Now it is timely to ask the question, «How numerous are the Tungus for whom all this machinery is going to be organized?” As is usual with Soviet publications, the statistical estimates are adjusted to demands dictated by various considerations. Generally speaking, the Tungus may be linguistically divided into two main groups, namely, Northern and Southern. Those who speak the northern language usually call themselves «Evenki”, while those speaking southern Tungus call themselves by different names. The Northern Tungus, or Evenki, are scattered over the territory from the western tributaries of the Ob River to the Pacific and from the Glacial Ocean to the southern frontier of Russian possessions in Asia. S. K. Patkanov, who had at his disposal the very rich and statistically rather reliable material from the Statistical Bureau of the Ministry of the Interior and had access to most valuable data regarding the past (covering almost two centuries), has come to the conclusion that within this long period there apparently occurred no great loss of Tungus population, while in those regions where the Tungus adopted some new cultural complexes, such as cattle breeding or agriculture, they have shown a certain increase of population. The Southern Tungus within the Russian possessions have never been numerous, while the Northern Tungus formed a group of importance. Thus, according to the Census of 1897 there were 62,068 males and females, of whom 33,450 lived in Transbaikalia, but the majority of them (84 percent) did not speak Tungus [19]. From a cultural point of view, almost all of them were under either Russian or Mongol (and Buriat) influence [20]. Naturally, all these people were recorded as «Tungus” only because of their administrative status — they thus enjoyed privileges in taxation, exemption from compulsory military service, use of common law, etc. In 1897 the actual number of those who were still Tungus-speaking in Transbaikalia and called themselves Evenki or the like, was only 5,515 souls, and they made up several ethnical units. As regards other regions, there were 28,618 Tungus, of whom slightly under 22.9 percent had lost their original tongue (most by adopting Yakut). Thus, forty years ago there existed 27,597 Tungus who were using their mother tongue. Since that time there have occurred further losses of Tungus-speakers in favor of Russian, Yakut, and Mongol dialects (Buriat included). This has been a natural process under powerful inter-ethnical pressure.
One can realize how far the number of Tungus-speakers has been affected by the Revolution. In 1926 Soviet authorities undertook a kind of census, the results of which were taken as the basis for further work [21]. However, there ought to be important corrections made to this Polar [«Pripoljarny»] Census. From various Soviet publications I have found the maximal figure for Tungus Proper as 55,000 [22]. However, the authors of «Explanatory Note to the Ethnographical Map” (edited by a special commission of the Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, 1929), having found the new statistical data unreliable, made use of Patkanov's figures. The lowest number I found was given by Koshkin and his subordinates as 41,531 [23]. It is evident that the latter was obtained by exclusion of the above-mentioned Russianized and Mongolized Tungus, who might be estimated at least at thirty thousand (from Patkanov's data). This figure (41,531) is quite improbable, since it is much larger than Patkanov's 28,618. First of all, there have been no records of any considerable increase in the Tungus population since 1897, but losses did occur [24]. Moreover, as I have already mentioned, the Tungus lost considerable numbers of people during the civil war in Siberia through famine, epidemics, and migration abroad. Some hints as to how such a large figure was obtained by Koshkin may be gathered from Vasilevich's dictionary (p. iv), where the population of the Enissei Tungus is estimated at 6,924, based on the Polar Census. This is extraordinary, indeed, since their population was only 3,169 in 1897, according to Patkanov. It is true that the figure given by Vasilevich obviously includes some other groups, such as a part of the Kirensk Tungus (Irkutsk Government), but the number she included must at any rate be less than a thousand. We know that there was a shifting of population westwards, but we have no evidence of Tungus migration from the Lena Basin to the Enissei Basin, or from Transbaikalia to the Enissei River. Doubling of the Tungus hunting population within thirty years (from 1897 to the time of the Polar Census) is out of the question. Of course, Patkanov's data may be suspected, too, but this suspicion appears hardly justifiable, for in all the other regions the figures for the Tungus population, as seen after the Census of 1897, were usually in agreement with new observations [25]. Apparently the Polar Census was much like other similar statistical operations dictated by political desiderata.
In this particular case the situation is rather simple. Even assuming there were 22,082 Tungus still speaking Tungus beyond Transbaikalia, as indicated by the data of 1897, would it be really rational to invest so much capital to create a literary language for them? But even this figure of 22,082 cannot be accepted forty years after the Census of 1897, since the Tungus have gone on losing their mother tongue all this while, and it is not likely that there has been enough increase in population to make up for the decrease. Accordingly, those Tungus who have preserved their mother tongue must be far fewer than twenty thousand. Therefore we are talking about the introduction of two planned literary Tungus languages, Evenki and Even (so-called Lamut), for a population numbering under twenty thousand and scattered over an enormous territory. It seems unrealistic, especially for a country which itself suffers from famine and in which the government has continued to struggle to survive for the past twenty years. Still more unrealistic is the plan to create boarding schools for all Tungus children to be collected from the taiga, with the yearly expenditure for their board alone being estimated at four hundred roubles. Maintaining schools with their staffs, buildings, books, organization of theaters, courses, professional schools, and publication of newspapers, and the maintenance of a huge editorial office with a special staff of translators, editors, and directors, etc., to create two literary languages far exceed the limits of normal imagination. No normally functioning government would allow itself to be fooled by such a plan, which can be accepted only on the condition that «credo quia absurdurn est».
What the practical result will be is not difficult to forecast. A group of people concerned with this huge enterprise will for a certain period of time be left alone to fulfill the obligations they have taken on themselves, and so they will go on with their useless work. The considerable expenses connected with it will be added to other «losses” by the bookkeepers. The Tungus attracted to live among the Russians for their education will be Russianized. Those few who will benefit from the school education, first by learning to read and write in Tungus, will easily master the Russian language. Denationalization and dispersion from the taiga towards Russian and other settlements will result from the further disorganization of the Tungus cultural complex. The Tungus as a distinct group of ethnical units will be submerged in the ocean of other ethnical units. Should they be left alone as they are just now, some groups of them in remote regions might perhaps survive as a kind of ethnic rarity, like the Yukagirs and the Enisseians, for future paleo-ethnologists to study.
Now, it is quite evident from this description of the situation that the creation of a Tungus literary language was not derived from the cultural needs of the Tungus, nor was it carried out by the Tungus themselves. Everything has been done by a group of naive enthusiasts who perhaps sincerely wanted to help (as they understood it) the Tungus, because the Tungus were needed by a certain political party for certain political reasons. It was also partly dictated by the need to obtain cheap fur goods.
There remains one more thing to be mentioned here. It is possible that the literary Tungus language created by G. M. Vasilevich and promoted by J. P. Alkor/Koshkin may cause great misunderstanding among linguists. I consider it my duty to warn them against such a possibility.
19. S. K. Patkanov, Essay on the Geographical and Statistical Distribution of the Tungus p. 194, Vol. I, Fasc. 2. These Tungus at the time spoke Russian or Buriat (or Mongol). The Tungus tongue had become a foreign language to them.
20. To find some Tungus-speaking people in 1912, I was forced to organize an expedition in order to reach them in the taiga.
21. I am speaking about «a kind of census”,since the results obtained have proved to be unreliable and needed immediate corrections.
22. Economic Geography of Siberia, edited by A. A. Anson et al., Novosibirsk (Novo-Nikolaevsk), 1928, p. 105. This manual for teachers is remarkable for its wealth of wrong information.
23. Report of the First Pan-Russian Conference, p. 102.
24. According to I. Lopatin, I. Gapanovic, and others, and my own studies.
25. Hunting populations are usually stationary when their territory remains the same, and they decrease if the territory is reduced or the animals are getting extinct. This is the case of the Tungus.