Cold War Anthropology From Both Sides of the Iron Curtain

Abstract

This paper seeks to widen the understanding of Cold War anthropology by considering the history of contacts and dialogue between Soviet and American anthropologists from 1945 to 1964. Focusing mainly on the Soviet side, it argues that the isolation of Soviet ethnography was never complete, although it reached a highpoint during late Stalinism. The paper considers the resuming of contacts between US and USSR scholars in the second half of the 1950s; Soviet participation in international anthropological congresses and its effects on theoretical developments in Soviet anthropology; and the preparation, proceedings and consequences of the 7th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (ICAES) and the Expert Meeting on the Biological Aspects of Race, held in Moscow in 1964. The paper argues that these events were instrumental in widening the confines of Soviet Marxism and introducing new research areas (such as psychological anthropology) into Soviet academia. This enabled ethnography in the USSR to present itself as an alternative centre of consolidation for both Western left-leaning anthropologists and scholars from postcolonial countries.