The election

Abstract

“The election” tells the story of the 2000 regional election in Chukotka, Russia's northeasternmost part. That year, Lyosha, a Chukchi activist, invited me to assist Indigenous movements with grant writing for Western-based civil society organizations. When I arrived in Chukotka, the election was in full swing and turned out to be more bizarre as—as Lyosha put it—could be believed. The gifting of the oligarch, the lies told by the governor, the dreaming of Lyosha, and the interrogation of the anthropologist are all things that happened, and I wanted to tell their story. But I also wanted to describe what did not happen: the democracy that was not desired or embraced. The result, I hope, is a story that shows not only what it felt like to be part of this election but also what Russia was at that time, why it has possibly become what it has become, and how and why elections leave ghosts. The narrative form has been inspired by the Russian literary tradition of the skaz, an absurdist form of narrative where things rarely are what they pretend to be.