Die Reise der Anna Odinzowa.

Mozur, Joseph P. Jr.

Juri Rytcheu. Die Reise der Anna Odinzowa. Charlotte Kossuth, Leonhard Kossuth, trs. Z'drich. Unionsverlag. 2000. 301 pages. DM 39. ISBN 3-293-00271-4.

FOR SOME THIRTY YEARS now, Yuri Rytkheu (b. 1930) has portrayed the clash between modernity and the native culture of Russian Chukotka. His last three novels, Die Suche nach der letzten Zahl (1995; see WLT 70:3, p. 723), Unna (1997; see WLT 72:4, p. 864), and Im Spiegel des Vergessens (1999; see WLT 73:4, P. 771), depict the loss of national identity of Chukchi characters seeking to find their way in the encroaching world of European culture, be it on board Roald Amundsen's ice-locked ship or in the materialist, utopia-oriented society of the Soviet Union.

In Die Reise der Anna Odinzowa (The Journey of Anna Odintsova) Rytkheu reverses the perspective, relating the travails of a Russian ethnographer who abandons modernity and the comfortable life of the city to gain deeper insight into the Stone Age nomadic culture of Chukotka's reindeer herders. Anna Odintsova's ideal is Margaret Mead, author of the renowned anthropological study on sexual mores in New Guinea. Yet Odintsova's personal dedication to her subject far surpasses that of her model. Unlike Mead, she seeks to study the Chukchi from the "inside." After gaining a native proficiency in the language, Anna marries the younger son of a Chukchi reindeer herder, and leaves with his clan for months of life in one of the world's most inhospitable climates. She keeps voluminous notes about everything -- from the herders' winter housing, the yaranga, to the food, dress, and the role of women in the tundra. With time she finds her own emotions becoming more and more the subject of her notes, such as her experiences during the birth and subsequent death of her first child and the jealousy she feels while adjusting to the ancient custom of levirate. As an ethnographer, however, Odintsova never questions the wisdom of being one of two wives, for she knows that the practice assures the survival of a people living in such extreme conditions.

But Anna and her kinsmen have much more to contend with than just the harsh elements. Although Soviet Chukotka was spared the agony of collectivization in the 1930s, Stalin again returned to the utopian project after World War II. This time, in the late 1940s, even the isolated reindeer herders Wandering throughout the vast Chukchi tundra do not escape his attention and are forced to join kolkhozes (collective farms). Those who refuse to give up their herds must flee to the most remote areas of the territory. Yet the Soviet authorities hunt them down by air, and eventually arrest and incarcerate them in labor camps, where many perish or commit suicide. Anna's adopted clan seems destined to share that fate.

Anna's notes chronicle her family's efforts to escape the watchful eye of the authorities. As a scholar she fears that collectivization will destroy a unique prehistoric culture; as a wife she fears for the fate of her husband's family, headed by her father-in-law, Rinto, a respected shaman. Rinto's knowledge and near-psychic abilities are crucial for survival in the tundra. When his son dies, the old shaman begins to teach Anna about the movements of the northern stars, the customs, incantations, and cosmology of the Chukchi. Her eventual initiation into the world of the shamans includes drinking a hallucinogenic potion and a ritual rape. Curiously, in surviving both trials, she appears to gain spiritual serenity and greater confidence in her wisdom and powers. When the clan is finally caught and Anna arrested, she uses her newly won abilities to deceive her captor, an Eskimo KGB agent. Anna exploits his lust for her and persuades him to start a new life with her by fleeing to the American island of Inalik across the icy Bering Strait. Mysteriously, Anna's experienced companion perishes on the ice floes, while Anna makes it safely to Alaska.

As an ethnographer, Anna fails. All her notes, sketches, and cross-cultural analysis is lost forever when her semiliterate brother-in-law burns her papers in a fit of jealousy. Soon after, Anna "goes native" to such an extent that she loses her ability to write about the Chukchi with scholarly detachment. In the epilogue to her story the reader learns that Anna was a real person living in Noma, Alaska, whom Rytkheu interviewed in the late 1970s during a trip to Alaska. His book is an attempt to reconstruct Anna's notes and research and to tell the story of an unusually courageous young woman.

Rytkheu is in a way what Anna Odintsova strives to be. While having an intimate knowledge of his people's customs, way of life, and beliefs, he has become so thoroughly Russified that he is able to see the Chukchi both from "the inside" as well as from the perspective of his Tangitan (European) readers. One senses sadness in his recognition that for both him and his people the train has long since left the station and there is no way back to the yaranga. Rytkheu does not embellish life in the tundra, nor is he silent about the shockingly primitive or savage customs of his people. Yet at the same time, his work is pervaded by stubborn pride and amazement at his people's tenacious ability to survive in arctic conditions.

Die Reise der Anna Odinzowa is a good read and presents a wealth of ethnographic information on the lives of the Chukchi in the postwar period. The Kossuths' translation of the Russian original is superb, and brings home the Chukchi world for German readers. The author's recent literary tour throughout Germany and Switzerland attests to his sustained and growing popularity in Europe.

Joseph P. Mozur Jr.
University of South Alabama