Izhma Komi and Komi-Permiak: Linguistic Barriers to Geographic and Ethnic Identity

Projects constructing ethnicity on the basis of territorial identity have been common in Europe but rather rare in Russia. This paper analyzes two such projects that have been undertaken in the northeast of the European part of Russia: the successful construction of the Komi-Permiak ethnic identity in the late 1920s–30s, and the unsuccessful project of constructing the Iz’vatas (Izhma-Komi) ethnic identity in the first decade of the twentieth century. A comparison of the two projects shows that the primary reason for the failure of the latter was most probably linguistic and terminological: The choice of defining ethnicity in strictly geographic terms has made the project unacceptable for those potential Iz’vatas, whose geographic identity was not properly described by that name. In the case of Komi-Permiaks, the choice of the ethnonym was more geographically neutral, and this contributed significantly to the success of this project.