Dolgan Émigré Publishes Her Novel in Dual Dolgan-Russian Edition Because So Few Can Read Her Native Language

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 31 – Kseniya Bolshakova, a Dolgan now living in the US, has published her new novel, And the Permafrost Melts, in a dual Dolgan-Russian edition because it she had issued it only in Dolgan only about 400 people of her own numerically small people of the Russian North would have been able to read it.

            That of course highlights the fact that the number of people who know some of the numerically smaller languages well enough to read in them is far smaller than the number who claim such knowledge in the census. In 2021, more than 1100 people claimed to speak Dolgan, but most are elderly and are not literate in that language.   

            That is a problem that many of the numerically smaller peoples now within the borders of the Russian Federation face but one that neither the Russian authorities nor most specialists on these nationalities often devote much attention to even though it helps explain why these nations are in many cases losing their languages so quickly. 

            Bolshakov’s book, which tells the story of the threats the Dolgan people now face, may help to change that because she has arranged the text so that the Russian translation she prepared herself appears alongside the Dolgan original, thus allowing those who know Russian the chance to see what the same text looks like in Dolgan.

            For a discussion of this novel and Bolshakov’s own life in the tundra and in St. Petersburg before being compelled to leave Russia for her anti-war views as well as a link to the dual language text, see nemoskva.net/2024/09/01/tundra-oleni-duhi/. For a translation into English of a story that forms part of the novel, see penopp.org/articles/reindeer-caravan.