Nyurba and Life in the Yakutia

Nyurba:
Again, I apologize for my lengthy disappearance. I’ve moved away from the big city and have much less regular internet access. You can take the next few weeks to read the new posts, since it will probably be a little while until I can post again :). However, I have been writing, so there’s quite a bit all at once.
Anyway, I’m now in a small town, technically called a city, Nyurba. The population is about 10,000 and it is the administrative center of the Nyurba ulus (or “county). The town is situated on the banks of the river, Viliui, which itself flows into the Lena a few hundred kilometers downstream. Bridges are apparently really difficult and/or expensive to build in permafrost regions, making pan-river development more or less impossible. As a result, the entire city is located on just one bank. To look over the river (about 500 meters wide), you see only forest as far as the eye can see on the other side. In actuality, there’s quite a lot going on over there, between potato growing, hay fields, horses and cows roaming and hunting, but if you don’t know where to look it seems like just wild forest. In the winter, its easy to get to the other side—just walk or drive over the ice-covered river. In the summer, the only way is by boat. In the late spring and fall, when the ice isn’t solid enough to cross, people simply don’t.
At the moment there isn’t a single paved road in the town of Nyurba, although there are rumors that the main street may be paved sometime in the coming years. This is a much awaited event as complaining about the roads is a favorite topic of conversation. Indeed, in the springtime, as the snow and ice melts, the roads become unbearably muddy, whole lakes developing in the middle of the road. Many walk around in galoshes, bringing their shoes with them to work and to school. In the summer, when the roads dry, they become dusty, dirt filling the air with every gust of wind. The roads are best in the winter, covered with snow so that the ever-present trash is hidden and then dirt and mud trapped beneath the white blanket. Furthermore, few cars actually continue driving all winter since the gasoline freezes without a heated garage, a luxury few find particularly useful in this small town.
Most of the buildings in the town are made of wood, but there are a few more solid structures in the town center, the most prominent of which is the offices of ALROSA-Nyurba, the regional branch of the state-owned diamond industry, ALROSA— “Almazii-Rossiya-Sakha” (almazii=un-cut diamonds). There’s also the new hospital, and a building housing Schools number 2 and 3, both built with funds from ALROSA. Older prominent structures, include School number 1, city government, and the House of Culture, the latter of which was recently refurbished with funds from ALROSA. Not surprisingly, the new city logo for Nyurba includes the ALROSA logo. I come back to the diamond industry in a later post.
Other than the above listed buildings, the city is pretty much entirely wooden. This is rather unfortunate because the wooden buildings quickly weather in the harsh climate and even relatively new structures end up looking ancient. The local college, for instance is just 10 or so years old, but is already tilting due to the permafrost shifting underneath it. Walking through the corridors on the second floor, makes you feel a little like Alice in Wonderland as the floor seems to wave up and down. In the city center, there are a few stores and other public buildings lining the two main streets. Buses run down these two streets, carrying passengers in and out from surrounding villages and also from one side of the city to the other. Fortunately, it’s possible to walk almost anywhere you want to go in half an hour since the buses take a break at lunch time and don’t run past 7 in the evening.
As far as residential buildings go, there are both houses and apartment buildings. The apartment buildings are small, typically two-story structures, also made of wood. These often will have something that approximates indoor plumbing so that the residents don’t have to use outhouses. But the houses all lack indoor plumbing, even those of the wealthier residents.
Life without indoor Plumbing:
How, you might ask, do people get along without indoor plumbing? It is a bit of a pain, but honestly you get used to it after a while. The worst thing is the rarity of bathing oneself—once a week, minimum. Other than that, its surprisingly easy to get used to. The toilet is in a little wooden structure, a little ways from the house—you just have to put on a coat and hat to go out. Of course, in the winter this can be pretty miserable, but even then, you just run out and back in so that the cold doesn’t get inside of you. To wash hands, they place a bucket with a spigot-like thing over a sink. To wash dishes, they simply use a tub of soapy water. They are also pretty sparing in their use of dishes so that there is rarely an extensive bulid-up of dishes. For many meals, the dishes consist of a cup and a fork for everyone and the pan of food (more often than not meat and potatoes) is put in the center of the table and everyone just digs in. Despite its offense to Euro-American germophobia, it certainly makes the clean-up afterwards much easier—and I don’t think people here are sick any more often than they are in the US.
Slightly more complicated, is washing clothes. The family I’m staying with (the Nikolaevs—relatives of my friend Sardana, who first introduced me to Yakutia when we met at the University of Pittsburgh) does have a washing machine. How common this is, I don’t know. But, to use the washing machine, they simply pour the water in at the appropriate moments themselves and it works just fine. They usually reuse the same water for a number of loads, making it necessary to wash whites first, then progressively darker loads.
Most complicated is bathing. There are no showers here. From what I understand, people who don’t have their own “banya” (sauna-like bath house), go to the public baths—but I haven’t encountered this personally, so I can’t say for sure. Others just bathe with a tub of water, in their house. Fortunately, I live with a family who does have a banya. It’s a little wooden structure that is just barely too small for me to stand up straight in (this seems to be a constant problem for me here, as everything was made for people who are shorter than me). Its heated so that you sweat considerable while in it—the sweating is part of the cleansing process, considered very healthy. There is a barrel of cold water and a basin of really really hot water (sitting on top of the furnace). To bathe, you mix the cold water in a tub with the hot water so that it’s a good temperature and use a wash cloth to clean yourself. Being a separate bathhouse, you just let the water fall to the ground so that its relatively easy and pleasant to bathe. The whole experience is really the highlight of my week, to tell you the truth. Not only do I come out clean, but it’s also relaxing and rejuvenating, just like sitting in a sauna.

Sakha Pastoralism:
Sakha traditionally speaking are horse and cattle pastoralists, which means that in prerevolutionary times, they lived primarily off of horses and cows. To this day, Sakha living in villages almost all keep horse and/or cattle. And many living in small cities, such as Nyurba also keep horse or cattle. They eat the meat and drink the milk of both horses and cows. Horse meat is actually quite healthy. Apparently, the Japanese import rather large quantities of horse meat from Yakutia for medicinal purposes. From fermented horse milk, they make kumiss, the Yakut national drink, which is used especially for ceremonial purposes and given to people when they are sick as it is rather expensive to produce—horses produce quite small amounts of milk in comparison to cows.
Both horses and cattle are special breeds, adapted to life in the severe climate of Siberia. Both the horses and the cows are small and thick, in comparison with European horses and cows. The horse hair is unique in that it is hollow, like a pipe, providing extra insulation in the winter time, but allowing them to breathe in the warmest days of the summer when temperatures can get above 90 degrees F. The horses also are able to dig under the snow to find grasses and other foods, so that they feed themselves all winter. With these adaptations, the horses need almost no maintenance in the wintertime and are let to roam freely around the pastures and forests near the villages. The cows require significantly more maintenance than do the horses but have their own adaptations, like thick coats of hair and small height that helps them to endure the cold better.
Despite these abilities, pure Sakha horses and cattle are relatively rare nowadays as the Soviets mixed them with European breeds in order to increase milk production. This of course also severely decreased their ability to survive without constant maintenance on the part of the keepers. Today, great efforts are made to preserve the purity of those few unmixed herds and furthermore to increase the quantity of such herds.
Many people today will keep horses and hold another job quite easily. However, cow farming, even with real Yakut cows, is more of a full time job. Cows can’t live on their own through the harsh winters and so are typically kept in a small structure all winter, where they are fed hay. Traditionally, this structure was right next to the house, and sometimes people lived together with their cows—this way they could share heat with the animals and spare the firewood. The hay is grown during the summer time, traditionally through slash and burn methods. A swath of land would be cut or burned to grow hay. In late July and August, the hay is harvested—the busiest time of the year when whole villages go out for the hay cutting. On bigger farms this is done mechanically, but on many smaller farms, the cutting is all still done by hand with scythes. Those who complained about having to mow their lawn—imagine what it must be like for Sakha teenagers (and adults) who have to go out to the fields and cut hay. During the Soviet period, all the young people in Nyurba were expected to work at least 2 summers on the state farm, cutting and gathering hay.
In prerevolutionary times, the cow farming cycle required regular movement. Sakha were not completely “nomads” in the sense of constantly moving, but rather “transhumant,” meaning they moved seasonally—winter dwellings were typically in places sheltered from the wind, made of wood, mud, grasses, and manure, while summer dwellings were in clearings good for growing hay and looked more like teepees, made from poles and animals skins. Nowadays, of course, residences are permanent and most live in wooden cottages in the Russian style that are nowhere near as effective for protection from the climate.
In the present day, most people in Nyurba at least also have gardens, including all-too-necessary greenhouses, near their house and many also have a larger field outside the town borders where they grow potatoes. Agriculture in Yakutia only started with the arrival of the Russians, and Yakut people came to widely practice agriculture and horticulture only in the 18th and 19th centuries. Until then, Sakha people got flour and other agricultural products only through trading with the Russians and so lived almost entirely off meat and milk products. As a result, in traditional Sakha cuisine, they make extensive use of every part of the animal, since many necessary vitamins and minerals can be obtained from the liver, intestines and other parts that make most Euro-Americans cringe.

Fishing, hunting and gathering:
Fishing, hunting and gathering are also a crucial part of Sakha lifestyle, both historically and today. As one man told me the other day, almost all Yakut men consider themselves hunters and when hunting season starts, the villages empty of adult men, who all disappear into the forests. Most commonly hunted are duck, rabbits, and other small game. Next are moose and wild deer/reindeer. Expert hunters will even hunt bears. Professional hunters (that is, people who are hunters by profession) hunt fur-bearing animals—sable, foxes, muskrat and others—following extremely strict laws that protect these animals from the over-harvesting that just about wiped them out in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Up until the mid-19th Century, all “aliens”, that is non-Slavs in the Russian Empire, among whom of course were Sakha, were required to pay tribute, or “iasak” in the form of expensive furs. Local officials, governing far from the oversight of the central government, often ran their regions like little fiefdoms, demanding enormous quantities of furs, only a portion of which they passed on to the tsar, keeping the rest for their own profit. As such, some animals, e.g. sable, were hunted almost to extinction throughout Siberia. Today, Sakha largely import their furs elsewhere. However, with strict protections in place, many animals are starting to revive, local fur production is growing again, and Sakha are able to earn a living from hunting.
Fishing is also an important source of food, especially vitamins, for Sakha. “Stroganina” or frozen raw fish, sliced in thin strips is considered a national dish and a delicacy. Indeed, made from good “chir” (a kind of white fish) it’s quite tasty. The best fish is found in the north in significant numbers, although sometimes in the central regions they can be caught as well: sturgeon, burbot (?), and others that I can’t find an English translation for. More common is “karas” (translated in my dictionary as “European carp”), which is a small, bony yet tasty fish, often fried. People fish all year round here, drilling holes in the ice during winter, and taking big nets out onto the river in the summer time. I’m learning words in Yakut language for all the different kinds of nets that they use, that I wouldn’t have the first clue how to translate into English.
Finally, where fishing and hunting is largely a male pursuit here, berry and mushroom gathering is the classic female summer activity. They say that Sakha people didn’t even gather mushrooms until the 19th Century when Russian habits came to be more widespread, and some even say that berry gathering was not so popular either before then. Now, however, both are significant additions to the regular diet. Beginning with the rains in June, mushrooms start popping up—they usually eat these immediately rather than canning and preserving them. Then, beginning in July, wild strawberries appear—these are the tastiest (you don’t even need sugar for the jam), but also are the hardest to gather, necessitating hours of searching through bushes, plucking one at a time, just to get a single bucketful. Later in the summer, red currants, cowberries(?)-“brusnika”, and black currants ripen--these are gathered in large quantities, made into jam reserves that typically last all winter long.

Industry and Ecology:
I was speaking with one older Sakha man today (who, incidentally, proudly declared himself a devoted communist), and was telling him about my interests, my research. I mentioned I was interested in the influence of industrial development in the region—his response was to immediately start talking about the disappearance of the animals and fish. For many Yakut, this is what the “influence” of industry in the region means. Ask any older Sakha here and they will tell you that in their youth, the woods were full of ducks and rabbits, the rivers full of fish—you only had to walk to the edge of the forest and you’d find plenty. Now, you have to go all the way to the river “Markha”—a good half-days walk, where the water is still clean and the woods are less polluted to find anything worthwhile. It’s hard of course, to be certain exactly what caused this, but if you ask Nyurba residents, almost all blame industrial development.
The most important industry in the region is the diamond industry. As I noted in my first post, Yakutia’s diamond industry produces almost 100% of Russia’s and 25% of the world’s diamonds, making it an extraordinarily lucrative enterprise. At the moment, it’s almost entirely state-owned, controlled largely by the federal government, although they have plans to sell-off portions of the company in the near future. Diamonds were discovered in the 1950’s, along the basin of the Viliui river, which runs through Nyurba. Since then, the incidence of cancer in the region has risen considerably, birth defects and other problems have increased as well. The significant presence of heavy metals in the water, by-products from the mines, is a well-known fact to all and is widely thought to be the cause of many health problems and the disappearance of fish and other animals from the region. It’s because of this that people have to make their way to the nearby river to find “clean” water.
Of course, however, one of the central aspects of my own research, is that 10 years ago, they found diamonds on one of the tributaries flowing into the Markha, and have started intensive mining there. As of yet, significant pollutants have not yet reached the lower Markha, but most Nyurba residents I’ve spoken with have low expectations for the future environmental health of the river. At the same time, it’s incredible the amount of attention paid in the media and in the press-releases from ALROSA to the issue of ecological security. In reading through old newspapers, almost every article pertaining to the company, mentions the significant role it is playing in the region’s “program for economic and social development,” a large portion of which includes environmental protection. As such, it’s clear that the company is aware of the problem. What precisely they are doing about it, however, is less clear—but it is difficult to say that they are doing nothing since I don’t have any strong evidence either way. Just the assertions of the company on the one hand and the assertions of friends and acquaintances on the other.