“Petra Rethmann’s evocative Tundra Passages breaks completely new ground in ethnography from the Russian Far East. Drawing on conversations and experiences shared with Koriak women living on northeastern Kamchatka peninsula, she conveys the human dignity and creative energy that persist in the midst of social suffering following the breakdown of the Soviet empire. Rethmann demonstrates how historical conditions and regional inequalities affect the lives of women who struggle to make a better world for themselves and their families. This is ethnography at its very best.” —Julie Cruikshank, University of British Columbia “This book is important for anyone hoping to keep pace with the whirlwind of change besetting Native Siberia. Each of its nine chapters is filled with the quiet drama of people in transition.” —E.J. Vajda Choice “Post-Soviet ethnography is expanding its gaze, due in part to a surging interest in regions of the former Soviet Union that have been recently opened to the outside world. Petra Rethmann’s book represents an important contribution to this expansion. Her book sheds light on a region and group poorly represented in the ethnographic literature, the Koriak of the northeastern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula.” —Edmund (Ned) Searles American Journal of Sociology “This book makes an original and creative contribution that breaks new ground in ethnography from the Russian Far East.” —Julie Cruikshank Current Anthropology