The Alyutors. General Information: Endonyms, Ethnographic Groups, Population, Settlement

In documents when conducting All-Russian Population Census 2002 г. Alyutorians identified themselves in different ways: 3 people - as “Alyutorians”, another 3 people - as “Alutalu”, 6 people – as “Olyutorians”. Thus, only 12 people linked their ethnic identity with the Alyutor people. The vast majority identified themselves as Koryaks. All-Russian population census 2010 did not mention the Alyutor people in her lists, even as a subethnic group. The 2020–2021 census recorded 96 Alyutor residents ("Karagins", "Namylans", "Nymylans"), 88 of whom lived in the Kamchatka Territory.

The Alyutor group, an ethno-cultural subdivision of the Koryaks, lives in the north of the Koryak area. For a long time, they were the largest in number. The Alyutor people were further divided into the sedentary and the nomadic. The sedentary people lived on the eastern coast of Kamchatka Isthmus from Korf Bay in the north to Cape Tymlat in the south. The Alyutor villages on the eastern coast were Tymlat, Kichi-Ga, Anapka, Vyvenka, Tilichiki, Kultushnoye, Olyutorka, Khailino, Vetvey. On the western coast, only one Alyutor settlement, Rekinniki, was on the map. In the 1950s -1980s, more than half of them were liquidated during the Soviet campaign of eliminating the “unpromising” villages. To date, only the settlements of Tymlat (Karaginsky district), Vyvenka, Tilichiki and Khailino (Olyutorsky district) have been preserved. The nomadic Alyutors lived on the eastern coast, but during migrations they often moved to the western coast.

One can come across the information about the Alyutor people in the earliest mentions of Kamchatka.

Sergei Stebnitsky, linguist and ethnographer, noticed that Stepan Krasheninnikov in his work “Description of the Land of Kamchatka” had grouped together “the Koryaks, the Olyutors and the Chukchi”. In most of the subsequent ethnographic works, the Alyutors were also considered a local Koryak group.

The census of the Russian Empire of 1897 enumerated the Alyutors (Olyutors) not by village, but by “tribe.” Thus, five tribes were recorded: Olyutorsky, Kultusny, Telechinsky, Vyvnuksky, Kichiginsky, four of which included both the sedentary and the nomadic inhabitants. The names of the tribes were similar to the names of the villages.

Since the 17th century, Alyutors were mentioned as “olyutors” in all official Russian documents and the works of Russian ethnographers. Sergei Stebnitsky considered this unfair and explained his opinion in the following way: “...historical documents, as well as Dr. Krasheninnikov in his “Description of the Land of Kamchatka”, routinely use such words as “olyutors”, “olyutorsky”. Also, “olyutorsky” is the official name for one of the four districts of the current Koryak national area, established in 1931. However, I give the group of the Nymylans in question the name “the Alyutor people” and call their dialect “Alyutorsky” (Alyutorian) in accordance with the name of one of the Alyutor villages, namely the village of Alut on the coast of Korf Bay. The contemporary village of Alut during the Nymylan-Luoravetlan (Koryak-Chukchi) and the Nymylan-Russian wars was one of the principal strongholds of the Alyutors, as unanimously evidenced by both the historical sources at our disposal and the legends of the Alyutors themselves”.    

Until 1958, the Alyutor language was considered a dialect of the Koryak language. However, Soviet linguist Piotr Skorik proposed to treat the Alyutor dialect as an independent language. In modern linguistics, the Alyutor language belongs to the Chukchi-Koryak branch of the Chukchi-Kamchatka family of languages. At the beginning of the 20th century, Sergei Stebnitsky, as well as other experts in the languages of the North, noted the special place of the Alyutor dialect in the Koryak language and the originality of the culture and life of the Alyutor people. The Alyutor language unites several similar dialects from different villages. The Palan and Karagin dialects of the Koryak language are very close to the Alyutor language.

During the All-Russian Census of 2002, the majority of the group identified themselves as Koryaks. The National Census of 2010 did not include the Alyutor people in its lists even as a subethnic group. In the academic literature, the common name is “the Koryak-Alyutors”. According to the census of 2020-21, there were 96 Alyutor residents, including 88 people living in the Kamchatka Territory.

According to the 2002 census, the Alyutor language was spoken by 40 people in Russia, including 2 people in the Koryak autonomous area. The census of 2010 identified 25 native speakers of the Alyutor language.