Allemann, L. The sami of the Kola Peninsula : about the life of an ethnic minority in the Soviet Union / Lukas Allemann ; [transl. by Michael Lomax]. - Rovaniemi : University of Lapland Printing Centre, 2013. - 151 p. : ill., map, portr. ; 25 см. - (Senter for samiske studier, Skriftserie ; 19).

The Sami of the Kola Peninsula en absolutely nothing in return [...] We asked our mother: "Would you like us to bury you in Lovozero?" And then she turned very angry: "To hell with this Lovozero." That's how much she hated it. Q: Where did you bury her in the end? A: ((in tears)) In Apatity (12) .146 Nina Afanas'eva's and her mother's emotions reflect the sad consequences of a failed policy towards the Sami, which sought to concentrate the small people on a small territory. After the Sami had been removed from the industrialized and border zones on the Barents Sea coast, they lived largely centralized in a few settlements, always mixed with Russians, Komi, Nenets and other. By far the largest such settlement is Lovozero, though even in this artificial Sami 'capital', Sami comprise only about 20% of the population. 147 The state farms were - in contrast to the new towns of the 1920s and 1930s - not managed on the basis of ethnic separation. Not only different ethnic groups lived together here, but also Sami from different sii'das and with different dia­ lects. Some of these found it difficult to communicate with one another in Sami. In this situation, the Russian language became an inter- and intra-ethnic lingua franca, thereby gaining a new importance .148 This encouraged the repression of the Sami dialects. This serious encroachment of the Soviet Union into the existence of the Sami also explains why, in the lives of my interviewees, the conflict between the Sami and the Komi almost did not matter. At the end of the nineteenth century it had been the Komi who intervened as colonists in the life rhythm of the Sami that had developed over hundreds of years. In my interlocutors' lifetimes, the Soviet state took over this role on a much vaster scale, pushing the differences between Komi and Sami into the background. From the 1970s onwards the shock of resettlement gradually gave way to a normal life. It is this short period of a little over ten years, roughly from the mid- 1970s until perestroika, that many Sami from Lovozero remember as the best times. 146Afanas'eva interview, lines 590-611. 147 Rantala 1995, 58. 148Cf.: Gucol/Vinogradova/Samorukova 2007, 43. Senterfor samiske studier, Skriftserie nr. 19 91