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 est landowner, whose land the Sami and Pomors were permitted to use. In contrast to central Russia, a wealthy land-owning nobility (pomesciki) did not develop here. In this way the abolition of serfdom was not a very relevant watershed for the popula­ tion of the Kola Peninsula .84 In this way it came about, as writer and amateur ethnologist Nemirovic- Dancenko tells us, that already in the nineteenth century almost all Sami spoke Rus­ sian, often even mixing up Sami and Russian, and had close contacts with the Rus- sians .85 A much more serious intrusion for the Sami was the unexpected migration of Komi and Nenets from the Izma basin west of the Urals into the Kola Peninsula, which took place in the 1880s. The Komi (also called izemcy), and with them the Nenets as hired herdsmen, drove huge herds of up to 5,000 reindeer into the Kola Peninsula searching for new living space. Until recently these migrations were believed to have been caused by an epidemic among the reindeer. Following his archive research, Konstantinov (2005) comes, however, to a different conclusion. Police records tell us that a first group of Komi was forbidden to move into the Kola Peninsula in order to guarantee an undisturbed life to the Sami. The Komi had requested a settlement on the Kola Peninsula, because the overcrowding of their grazing grounds required them to open up new areas. Despite the authorities' rejection of their request, more and more Komi arrived in the peninsula. Amazingly, around 1890, the attitude of law enforcement officials in the far-off administrative centre of Archangel'sk - as yet no towns existed on the Kola Peninsula - changed radically: the Komi were praised for their industriousness and their colonization of the Kola Peninsula legalized, as is clear from documentary sources .86 The 'Lapp race' was stated by the governor to be dying out, thereby officialising the 'backwardness vs. progressiveness' ideology as contin­ ued during the Soviet period .87 84Cf.: Konstantinov/Vladimirova 2006, 119. 85Quoted from Bol'sakova 2005, 173. 86Cf.: Konstantinov 2005, 174 f. 87Cf.: Konstantinov 2006, 6. Senterfor samiske studier, Skriftserie nr. 19 37