The Nenets are currently the largest of the Samoyedic peoples in terms of language. The name “Nenets” is derived from the word Nenets - “man”. This self-name of the main groups of European and Siberian Nenets was adopted after the revolution as the official name of the whole nation. Another self-designation - Khasava (“man”) is found in all Yamal Nenets, in part of the Gydan Nenets, and along with the self-designation “Nenets” in some groups. The archaic self-designation nenei nenaets (“real man”) is predominantly spread east of the Ob, partly in its lower reaches and on Yamal.
Before the revolution, Russians called the Nenets Samoyeds and Yuraks. The first name was widespread in the European and Ob North, the second in the Yenisei North. Until the 19th century, the first name was used in the forms “Samoyad” and “Samodi” and applied to all Nenets, as well as to the Enets and Nganasans.
Russian and foreign researchers have different explanations for the name “Samoyed”. Attempts to link this ethnonym with the word formation “samoyed” (i.e., eating itself), “samodyn” (i.e., living alone), “semgoyed” (i.e., eating salmon), etc. are completely unscientific. Some researchers have compared the name “Samoyed” with the Lappish (Sami) words “Same-edne” (“land of the Sami”). This comparison is based on the fact that the territory of settlement of the Nenets of the North of the European part of the USSR, which the Russians first met, was in more ancient times the area of spread of the Loparians (Saami). However, the final explanation of this name has not been found yet.
According to the far incomplete census of 1897 Nenets numbered 9,427 people, according to the census of 1926-1927, which covered all groups of Nenets - 16,375 people.
The territory of Nenets settlement was very large and almost entirely covered the European tundra and forest tundra from the Mezen River in the west to the left tributaries of the Pyasina River - Pura and Agapa in the east in Siberia. Since the 19th century, a small number of Nenets lived on the Kola Peninsula (mainly in the Levoozersky and Ponoysky districts of the Murmansk Oblast). Small groups of them came westward from Mezen to the Northern Dvina. In the north, the Nenets settled to the shores of the Barents and Kara Seas, lived on the Kolguyev, Vaigach, and Novaya Zemlya islands, and visited Dolgiy, Bely, Shokalskiy, Oleniy, and Sibiryakov islands. In the south, some groups of Nenets reached as far as the middle reaches of the Mezen River; they settled along the southern tributaries of the Tsylma River (a tributary of the Pechora River). Nenets groups also lived in the basins of the Nolui and Taza rivers, along the Yenisei tributaries, the Bolshaya and Malaya Kheta, and from the mouth of the Khantayka down the Yenisei to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. The southern Samoyedic group, the so-called “forest Nenets”, mainly roamed in the basins of the Pura and Nadym rivers, entering the northern tributaries of the Vakh and other rivers.
The main areas of settlement of modern tundra Nenets are tundras: Kaninskaya (Kanin Peninsula and coast of the Cheshkaya Bay up to the Snopa River), Timanskaya (between the Snopa and Welt Rivers), Malozemelnaya (between Welt and Pechora Rivers), Bolypezemelskaya (between the Pechora, Kara and Usa Rivers), Priuralskaya (eastern slope of the Ural Mountains, between the Shchuchya and Sob Rivers), Yamalskaya (Yamal Peninsula), Maloyamalskaya (between the Gulf of Ob and the Taz Bay), Gydanskaya (between of the Gulf of Ob and Yenisei River) and part of Taymir (from the Yenisei to the Pura and Agapa Rivers).
At present, the overwhelming majority of Nenets are concentrated in three national districts: Nenets in the Arkhangelsk Oblast, Yamalo-Nenets in the Tyumen Oblast, and Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenets) in the Krasnoyarsk Krai. Kolguyev and Novaya Zemlya Islands are directly subordinated to the Arkhangelsk Oblast Executive Committee. The rest of the islands inhabited by Nenets are territorially included in the respective national districts. Nenets are neighbors of many nationalities. In the European territory - Lopars (Saami), Komi; in Siberia - Komi, Khanty, Selkups, Evenks, Dolgans, Enets and Nganasans; in the southern part of their settlement Nenets almost everywhere neighbor Russians, and in many areas Russian settlements are located in remote parts of the tundra inhabited by Nenets.
The Nenets settlement area west and east of the Polar Urals is flat and rich in lakes. Only the Northern Urals and the spurs of the Timan Range rise above the tundra. Long winters and short summers, strong winds blowing from the sea in summer and from the mainland in winter, and the widespread development of permafrost (continuous in the extreme northeast and island in the southern part) are the common features of the harsh climatic conditions of this territory. Forests prevail only in the Pur River basin. The rest of the Nenets settlement area is occupied by forest tundra (forests - spruce forests west of the Urals and larch forests east of the Urals - are interspersed with tundras), and to the north, up to the sea coast and on the islands, tundras with bushes of willow shrubs extend. Different types of bogs are found everywhere.
The prey fauna is represented by forest (squirrel, chipmunk, fox, brown bear, ermine, elk, etc.) and tundra (Arctic fox, and on the ocean coast polar bear, etc.) species. Reindeer, wolverine, and white partridge are found in the tundra and forest. In summer a lot of geese, ducks and other birds come to the tundra. Coastal waters are inhabited by various species of seals, walrus, beluga whale (the latter especially near Novaya Zemlya and in the Gulf of Ob); fresh waters - lakes and rivers - are inhabited by various fish (sturgeon, whitefish, salmon).
The most numerous group (more than 14,000) are the tundra Nenets. They live in the tundra and forest tundra zones and speak the tundra dialect of the Nenets language. A separate group - forest Nenets (self-name “Neshchang”), known as “Pyan Khasavo”, “Piad-Khasavo”, “Khandeyary”, inhabit, as mentioned above, the taiga zone, which is part of the Purovsky District of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Surgut District of the Khanty-Mansiysky National Districts. According to the census of 1926-1927, the forest Nenets numbered 1129 people. They speak a special dialect of the Nenets language.
Many Nenets of the Bolshezemelskaya Tundra (Nenets Okrug) and northern districts of the Komi ASSR (Izhemsky, Pechorsky, and Ust-Tsylemsky districts) were strongly influenced by the Komi-Izhemsky. The sedentary Nenets from the village Kolva (south of the Bolshezemelskaya tundra) and a number of villages along the Izhma, Pechora, Kolva, Usa, and Adzva rivers speak the Izhemsky dialect of the Komi language and lead a way of life close to the Komi-Izhemians. The neighboring nomadic Nenets also speak this dialect. Previously these Nenets called themselves “Yaran” (plural “Yaranyas”), i.e. as the Komi called the Nenets. Unlike themselves, they called the Nenets who preserved their language “Vy'nentsi” (from Nenets “vy'nenetsya” - “tundra Nenets”).
Another group of Nenets living in the lower reaches of the Ob, on the Small Yamal, in the lower reaches of the Taz River, and partly on the Big Yamal and in the Gydan tundra should also be noted. This group is known to the rest of the Nenets as “Khabi”. This is how the Nenets call all foreigners in general and Khanty in particular. The Khabi are descendants of the Lower Ob Khanty, who mixed with the Nenets and lost their native language and most of their national cultural traits. They themselves also call themselves “Khabi”.
The Nenets language, as it was indicated, belongs to the group of Samoyedic languages. Like all Samoyedic languages, it is characterized by agglutination. In addition, the language has elements of inflectionality, which are expressed in the alternation of root vowels. The lexicon of the Nenets language reflects the ancient interrelations of Samoyedic languages with Turkic languages and with the languages of the pre-Samoyedic population. In some colloquialisms, connections with the Komi language are reflected. In recent years there has been a great influence from the Russian language. However, it should be noted that the lexicon of the Nenets language is poorly studied. The Nenets language has two main dialects: tundra and forest; each of them is divided into a number of dialects. The main divergences between the dialects relate to sound composition; some differences are noted in the area of lexicon and morphology. The lexical divergence between the dialects of the tundra and forest Nenets consists of numerous inclusions of Selkup and Khanty words in the lexicon of the latter. A number of elements in the language of the forest Nenets connect it with the languages of the Enets and Nganasans. The tundra dialect is divided into western (Kaninsky and Malozemelsky) and eastern (Bolshezemelsky, Yamalsky, and Tazovsky) dialects. However, the differences between the western and eastern colloquialisms are very insignificant and do not prevent the representatives of different groups of Tundra Nenets from understanding each other.
Samoyedic languages were formed in the region of the Sayan Plateau. As early as 150-200 years ago, Samoyedic languages were spoken in the Sayan Mountains by the Mators (Koibals),
Kamasins, Karagases (Tofalars) and others. As a result of the long influence of Turkic-speaking peoples, these tribes adopted the Turkic language, only the Kamasins retained the Samoyedic language as late as 1921-1925. The assumption about the kinship of the Nenets, Enets, Nganasans and Selkups with the mentioned Sayan tribes was made as early as in the XVIII century. In the middle of the XIX century the famous researcher M. A. Kastren on the basis of the study of linguistic and ethnographic material on the northern Samoyan and Sayano-Altaic groups put forward the hypothesis of the Sayan origin of the Samoyan groups. The Soviet ethnographer-linguist G. N. Prokofiev, comparing languages, material culture and ethnonyms of various Samoyedic groups, confirmed Kastren's hypothesis in a number of his works.
The issue of reindeer husbandry is of great interest in terms of solving the problem of the origin of the northern Samoyedic groups. Although quite early chronicles speak about Samoyed reindeer herders with harness reindeer husbandry, some Samoyed groups (Pyan-Khasavo, Selkups), apparently, had pack reindeer husbandry, which preceded the modern sledge reindeer husbandry. A special term for a saddle has been preserved in the language of both. Researchers of the middle of the XIX century still found the pack saddle in the southern groups of Samoyeds. This brings the southern Samoyedic groups closer to the surviving to this day Sayan reindeer herders-Tuvinian Toji and Tofalar. It can be considered that reindeer herding was known to the Samoyeds even before their migration to the north, where it later developed into a special tundra type of reindeer herding peculiar to the modern Nenets. At the same time, in the material culture and language of the Samoyed peoples, features that were absent in the Sayan groups are observed or were observed in the recent past. These peculiar features, specific for the polar zone population, in particular for the ancient sea beastmen, appeared in modern Samoyed peoples, probably, as a result of mixing their Sayan ancestors with the oldest inhabitants of the polar zone, whom they caught here. In the Eskimo, Chukchi and Koryak languages there are words that coincide with the corresponding terms of the modern Nenets language and belong to the part of the vocabulary that covers phenomena characteristic only of the polar zone. Thus, the seal in Nenets is "nyak", and in Eskimo is "ne sak"; the polar partridge in Nenets is "habevko", in Chukchi is "habev"; the front part of the malitsa (an anorak), below the hood, in Nenets is "luhu", in Nganasan deaf clothing in general is called "lu", and in Koryak is "lkhu" (lku) - the root of the word denoting all clothing.
These and other comparisons suggest that the modern northeastern Paleo-Asiatic peoples were also connected with the pre-Samodian population of northwestern Siberia. The remains of dugouts found here are consistent with the Nenets folklore, which mentions underground dwellings of some aborigines.
The first written information about the Nenets dates back to 1096. Nestor's chronicle contains the following mention: “Guryata Rogovich, a Novgorodian, said to me 'I sent my son to Pechora, and the people are tribute giving to Novgorod, and when my son came to them, from there he went to Yugra, and Yugra is their language and they are neighbors with Samoyads in the midnight countries'. Consequently, already in the XI century the Nenets were known to the Novgorod industrial, trading people, penetrating into the remote suburbs. Nenets were known to Novgorod industrial and trading people who penetrated into the remote suburbs. After the fall of Great Novgorod, the initiative to develop the rich Siberian lands passed to the Moscow principality. Moscow organized a number of campaigns beyond the Urals, bringing the peoples of Siberia under the “high hand” of the Moscow knyaz.
In the XVI century a wide movement of Russian industrial people to the east began. The tsarist government built a number of strongholds - stockaded towns and towns in the Nenets territories. In 1499 Pustozersky stockaded town was founded, and about a century later - Berezov (1593), Obdorsk (1595), Surgut (1594), Mangazeya (1601) and Turukhansk (1607). The population of these stockades consisted of servants, peasants and industrialists. At the head were government-appointed voevods who managed the lands assigned to the ostrog. Stockaded towns and towns were not only the first administrative points, but also the first cultural centers in the remote northern Siberian lands. Regular trade relations between Nenets and Russians began here. Here the Nenets got acquainted with the higher Russian culture of peasants and industrialists, established close friendships with them, and helped the Russian labor population in their struggle against the harsh northern nature. The sources of the XVII century show the gradual rapprochement of the Nenets with those Russians with whom they started neighboring trade relations, necessary for both sides. The rapprochement with the Russian population played a great role in the development of the Nenets people. New means of production and objects of material life, such as firearms, nets, metal products, fabrics, etc., penetrated into the Nenets' everyday life and production.
The tsarist government imposed a yasak (tax) on the Nenets, the size of which varied depending on districts (2-3 Arctic foxes, 1 sable or 15 squirrels). Many Nenets (Yamal, Purov) paid the yasak “out of wages”, i.e. they paid as much as they could or wanted to pay. In the 18th century, the natural yasak was partially replaced by money yasak. To pay the yasak, the Nenets resorted to loans and often lost their pledged reindeer. The Nenets' resistance to the colonial policy of the tsarist government, in particular to the yasak tax, was expressed in the XVII century in devastations of the yasak treasury when it was transported from Siberia through the Urals, in attacks on Russian stockaded towns as administrative centers of the tsarist government, and so on. The Pustozersky town alone was attacked six times during a hundred years (XVI-XVII centuries).
The “Statute on the Administration of Inorodtsy (members of national minority) in Siberia” (1822), developed by Speransky's commission in the early 19th century, also applied to the Nenets, who were classified as third-class the Inorodtsy - “nomads”. Special sections of the “Statute” - “The rights of nomad inorodtsy” (Part I, Ch. 6) and “On the natives of Arkhangelsk province, called Samoyeds”, promised the Nenets ownership of land, internal self-government on the basis of customary law, etc. Most of these points, however, were not practically implemented.
The establishment of new government bodies - inorodtsy administrations and the institution of elders - contributed to the further deterioration of the Nenets masses. The elders were usually wealthy Nenets, and the assignment of certain rights to them: collection of yasak, some judicial functions, etc., aggravated the exploitation of the Nenets labor masses and strengthened the property inequality among the Nenets. In the first quarter of the 19th century, Christianity began to be planted among the Nenets. For this purpose a special “Spiritual Mission for the conversion of Samoyeds to the Christian faith” was established in 1824 for the Nenets of the Arkhangelsk province. Nenets were baptized by whole families. Hundreds burned images of spirits on sacred places. It was also ordered that “all those who, having accepted the Christian faith, still continue to idolize, all idols should be taken away by police power”. All this further intensified the Nenets' indignation against the actions of the tsarist government.
Shameless trade exploitation by merchants, who paid Nenets for a fox pelt a brick of tea or a ladle of flour, bondage relations, as a result of which Nenets had to pay the debts of their fathers and grandfathers, etc., caused mass ruin and impoverishment of Nenets. The poor went to work for rich Nenets reindeer herders and fell into bondage. Expropriation of lands also contributed to the ruin of the Nenets masses. Nenets, Russian and Izhemsk rich reindeer herders, who had thousands of herds, seized pasture lands.
In response, there are organized demonstrations against both the representatives of the tsarist authorities and against their own exploitative upper class.
The most prominent of such uprisings was the rebellion of the Obdorsk and Tazov Nenets under the leadership of Vavlyo Nenyang (otherwise known as Vauli Piettomin). In the late 30s of the XIX century Vavlyo, having gathered a group of Nenets, organized attacks on herds of rich people, taking away reindeer and distributing them to the poor. He urged the Nenets to stop paying yasak to the tsarist authorities. In 1839 Vavlyo was caught, imprisoned in the town of Berezovo, and then exiled to Surgut district. From there he soon fled to his native tundras on the Taz River. In 1841, Vavlyo again gathered Nenets from the Taz, Small and Big Yamal, as well as Obdorsk Khanty, and approached Obdorsk itself with a detachment of 400 men. His goal was to invade the town, drive out the tsar's officials and their protégé, the Khanty prince Taishin, and stop the Nenets from paying yasak. By deceit and cunning the tsarist authorities and local rich men managed to lure Vavlyo to Obdorsk and take him prisoner. He was tried, punished with lashes and exiled to hard labor. But the protest movement among the Nenets did not die out. In 1856 Nenets Pani Toho, Tum Pae and others, including participants of the Vavlyo uprising, gathered again as a group and took away reindeer and other property from Nenets rich people. In the end, with the help of the rich and elders, they were caught and sent to penal servitude.
In the 70s of the 19th century, the tsarist government began resettlement of Nenets to Novaya Zemlya. This colonization was undertaken to put an end to Norwegian claims to Novaya Zemlya, rich in fishing resources, which had long belonged to Russia.
In the second half of the 19th century, trade exploitation of the Nenets significantly increased. Along with single fur traders, representatives of large merchant firms from Arkhangelsk, Cherdyn, Tobolsk and Krasnoyarsk penetrated into the tundra. Small traveling trade, mainly exchange trade, is joined by large trade with an extensive network of shops and its own fleet. Capital penetrates into fishing, fisheries are organized; as a result, commodity relations are considerably strengthened. In the western regions (Kaninskaya and Malozemelskaya tundras), where the marketability of the reindeer herding economy was incomparably higher, elements of capitalist relations were already emerging. All this contributes to the further growth of exploitation of the Nenets labor force and the increase in the number of landless farms. A considerable part of the herds passed in some areas to Russian, Izhemsk and Nenets rich people. In 1895 in Pechora uyezd, Russian and Izhemsk rich people owned 229,365 reindeer, while the rest of the Nenets population owned only 46,950 reindeer. This redistribution of reindeer was accompanied by the seizure of pastures that had once been community property. The devastation and impoverishment of the Nenets labor masses continued until the revolution.
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