Economic aspects of social justice in the practices of traditional households of the Kola peninsula

The article is based on the analysis of ethnographic literature dating back to the late XIX and the early XX centuries, as well as folklore and archival sources. It examines the historical and cultural context and the current existence of a specific subjective concept of social justice in the economy of traditional households, historically formed by the local Arctic population - the Sami of the Kola Peninsula. When contemplating this concept, criteria of strict equality in distribution, productivity and principles of needs satisfaction were identified. It is noted that under the state policy of colonizing the Murmansk coast of the Kola Peninsula starting with 1860 the region initiated new economic relations, governed by the norms of all-Russian legislation and “colonization” legal acts which were prepared speculatively, without taking into account the specific rights of the indigenous people. Using the example of the analysis of archival sources deposited in the State Archive of the Murmansk region, the authors show that in 1870 and 1871, when the Sami of the Kola-Lopar district used legal means of upholding their ideas about social justice in the process of resolving possessory conflicts, declarative justice was on their side, and not on the side of the colonists, despite their resettlement privileges.