The Altai people comprise an amalgamation of Turkic tribes who reside in the Altai Mountains and the Kuznetsk Alatau. Their origins lie with the earliest Turkic tribes (Uighurs, Kypchak-Kimaks, Yenisey Kyrgyz, Oguz, and others). In 550 C.E., the Tugyu Turks settled in the Altai Mountains along the headwaters of the Ob River and in the foothills of the Kuznetsk Alatau, where around 900 C.E. they formed the Kimak Tribal Union with the Kypchak
AMALRIK, ANDREI ALEXEYEVICH
Turks. From this union sprang the ethnonyms Kumanda, Teleut, and Telengit.
In the seventh century, the Telengit lived with another would-be Altai tribe, the Telesy, on the Tunlo River in Mongolia, whence they both migrated to Tyva. By the eighth century they had gravitated to the Altai Mountains and eastern Kazakhstan. The Russians arrived in the 1700s and proceeded to sedentarize many of the nomadic Altai. The Soviet government gave the Altai nominal recognition with the establishment of the Gorno-Altai (Oirot) Autonomous Oblast in 1922. In 1991 it became the Altai Republic.
In 1989 there were 70,800 Altai worldwide, 69,400 in Russia alone, and 59,100 in the Altai Republic. A few lived in Central Asia. The internal divisions among the Altai are distinguished ethno-graphically and dialectically. The northern group comprises the Tubulars who live on the left-bank of the Biya River and on the shores of Lake Telet- skoye, the Chelkans who live along the Lebed River, and the Kumandas who live along the middle course of the Biya. Each of these tribes speaks an Altai dialect that belongs to the Eastern division of the Ural-Altaic language family. The southern groups, including the Altai-Kizhi, Telengits, Telesy, and Teleuts, live in the Katun River Basin and speak an Altai dialect closely related to the Kyrgyz language.
Although the ethnogenesis of the southern Altai took place among the Oirot Mongols, consolidation of the northern groups and overall consolidation between the northern and southern Altai has been difficult. The Teleuts, for example, have long considered themselves distinctive and have sought separate recognition. In 1868 the Altai Church Mission tried, but failed, to establish an Altai written language based on Teleut, using the Cyrillic alphabet. In 1922, the Soviets succeeded in creating an Altai literary language, and, since 1930, the Altais have had their own publishing house.
In spite of internal differences, Altai societies share certain general traits. They are highly patriarchal, for example: Women do domestic work, whereas men herd horses and dairy cows. Since the 1750s, most Altai have been Russian Orthodox, but a minority practices Lamaism and some practice shamanism. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; ETHNOGRAPHY, RUSSIAN AND SOVIET; KAZAKHSTAN AND KAZAKHS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mote, Victor L. (1998). Siberia: Worlds Apart. Boulder, CO: Westview. Wixman, Ronald. (1984). The Peoples of the USSR: An Ethnographic Handbook. Arkmonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
Monetary unit used in Russia from the last quarter of the fourteenth century until the eighteenth century.
The altyn’s first use was directly connected with the appearance of the denga, another monetary unit and coin that came into existence at the same time. Six dengi (pl.) equaled one altyn. The word altyn was a lexicological borrowing into Russian from Mongol, meaning “six.” From its origins, the altyn was mainly used in the central and eastern lands of Russia (Moscow, Ryazan, Tver), but spread to the lands of Novgorod and Pskov by the early sixteenth century. In the early eighteenth century, the altyn became synonymous with a silver coin that equaled about three kopeks. See also: DENGA; GRIVNA; KOPECK; RUBLE
Spassky, Ivan Georgievich. (1967). The Russian Monetary System: A Historico-Numismatic Survey, tr. Z. I. Gor-ishina and rev. L. S. Forrer. Amsterdam: Jacques Schulman.
ROMAN K. KOVALEV
(1938-1980), Russian political activist, dissident, publicist, playwright, exiled to Siberia from 1965 to 1966 and imprisoned in labor camps from 1970 to 1976.
Born in Moscow, Amalrik studied history at Moscow University; he was expelled in 1963 for a paper featuring unorthodox views on Kievan Rus. Amalrik wrote several absurdist plays such as Moya tetya zhivet v Volokolamske (My Aunt Lives in Volokolamsk), Vostok-Zapad (East-West), and Nos! Nos? No-s! (The Nose! The Nose? The No- se!), the
latter referring to Gogol’s famous short story. In 1965, Amalrik was arrested for lacking official employment (“parasitism”) and charges that his-yet unpublished-plays were “anti-Soviet and pornographic.”
Exiled to Siberia for two and a half years, he was released in 1966 and subsequently described his experiences in Nezhelannoye puteshestvie v Sibir (Involuntary Journey to Siberia, 1970). Amalrik’s essay Prosushchestvuyet li Sovetsky Soyuz do 1984 goda? (Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?), an astute and prophetic analysis of Soviet society’s dim prospects for the future, brought him worldwide fame. It was completed in 1969, published the same year by the Herzen Foundation in Amsterdam, and translated into many languages. As a result, Amalrik was put on trial and sentenced to three years in Siberian camps, with another three years added in 1973. Protests in the West led to a commutation of the sentence from hard labor to exile and ultimately to permission to leave the Soviet Union in 1976. In the West, Amalrik was involved in numerous human rights initiatives.
In 1980, Amalrik died in a car crash in Guadalajara, Spain. He was legally rehabilitated in 1991. See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Keep, John. (1971). “Andrei Amalrik and 1984.” Russian Review 30:335-345. Svirski, Grigori. (1981). A History of Post-War Soviet Writing: The Literature of Moral Opposition. Ann Arbor: Ardis.
As World War I ended, the United States helped many countries around the world recover from the effects of war through the American Relief Administration (ARA). Herbert Hoover headed the ARA and had opened numerous missions in Europe by 1919. The primary goal of the ARA was to provide food relief, but it also provided medical aid, relocation services, and much else. The ARA attempted to open a mission in Russia in 1919 and 1920, but they were unsuccessful because the Bolsheviks suspected that the Americans had intervened in the Russian Civil War. However, after the horrible famine of the winter of 1920 and 1921, and after writer Maxim Gorky petitioned Vladimir Lenin to provide relief, the new Soviet government recognized the need for the ARA in Russia. By the summer of 1921, the ARA director for Europe, Walter Lyman Brown, and Soviet assistant commissar of foreign affairs Maxim Litvinov reached an agreement for an ARA mission in Russia. One of the primary concerns for the Soviets was the potential for American political activity in Russia. Brown assured Litvinov that their mission was solely to save as many lives as possible, and he appointed Colonel William N. Haskell to head the ARA in Russia.
The ARA opened kitchens in Petrograd and Moscow by September 1921, serving tens of thousands of children. The ARA spread into smaller cities and rural areas over the next several months, but in several places faced opposition from local village leaders and Communist Party officials. Most rural local committees consisted of a teacher and two or three other members who would serve the food to the children from the local schools. This fed the children, paid and fed the teacher, and continued some measure of education. In addition to feeding programs, the ARA employed thousands of starving and unemployed Russians to unload, transport, and distribute food to the most famine-stricken areas. The ARA also established a medical division that furnished medical supplies for hospitals, provided treatments to tens of thousands of people, and conducted sanitation inspections. It was estimated that the ARA provided about eight million vaccinations between 1921 and 1923.
By the summer of 1922, disputes within the ARA administration in the United States and between the ARA
