“The contributors have made excellent use of recently opened archives and interviews with descendants of the people surveyed to provide a uniquely human portrait of this seminal project. While the chapters focus most thoroughly on the Nenets, Khanty, and Yakut, the analysis is of broader relevance to an understanding of Siberian peoples during the first stages of the sovietization of the Far North. This book will prove of unique value to historians of the Soviet period as well as to cultural anthropologists specializing in polar peoples. Highly recommended.” • Choice “All in all, this book is an important contribution to our knowledge about the ethnography and ethnohistory of the indigenous peoples of this region as well as about the immense work undertaken during the very early years of the Soviet Union in an effort to understand the demography and livelihoods of these peoples. The volume belongs on the shelves of all researchers working on these issues.” • Polar Research “This a much-welcome addition to the modern English-language reference library on Siberian indigenous people and the first book-size effort to address their plight and status from the perspective of the Russian archival statistical and documentary records of the early 1900s. It is an outcome of a monumental collaborative project.” • Igor Krupnik, Smithsonian Institution