“Reindeer mania” among the administration of the Murmansk district at the turn of the 1930s

This paper examines the collectivization of reindeer herding farms in the “indigenous areas” of the Murmansk District of the Leningrad Region during the 1930s, a process primarily viewed through the lens of Soviet historical scholarship. Consequently, a number of problematic issues surrounding the organization of collective farms during this period for a long time have remained overlooked due to ideological biases and require a more comprehensive historical analysis. The aim of this study was to uncover the true nature of the so-called “reindeer mania” among the district leadership in the early years of collectivization and to identify systemic issues that significantly affected the implementation of the collectivization policy. The large-scale reindeer herding practices that exist in the region today are largely a result of the Soviet transformations that took place in the tundra. The challenges facing reindeer herding farms at the turn of the XXI century, alongside ongoing crises in this area, underscore the importance of revisiting the foundational experiences of the reindeer herding system established in the 1930s.