Post-Socialist Infrastructure: Social Dynamics and Identity Politics in the Region of Baikal-Amur Mainline

This project component aims at exploring large infrastructures as an articulation of Russia’s state modernization projects and identity politics in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Drawing on the case study of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) in East Siberia, I raise the following specific research questions. How did the BAM construction shape new identities and communities in the Soviet period? In which ways has the railroad infrastructure affected indigenous and local people and involved incoming migrants? What is the role of Soviet ideologies and memories in the current processes of identity building and the politics of emotion? Which ideological, affective and material continuities and ruptures could be identified between the socialist BAM and its present modernization program BAM-2? 

While the existing publications about the railway often focus on one group or one level of analysis, this research aims at a more comprehensive study of entanglements of different groups and stakeholders with the BAM infrastructure. It will bridge two strands of discussion – on Soviet and post-Soviet ideologies and identities, on the one hand, and on anthropology of infrastructure, on the other. Data gathered with the help of participant observation and ethnographic interviews and archival works will be complemented with policy documents and local press materials and triangulated with statistical data and results of a questionnaire-based mobility survey. While the major anthropological fieldwork is conducted in select towns and villages along the BAM (see the project map), additional information is requested in libraries, archives, statistical bureaus and companies’ offices in East Siberia and in Moscow.

Field Sites 

The fieldwork on the component will be conducted in the BAM cities of Tynda, Severobaykal'sk, the town of Novaya Chara, and indigenous villages Chapo-Ologo, Pervomayskoe, Ust'-Nyukzha and Kholodnoe off the railroad in Zabaykal'skiy Kray, Amurskaya Oblast' and the Republic of Buryatiya. To study the BAM history and population dynamics, we will work with documents from the state archives and statistical bureaus in Moscow, Chita, Tynda and Severobaykal'sk. In order to analyze identity politics and social relations in the region, we will collect in-depth interviews and oral histories of indigenous people and BAM builders, as well as recent migrants and industrial shift workers. Expert interviews with officials and the leaders of NGOs, railroad and extractive companies, as well as content analysis of the official documents and local press, should serve us as a basis for examination of stakeholder relations and community development. The mobility survey, addressing some of our research questions and conducted in collaboration with The View from Above component, will provide us critical support with visualization and mapping of the received statistical data and mobility patterns in the studied communities.