Samoyedic Diary: Early Years of Visual Anthropology in the Soviet Arctic

This article describes Georgii and Ekaterina Prokofiev's expedition to the Bol'shezemel'skie Nenets and their experience in filming documentary chronicles. Their records form a unique part of the visual anthropology of the Samoyedic peoples. From extant archival documents it is assumed that the chronicles were filmed with funding from the cooperation agreement that was signed by Franz Boas and Vladimir Bogoras in New York in 1928. The article offers a reconstruction of Prokofiev's fieldwork experience and his accounts of the early history of collectivization. In this regard the filmed chronicles and a collection of photos taken in the field are treated as a visual conceptualization. Available studies of visual anthropology in the USSR suggest that the documentary chronicles by the Prokofievs, made in 1929–30, are the first cinematic records to be produced by ethnographers in the Soviet Arctic.

The majority of historians consider the events of 1929, specifically the Conference of the Ethnographers of Moscow and Leningrad, to be a dividing line between early Soviet ethnography and its later development, resonating with the beginning of Soviet modernization under Stalin Slezkine 1991;Solovei 2001]. Shortly before that meeting, in October 1928, Vladimir G. Bogoras returned from his last trip to the United States. His tour had been productive and full of events. Bogoras gave several speeches, including those on behalf of his students, at the International Congress of Americanists in to the MAE negatives collection (Russian negateka) and indeed found the Cine-Kodak films [ Figure 1]. Those were the cinematic chronicles filmed by the Prokofievs during their expedition to the Bol'shezemel'skaia tundra. . .
The present article is divided into two parts. The first describes the Prokofievs' expedition and their chronicles. The second part attempts to situate this material within the context of visual projects carried out in the USSR, as well as within the history of visual anthropology in Europe and the United States. 7

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EXPEDITION AND FILMING
The Prokofievs' Fieldwork Biography, and a ''Mistake'' of the Committee of the North Despite the fact that a colleague of Georgii Prokofiev, Nina I. Gagen-Torn, spoke of him as an unsympathetic man with no inclination to become an ethnographer [Gagen- Torn 2013: 273], one finds that he was really an extraordinary person. Before the expedition of 1929-31 Prokofiev had spent a considerable amount of time in the field, going each time not just for a couple of weeks but for rather long stints. One of his first expeditions was to the Nenets of the lower reaches of the Ob' River in 1921 where, in addition to making notes on the language and ethnography [AMAE 3], 8 he was practising yoga (!) presumably for health purposes. It is hard to imagine how he managed that while living in a chum (lodge) in the tundra. 9 In 1925 Georgii and Ekaterina Prokofiev made a well-known trip to the Selkups. Living among Selkups made them genuine ethnographers and linguistic fieldworkers [cf. fieldwork notes in Gagen-Torn 1992]. In October 1928 Prokofiev passed over a report based on his studies of Selkups to Bogoras, for presentation at the Congress of Americanists in New York. This paper was supplemented with slides showing drawings of Selkup (Ostyako-Samoedic) shamans [SPFA RAN 142-1(1928)-7: 6]. Finally in 1929-31 the Prokofievs traveled to the Nenets and Komi peoples, equipped with a cine camera [ Figure 2].
According to official documents of the MAE, Prokofiev was sent by the Committee for the Assistance to the Smaller Peoples of the Lesser Nationalities of the North (the Committee of the North), to a Samoyedic cultural station (kul'tbaza) called Khoseda-Khard, and there appointed as researcher responsible for regional studies (zaveduiushchii kraevedeniem), an official title for a staff ethnographer, from April 4, 1929, till July 11, 1930Figure 3]. A diary of the Prokofievs' expedition (only partially preserved) starts on May 21, 1930. Viktorin Popov writes that his goals included the ''formulation of the first Latinized ABC-book for the Nenets language,'' and further describes the heroism of the expedition, referring to ''the ethnographer Prokofiev-a person with asthma, without two ribs, on the move throughout the Far North for about five years, while separated from his wife and children'' [Popov 1932]. According to Verbov's diary, Prokofiev's ''separation from his wife and children'' was rather short: all of them were in the field, albeit in different settlements, but still able to meet each other. Vladimir Kisel', who published Prokofieva's book on the Tuvans, writes: ''Ekaterina Dmitrievna studied the traditional culture of the Nenets and at the same time was an assistant to the ethnographer [G. N. Prokofiev-D. A.], the head of a station for the liquidation of illiteracy, and the head of an orphanage'' [Kisel' 2011: 14].
The assignment to supervise regional studies supposed that Prokofiev would study exclusively the Nenets language and culture. He writes with regret, however, in one of his letters to Bogoras: A great disappointment awaited me here: the Samoyedic station Khoseda-Khard is Samoyedic only in name. It is built in an area where the real Samoyeds (n'enaj n'ennec') do not stop off. There are Zyrians and Kol'vinskie Samoyeds in the area who have long ceased to be Samoyeds, having adopted both the language and the culture of Zyrians. There are forty-one pupils in the 'Samoyedic' boarding school, of whom twenty-two are Kol'vinskie Samoyeds and nineteen are Zyrians. The language everywhere here is Zyrian.  In another letter Prokofiev describes his way of life during the assignment: As to the station as such, it is hard to call it 'cultured'. In an uncivilized, savage nook, which Yanov Stan 10 happened to be, I used to live better than here. The lack of supplies 334 D. V. Arzyutov Figure 2 The Nenets National Okrug, 1931. (Cartography: Alessandro Pasquini) is felt in everything, from firewood and kerosene to food. We're sitting here with a kerosene lamp; it's cold in an apartment. The bath (bania) happens only twice a month; it could be nothing much, perhaps, but bathing with cold water makes it much worse. I was right in my wish to specify the issue of the food supply in my agreement with the Committee of the North. But they were also right in their unwillingness to include this point in the agreement, because if they had agreed to do so, I would have had the right to break the contract. There is still a long time until spring, but it is already dreadful with foodstuffs: there is no butter; sugar is given out one kilo [at a time]; the quality of the salted fish is below average; there is no white flour. Meat supplies are also poor: there is cattle meat from the autumn slaughter. But it's not easy to buy some reindeer [meat]. The only stuff in abundance is partridges.  In general the trip was a continual disappointment for Prokofiev. In a letter to Bogoras of March 29, 1930 from Khoseda-Khard, he already says quite frankly: ''I will be glad if you manage to get me out of the station before the end of the tenure. This is not a Samoyedic station but a Komi one (due to a misunderstanding, on the one hand, and a successful Komi speculation, on the other)'' [SPFA ].
Verbov's letters to Bogoras from the Bol'shezemel'skaia tundra in those years are all the more full of resolve: The conditions of the organizational work were hard enough. Being a supervisor of the educational sector and a teacher of the Nenets language, I was involved with everything, up to carting firewood and carrying bricks . . . Based on the experience of my last-year's work in the tundra and the current work at the technical school, I have come to the conclusion (I assume Georgii Nikolaevich shares my opinion) that it is possible to change such a state of affairs only through a top-down directive order. All other methods have been tried and it is quite clear that here, at the fringes, the workers, unfortunately, will not be able to sort this issue out without pressure from above. After all, the Nenets Okrug is not on the Moon and it is possible, I suppose, to bring an end to this outrage. It should be acknowledged that national policies apply to the territories that stretch beyond the outskirts of my italics] A ''mistake'' of the Committee of the North related to ignorance of the real cultural diversity of the country at the end of the 1920s. And it was exactly the information from people like Prokofiev that was determining the models of differentiation between the cultural groups and the implementation of identity politics. Regional studies like ethnography were viewed in the 1920s not as a curious academic exercise but rather as a specific development project. It is this vision that underpins Bogoras's saying that ''ethnographers are the missionaries of the Soviet way of life,'' even though the position of ethnographers then sometimes did not coincide with the position of official authorities. As for Prokofiev, we can speak about his disagreement with the policy of the romanization of the Northern peoples' languages (on the romanization of Nenets, cf. Evsiugin [1993: 19-20]) 11 and collectivization in the tundra. He was not alone in that respect: one might cite a biography of Glafira M. Vasilevich, a colleague of the Prokofievs in both the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography and the Institute of the Peoples of the North (IPN) in Leningrad [ Ermolova 2003]. The Prokofievs' questions to Bogoras (4 October 1930) illustrate the situation in Leningrad at that time: I heard about the death of Kotovshchikova 12 in Yamal. I do not know the details. Perhaps you could tell me briefly. It is such a pity. Where are the others? What is the outcome of the cleansing (chistka) 13 in the Academy? What are the manifestations of the big changes that you wrote me about? I read about the saboteurs in the Academy of Sciences in one of the issues of Moskovskaya Pravda (from November 20). Oldenburg was mentioned; it was said that the Academy was keeping secret military documents, silver goblets of the Guard officers, and so on. I could not find out anything else. How is it going at the Sevfak? 14 I have learned about my re-election from E[vgenii] G. Kagarov-he wrote me a postcard. We are living here in complete isolation. The radio has been idle. In short, [everything is] depressing.  & Howell, or the Cine-Kodak Model A. These were portable, compatible with Cine-Kodak film, and ideally suitable for an ethnographic fieldworker. As for photographs, the Prokofievs used several types of camera, as there are both glass-plate and film negatives in the collection [MAE# b-1174].
When it comes to the films, dating them is the most challenging question. Based on the available materials there are several possibilities with regard to Prokofiev's reels. First, film is mentioned in Prokofiev's letter to Bogoras dated October 4, 1929 (date no. 1) [SPFA RAN 250-4-269: 5v]: he writes about five reels. Exactly one year later, in another letter to Bogoras on October 4, 1930 (date no. 2), Prokofiev asks: ''Have you developed the cine films? I still have five untouched reels (one of them in use). I will send them in the spring or in the summer. It would be nice to get extras'' . From this letter we know about the remaining five reels. The date no. 2 does not coincide with the information from Verbov's diary, where he notes the date of his acquaintance with Prokofiev, and mentions that the latter ''at the moment'' must be boarding the ship ''The Nenets'' to Tel'viska, whence he would go to the cultural station, and only then to Leningrad [AMAE . These particulars provide a rather relative date: specifically, that the filming could have been partially complete by August 1930 (date no. 3). This date correlates with the details to be found in Prokofiev's personal file: he returned to Leningrad on September 30, 1930 [SPFA RAN 142-5-153]. This presumably more-or-less clear picture is complemented with the information from Ekaterina D. Prokofieva's inventory: in her commentary to the first reel, she notes that the filming was occurring in August 1931, during the reindeer crossing from the Vaygach Island to the mainland over the Yugorsky Strait, in the vicinity of the settlement of Khabarovo (date no. 4) [inventory of the MAE collection b-1173]. The personal file of Prokofiev offers support for this fact: according to this document, during July 20 to September 20, 1931 Georgii was on a business trip from the Institute of the Peoples of the North in the Nenets Okrug, in order to participate in the re-training of teachers. Was it possible that he took a cine camera with him again and could get to Khabarovo settlement to film the given footage? Perhaps yes. However, comparing this date with the mentioned fragment of the letter to Bogoras of October 4, 1929 (date no. 1), one can assume that there must be a mistake in Prokofieva's inventory. This confusion of the dates is further complicated by one more fact: the (original?) reel boxes display the factory's ''develop before'' stamps, according to which the reels should have been used before December 1929 (date no. 5). This nevertheless does not exclude the possibility that Prokofiev could have used the expired films.
Comparing all the above-mentioned dates, we can assume that the chronicles were likely filmed in several sessions between the spring of 1929 and the autumn of 1931, but most probably till the late autumn of 1930. Table 1 presents an analysis of the notes on the reel boxes alongside the contents of the respective cine chronicles. If we assume that the numbers on the boxes were written in the field, then the reels MAE# b-1173-6, b-1173-3, b-1173-2, and b-1173-5 are those first films, which were sent to Bogoras (cf. date no. 1 above).
In addition to the issue of dating the films, there is some question about their editing or cutting. The reel MAE# b-1173-5 is the hardest to date since it contains frames with both snow-covered tundra and summertime landscapes. The mixture The footage is filmed in the same location and at the same time.
Setting up a chum on the shore; reindeer in the corral; people among reindeer in the herd; releasing of reindeer from the corral; children.
The footage is filmed in the same location and at the same time as that on the reels MAE# b-1173-4 and MAE# b-1173-7.
Weaving of fish nets; a man narrating something; weaving of fish nets; several people are eating raw fish together; a cradle; knife sharpening; hides cleaning; sewing of niuks; 2 a woman near a chum; gods; hides tanning; sewing of kisy and tobaki. c The footage is filmed in the same location and at the same time. Perhaps, the filming was taking place in the same location as on the reels MAE# b-1173-3 and MAE# b-1173-7.

MAE# b-1173-5
Reindeer crossing over a strait; hides tanning; a dog sled team (winter=early spring= late autumn); collecting of driftwood along the shore; chopping of driftwood; drying of kisy; kneading of tobaki; face washing; reindeer intestines processing; children are picking berries (most probably, enacting The footage was filmed in different seasons and presumably in different locations. (Continued )

Samoyedic Diary 339
of frames implies that the Prokofievs were filming only the scenes valuable from their point of view, but this may also mean that they had cut and edited the film. There are no reasons to be sure about either option. It is also noteworthy that some of the frames are seemingly staged; such as, for example, the footage with tobacco sniffing where Prokofiev (or someone of similar appearance) measures the distance from the camera to a person, using a meter ruler (a procedure common in the early years of cinematography). In some frames people pay attention to the movie camera, as if asking the beholder whether he is satisfied with their performance.

The Cinema and Nenets
The story of the Prokofievs' expedition is closely intertwined with Grigorii Verbov's entry into the ethnography and linguistics of Samoyeds. According to the documentary book The Knights of the North, by Anatolii K. Omel'chuk [1982], Prokofiev and Verbov had known each other before 1930; but this information is apparently erroneous, for Verbov writes in his diary: ''On the 15th [of August 1930] I also got to know G. N. Prokofiev who had managed to do a lot of linguistic work for a year and had to get to Tel'viska by the ''Nenets' ' [ship], then to the cultural station, and from there to Leningrad'' [AMAE . That meeting was consequential for Samoyedic studies in the 20th century, when in their heyday. And another contact significant for the history of the Bol'shezemel'skie Nenets occurred during that expedition-the encounter with cinematography. Ekaterina Prokofieva starts her inventory of the cine chronicles with the following story [ Figure 4]: This story is interesting in many respects. First, the footage with the reindeer crossing over the Yugorsky Strait (and any other strait in general) is indeed rare material. 15 Prokofiev himself understood that very well and pointed it out in his letters to Bogoras. Second, in comparing the material with the notes of Verbov one can say that Nenets already knew about cinema. The point is that the responsibilities of the head of the first Bol'shezemel'skii ''Red chum,'' the position occupied by Verbov in 1930, included the showings of propagandistic films. 16 He wrote in his diary on August 30, 1930, from Khabarovo, about one such film: ''Novolotskii and I organized a daytime cinema showing attended by about 50 Nenets persons. The majority were watching a film for the first time and were expressing their rapture in various ways'' [AMAE . Probably, being tired of the constant showing of cine films, Verbov drew a few cartoons in his diary representing drunkards in a pub-scenes from one of those films. Viktorin Popov's notes explain why drunkards were a curious issue: ''The urban anti-alcoholic scene [campaign] is not clear to Nenets. After the showing, there was a lot of talk in chums discussing how bad life is in a city but, on the other hand, how abundant the liquid fire [alcohol] is there . . . '' [Popov 1932]. After returning to Leningrad Prokofiev was to cite that story with a movie at one of the meetings in 1932 as an unsuccessful instance of the anti-alcohol campaign in the North.
Despite their familiarity with the cameraman's work, Nenets still saw photography as a threat to their well-being, calling such pictures gadgadgo''mo or ''a glued reflection,'' and sidriadg or ''a shadow.'' 17 It is noteworthy that Prokofiev had already experienced this phenomenon among Selkups in 1925-26. There is a snapshot [MAE# b-1177-50] in his collection of photos that represents Selkups covering the eyes with their hands. In the inventory for this picture there is a note that Selkups were resisting attempts to photograph them, referring to the same beliefs as those of the Bol'shezemel'skie Nenets.

Khabarovo
The scene of one of the main locations where Prokofiev was filming his chronicles appears quite depressing. Viktorin Popov writes that the village of Khabarovo consisted of literally ''five huts, a warehouse of Gostorg [the State Trading Agency-Transl.], a bathhouse, and a tiny church.'' The settlement was situated in complete isolation, far from all others, despite being a well-known place: it had been visited by Nansen and Amundsen during their voyages and, as Popov assures us, one of the dwellers of Khabarovo had a plate from the ''Fram'' [Nansen's ship-Transl.] in his house. Early in the 20th century there used to be Norwegian warehouses there and the territory was functioning as a peculiar frontier in trade between Norway and Russia. In Prokofiev's time Khabarovo was a mere trading post: Nenets were coming here to buy foodstuff and to hand over the furs (rather as we see in Nanook). From Popov's words, the bakery was the main location of activity in the village, while the church had already been idle during the Prokofievs' and Verbov's expeditions. It may well be that it was this church in Khabarovo whence Verbov brought a collection of documents archived in the MAE [e.g., AMAE RAN K-V-1-173-174; also Arzyutov 2013]. 18 According to the correspondence between Prokofiev and Bogoras, the route of the Prokofievs lay from Ust'-Usa to Yushar and Khabarovo and thence to Khoseda-Khard.

Getting Acquainted 85 Years Later
Combining all the available materials it is possible to restore the names of the filmed subjects. We can see the chairman of the RIK (Regional Executive Committee), Ivan F. Taibarei [a photo by Prokofiev, MAE# b-1174-50, and the drawing by Verbov, MAE# b-1215-76], a Nenets pauper Vadio Valei [MAE# b-1174-23], and a Nenets Dmitrii Lagei who is feeding dogs in a photo [MAE# b-1174-25] and is riding with a dog-sled team in the chronicles. Ekaterina D. Prokofieva wrote about him: ''This Nenets has no reindeer, constantly resides in the vicinity of Yushar, and hunts walruses and fish. He has a dog-sled team. In winter, he sets traps for polar foxes. Checks them riding his dogs'' [the collection inventory MAE# b-1173]. Each of these subjects is described in detail in the diaries of Prokofiev and Verbov, as well as in the book by Popov.
Together with his constant guide Taibarei, Prokofiev often visits Vadio Valei [ Figure 5] and gets to know his entire family. Vadio is mentioned in Prokofiev's diaries as ''a poor person.'' However, considering the official division of rural dwellers into the poor, the middle, and the kulak (a rural dweller in Russia and in the early Soviet Union wealthy enough to own to hire labor), Prokofiev wrote that he was concerned over the issue of the assessment of the condition of reindeer in this social classification: One should pay serious attention to all those particulars in the methods of reindeer herding, think them over, compare them with the details of the reindeer herding of the so called 'poor guy' and only then make a conclusion on why the kulak has such decent reindeer.. . . What if he is not a kulak but a good owner-a worker? If I compare reindeer herding of Vadio Valeiskii with that of Rogachiov Egor or Pavlov 'Evden', how can I, considering the issue quite impartially, at least in some way come to the conclusion that Vadio Valeiskii is a poor man who has been robbed of [his wealth] while Pavlov-kulak is the robber? [AMAE  It is such observations concerning the people in the tundra that reveal Prokofiev's sentiments in the discussions on collectivization.

Discussions on the Collectivization and the Ethnographer's Dilemma
Staying in Khabarovo, Prokofiev was at the center of the local discussions about collectivization. Like many other Soviet ethnographers of that time he did not Samoyedic Diary 343 acknowledge that it was dangerous to express opinions that differed from the official ''general line'' of thought. He wrote in his diary: They [Nenets-D. A.] have the most negative attitudes towards collectivization. According to the current [Nenets] rumors, a collective organized in Malaya Zemlya is falling aparttwo people have left it already. One of them left his reindeer to the collective because the collective had refused to return them to him.. . . Tel'viska's reindeer herders (Russians), in the information given by Nenets, were de-kulakized: they were deprived of their reindeer and property and evicted from their houses. Nenets call this nothing other than that ''they were robbed.'' [AMAE  Filming the chronicles Prokofiev repeats several times a frame where the letter ''K'' is being cut on the rump of a reindeer [ Figure 6], as if emphasizing the significance of the action. That letter ''K'' apparently stood for the word kolkhoz. 19 This frame, repeated twice in the cine chronicles, is important both for understanding the ethnographer's speculations in the field about the current events and for documenting the practice of branding as such. In his fieldnotes from 1930, taken in the Bol'shezemel'skaia Tundra, Verbov describes reindeer branding like this: ''The tags on the ears are cut with a knife; those on the hip, also with a knife. The ears of calves-yearlings (  The ethnographer's dilemma assumes that, being involved in the heated debates about collectivization, Prokofiev was a doubter in his diaries and presumably in the conversations with his friends and acquaintances in the field; apparently he did not agree with local practices of collectivization.

THE PROKOFIEVS' CINE FILM IN THE CONTEXT OF THE HISTORY OF THE VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE RUSSIAN NORTH
Shortly before his assignment to the Bol'shezemel'skaia Tundra, Prokofiev was an active participant in the meeting of 1929. At that same meeting Ian P. Koshkin (Al'kor), a well-known researcher of Tungusic history and culture and one of the activists at the Institute of the Peoples of the North, said: ''Here [at the Institute] we have well-organized studies of topography, drawing; besides, we are introducing cine filming because we think that if an ethnographer goes to the field he should know how to film. On the other hand, we consider photography and sketching, technical reproduction, which is very important for the ethnographer, as well as movie-making to be very important in our scientific plan, and these technical subjects are included now [in the training]'' [Arzyutov, Alymov and Anderson 2014: 412;my italics].
Referring to these words we might say that the cine chronicles are the films of the Institute, which was introducing training in filmmaking at the time. However, although we know the motion pictures produced by students of the IPN [Trofimov 1939] as well as the filmed scenes portraying how Archibald L. ''Archie'' Phinney-a Nez Perce Indian who was staying in Leningrad in 1932-37 within the framework of the previously mentioned Boas-Bogoras project-was using gestures [Korsun 2010: 45;J. Smith 2015], 20 we cannot be sure that the reel under consideration was filmed with a cine camera belonging to the IPN. Some details are confusing. First, there is the phrase from Prokofiev's letter: ''we will have to send them to America for printing.'' This sounds strange: Lenfilm (Leningrad Cinema) had been working as a film studio since 1918 and it was possible to print photos from a 16-mm film there. Secondly, we cannot exclude the possibility that the cine camera and=or the film reels which pioneered ethnographic cine chronicles of the Soviet Arctic were acquired in the framework of the Boas-Bogoras project.
Despite the possibility of such an exchange, Soviet ethnographers were not very familiar with the history of Western visual anthropology of the North. 21 One can only assume that Bogoras could have known about the feature film In the Land of the Head Hunters (its other title was In the Land of the War Canoes), shot by Edward Curtis among the Kwakiutl tribe of British Columbia in 1914 [Evans and Glass 2013]. The film Nanook of the North, produced by Robert Flaherty in 1922 and featuring Inuit of Hudson Bay in Canada [Christopher 2005], was familiar to Soviet researchers of the North, as is seen (in addition to other sources) from the textbook by Anatolii N. Terskii [1930].
A linguist and ethnographer, Petr P. Shimkevich, had by that time filmed in Manchuria. Sergei M. Shirokogorov wrote in his letter to Lev Ia. Sternberg on April 26, 1915 The real breakthrough in the visual anthropology of the North and Siberia apparently occurred in the late 1920s. An ethnographer-mongolist, Kapitolina V. Viatkina, created her first film in Buryatia, in Khorinsky aimag, during her work for a Russian-German expedition to combat syphilis. 22 Only several frames from this motion picture, copied to photo film presumably in the 1970s, have been preserved in the MAE RAS. Unfortunately we do not know whether this film was screened in the MAE or other places. In the same year, in Oyrotia (today the Republic of Altai), the Kino-Sibir society shot a ''historic and ethnographic motion picture,'' The Altaians [KPDA RA P- 1-1-494: 7, 8, 9], that referred to Andrei V. Anokhin-a composer, folklorist and ethnographer living in the Altai-as its main consultant. 23 In Ivan A. Golovnev's opinion, it is the film ''Forest People (Udihe)'' (Lesnye liudi (udihe)), 24 created by the film director Alexandr I. Litvinov along with the ethnographer Vladimir K. Arsen'ev, that was the turning-point in the history of Soviet visual anthropology (''the first Soviet ethno-cinema'') [Golovnev 2012;also Divnina 2009;Golovnev 2013Golovnev , 2014. At the same time Proletkino (Proletarian Cinema) was making the motion picture ''Down the Yenisey [river] above the Arctic Circle'' (Po Eniseiu za Poliarnyi Krug), while the politician and vice-chairman of the Committee of the North at the Central Executive Committee, Anatolii E. Skachko, was filming ''Polar Countries'' (Poliarnye strany). The famous Dziga Vertov was also including scenes depicting aboriginal peoples' ways of life in his movie ''The Sixth Part of the World'' (Shestaia chast' mira). It is likely that the Prokofievs were aware of most of these motion pictures and probably would have seen some of them.
It makes sense to outline the ideas that were important for ethnographers with cine cameras. By the time of the 1929 Meeting and Prokofiev's expedition to the Bol'shezemel'skaia Tundra, the first textbook on ethnographic fieldwork had appeared, written by Sergei A. Makar'ev [1928] on the basis of Bogoras's lectures . The methodological aspects of photo-and movie-making in the field were already discussed in that textbook: The techniques used by the ethnographer-photographer are infinitely more complex and are approaching the techniques of cinema-making. However, the organization of the frame should not overstep certain limits. It should not include any extraneous moments, psychological or aesthetic, not to mention vulgar-romantic, which often happens in cinema-making. The organization of the frame should seek to identify the essence of a phenomenon, to present it to the audience and to the reader in the most accentuated and clearly illustrative way. [Makar'ev 1928: 32] These recommendations of Bogoras=Makar'ev are reflected in Prokofiev's cine chronicles and in the discussions on documentary filmmaking of the 1920s. Prokofiev saw his films rather as a collection of stories that could be printed as photographs and used for publication. This assumption is confirmed by both the above citation from Prokofiev's letter to Bogoras as well as by the origin of the photo [ Figure 4] published in the book ''The Peoples of the North'' (Narody Sibiri) [Levin and Potapov 1956: 614;1964: 554]. 25 The initial methodology of filming was articulated by the Soviet writer Anatolii N. Terskoi in his textbook ''Ethnographic Film'' (Etnograficheskaia fil'ma), published in 1930-the year when the Prokofievs returned from the field. The author of the preface to this textbook, Nikolai Yakovlev, a linguist and ethnographer, initiated a particular debate with Bogoras that had already started at the Meeting of 1929 and was related to long-term expeditions or, as we define it today, participant observation. Referring to a camera, a pencil or a paintbrush, an ethnographer, in the opinion of the authors of those years, was turning into a bystander, a distant observer, who should ''by all available technical means reflect and fixate the [surrounding-D.A.] objects on the paper, photo, sketch and so on'' [Yakovlev 1930: 7]. The quintessence of the ethnographic film was that: ''The necessary elements of an ethnographic film . . . are, first, good-quality authentic ethnographic material reflecting the development of a specific real community (a people); secondly, the presentation of this material within its internal causal interconnectedness, in its Marxist sociological illumination and, finally, third, a technically quite perfect, plot-based (structural) design of this material'' [ibid. : 10-11].
Thus the ethnographic film was supposed to reflect a people as a subject of history, depicting it through the Soviet Marxist paradigm. Of course, as a participant at the Meeting of 1929, Prokofiev not only knew the ''current moment'' quite well, but also tried to follow the idea that the ''khoziaistvo [economy] is the core of the ethnographic film'' [Terskoi 1930: 28-29; cf. the contents of the cine chronicles in Table 1].
These claims assumed the field ethnographer to be a curious combination of a ''missionary of a new (or Soviet) way of life,'' on the one hand, and a distant bystander, on the other. The second role was necessarily related to the technical attributes of the profession which, as a Yukagir, Theki Odulok, argued in 1929, are the most frightening for the ''natives,'' who misrecognize the ethnographer as the ''exploiter'' [Alymov and Arzyutov 2014: 58, 327]. While the ethnographer-as-missionary is active and is constantly co-producing knowledge with his field partners, the ethnographer-as-bystander is more engaged with his dissociated observations. These dynamics and statics are reflected in Prokofiev's chronicles: we can see how the ethnographers are trying to view their field statically, despite their usage of a cine camera designed to take dynamic pictures. The interplay of the static and dynamic representations was related in the USSR in 1927-32 to the movement of ''factography'' in documentary filmmaking [Malitsky 2010]. One can consider it as an ethnographic ''Zeno's arrow''-statics in each frame and the museification of a pulsating life that grant ethnography an aura of a timeless science occupied with the fundamental (and also timeless) issues of the history of humanity.
The ideas of the ''static movement'' resurface, albeit with regard to another issue, in the correspondence between Prokofiev and Bogoras: Our trip from Yushar to Khoseda-Khard took 38 days. With the meagre outfit that we had (in Yushar we had managed to buy nothing but the pimy 26 ), the journey was not a pleasant one. Samoyeds with whom we were nomadizing [argishili 27 ] were very poor, the chum they had was for the summer, besides, full of holes; the reindeer were lean. Our movement forward contradicted any dialectical understanding of movement, for even when we were riding we were all in one and the same place. True, here is a dialectic too.  The same perception of the cinematic picture can be found in the notes of Ekaterina Prokofieva who, in describing the collection and providing the most interesting information about the process of filming, confused the words ''cine camera'' (kinoapparat) and ''photo camera'' (fotoapparat).
After the Prokofievs' return from the Nenets expedition and publication of the book by Anatolii N. Terskoi [1930], Vladimir Bogoras suggested that the specialization in ethno-cinema (etnokinofil'my) be introduced at Leningrad State University in 1930-31 [SPFA RAN 250-3-93]. This initiative of Bogoras's was not, it appears, accepted, but a small-scale ''seminar for teaching photography to ethnographers'' did occur, a joint project of the Central Bureau of Regional Studies and Leningrad State University [SPFA RAN 142-1(1929)-11: 34]. Boris M. Sokolov held a series of seminars on ethnographic filmmaking at the Museum of Studies of Peoples in Moscow at the same time [Terskoi 1930: 21-22]. Besides, there were also some photography courses conducted by Samuil M. Dudin (1863, an outstanding photographer who worked for the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography and headed a photographic laboratory there [Prishchepova 2011]. The Prokofievs were of course aware of all those activities. Probably the high quality of their photographs and cine chronicles is the outcome of their training. 28 It is worth mentioning however that, being a violinist, Georgii had strong hands which could help him in cranking a movie camera steadily and accounts for the high quality of his footage. As for the visual anthropology of the Nenets specifically, one notes that they had already been filmed several times by 1930, as follows from the available archival information. The Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive (RGAKFD) has preserved several reels of such footage. One of the pieces, entitled Malozemel'skaia Tundra, and in two parts, was filmed in Tel'viska in 1930[RGAKFD 2685; another one, ''Ways of life of the Nenets'' (Byt nentsev), was also filmed in 1930, at the Yamal Peninsula [RGAKFD 7918]. Except for these documents there is no other information on filming of the Nenets in the archival inventories.
In conclusion I will briefly outline a history of filmmaking that was taking place in the North and in Siberia in the 1930s, when the Prokofievs probably were preparing to cut and edit the footage they had brought from the field.
In 1931 ethnographers and linguists at the Institute for Studies of the Peoples of the USSR (IPIN) were making a film about the Gilyaks (Nivkhs) and the Evenks in the lower reaches of the Amur River [MAE# 5154]. A year later, in 1932, a British anthropologist, Ethel J. Lindgren, and her husband Oscar Mamen, were making a movie, forgotten today, entitled Reindeer Tungus. 29 Their experiences also hark to a particular dialogue with Haddon and Boas and resonate with the discussions about cultural encounters that were happening at the time in British and American anthropology. However, this film in particular and Lindgren's works in the USSR in general had been unknown until recently. Some indirect information allows us to claim that Leonid L. Kapitsa, a brother of the outstanding physicist and a student of Fedor K. Volkov, who studied the Karels, Pomors and Lapps (Saami), was also filming chronicles in the early 1930s [on his work cf. Ivanovskaia 2014]. Somewhat later than Prokofievs' chronicles, in 1936, an archeologist and ethnographer, Albert N. Lipsky, participated as consultant in the production of two cinema films, ''Mangobo Nai-the Amur Man'' (Mangobo nai-amurskii chelovek) and ''Buni Poktadi-by the Road of the Dead'' (Buni poktadi-dorogoi mertvykh), that had for long been considered lost. However, Nina A. Messhtyb has located them in the archives of the State Cinema Fund of the Russian Federation (Gosfil'mofond RF) [Vainshtein 2003;AMAE RAN 5-4-90: 86-88]. In addition to these films, Lipsky consulted for the film ''From Primordial Communism towards Socialism'' (Ot pervobytnogo kommunizma k sozializmu) [AMAE . As for Lipsky's story, there is a noteworthy phrase in his agreement with a film studio that is linked to the ''factographic'' background of the discussions on documentary filmmaking: ''The consultant has the right to use the frames of the leftovers or doubles of the exposed negatives for printing photos in order to illustrate the works or scientific materials of expeditions that are to be published by him or by the IAE [Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography] of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, or [to be used] in ethnographic collections-outcomes of the expeditions-exhibited in the museums of the Academy of Sciences' ' [ibid.].
Among the well-known cinematic experiments in the North of Western Siberia one can mention the film by Valerii N. Chernetsov and Vanda A. Moshinskaia about the Bear Celebration of the Mansi, made in the settlement of Vezhakory in 1948. This film was staged because it happened to be impossible to get to the site and observe the actual celebration due to the seasonally bad roads [Sagalaev 2014]. 30 The post-war history of the visual anthropology of the Arctic in the USSR however saw the creation of hundreds of films, lost or foundering in dust in the archives of various institutions, which could provide a completely novel perspective on the visual anthropology of the North.

CONCLUSION
During fieldwork Prokofiev paid much attention to developing a theory that explained the ethnogenesis of Samoyeds. Specific ideas with regard to this theory can be found in his fieldwork diary [AMAE  and in the book by Viktorin Popov [1932], who recalls his discussions with Prokofiev about the past of Samoyeds. Prokofiev tended to view the contemporary Nenets as a ''pure'' group strictly separated from, for example, the Komi people. His concern with this ''purity'' is observable in his cine chronicles, where the camera lens is focused exclusively on the Nenets and their life. Such a classificatory approach and the construction of strict genealogies of groups were at the core of Soviet ethnography.
In the fall of 1930 the Prokofievs returned to Leningrad. Ahead lay a new wave of meetings and public talks that would to an ever lesser extent be raising scientific questions, and to a greater extent focus on the issues of the ''practical significance'' of ethnography. Already in 1932 there were two meetings [RA IIMK RAN 2-1 (1932)-201, 202; AMAE RAN K-II-  where the anti-religious theme was almost dominant. Prokofiev took part in those discussions, speaking about the cinema and language construction. His observations with regard to Verbov's screenings of certain films to aboriginal audiences, as well as his own experiences of filming, were very important in this respect. In August 1932, at the meeting on issues of the enlightenment of the peoples of the North, Bogoras continued speaking about the creation of socially oriented films about the North with ''god-less contents'' [AMAE RAN K-II-1-161: 8]. Following his speech, Prokofiev said: ''The films which are brought to the North sometimes bring the opposite results. Incidentally, there was a screening of a film of the anti-alcohol campaign in the life of a big city, and the conclusion reached by the audience was as follows: why do you tell us that there is no wine when you have wine for yourselves there?'' [AMAE RAN K-II-1-161 : 16]. The debates resulted in a joint statement by the participants that ''through this meeting, we have to manage that Soyuzkino [Cinema of the Soviet Union] turn its face towards the North'' [AMAE RAN K-II-1-161: 33].
Unfortunately we do not know how the chronicles of the Prokofievs were used for purposes of public agitation and propaganda, but it should be acknowledged that, despite their compliance with the ''factographical'' genre, the authors were able to avoid almost entirely the propaganda of the Soviet regime (perhaps, except for the frames with reindeer branding that are more related however to Prokofiev's concerns with the injustices of collectivization). This feature of his work, as well as the very fact of the cinematic documentation of Nenets life in 1929-30, make the chronicles of Prokofiev not only a monument to that time but also a milestone in the history of the visual anthropology of the Arctic.
There are still many questions left that lie beyond the scope of this article. Thus it is unknown who actually provided the money for buying the cine-camera: was it Franz Boas, the Institute of the Peoples of the North, the Institute for Studies of the Peoples of the USSR, or the Committee of the North? Where is the first part of the fieldwork diary of Georgii N. Prokofiev stored, if it is still preserved? Where are the materials of Viktorin Popov's journey? The answers to such questions could lead to a better understanding of the first steps of cine-camera usage in ethnographic fieldwork.
Today, 85 years later, Prokofiev's film is digitized and the author of this article is editing it, following the logic of its original creator: to present the final cut of the ''Samoyedic Diary'' to wide audiences in the Nenets, Russian and English languages.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author appreciates the comments and remarks of Craig Campbell (University of Texas, Austin) and of all the participants in the workshop dedicated to the commemoration of Vladimir G. Bogoras, held on May 14, 2015, in the framework of the joint anthropological seminar of the Department of Ethnography of Siberia at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the European University at Saint Petersburg. The author also thanks Joselyne Dudding (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge) and David G. Anderson (University of Aberdeen) for a discussion of Ethel John Lindgren's cinematic and photographic materials, which helped in the understanding and contextualization of the Prokofievs' chronicles. The author is also grateful to Nikolai B. Vakhtin (European University at Saint Petersburg) for his comments on the first version of the article. I am very thankful to Olga Pak for her translation of this article. A Russian version will be published in Antropologicheskii Forum (2016, no. 29).