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 ently ignored the age-old knowledge of the indigenous population. Paradoxically, and at the same time significantly, it is precisely Kiseleva (1994), the co-author of the beautifying monograph by Kiselev/Kiseleva (1987), who after the end of the Soviet Union was the first to report on these abuses in a scientific study. From the 1970s onwards, the reindeer stocks stopped growing and the long-standing unconsidered use of resources began to show its effects. It is precisely the centralizing of the Sami population, presented previously as the greatest advance, that Kiseleva presents as the greatest mistake. The consequences of this were that most pogosty were aban­ doned, and the pastures were no longer distributed over the entire peninsula. This in turn led to an overuse of a few areas, the fragile subarctic flora of which can recover only very slowly. Also the transport routes from the few settlements in the tundra are long and expensive. At the same time a steady increase in the reindeer population was sought for while neglecting to build up an industry for processing reindeer products. This could have created valuable jobs. Kiseleva's study presents as a source of massive social problems the systematized way in which herding was changed from a way of life to purely professional employment. This made the profession unat­ tractive, because either the men had to live in the tundra for weeks or months at a time without wives and children or, if the wives came along, the children had to live in boarding school. At the same time, the children and young people no longer learned the profession of reindeer breeder from their fathers. Reindeer herding was seen by the planners not as a part of the Sami culture and way of life, but only as one industry among others .155 E fforts to systematize education in reindeer management resulted in a training of reindeer herdsmen - from now on known as reindeer techni­ cians (olen'technik) - that smelled of the classroom and involved little hands-on expe­ rience. The social problems, however, went much deeper. Information about them is found in the existing literature mostly in the form of marginal notes. For this reason the following section will be devoted to my interviewees' accounts of the immediate and later negative consequences of the policy of agglomeration. 155Cf.: Kiseleva 1994, 76 f. Senterfor samiske studier, Skriftserie nr. 19 95