Sakha Literature from Russian Colonialism to the Soviet Friendship of the Peoples

This dissertation examines how Indigenous Sakha intellectuals, writers, and cultural figures navigated identity and political belonging from the late imperial period through the early Soviet era until the late 1940s. Drawing from literary analysis and Soviet-era ethnographic discourse, this study traces how place-based understandings of community among Sakha peoples rooted in reciprocal relationships to land were gradually redefined as parts of the centralized state-nationalist project of the Friendship of the Peoples. This dissertation argues that early expressions of Indigenous identity in Yakutia were not grounded in abstract ethnic categories but rather in material, place-based practices and cosmologies. However, as the Soviet state was transitioning from a Leninist to a Stalinist conception of state, Indigenous belonging was gradually reframed as primordial notions of nationality. Through close readings of major Sakha authors, the dissertation demonstrates how Indigenous authors contributed to or resisted these transformations while envisioning land, memory, and labor in new literary and political symbolism. Drawing from Marxist theory and Indigenous studies, this project explores Indigenous literature of Yakutia as a testing ground for Soviet national policies. This dissertation traces legacies of Stalinist ideological campaigns in contemporary post-Soviet national identities, arguing that current nationality discourse around Russia perpetuates primordial narratives that often lead to ethnonationalist fallacies. By bridging together literary and historical analysis, this dissertation offers a nuanced interpretation of Russian regional history as a part of global history of colonialism, where colonialism is understood as an extension of capitalist production.