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7 Life in Ruins: Forced Migration and Littoral Persistence in Chukotka
Abstract Like other regions of Russia’s North, Chukotka (Chukotka Autonomous Okrug) was subjected to dramatic changes during the last century. With long-lasting societal impacts, the inhabitants of predominantly native coastal villages along the Bering Strait were subjected to relocation policies implemented by the Soviet state that left dozens of settlements and hunting bases deserted; yet extraordinary resilience and novel strategies of coping with Sovietisation, subsequent loss, and infrastructural collapse created new forms of communities in Russia’s easternmost federal subject.
The chapter explores local reactions of North Pacific coastal communities to translocal forces through time. Focusing on individual strategies of resilience and place-making amidst a relocated population, the chapter thus addresses the central role of space, infrastructure, and ecology in relation to a shifting maritime landscape as well as the specific impacts of equally changing state policies in a North Pacific borderland.
