Arctic Travelogues: Conquering the Soviet North

In this chapter Oksana Sarkisova examines the depiction of indigenous peoples in the Soviet Arctic and how these representations have changed in accordance with the ideological narrative of a communist state in the 1920s and the 1930s. Examining films both central to and outside the canon of Soviet film history, such as Dziga Vertov’s A Sixth Part of the World (1926), Vladimir Erofeev’s Beyond the Arctic Circle (1927) and Shneiderov’s Two Oceans (1933), Sarkisova uncovers a little-known history of Arctic indigenous representation, and how these representations fundamentally shifted with the end of Leninism and the beginnings of Stalinism. Sarkisova also explores the profound role played by Polar exploration in the Soviet imaginary during these years, tracing its shifting ideological underpinnings in the process.