The Sacred Realm: Social and Cultural Memory of Deportations in Rural Landscapes across the South of Western Siberia (Altai Krai)

Introduction. The article deals with the memorialization of victims of deportations and contemporary commemoration practices witnessed in Siberian recipient society. Goals. The study attempts an insight into the deportation-related memories of recipient communities, memorialization means and trends, commemoration forms in the region’s society and cultural environment. The hypothesis is that the memorialization processes were actually (and largely) ignited among the deported peoples (and their local autonomies) by Russian government policy of the 1990s. It was the rehabilitation of Soviet ethnic deportees that triggered the memorialization movement and the emergence of related commemorations. The publication presents results of the long term research into memories of rural Siberians conducted through the methods of oral history and ethnology. Materials and methods. The study focuses on eyewitness accounts and interviews with individuals representing the once recipient communities, commemoration sites that include not only monuments to deported victims installed in the Altai but also some traces of deportations evident from folk toponymy, rural housing stock, burials across local cemeteries, and other types of ‘memory solidification’. Results and conclusions. The paper seeks to supplement the published history and historiography of deportations — largely based of the deportees’ memories and experiences — with insights into perceptions of recipient communities and Siberian cultural landscapes. Special attention is paid to certain distinguishing features of the memorialization processes and ways in places of actual residence and death of the deportees and related commemoration forms. The work also strives to reveal an actual correlation between the ‘downward’ (from government agencies) and ‘upward’ (from the public) initiatives, and specifically the contribution of rural Siberian population to the memorialization of deportations in the 1990s–2020s.

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