Forms of Protest II: Political Resistance in Northern Eurasia, 1910s–1930s

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable explores grassroots resistance in Northern Eurasia, centering on political grammars of protest, local agency, and the entanglements of ideology, identity, and territorial claims. This discussion foregrounds subaltern actors—Indigenous leaders, borderland communities, and cultural intermediaries—who navigated the pressures of empire, revolution, and ideological consolidation in their own ways. Drawing from historical case studies across Yakutia, Karelia, and the transnational revolutionary imaginaries of the early 20th century, this roundtable investigates how grassroots movements shaped and were shaped by shifting political structures. Key questions include: How did local actors articulate struggles within broader frameworks of self-determination and anti-colonial resistance? To what extent did they challenge or appropriate dominant ideological discourses? What alternative narratives of resistance emerge when we focus on localized political grammars rather than centralized revolutionary teleologies? Participants will explore diverse forms of protest, from armed uprisings and transnational revolutionary solidarities to the role of literature and historical memory in shaping resistant subjectivities. Anna Gomboeva examines the 1927 Yakut Confederalist Uprising, interrogating whether it constituted an Indigenous land rights movement or a landowning elite’s manipulation of ethnonationalist rhetoric. Alexey Golubev presents a case study of Karelia during the Russian Civil War, highlighting the dilemmas of local populations caught between competing imperial and revolutionary forces, where resistance took fluid, pragmatic forms rather than adhering strictly to ideological divides. Charles McKenna Smith bridges Russian and Mexican revolutionary experiences, demonstrating how literary representations in Red Cavalry and Cartucho articulate a lament against the collectivization of revolutionary historiography, centering individual experience of upheaval.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Kirill Ospovat, U of Wisconsin-Madison

Roundtable Speakers

• Alexey Golubev, U of Houston

• Anna Gomboeva, New York U

• Charles McKenna Smith, UC Berkeley