Yurak-Samoyeds: Problems of Ethnic Identification

The article is devoted to the poorly studied problem of the origin of the name Yuraki, which the Russians, as well as the Enets and Nganasans, called the group of the Samoed-speaking population that wandered along the northern outskirts of Western Siberia in the 17th — first half of the 20th century. On the basis of published and unpublished archival materials, information from the works of Russian and foreign scientists, as well as dictionaries of the peoples of the North, we attempted to identify the ethnic composition of the Yuraks, the boundaries of their settlement, determine the chronological framework for the emergence and existence of this name and clarify its origin. The research has resulted in a number of reasonable conclusions and assumptions. The name Yuraki appeared in the 17th century, when the tax policy of the tsarist administration in the north of Western Siberia provoked active resistance of certain groups of the nomadic Samoyed population. Russians called the Yoraks / Yuraks nomadic in the deep tundra, who did not pay a permanent tax, tundra and forest Nenets and Enets, as well as a mixed Nenets-Enets group. This name comes from the Nenets word Yor meaning "depth". By the 19th century, the Nenets of the Yenisei province began to be called Yuraks, regardless of the tax system. In the Soviet household documents of the Dolgan-Nenets National District, this name appeared until the middle of the 20th century.