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).

Lukas Allemann Today, Nina Afanas'eva's and Anna Jur'eva's children speak all Sami, while Anastasija Matrehina's children no longer master the language. Ms Mat^hina regrets this, but pushes all the blame for this onto the teachers. Ms Afanas'eva contradicts this in the most violent manner, saying that it was purely a matter of willpower, whether they retained the language within the family or not. Each family was itself responsible for which language they used at home. In the consciously multi-ethnic Soviet state, there was no prohibition on the Sami lan­ guage, in this respect there were no official sanctions. The teachers, with their 'knowledge' of the alleged disadvantages of bilingual­ ism, tried to persuade the families, with some being more and others less receptive to this message. The parents' linguistic environment at work certainly had an impact. In Ms Matrehina's case, on top of the admonitory words from her teacher-relation came the fact that she lived in a settlement inhabited predominantly by Russian sol­ diers and both she and her husband spoke only Russian at work. In this way there was little room for Sami in their own daily lives, and not only in that of their children. The strong assimilation was also a more or less personal choice of the Matrechins, as we have already seen in the chapter chapter The Immigration of the Komi and Nenets (Chapter 3.4.). In contrast to her father, Anastasija Mat^hina made a conscious choice to live in Gremicha in a purely Russian environment, instead of in the multi­ ethnic mix of Lovozero. For the Mat^chins there was no strong sense of tradition motivating them to force the use of Sami at home. For Ms Jur'eva the situation was different. She lived in Lovozero and worked in the kolkhoz, along with many other Sami, so she and her husband often spoke Sami at work. At the same time in the kolkhoz, Russian was often used to communicate with the Komi and Russian employees. Ms Jur'eva and her husband saw from their own experience that bilingualism was not a problem in everyday life and were there­ fore accustomed to speak Sami at home. In addition, finding themselves confronted with a significant Sami-speaking population, the teachers in Lovozero tried less stub­ bornly to militate, also outside school, against bilingualism. Senterfor samiske studier, Skriftserie nr. 19 110