Japanese. Historians are still not sure of the reasons for this event due to the impossibility of fully studying the sources associated with Soviet policy in relation to the Sakhalin Ainu. Nevertheless, already now the paper raises important research questions if it is possible to call the departure of the Ainu as “repatriation”, how the policy of the Soviet authorities toward the Ainu changed, and if it is possible to identify the reasons why the Ainu no longer live on Sakhalin.
Keywords: repatriation, World War II, Ainu, Karafuto, civil administration of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

Vitaliy Boldyrev, Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology of the Peoples of the Far East, FEB RAS, Vladivostok, Russia. E-mail: boldyrev89@list.ru.
The paper is devoted to the problem of indigenous peoples’ health in the Canadian North. Due to the absence of the common recording system of medical and social parameters, the problem is reconstructed as a network of interrelated aspects and issues. In accordance with the official Canadian concept of health, three main aspects of the negative influence on the health of indigenous peoples are distinguished: medical, psychological and daily, and social. The emergence of mining companies in the North led to lifestyle changes, intensive spread of bad habits, transformation of everyday life cycles, and change of eating habits. A low hygienic culture, deprivation of usual life environment, absence of long-term social policy taking into consideration the interests of indigenous peoples led to the spread of infections, social deviations, and growth of crime. The issues aggravating the situation are analysed: the northern areas of several provinces suffer from the shortage of medical staff; the federal government does not provide regular housing policy. As a result, indigenous villages, built in the European way, suffer from overpopulation. The encouragement of self-independence of the territories brought to the fact that the Nunavut’s government revenue depended on tobacco sales. At the same time, indigenous peoples don’t have very many instruments against this negative influence: correspondence, common self-government, rejection of integration into the society of migrants, and household adaptation.
Keywords: Canada, the North, aboriginal population, health, healthcare, society, governing, mining industry.

Dmitrii Likharev, Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, Russia. E-mail: liharev.dv@dvfu.ru.
The paper contains the analysis of the Soviet and Russian historiography of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty of 1905. The author studied the works of Russian historians in terms of relevance, methodology, concepts, and sources. Three stages are distinguished in the evolution of historiography: the first period between 1940 and the 1950s, the late Soviet period, and the contemporary period between 1990 and the 2010s. Distinctions between these stages can be found in the realm of methodology. Orthodox Marxism considers history as a social and economic process predetermined by objective laws independent of human will and consciousness. Thus, between 1940 and the 1950s, Soviet historians tried to consider peace negotiations in Portsmouth in the broadest international context. Such approach implicated that political leaders and delegates had to act within certain limits. In fact, it did not leave them room for choice. Gradual withdrawal from Marxist methodological paradigm helped to switch attention of historians to the role of the human factor in negotiations and gave opportunity for discussing alternatives of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty. Nowadays, there are three points of view on the Portsmouth Peace in modern Russian historiography: the concepts developed by A.V. Ignatiev, I.V. Lukoyanov and V.V. Noskov. The author claims that methodological conservatism of diplomatic history is related to the object and subject of studies.
Keywords: historiography, sources, methodology, Portsmouth peace, Russo-Japanese war.

Angelina Vashchuk, Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology of the Peoples of the Far East, FEB RAS, Vladivostok, Russia. E-mail: va_lina@mail.ru.
Svetlana Kovalenko, Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology of the Peoples of the Far East, FEB RAS, Vladivostok, Russia. E-mail: ostina@list.ru.
This paper examines the formation of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation during the creation of the post-Soviet Russian statehood using the example of Chukotka. The novelty of the research is based not only on the analysis of the events of the Chukchi political history in the 1990s of the twentieth century in terms of the general context of the “parade of sovereignties” but also the establishment of factors that influenced the specifics of raising the political status of Chukotka. The analysis of events is considered within the framework of the synthetic methodological base: through the retrospective historical method using the elements of political regionalism and the theory of “the challenge of the Center — the response of the territory”. There are two main factors, which affected the sovereignty in the early 1990s: the Soviet management legacy when Chukotka was a part of the Magadan Region for a long time, and the concept of revival of the indigenous minorities of the North. The authors came to several conclusions. The political controversy of the emerging local elite with the Magadan leadership and the litigation at the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation were among the peculiarities of Chukotka’s acquisition of the status of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation. Another circumstance that forced the Center to support the Chukchi deputies was the uncertainty factor in the behavior of Chukotka politicians in relation to the State Committee on the State of Emergency. In the context of radical and liberal economic reforms, the importance of raising the political status of the Chukotka Autonomous Area, taking into account the interests of the indigenous peoples of the North, to the level of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation didn’t influence significantly the development of the territory until the late 1990s of the twentieth century but became the instrument in regulating relations between Russian authorities and the emerging new territorial and national elite. The process of the formation of new power structures on the periphery of Russia dragged out in time which affected the effectiveness of management and economic development of the Chukotka Autonomous Area.
Keywords: Chukotka, political process, history of Russia, national policy, ethnopolitical elite, sovereignty.

Oksana Fedirko, Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology of the Peoples of the Far East, FEB RAS, Vladivostok, Russia. E-mail: fedirko@ihaefe.ru
The paper is devoted to the study of newspaper publications as a historical source on the religious life in the post-Soviet Far East of Russia. The genres of newspaper publications covering religious topics on the pages of the Far Eastern press and their importance are considered. The following genres of texts were distinguished: informative, analytical, and literary and journalistic (the latter are not much presented). It is noted that such newspaper publications have the following features: they are accessible and have a large audience reach, allow to analyze the need of the population in the coverage of events and phenomena in the religious life of the region, replenish lost documents, and inform the researcher about the presence of documentary primary sources by filling in the research gaps. It is concluded that newspaper publications can only act as a secondary source because the absence of documents’ references narrows their scientific use. The presented information is cut off from the record work of religious associations, taken out of context, fragmented, and poorly detailed. In this regard, the information contained in the texts of newspapers needs to be verified, clarified, and compared with the data from other sources. However, this does not reduce the importance of newspaper publications in the process of reconstructing the religious life of the society of the Far East in the 1990s.
Keywords: historical source, newspaper, publications, genre, religion, Far East, society, politics.

Svetlana Dudarenok, Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology of the Peoples of the Far East, FEB RAS, Vladivostok. Russia. E-mail: dudarenoksv@gmail.com.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the place and role of the Protestant press in the media space of the Russian Far East. Religious journalism, which developed in the early 1990s and had two main directions — secular and confessional — played a significant role in the revival of religious life in the Russian Far East, in the promotion of religious values and the formation of church institutions. The chronological framework of the research covers the period between the 1990s and the early 2000s. The main sources are the Protestant periodicals and materials of the congresses of the Evangelical churches of the Primorye Region that existed on the territory of the Russian Far East between the 1990s and the early 2000s. The work is based on a complex, systemic-historical approach; the main methods of the research were the comparative-historical method and the method of scientific description. Material and moral assistance of foreign missionaries and missionary organizations to local Protestant communities (Baptists, Evangelical Christians, Christians of the Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals) and Seven-day Adventists) contributed to the fact that Far Eastern Protestants were able not only to begin mass evangelization of the population of the Far East but also to achieve significant success overtaking the number of religious communities of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1990s. The revival of Protestant denominations in the Russian Far East in the 1990s brought to life not only the growth of religious communities and believers but also the creation of their own confessional media, primarily newspapers, which significantly helped to conduct evangelistic programs. In the 1990s and the 2000s, Protestant churches of the Russian Far East sought to create interunion and interfaith newspapers, which set out the Christian (biblical) point of view outside the confessional affiliation. They gave priority to the spiritual and moral revival of man and society, legal and socio-cultural issues, church histories, and charitable and merciful activities of evangelical believers.
Keywords: Russian Far East, mass media, religious organizations, evangelical believers, religious journalism, confessional press, Protestant newspapers.

Vitaliy Zelyak, Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk, Russia. E-mail: Zelyak75@mail.ru.
This paper is a review of the collection of scientific papers “Reforms from the Late 20th until the Early 21st Centuries in the Post-Soviet Space: A Regional Aspect” (Vladivostok, 2020). The collection includes an analytical review of various aspects of the reform process from the late 20th until the early 21st centuries in the Russian regions and in some republics that were formerly part of the USSR. Five thematic units of this publication are analyzed: “Political transformations in the post-Soviet space in the regional dimension”, “Reforms and problems of regional development”, “Reforms and social transformations”, “Reforms and religion in the post-Soviet space”, “Education and youth in the context of Russian reforms”. As a result of a critical review, the author concludes the relevance, scientific novelty, and great practical significance of this work. The goal set by the editorial board — to identify the concepts and problems of the reforms between the 1990s and the 2000s by historians, political scientists, philosophers, and lawyers — has been achieved. The work defines the current historical problems from the late 19th until the early 20th centuries and the concepts that modern humanitarians use to cover them. In these five thematic units, the editorial board emphasized only the general outlines of the discussion; otherwise, the choice of research issues was left to the researchers. It is very valuable that the authors carefully studied the evolution of legislation of the issues and used highly professional heuristic possibilities of historical and legal as well as historical and comparative methods.
Keywords: review, Russian historiography, post-Soviet period, radical liberal reforms, Russian’s Far East.