USSR leader of far Northern indigenous origins?

Changundramon

Changundramon

Is there a possibility to have a person from the northern regions of Soviet Union lead that country, and were there any prominent politicians of strong Komi, Nenets, Yakut, Chukchi, etc. background? I am looking into the viability of Soviet Union becoming a better place for smaller ethnicities, and surviving long term.

Hoping for inputs from @fasquardon
 

Cryptic

Changundramon said:
Is there a possibility to have a person from the northern regions of Soviet Union lead that country, and were there any prominent politicians of strong Komi, Nenets, Yakut, Chukchi, etc. background? I am looking into the viability of Soviet Union becoming a better place for smaller ethnicities, and surviving long term.

Hoping for inputs from @fasquardon
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I think at one time, the mayor of Moscow was Mani ethnicity, a Finno Ugric indigenous group from the northern Urals. As a side, note, their relations with other indigenous groups further east were not that good.
 

fasquardon

Changundramon said:
I am looking into the viability of Soviet Union becoming a better place for smaller ethnicities, and surviving long term.
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Honestly, I doubt ethnicity will have much bearing on this question. Being a committed ideologue is going to be an important part of the top job, meaning whoever gets in charge will be a Communist first, and their ethnic identity will be a ways down the list. Stalin and Khrushchev both favoured their ethnic groups in various ways, Stalin brought in his "Georgian mafia" and Khrushchev did things like giving Ukraine Crimea and insisting that Ukraine have its own rocket building enterprise (Yangel's OKB-586), but mostly they were Soviet leaders (and Stalin's rule was more brutal in Georgia than it was for the average region in the USSR, so partiality didn't only mean good things for ordinary people).

fasquardon
 

David T

Changundramon said:
Is there a possibility to have a person from the northern regions of Soviet Union lead that country, and were there any prominent politicians of strong Komi, Nenets, Yakut, Chukchi, etc. background? I am looking into the viability of Soviet Union becoming a better place for smaller ethnicities, and surviving long term.

Hoping for inputs from @fasquardon
Click to expand...

If any member of these nationalities were to reach a high position, one would expect it to be a Yakut, who were both more numerous and more culturally "advanced" than the other nationalities. The two highest ranking Yakut Communists of whom I am aware are:

(1) S. Z. Borisov ("a Yakut in spite of his Russian-sounding name" http://www.unz.com/PDF/PERIODICAL/ProblemsCommunism-1967sep/83-94/), who was First Secretary of the Yakut Communist Party from 1951 to 1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakut_Regional_Committee_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union seems to have never advanced further in All-Union politics than candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.129489/page/n105

(2) Borisov's successor as Yakut First Secretary, Gavriil Chiryayev, "born in 1925 into a Yakut family" https://www.google.com/search?biw=1920&bih=846&tbm=bks&ei=HejMXPnBDs6wtgWI84rYBA&q="1925++into+a+yakut+family became a full member of the Central Committee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centr...ss_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union I don't know too much about him but there's a monument to him in Nuryngri. https://goodplaces.travel/en/pretty/neryungri/culture/pamyatnik-gavriilu-chiryaevu/19096

Both of them seem to have been essentially local politicians, on the Central Committee only because Yakutia was populous enough to have its own Autonomous Republic. But if no Yakuts reached anywhere near the top, it would be even less likely for members of some of the other nationalities you mentioned--if only because their numbers are so small.

And in any event, if by chance someone from one of the small nationalities made it into a top All-Union leadership position, it probably would make little difference. Suppose a Chukchi boy's family moves to Moscow or Leningrad, he is educated and rises to high office there. He would no doubt be thoroughly Russified, without a trace of "bourgeois nationalism." If on the contrary, the boy's family remained in Chukotka and he was educated there, he would be unlikely to rise to anything higher than local office.
 
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Deleted member 114175

Do Mordvins or Chuvash count? Lenin's father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was from a family of serfs; his ethnic origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin, or Kalmyk. Either way, he did open the first Chuvash school in Simbirsk, which would later be transformed into Chuvash teacher's seminar. He also established national schools for Mordvins and Tatars.
 
kasumigenx

kasumigenx

If we have an Eskimo leader of USSR this will also create some panic in the US and Canada, because Canada and US has Eskimo/Inuits as well this would be a Russian 'Evo Morales'.
 
Changundramon

Changundramon

Cryptic said:
I think at one time, the mayor of Moscow was Mani ethnicity, a Finno Ugric indigenous group from the northern Urals. As a side, note, their relations with other indigenous groups further east were not that good.
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Ah yes, the Mansi. They are definitely one of the groups that would fit what I'm looking for. They got wrongly accused for the spooky Dyatlov Pass incident.
 

Some Bloke

kasumigenx said:
If we have an Eskimo leader of USSR this will also create some panic in the US and Canada, because Canada and US has Eskimo/Inuits as well this would be a Russian 'Evo Morales'.
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That would be interesting. Maybe immediately after or instead of Brezhnev.
 
Changundramon

Changundramon

David T said:
AFAIK the Finns are never referred to as among the "indigenous peoples of the North" (even though some such peoples speak Finno-Ugrian languages)--they are just too numerous and have too much of a "European" history.
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Would still be cool for that guy to lead USSR. But yeah, Finns have their own country by this point, and are a part of Nordic Europe. Kola Sami people would work, but Kuusinen probably had no connection to them.
 

David T

So far as the "small indigenous peoples of the North" strictly defined are concerned (which does not include Yakuts) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indig...eoples_of_the_North,_Siberia_and_the_Far_East this is the highest-ranking politician I could find--and he wasn't really very high-ranking--from the 1979 Great Soviet Encyclopedia:

***


Uvachan, Vasilii Nikolaevich

Born Dec. 12 (25), 1917, in the nomad camp of Kresty, now in Katangskii Raion, Irkutsk Oblast. Soviet historian and party and state figure. Doctor of historical sciences (1970). Professor (1974). Member of the CPSU since 1940.

The son of an Evenki hunter, Uvachan graduated from the technicum of the Leningrad Institute of the Peoples of the North in 1937, from the Higher Party School Under the Central Committee of the ACP(B) in 1948, and from the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1954. In 1934 and 1935 he was involved in Komsomol work. From 1942 to 1946 he was a secretary of the Evenki Regional Committee of the CPSU, and from 1948 to 1951 and from 1961 to 1976 first secretary. From 1954 to 1961, Uvachan taught in Novosibirsk and Krasnoiarsk. In 1966 he became a member of the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU, and in 1974 he became a committee member of the Parliamentary Group of the USSR. Since 1976 he has been with the Central Administration of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR. His main works are devoted to the history of the peoples of the north and to problems connected with policies concerning the country’s numerous nationalities and with relations between nationalities.

Uvachan was a deputy to the third and sixth through ninth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, two other orders, and various medals.

https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Uvachan,+Vasilii+Nikolaevich

***

I just don't see him leading the USSR. (BTW, his The Peoples of the North and Their Road to Socialism is available online at https://archive.org/details/ThePeoplesOfTheNorthAndTheirRoadToSocialism/page/n1)

Given their small numbers, it is not surprising that so few figures from these peoples have gone very high in the leadership of the CPSU. It would be like expecting a Tlingit to be a serious candidate for President of the United States--though, come to think of it, one did become Lieutenant Governor of Alaska! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Mallott
 
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