The hand about which not everyone knows.

 

«The wisdom of our grandmothers traveled on the wings of stars to that place where our village slept under the rain of darkness. The wisdom of our grandmothers was carried from the Veps lands, giving birth to dreams of harmony. The wisdom of our grandmothers descended from the peak of the mountain through memories of circles, not interrupted by wider circles of doubt. The wisdom of our grandmothers touched the life-giving feathers of those who danced with stone feet, lifting them like eagles into the waiting embraces of the wind».

 

Does the universe of indigenous peoples exist not as a geographical place, but as a special spiritual space, as a world with its own laws, memory, rhythms, rites, dreams and ways of comprehending life? Yes!

 

We devote much time to reflecting on our original identity, and we do this not only because a terrible historical encroachment was committed against our way of life. We do this because we are building a world in which we love to live. Thanks to our stories, songs, dreams, rites and ancestral memory, we look to the future with optimism. In general, we are very interesting and cheerful people and have never been bores. Our universe is defined by us ourselves: by our elders, our children, our storytellers, our scholars, our artists, our songs, our rites and our dreams.

 

The dream that will be discussed further is a very important event both for us and for the man who told us this dream. Therefore we speak of this path not only as a historical testimony, but also as a gesture of gratitude, joy and respect to all our dreams.

 

Once, during one of our expeditions in the state of Oregon, we met a man from one of the indigenous tribes of the western Pacific coast. He told us his dream. In the dream he was alone in his dwelling. He was sitting on the floor, and in his right hand there was another hand – straw, made as an imitation of a human hand with fingers. And this straw hand, with his right hand, he was placing against his right cheek.

 

An ignorant man, brought up in a paper world, could immediately give predictable explanations. He would say: this is another’s hand on the face, a symbol of an imposed identity. Or, this is the substitution of the living by the dead. Or, this is a mask instead of a face. Or, this is a sign of inner violence, when man himself applies to himself another’s form, because he was taught to consider it his own. Or, this is marionette-like being, the transformation of man into a strawman. 

 

All these interpretations could be beautiful for many. But we knew: they do not suit us. Because we have knowledge of this hand.

 

When we were little, our grandmother gifted us a straw hand – a hand made of straw. She said that this symbol is passed down from generation to generation and helps the one who finds himself in the most difficult life situation. If man remains alone, if his pain is too great, if there is no one near who could take him by the hand, he can close his eyes and place this straw hand against his body: against his cheek, against his chest, against his shoulder, and through this hand man will feel that he is not alone. Through this hand one can feel the help of the ancestors. The memory of the ancestors. Grandmother said that this hand helps to live through the deepest pain: loss, loneliness, injustice, and also – if you want to meet your beloved man or a true friend, then you can close your eyes and place the straw hand against your cheek. And one day in your hand there will be not straw, but the living hand of a beloved living man. And when grandmother was passing this hand to us, she said in Veps: «Sanukat sidä hänelle, ken mugažo tethäb sidä», which means in translation: «Tell about this to the one who also knows about this». And then she added: «Venälaižed sidä ei teda», which means: «The Russians know nothing about this».

 

Having heard grandmother’s instructions, our friend the dreamer realized that his dream is the very confirmation that we must tell precisely him about the hand, for it appeared to him in a dream. We smiled and for a long time looked silently into each other’s eyes, feeling with our skin the most real Miracle – we had met the man who knew what we know, and the words of our grandmother became prophetic. And then our friend continued that the words about the Russians have an enormous response in his heart, because the Russian Empire came to many indigenous peoples: to Alaska, to the Aleuts, also known as Unangan or Unangas; to the Tlingit, also known as Lingít; to the Alutiiq, also known as Sugpiaq; to lands that were living long before the appearance of Russian forts, the fur trade and colonial companies. We agreed together that it is accepted to think about how many indigenous peoples of America the Anglo-Saxon colonial powers destroyed, but it is very important to remember: the Russian Empire also was a colonial empire, and its expansion was accompanied by violence, forced labor, hostage-taking, deportations and wars against indigenous peoples.

 

Together with the dreamer, we recalled history, beginning with Russian America – Alaska, namely the series of conflicts between Russian promyshlenniki – fur hunters and traders –and the Russian-American Company with the indigenous peoples of Alaska. We recalled one of the most well-known episodes – the war with the Tlingit for Sitka. In 1802 the Tlingit drove the Russians out of Old Sitka, and in 1804 Alexander Baranov returned with Russian forces and dependent Aleut and Alutiiq hunters. The U.S. National Park Service describes the battle of 1804 as a turning point: the Tlingit were forced to leave their fortification Shís’gi Noow – Sapling Fort, the Russians established themselves in Sitka, and the Tlingit did not regain full control over Baranov Island until the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867. It was also necessary to recall an even harsher example – Kodiak. In 1784 a detachment of Grigory Shelikhov attacked the fortified refuge Awa’uq, known as Refuge Rock, where the Alutiiq had gathered. Archaeological and museum sources call this place a symbol of the bloody loss of political independence of the indigenous population of Kodiak. Scholarly descriptions speak of a bloody massacre, after which Alutiiq resistance was broken, and near it the Russian trading post Three Saints Bay arose. Estimates of the dead differ: the cautious formulation is hundreds killed; in a number of summaries there appears a range approximately from 200–500 to several thousand. Separately it is necessary to speak about the Unangan, better known as the Aleuts. The Library of Congress writes that the Aleuts were forced to hunt sea otter, and Russian merchants took hostages in order to ensure the fulfillment of labor norms. The number of Aleuts in the early period of Russian colonization sharply declined: some people died from diseases to which there was no immunity, some from violence, forced labor and the destruction of their habitual way of life.

 

Our friend the Indian asked us to expand the theme beyond America. So we told that the expansion into Siberia was not a peaceful walk of so-called pioneers. Russian expansion was built on the collection of an obligatory tax – yasak, also known as yasaq; military pressure and punitive campaigns against those who resisted. In historiography, violent expeditions against the Yakuts, also known as Sakha; the Daurs, also known as Dagur, Daghur, or Dahur; the Itelmens; the Koryaks; the Chukchi, also known as Chukchee or Chukot; and other peoples are described. Especially destructive was the fur trade, which required the subordination of the local population, its labor, routes, knowledge and resources. In the Caucasus there also were mass killings and deportations. One of the known episodes is Suvorov’s campaign against the Nogais in 1783 after the annexation of Crimea and attempts to resettle the Nogais. In Nogai memory this episode was preserved as a massacre and a punitive operation: Russian troops under Suvorov’s command attacked the camp of the rebellious Nogais, destroyed it and took hostages. Later Soviet power continued the practice of mass deportations – entire peoples and ethnic groups were deported: the Volga Germans; the Chechens; the Ingush; the Crimean Tatars; the Kalmyks; the Karachays, also known as Karachais; the Balkars, also known as Karachay-Balkar; the Meskhetian Turks, also known as Turkish Meskhetians, and others. Studies call the order of magnitude approximately 2.8 million people from several ethnic groups, exiled in the 1940s to Siberia and Central Asia. We told our friend the Indian that the Veps – a Finno-Ugric people – had lived for centuries on their land between Lakes Ladoga, Onega and White Lake: in Karelia, Leningrad and Vologda regions. Russian historical tradition often hides such peoples under Russian words, and then tells history as if on these lands there had always been only «Russian land». But this is not so. We, the Veps, are a separate indigenous people with our own language, culture and territory.

 

«So what happened in the 20th century?» asked our friend. We told that under Soviet power there was first a short policy of korenizatsiia – an early Soviet policy of promoting local indigenous and non-Russian national cultures, languages, schools, and administrative autonomy within the Soviet system: Veps national districts were created, writing, school and culture were developed. But already by the end of the 1930s the course sharply changed. In 1937 the Vinnitsa National District in Leningrad Oblast was liquidated, and in 1957 – the Sheltozero District in Karelia. After 1959 the Shimozero Veps of Vologda Oblast were resettled to the Podporozhsky and Vinnitsa districts of Leningrad Oblast. In August 1944 the command of the Karelian Front raised before the Central Committee of the VKP(b) – Vsesoyuznaya Kommunisticheskaya Partiya (bol'shevikov), or the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) – the question of liquidating the Karelo-Finnish SSR and deporting Karelians, Finns and Veps to Siberia. The Veps fell into the same logic of Stalinist suspicion toward «western» and Finno-Ugric minorities. During the so-called «national operations» of the NKVD – The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, not only Finns were repressed, but also many representatives of other Finno-Ugric groups, including the Veps. By the end of the 1920s – the 1930s, Stalinist policy increasingly shifted from korenizatsiia to Russification and suppression of local national development. Then began the destruction of the entire people through the liquidation of national districts, a blow against the intelligentsia – the educated cultural and intellectual class: writers, teachers, scholars, artists, clergy, and other people who preserve language, memory, education, and public thought – the prohibition of the Veps language in public and cultural work, the destruction of writing, administrative fragmentation of the territory and the pushing of youth out of villages. The numbers show the scale. In 1897 there were about 25.6 thousand Veps, according to the 1979 census in the USSR – 8.1 thousand, in 1989 – 12.1 thousand, and by 2010 – 5,936 people. In 2000 the Veps received the status of an indigenous small-numbered people of Russia, and from 2006 entered the list of indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation. Today the Veps are in a stage of depopulation, and their small-numberedness has reached a critical limit. But the most terrible blow was not only on the road, not only in resettlement. The most terrible blow was in paper. When the Veps were torn out of their land, when they found themselves far from native villages, from cemeteries, when the Veps were forced to speak Russian and forbidden to speak their native language, they still had a name left. Veps. A Veps man. And then the state came and said: in the documents certifying your identity, from now on there is the line «nationality – Russian». This was done with ink. With a passport. With a birth certificate. With a questionnaire. With a census.

 

But we have no relation to the Russians and to what is called the nationality «Russian». We are Veps. Veps is not a nationality or a sign of belonging to some state. Veps are a Baltic Finnic people.

 

So we were fully ready for the interpretation of the dream of our friend the dreamer: «The straw hand at your cheek is the hand of the ancestors. It is the hand of memory. It is the hand that says to you: “You are not alone. You want to live and are very much waiting for a meeting with a man important to you. Your ancestors are near and also want this. Your people are near. Believe, and soon a real Miracle will happen in your life: you will meet your wife.”» Then we said to him: «Now, instead of the straw hand, you can take our hand and place it against your cheek». He took our hand and placed it against his cheek. And we cried together. Then the dreamer said to us: «Now you can take my hand and, instead of the straw hand, place it against your cheek». We did this. And we again cried together. Thus, thanks to a dream, two peoples met who know everything about the symbol of the sacred straw hand and the warmth of living human hands on their cheeks.

 

A year later our friend wrote us a letter of gratitude, in which he informed us that he had met his beloved woman and now had his own long-awaited family.