NITs
"Chukotka"
The
Chukotka Affiliate of the
Northeastern
Interdisciplinary Scientific Research
Institute
of
the Far Eastern Branch
of
the Russian Academy of Sciences
NITs "Chukotka"
is a research institute located in Anadyr',
the capital city of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug (NITs is pronounced
"Neets"
-- it stands for Nauchno-Issledovatel'skii Tsentr, Scientific
Research
Center, which is an old name that persists in current usage). Up until
1992,
it was just an outpost of the research institute in Magadan, but when
Chukotka
gained its independence from Magadan Province that year, the
outpost became a full-fledged independent institute. Hard economic
times
have caused another reorganization, however, and as of 1998, NITs has
been
once again subsumed under the Magadan institute. It now has the
rather
cumbersome title of Chukotskii Filial Severo-Vostochnogo
Kompleksnogo
Nauchno-Issledovatel'skogo Instituta Dal'nego-Vostochnogo Otdeleniia
Rossisskoi
Akademii Nauk, which you see translated above. The current
Director
of NITs is Vladimir Savich Krivoshchekov (kree-va-SHOW-kof).
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Natural
sciences like geology, permafrost studies, botany,
and water ecosystems dominate the institute, but social sciences play
and
increasingly important role -- in the early 1990s, NITs added a
Laboratory
of Traditional Resource Management and Ethnosocial Research.The lab was
originally headed by Vladimir Mikhailovich Etylin (at right in the
photo), a Chukchi political and social activist with post-graduate
training in economics. Etylin left his position at the Institute in
2001, when he became a Deputy in the federal Duma.
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The research colleagues at the institute are suffering hard times along
with those at other academic institutions throughout Russia -- they are
paid
tiny salaries (which they often do not receive on time), there is
almost
no money for fieldwork or equipment, and the institute cannot attract
new
scholars to join them because people shy away from the economic
hardships
of the Russian North. There are some very bright scholars here,
however, and great potential for innovative research, given adequate
resources.
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Events at
NITs
Left:
An expedition
team about to head out for several weeks of fieldwork in the tundra in
the summer of 1997. From left to right are Oksana and Aleksei Galanin
(formerly of NITs)
and their young son Dima; Dave Mostoller and Lyn Gualtieri (American
geologists
from the University of Massachusetts), and Anna Belikovich (formerly of NITs).
Center: A seminar with NITs
graduate students in social
sciences
is held by two eminent Russian ethnographers, Nikolai Vakhtin and Igor
Krupnik,
who visited Anadyr' in the spring of 1996 for field work. Krupnik (far
right) is currently at the Smithsonian Institution's Arctic Studies Center, and Vakhtin (second
from right) is Rector of the European University in St. Petersburg,
and also a member of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian
Academy
of Sciences.
Right: A going-away party at
the
conclusion
of Krupnik's and Vakhtin's visit thrown by colleagues at NITs. On
the far right in that photo is Aleksandr Galanin, the former director
of
NITs, now at a research institute in Vladivostok.
Nadia
Vukvukai (at left in the photo) is a graduate student employed
at NITs, and currently serving as the institute's Scientific Secretary.
Nadia is an ethnographer
studying traditional Native clothing and spiritual culture; her mother
is an accomplished seamstress, and Nadia is practicing experimental
ethnography
by learning how to sew fur clothing as she studies it from a scholarly
perspective.
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All text
and photographs © 1997 Patty A. Gray.
Do not reproduce or use without permission from the author.
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