General information

Itelmens (endonym Itelmen, Itenmen – a local resident, an older name is Kamchadal) is an ethnic group in the Russian Federation. They mostly live in Koryakskiy Okrug of Kamchatka Krai, where they are concentrated in four settlements of Tigilski District: Kovran, Ust-Khairyuzovo, Tigil, Khairyuzovo, as well as the administrative centre of the Okrug, the urban-type settlement Palana.

During the 2020-2021 Census, 2596 people put down their ethnicity as Itelmens.

In the late 17 ^th – first half of the 19 ^th centuries, the northern frontier of Itelmen area of residence was the River Tigil in the western part of Kamchatka and the river Uka in the eastern coastline. The area of Itelmens’ dispersion went as far as the southern tip of the peninsula. In the second half of the 19 ^th century, Itelmens mostly lived along the western part of Kamchatka, in the settlements of Sopochnoye, Moroshechnoye, Khairyuzovo, Kovran, Utholok, Napana, Sedanka Osedlaya. Due to the 1950s-1970s administrative reforms which included the agglomeration of the kolkhoz and shutting down the “unpromising, hopeless” settlements, the Itelmens living in Soppochnoye, Moroshechnoye, Utholok moved to Kovran, while those living in the settlements of Amanino, Napana and Sedanka Osedlaya moved to Tigil. Part of the Itelmen population moved to cities.

The size of the Itelmen ethnic group has been estimated differently in various sources, mostly due to the confusion between “Itelmens” and “Kamchadals”. The information about how many Itelmens there were in the late 18 ^th -19 ^th centuries varies from writer to writer, but they all describe the ethnos as diminishing in numbers. Many researchers explain the fact by an active process of assimilation of Itelmens as well as the consequence of “imported illnesses”.

The 1926 Nationwide Census recorded 4207 Kamchadals which included Itelmens. The 2002 All-Russia Census registered 3180 Itelmens, among them 2296 lived in Kamchatka Krai and 643 in Magadan Oblast. The 2010 Census recorded 3193 Itelmens, 2361 of whom lived in Kamchatka Krai and 600 in Magadan Oblast. During the 2020-2021 Census, 2596 people put down their ethnicity as Itelmens. This considerable reduction in the numbers of Itelmens during the latest census compared to the previous two was to do with the fact that with the recognition of Kamchadals as a separate ethnic group and their 2000 inclusion into the list of the indigenous minor peoples of the North, those of them that used to be recorded as Itelmens preferred to reclaim their previously lost ethnic name. It is particularly true about the “Magadan Itelmens” living along the Okhotsk coast of Magadan Oblast, who were similar to Kamchadals in their ancestry, culture and self-identification, but were officially labelled as Itelmens.

The Itlemen language is traditionally classified as a Chukchi-Kamchatkan language of the Paleo-Siberian family. But at the same time, some researchers believe there no genetic relation between the Itelmen language and the Chukchi and Koryak languages. In the past, Itelmens represented three major groups linguistically: the eastern group (Pacific coastline and the River Kamchatka valley), the southern group (the area around Bolsheretsk and Petropavlovsk) and the western group (the Okhotsk coastline). There were linguistic differences within these groups. For instance, G.V.Steller wrote: “Along one river there is only a dialect, but along another it is accompanied by a linguistic change”. S.P. Krashenennikov pointed out the linguistic variation between residents of different Itelmen settlements ( ostrozhoks ): “There is barely any settlement in Kamchatka that would have no variation from the language of the nearest settlement”. Currently, only the western variant has survived, with a considerable influence of the Koryak language. There are two dialects within this variant of the language: the northern (Sedanka) and the southern dialects.

In 1989, around 20 percent of Itelmens considered the Itelmen language to be their native language. In the 2010 census, only 82 people recorded their being able to speak Itelmen. Recently, there have been tendencies of revitalising the language. In 1988, Itelmen writing system was created on the basis of Cyrillic letters. There are textbooks of Itelmen publish, and it is taught.