ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Nenets religious conversion intersects with notions of modernity shaped by centuries of Russian colonialism, Soviet reforms, and post-Soviet globalization. Conversion to Christianity signified both integration into “Russian modernity” and a rupture from tradition, reflecting tensions between tundra and urban life. The Soviet era transformed Siberia into a laboratory of modernity through policies of sedentarization, Russification, and anti-religious campaigns, marginalizing indigenous peoples amid industrial expansion. The figure of the “Russian” embodies the ambivalence of colonial modernity-offering progress alongside cultural disruption. The Nenets negotiated and reshaped (post-)Soviet modernity. They adapted to new economic and social realities, appropriated state symbols, and expanded their cultural and geographic horizons, transforming imposed structures into a dynamic process of cultural mediation and agency.
