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Calling on the State: “Illegal” Gold Mining in the Russian Far East

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Abstract

The practice of “illegal” gold mining in one of Russian Far Eastern settlements is examined. An attempt is made to deconstruct the state as a self-sufficient institution or autonomous actor with the right to regulate, govern, and use force against the population living in a certain territory. It is shown that the bankruptcy of the main enterprise in a particular locality and the feeling of the state’s absence in everyday life under the availability of natural resources have not made the territory get out of control. This is manifested in the categorization of informal practices, where there is a reference to the “normal” order: gold mining should be carried out within the framework of tight control, as opposed to the self-will of the gold rush. The discursive formalization of practices makes it possible to see how an imaginary strong state operates across the boundaries of a local place and in what features the cultural specificity of the construct under study is manifested. This article is based on the results of a series of field studies conducted from 2010 to 2017 in the regions of the Russian Far East.

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Notes

  1. Black digging and predation are methods of gold mining by individuals prohibited by law. Free bringing is legally permitted mining of gold by individuals. Black diggers is a local designation of gold miners who violate the legislation in this sphere. Guided by the principle of ethnographic accuracy, we decided to keep the terminology. In a different context, black diggers most often mean grave robbers.

  2. Let us explain the use of the categories informal and illegal. The theoretical concepts of the informal economy are built around special relations with the state—this is what is hidden from its control, is not taken into account by statistics, and is regulated by rules that differ from the official ones [11]. By and large, all other definitions only add shades. The term informal itself is extremely loaded with meanings and does not work well in attempts to describe the observed reality. Other terms used also work depending on the context and research paradigm: “unregistered,” “criminal,” “shadow,” “hidden,” “illegal,” etc. Attempts to use the term illegal economy to denote practices run into an insurmountable obstacle: it is impossible to draw a line between what strictly complies with the law and what does not. Therefore, the “legal vs. illegal” dichotomy also requires an expansion of the range of values [12–14]. The term extralegal gives an important semantic addition: some practices exist in addition to the effective legal norms but not necessarily in spite of them [15]. We use the designation illegal only to show the special relationship of the described practices with the state, without presupposing an obligatory direct violation of legislative norms (the descriptions use categories from the verbal practices of the informants and the analyzed texts). In addition, when interpreting, we prefer a broader concept of informal practices, despite the implicit semantic connotations.

  3. FMA 2010 is field materials of the authors’ expedition to Amur oblast and Khabarovsk krai in 2010. Transcripts of expert interviews.

  4. FMA 2013 is field materials of the authors’ expedition to Khabarovsk and Primorski krais, Magadan and Amur oblasts, and the Republic of Yakutia in February–September 2013. Transcripts of expert and in-depth interviews.

  5. FMA 2012 is field materials of the authors’ expedition to Amur oblast in August 2012. Field diary and interview transcripts; materials related to participation in the on-site inspection of subsoil users.

  6. FMA 2014 is field materials of the authors’ expedition to Amur oblast in August 2014. Field diary and interview transcripts; materials related to participation in the on-site inspection of subsoil users.

  7. FMA 2017 is field materials of the authors’ expedition to Amur oblast in July 2017. Field diary, transcripts of interviews, and personal archives of informants.

  8. The name of the settlement was changed for ethical reasons. “Dzheltulak” is a frequent toponym in Amur oblast; in 1914 this name was given to one of the settlements located in the valley of the river of the same name; its fate is currently unknown to the authors (it was not found in the statistical reporting for the oblast). At present, Dzheltulak is a frequent name for licensed areas of gold mining (Dzheltulak-1, Dzheltulak-2, etc.). According to the dictionary of toponyms, “dzhelta is rapids, a rocky bottom of a river with stones coming out to the surface of the water” [31].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Economic Research Institute, Far East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, Russia

    T. N. Zhuravskaya & N. P. Ryzhova

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  1. T. N. Zhuravskaya
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  2. N. P. Ryzhova
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Correspondence to T. N. Zhuravskaya or N. P. Ryzhova.

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Translated by B. Alekseev

Reprinted from the journal Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie, No. 4, 29–44 (2019).

Tat’yana Nikolaevna Zhuravskaya, Cand. Sci. (Sociol.), is a Senior Researcher at the Economic Research Institute, RAS Far Eastern Branch. Natal’ya Petrovna Ryzhova, Dr. Sci. (Econ.), is Laboratory Head at the same institute.

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Zhuravskaya, T.N., Ryzhova, N.P. Calling on the State: “Illegal” Gold Mining in the Russian Far East. Her. Russ. Acad. Sci. 91, 464–472 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331621040092

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