Russian Ethnography Research Articles

Tchougounnikov, Serguei and Trautmann-Waller, C�line (eds). Ptr Bogatyrv et les débuts du Cercle de Prague (review)

SEER, 93, 2, APRIL 2015 340 of the major players in the cultural life in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, is conspicuously lacking. Save for sporadic reference to the status of Ruthenian, Dini neglects the presence of Ruthenian authors in the cultural Baltic landschaft, such as De bello Ostrogiano ad Piantcos cum nisoviis libri quattuor a Simone Pecalidis Artium Baccalaureo conscripti (1600) or the polemical treaties by Xristofor Filalet (1597–99) and other Ruthenian writers. All these works would widen the author’s perspective on the beginnings of the Baltic linguistic ideas in Litvorosija, a term used in a charter issued by the Patriarch of Constantinople to Jagailo in 1397. Dini mentions en passant the works of Nur al-Din Muhammad Aufi (1228) and Ibn Battūta (1332) (p. 464), but would have benefited from consulting al-Idrīsī’s Kitāb Rujār (Liber Rogerii, ca 1153) and works by Georg Jacob (1887), Ephraim Kupfer and Tadeusz Lewicki (1956), who explored attestations of the Balts in the writings of Muslim and Jewish geographers. Despite its size, the volume is meticulously edited, although some references are not included in the bibliography, e.g. Georg., VII (p. 573), and has no indices (a deplorable absence that is surprsingly repeated in the shorter Englishlanguage version, Prelude to Baltic Linguistics, published by Rodopi in 2014). Despite these shortcomings, the Italian-language redactio longa under review will serve as the major source of information on early Baltic linguistics for many years to come. Pace University, New York Andrii Danylenko Tchougounnikov, Serguei and Trautmann-Waller, Céline (eds). Pëtr Bogatyrëv et les débuts du Cercle de Prague. Recherchés ethnographique et théatrales. Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, 2012. 275 pp. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. €26.00 (paperback). This book consists of papers from a conference on the Russian ethnographer Petr Grigor´evich Bogatyrev (1893–1971) held at the New Sorbonne University in 2009, accompanied by a selection of Bogatyrev’s articles. Bogatyrev was educatedatMoscowUniversity,wherehewasafoundingmemberoftheMoscow Linguistic Circle, but he spent much of the interwar period in Czechoslovakia (1922–38), before returning to the USSR. After a period of persecution, Bogatyrev resumed academic positions in Moscow in the late 1950s, and was influential in the development of Soviet folkloristics and structuralism in the 1960s and 1970s. Bogatyrev’s interwar writings are considered to represent the peak of his intellectual career. In them, Bogatyrev combined his training in ethnographic fieldwork and the ethos of early Russian formalism with new REVIEWS 341 developments in structuralist linguistics. The articles in the book focus on this period, and are divided into three categories: linguistic theory, ethnography and theatre studies. The book’s most original contribution is its effort to more thoroughly analyse the relationship between Bogatyrev’s ethnographic method and linguistic theory in the early twentieth century. The difficulty of this task is foregrounded in contributions of Céline Trautmann-Waller and Serguei Tchougounnikov, the two editors of the volume. As Trautmann-Waller illustrates in a useful list format, during this period Bogatyrev regularly published in twenty-seven journals in five primary languages. His writings moreover combined key concepts adapted from Russian, German, Czech, French and English scholarship in ethnography, folkloristics, literary and theatre studies, linguistics and anthropology. Tchougounnikov provides a wide-ranging survey of the linguistic theory which informed Bogatyrev’s concept of the ‘ethnographic fact’. He calls attention in particular to the critique of the German Neogrammarian school, and the influence of Italian Neolinguistics and French linguistic cartography. A highlight is Ekaterina Velmezova’s essay, which clarifies the concept of ‘synchrony’ — a key term for Bogatyrev adapted from Ferdinand de Saussure. She illustrates that this could mean either a short segment of diachronic time or panchrony, and that Bogatyrev wavered between the two interpretations in his writings. The collection includes papers by leading specialists on Bogatyrev — Svetlana Sorokina and Klaas-Hinrich Ehlers. Their excellent contributions draw on extensivearchivalresearchandprovidenewinsightsintoBogatyrev’sintellectual biography. Ehlers’s introductory essay focuses on Bogatyrev’s institutional affiliations during his Czechoslovak period. It is an excerpt from a longer article published in Petr G. Bogatyrev. Funktional-strukturale Ethnographie in Europa (Heidelberg, 2011), which is worth reading in full. Sorokina provides details regarding Bogatyrev...

An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and the USSR ed. by Roland Cvetkovski and Alexis Hofmeister (review)

Reviewed by: An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and the USSR ed. by Roland Cvetkovski and Alexis Hofmeister Alfrid K. Bustanov (bio) Roland Cvetkovski and Alexis Hofmeister (Eds.), An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and the USSR (Budapest and New York: CEU Press, 2014). 407 pp., ills. Index. ISBN: 978-615-5225-76-5. Over the past two decades, the study of the power-knowledge nexus in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union has come to the fore of Anglophone scholarship. Specifically, scholars are looking into the broader social and political ramifications of the development of disciplines such as anthropology and ethnography, history and archaeology, Oriental studies and linguistics. This approach relativizes otherwise academically clear disciplinary boundaries, and thus the recent collected volume An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and the USSR is not restricted to the history of ethnography. The volume includes a variety of case studies using different methodological frameworks. This disciplinary pluralism notwithstanding, the contributors pursue a similar approach toward the study of knowledge and nationalism, marked with regular references to Edward Said and Benedict Anderson. The editors formulate their overall goal as an attempt to [End Page 425] “address ethnographic knowledge as a prism through which to look at Russian history” (P. 6). To this end, the volume bridges the divide of 1917 in tracing the evolution of scholarship and the changing ways it interacted with politics. More specifically, the editors wanted to analyze the language of ethnographic knowledge in historical perspective with an emphasis on “the different epistemic conditions in which the ethnic categories appeared” (P. 7). Rather than narrowing the focus on the direct involvement of ethnography with servicing the interests of the state, the editors are interested in reconstructing specific contexts and elaborated modes of producing implicitly politicized knowledge about the empire’s population. In practical terms, they distinguish three planes of analysis that inform the tripartite structure of the volume: Part 1, “Paradigms,” reviews theoretical debates about what constituted the essence of ethnography; part 2, “Representations,” analyzes the formats and models for making sense of the study of the empire’s diverse population; part 3, “Peoples,” discusses the role of ethnography in “creating” and cataloging the groups recognized as ethnographic entities. In the “paradigmatic” part, Alexis Hofmeister compares Russian and British approaches to ethnography and makes the important observation that one should “carefully differentiate between the sometimes anti-imperial purpose of Russian ethnography and its obvious imperial function” (P. 37). To substantiate this argument, Hofmeister turns to a very important practice of imperial scholarship – academic expeditions – a phenomenon mentioned in passing in several chapters of the volume, but never conceptualized specifically as an influential practice of imperial scholarship. This is a remarkable oversight, given that expeditions certainly functioned as a vehicle for cultural interaction between scholars and the objects of their study. Stressing the impressive amount of data collected during those expeditions and formidable resources spent on them, Hofmeister concludes that “quantity” did not transform into “quality” in Russia: ethnographers did not put as much effort into conceptualization of their findings, even though they were aware of theoretical approaches employed by their Western colleagues (P. 43). On the other hand, even the “exiled intellectuals” (such as von Strahlenberg), despite their oppositional political views, eventually served the interests of imperial elites, because they had to work in the imperial setting. Several subsequent articles deal with the discursive field that proved formative for the very definition of ethnographic knowledge. Alexei Elfimov analyzes a contradiction [End Page 426] between ethnographers’ claims to represent social science and the prevalence of descriptive approaches in their work. On the example of Nikolai Nadezhdin, Elfimov demonstrates the centrality of geography and language in the imperial ethnographers’ efforts to classify and systematize. He argues that the debates over ethnos as a central scientific category of Soviet ethnography were driven by its claim for the status of social science, which ultimately failed (P. 78). Conversely, in her chapter on the interplay of ethnography and physical anthropology in imperial Russia, Marina Mogilner finds a commonality between Western and Russian scholarly approaches by telling a story of “coexistence and interaction...

Henri Henrikhovitch Manizer's Botocudo folklore texts: a symbol analysis

Abstract Henri Henrikhovitch Manizer (1889–1917) was a Russian ethnographer and linguist who spent six months among the Botocudo people from the Southeastern region of Brazil in the beginning of the twentieth century. His research was the result of a Russian expedition through South America in 1915. Manizer was the first researcher who was able to write down the Botocudo language with the most developed method of his time: the International Phonetic Alphabet transcription (Sebestyén 1981). Although many ethnographers had visited the Botocudo people before him, the material he collected is in many aspects of great value but it still remains unexplored both by linguists. This material includes bilingual Botocudo-Portuguese tales: a bilingual dictionary, articles and notes on the Botocudo grammar and culture, and a description of his impressions of the group. In spite of the good quality of the data, still many problems can be reported, such as the variations registered in the language transcriptions, the difficulties in transcribing some phonetic sounds (like voiceless nasals and contour segments, for example), the translation into Portuguese, problems with comprehension of the morphological and syntactic aspects, and cultural barriers (Seki 1984, 1985, 2001, 2004). In this paper, we aim to show our current research on this matter and present some of the partial results of this investigation based on the linguistic data by Manizer. We found out that our synchronical study of the phonology of the Krenak language, the only language of the Botocudo group which is still alive, leads to a better understanding of this old material, although there will remain still some unanswered questions. It enables us to formulate some hypotheses on what may have happened to the language and, maybe, to predict and understand its changes through time. As a result, we shall be able to work with this old material and make it available for both scholars and speakers of the language.

Andrei Cușco, Între „orientalism” şi obiectivitate: etnografia rusă şi Basarabia în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea / Between “Orientalism” and Objectivity: Russian Ethnography and Bessarabia during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

This paper discusses the interaction between the discourses of empire and nation as it emerged in the debates about the proper object of research and the criteria for legitimacy of the newly founded discipline of ethnography in the Russian Empire in the last decades of the 18th and throughout the 19th century. A special emphasis will be laid upon the particular features of the appearance and evolution of ethnographic preoccupations in the Russian Empire starting with the second half of the 18th century, when the first attempts at the synthesis and classification of ethnographic enquiries can be discerned, and spanning the first half of the 19th century. In this context, the case of Bessarabia represents an illustrative example of the uneasy interaction between the specialized and supposedly “objective” knowledge of learned experts and the agendas of the central and local authorities and officials. My basic goal has been to uncover the relationship between the “imperial” and the “universalistic” dimensions of Russian ethnography.

Gypsies as a litmus test for rational, tolerant rule: Fin-de-siècle Russian ethnographers confront the comparative history of Roma in Europe

This article examines six ethnographic studies of Gypsies published in late imperial Russia that offered a comparative history of Roma in Europe. In representing Gypsies’ culture and history, Russian ethnographers deployed “the Gypsy question” as a litmus test of tolerant, rational governance. Comparing European modes of managing ethnic difference, they argued for the superiority of imperial Russian rule. The rational and tolerant Russian state, they insisted, endeavored to transform the “semi-savage” Gypsies into integrated citizens of the autocratic empire. By contrast, Western European states oppressed Gypsies, thereby alienating them from civic life. Late imperial ethnographic writings on Gypsies presaged similar, but also different claims made about Gypsies and their history in the context of early Soviet nationality policy during the 1930s. They also deserve consideration as an underappreciated antecedent to late twentieth- and early twenty-first century debates over social justice and European states’ policies directed toward either the civic inclusion or exclusion of Roma.

Vocabularies of Difference: Ethnicity and Race in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia

Juliette Cadiot, Le Laboratoire imperial: Russie-URSS, 1870-1940 (The Imperial Laboratory: Russia and the USSR, 1870-1940). 267 pp. Paris: Editions CNRS, 2007. ISBN 2271064821 (paper). Marina Mogil'ner, Homo imperii: Istoriia fizicheskoi antropologii v Rossii (konets XIX-nachalo XX v.) (Imperial Man: The History of Physical Anthropology in Russia in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries). 512 pp., illus. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2008. ISBN-13 978-5867935672. Human beings are diverse. This is a fact of nature, as inevitable and universal as the primordial distinction between self and other. But the terms we use to describe, define, and classify human diversity are manmade, rooted in particular cultural, social, and intellectual contexts; in short, they have a history. Since the 1990s, this constructivist truism has formed the basis for a growing body of literature on the conceptualization of human diversity to which scholars of the Russian Empire have made substantial contributions. (1) But while the theme of human diversity has echoed broadly throughout the recent literature of Russia and the Soviet Union, the works under review are among the first to address head on two of the most powerful and pervasive measures of difference: ethnicity in Juliette Cadiot's Le Labaratoire imperial, and race in Marina Mogil'ner's Homo imperii. Cadiot and Mogil'ner place their discussions within roughly congruous chronological boundaries. They begin their narratives in the aftermath of the Great Reforms, focus particular attention on the first decade of the 20th century, and follow their subjects well into the Soviet period. Thus both works join a growing body of recent literature spanning the boundary of 1917 in search of common trajectories and patterns that transcend the dramatic shift in ideology and practices brought by the revolution. (2) Authors of such works tend to view the period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an incubator of ideas and practices that would find broader application by the modern state both in the Soviet Union and abroad. Markers of group identity in particular--such as class, gender, nationality, and race--served as instruments through which the state organized its population into manageable units readily arrangeable into hierarchies of utility and trust. Yet the recognition of these tools of identity opens new agendas for research: why were some modes of classification preferred over others? How were markers denoting innate features reconciled with belief in the malleability of the individual? And who controlled the ways in which markers of difference were articulated and deployed? Such questions, of course, were not unique to Russia and the Soviet Union. The fact that Russian statisticians, ethnographers, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and government officials participated in international discussions on the human sciences and their practical applications underlines the importance of the comparative context. Cadiot and Mogil'ner, like many recent scholars, firmly resist the notion of a Russian Sonderweg, showing in considerable detail the international ties of Russian scholars and the circulation of West European concepts within Russia. Nonetheless, the evidence they present suggests a number of ways in which the Russian experience was distinct: the tsarist state's tardiness in embracing the category of ethnicity, for example, or the downplaying of race by key elements within the scholar community, to note two of the most obvious instances. But how much analytical weight do these particularistic elements merit? Were Russia's distinct features merely variations on a larger European imperialist theme, or do they bear witness to fundamental differences? In one way or another, both authors face the challenge of placing Russia's experience in an international context and accounting for its distinctiveness. Both works focus on the processes through which concepts of difference were established and deployed to classify, quantify, and administer the population of the empire; and both writers look to academic disciplines as workshops within which a modern vocabulary of ethnicity and race was formulated and disseminated. …

“We are Reindeer People, We Come from Reindeer.” Reindeer Herding in Representations of the Sami in Russia

Reindeer herding, a tourism emblem of the European North, is also part of a long-lasting tradition of objectification of Sami culture in Russia. Sustained in the popular imagination by Russian ethnography, the dominant order's agent for legitimization of Soviet ethnic policies, in the 1990s the tradition of exoticization and “othering” was strengthened by Western anthropological and political engagement with the indigenous debate in Russia, transposing on the Sami the imagery and ideals of the global indigenous movement. Business aspirations to utilize the persistent imagery of exotic otherness gave birth to ethnographic tourism in the Kola Peninsula, Northwest Russia, which markets indigenous culture as an attraction. In this paper, I analyze how these diverse discourses equally reify and exploit the concept of Sami reindeer herding and the effects that such representational economy has on the community.

Formation of Russian Ethnography (1750–1850)

The author explains how Russian ethnography was created in the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. She divides this time-span into shorter periods. In each of these periods she presents crucial events that left an important mark on ethnographic works (e.g. research expeditions) as well as outstanding individuals who influenced the development of ethnographic science in Russia. *** Avtorica v prispevku pojasni, kako se je ruska etnografija oblikovala v drugi polovici 18. stoletja in prvi polovici 19. stoletja, pri čemer ta časovni razpon razdeli na več krajših obdobij. Predstavi bistvene dogodke, ki so zaznamovali etnografska dela (npr. raziskovalne odprave), in posameznike, ki so s svojimi deli vplivali na razvoj vede v Rusiji.

Postcolonial Empire? Russian Orientologists and the Politics of Knowledge in Late Imperial Russia

385 Ab Imperio, 3/2011 Sergei GLEBOV POSTCOLONIAL EMPIRE? RUSSIAN ORIENTOLOGISTS AND THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE IN LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA In January 1923, with less than a year of his life left, Vladimir Lenin felt compelled to revisit the most crucial question of the history of the Russian Revolution. As most Social Democrats outside of the Bolshevik circle (and some within it) pointed out Russia’s unpreparedness for the socialist transformation , Lenin lashed out at his critics for their “utter inability” to grasp variations and mutations in the “general laws of history.” These critics, Lenin charged, were dismally pedantic, for “it has not even occurred to them that because Russia stands on the borderline between civilized countries and the countries which this war has for the first time definitely brought into the orbit of civilization – all the Oriental, non-European countries – she could and was, indeed, bound to reveal certain distinguishing features; although these, of course, are in keeping with the general line of world development, they distinguish her revolution from those which took place in the West European countries and introduce certain partial innovations as the revolution moves on to the countries of the East.”1 Although it is tempting to see Lenin’s take as a sign of his extraordinary flexibility in Marxist theory alone, the Communist state founder – who grew up in the startling ethnic and cultural mix 1 V. I. Lenin. Our Revolution (A Propos N. Sukhanov’s Notes) // Collected Works. Vol. 33. Moscow, 1965. Pp. 478-479. 386 Sergei Glebov, Postcolonial Empire? of the Volga region – revealed a certain lasting ambivalence about Russia’s place on the mental map of civilizations. Lenin’s lashing out at “pedantry” might also turn out helpful in the current discussions of Russian “Orientalism.” Scholars of the Russian Empire and the USSR began exploring the issue in the 1990s in the context of expanding studies of the imperial, multiethnic, and multiconfessional past of the Russian Empire. Much of the discussion, following the structural definitions and understanding of “empire” as a range of national groups dominated by a “metropole” on the one hand, and the very well-established mode of thinking about Russia vis-à-vis “the West” on the other, focused on how Russian representations of “Eastern” peoples compared to largely abstract “European” ones.2 The changing frame of the discussion and the emergence of new imperial history with its more nuanced and dynamic understanding of “empire” problematized the dichotomies of both the “Orientalism” itself and its Russian variations. Innovative studies of the production of knowledge in the Russian imperial context demonstrated how crucial categories of Western “cultural domination,” such as race, functioned as rally points for liberal and progressive scholars generally opposed to the current political regime yet committed to a project of inventing the imperial racial “mixed type.”3 Francine Hirsch showed still another instance of the imperial situation : Russian imperial ethnographers enthusiastically participated in the project of national construction among the many peoples of the USSR as the Russian Empire was reinvented as the first socialist “federation” of nations.4 2 Daniel Brower, Edward Lazzerini (Eds.). Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917. Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1997; Catherine B. Clay. Russian Ethnographers in the Service of Empire, 1856–1862 // Slavic Review. 1995. No. 1. Pp. 45-61; Nathaniel Knight. Grigor’ev in Orenburg, 1851–1862: Russian Orientalism in the Service of Empire? // Slavic Review. 2000. No. 59. N. 1. Pp. 74-100; Adib Khalid. Russian History and the Debate over Orientalism; N. Knight. On Russian Orientalism: A Response to Adeeb Khalid; Maria Todorova. Does Russian Orientalism Have a Russian Soul? A Contribution on the Debate between Nathaniel Knight and Adeeb Khalid // Kritika. 2000. Vol. 1. No. 4. Pp. 691-728; David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye. A Subtle Matter – Orientalism; Alexander Etkind. The Saved Man’s Burden, or the Inner Colonization of Russia; Nathaniel Knight. Was Russia Its Own Orient? Reflections on the Contributions of Etkind and Schimmelpenninck on the Debate on Orientalism; Elena Campbell. On the Question of Orientalism in Russia (in the second half of the 19th–early 20th centuries) //Ab Imperio. 2002. No. 1. Pp. 239-311. See also Etkind. Inner Colonization : Russia’s...

‘Een weinig bijzonder leven’ - Aleksandr Nikolaevič Pypin (1833-1904)

Aleksandr Nicolaevič Pypin (1833-1904), ethnographer, historian, and journalist, was born in Saratov and was a cousin of radical journalist and revolutionary Nikolaj Gavrilovič Černyševskij (1828-89). Pypin graduated from St. Petersburg University and in 1857 received his doctorate. He was the author of about 1200 publications, including three great compilations: A History of Russian Ethnography, A History of Russian Literature, and A History of Slavic Literature. Pypin became one of the leading authorities in Slavic literature and culture. He undertook a trip to several Slavic countries, where he collected material for his publications. He began his career at St. Petersburg University, where he became a professor in 1860. It turned out to be a brief career. In 1861, because of government reaction to student unrest, he resigned together with his liberal colleagues. Pypin began to write for the ‘thick’ journals, publishing in Sovremennik and later in Vestnik Evropy, where he became one of the most active contributors. His support for his revolutionary cousin and his association with other radicals further complicated his life and career. It attracted the wrath of the Russian government. Only a few years before he died his talents were officially recognized, and in 1891 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences.

Ethnographic research in Russia in the 19th century

Systematic and structured ethnographic data collection started in Russia with the formation of the Emperor’s Academy of Science and in 1765 the Emperor’s Economic Society. In the beginning of the 18th century, the Academy had supported numerous expeditions and scientific research in Siberia. A handbook was introduced, with questions regarding peoples in the region, their customs, borders, languages and rituals. Later on, at the time of foundation of the Emperor’s Russian geographic society, in 1845, several special ethnographic programs were formulated, with the idea to facilitate data collection about many aspects of everyday life, customs and various questions related to the exclusively Russian population of the Russian Empire. In this process, a significant role was played by the Department of Ethnography and its head, the anthropologist K.M. Ber and later on, a famous publicist, art historian and ethnographer, N.I. Nadeždin. The program suggested in 1852 by N.I. Nadeždin was incorporated in “the handbook collection for Kamtchatka expedition”, undertaken by the Russian geographic society. Afterwards, many other departments and individuals had successfully continued to improve ethnographic program and design of the various data collection. For example, in the 19th century, a private ethnographic practice by prince Vjačeslav N. Tenjišev was very active, by collecting data on all life aspects among the rural population. The practice had 348 employees of various status and background. Today, the collected data and sources are being kept in the archive of the Russian Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg.

THE ETHNIC ENVIRONMENT OF DIASPORAS IN WESTERN SIBERIA

The study of ethnic development and ethno-cultural adaptation of diasporas is one of the most important areas of research in Russian ethnography and history. Following successive migrations in the late 19th and early 20th cent., several diasporas emerged in Western Siberia, and were forced to adapt to local conditions. The numerically predominant Russian population was the key factor in rapid and signifi cant changes in the ethnic traditions of immigrants. Largescale economic and linguistic integration of the diasporas into the population structure of the region caused a leveling of ethnic differences and an erosion of ethnic identity, eventually resulting in voluntary assimilation.

Nikolai Kharuzin and the Quest for a Universal Human Science: Anthropological Evolutionism and the Russian Ethnographic Tradition, 1885–1900

Nikolai Kharuzin and the Quest for a Universal Human ScienceAnthropological Evolutionism and the Russian Ethnographic Tradition, 1885–1900 Nathaniel Knight (bio) In 1890, the prominent literary historian Aleksandr Pypin published the first volume of his major study on the history of Russian ethnography. It was a formidable undertaking: by the time publication was complete in 1893, the work had stretched to four densely packed volumes chronicling almost 200 years of scholarship on the peoples and cultures of the Russian empire.1 A decade later, another landmark work in the field of ethnography made its appearance: the first systematic textbook on the subject intended for use in university teaching.2 Sadly, the textbook was a posthumous edition. Its author, Nikolai Kharuzin, died in 1900 at the age of 34, leaving his sister, Vera Kharuzina, an accomplished writer and ethnographer in her own right, with the task of bringing the project to completion. Two major works, published a decade apart, both aspiring to present a comprehensive overview of ethnography as a scholarly field to an audience of Russian readers—but there the similarities end. Between Pypin's detailed intellectual history of Russian scholarship and Kharuzin's survey of ethnography as an academic field there was little common ground. "Ethnography," Kharuzin declared at the outset, "is a new science," so new, in fact, that its leading practitioners could not even agree on what to call it.3 And who [End Page 83] were these practitioners? "The famous Max Müller" began a parade of English, French, and German names: Léon Rosny, Eugène Verrier, Edward Burnett Tylor, Theodor Waitz, Georg Gerland, and so on. Russian scholars made only a brief appearance in connection with the geographical exploration of Siberia.4 The section devoted to the "History of the Development of Ethnography as a Science: Its Tasks, Methods, and Boundaries" was devoid of Russian names entirely. Whatever the virtues of the scholars described in Pypin's magnum opus, they had little to do, it would appear, with the march of ethnographic science. The differences between Pypin and Kharuzin were by no means personal or even ideological. In many respects, the two were in the same camp. Pypin was anything but a Slavophile. Underlying his endeavor was a quest to demonstrate the role played by Western enlightenment in unlocking the mysteries of Russian national identity.5 Kharuzin, in turn, was well aware of the tradition of Russian ethnography. He wanted nothing more, in fact, than to apply to the laws of science as he understood them to the vast body of Russian ethnographic literature, most of which remained virtually unknown in the West. If anything, the contrast in their views reflected a generational shift—Pypin was a man of the 1860s, shaped by the ethos of service to the narod, while Kharuzin, coming of age in the reign of Alexander III, was part of a new generation that looked to science to reveal not just the secrets of nature but also the path of human progress.6 Pypin embarked on his study of ethnography in the 1880s as an established scholar with a distinguished record of publication in philology, literary history, and public affairs. Kharuzin, in contrast, was a relative neophyte aspiring to build a scholarly career in the field of ethnography. But for ethnography to bear the weight of a young man's ambitions, it had to be cast in a new and properly scientific light. Ethnography, as it took shape in Russia from the 1840s onward, was, above all, a science of the particular. Central to the ethnographic endeavor was the concept of narodnost´, the essence of ethnic distinctiveness. The task of the ethnographer, as set out by Nikolai Nadezhdin in 1846, was to catalogue and describe the features of narodnost´ in their native setting, "where [End Page 84] they are and as they are," so that out of the seemingly chaotic assemblage of individual traits a harmonious picture would emerge, revealing the connections among the individual, the nation, and all of humanity.7 While Nadezhdin's interests lay primarily with Russian folk, his methods were equally applicable to the various peoples of the empire. Thus, as ethnography took deeper root...

Russian Ethnography

An honest statement to begin with would be that the place of anthropology in Russian society is something of a relativity puzzle. Some can define its place but are not sure what exactly anthropology is. Others can define what anthropology is but are not quite sure what place it occupies. A few suppose they know both. The majority are not aware that either exists.The issue is a complex one, and I do not have a handy equation to reduce it to a single meaningful set of answers, but I will try to delineate some of the facets that shape its general contours.

Антропология и “славистика” (взгляд отсюда)

SUMMARY: Sergey Abashin, one of the most prominent Russian anthropologists of his generation and a member of the Editorial Board of the leading anthropological journal, Etnograficheskoe obozrenie ( The Ethnographic Review ), treats Katherine Verdery’s address as an example of the America-centered approach that simplifies, standardizes, and even ignores European and Russian ethnographic traditions. He points out the presence of an “imperial” trend in the pre-revolutionary Russian ethnography, alongside a nationalizing one, and the tendency toward theoretical reflection in Soviet ethnography. Abashin brings examples of original Russian ethnographic research (on the images of “the other” in Russian history and culture and on the gender self-representations in Nagorno-Karabakh) that are downplayed or ignored by Western anthropologists, for whom Russia is a depopulated “desert” to be conquered by cultural anthropology. Abashin reminds us of the double scholarly affiliation (“Eastern” and “Western”) of many modern Russian and Western scholars, including anthropologists. The best example is Sergey Ushakin, whose role in the Russian academic context is completely ignored in the address. Abashin also questions the neutrality of cultural anthropology in the region. He starts by deconstructing the notion of the “Second World” as a new object of anthropology. This “world” has its own “Third World” (Central Asia, Caucasus, partly – Volga region) and even its own “Indians” (the population of Siberia and the Far East), not to mention the contested borders between the “metropolis” and “borderlands” within the eastern European region as a whole. The constellation of power in this region is so complex and the political interests of the US and Russia are so strong that anthropology can hardly be viewed as a neutral agent. The danger also comes from within the anthropological method, which is sensible to the voices of the “subaltern others” and thus capable of fixing and objectifying new emerging identities and groupings. Finally, Abashin raises doubts about the special scholarly potential of anthropology in the region, stressing the problem of generalizing the results of micro-level anthropological research. He sees the need for a new program for Slavic studies in the modern world, yet warns Russian readers against an uncritical reading of Verdery’s address.

Narodnye obyčai v dni prazdnikov Presvjatoj Bogorodicy<br>Ljudske šege ob praznikih Matere Božje</br>

Folk Customs Accompanying the Celebrations of Mother Mary. The annual celebrations of Mother Mary’s holidays in Russia do not consist only of church prayers on the days of Mother Mary’s Birth, Presentation in the Temple, Announciation, Mary With Her Cloak as Protectress, Assumption, and of honouring her miraculous icons, but also of numerous rituals and customs. Much has been written about such celebrations by Russian ethnographers in 17th and 19th century. Researchers in the 20th century have been looking for the archaic basis of these celebrations, their nature and their linguistic connections. They tried to discover the structure of the folk culture and did not pay much attention to the nature of the celebrations practiced among the people. The author has found a new methodological approach for researching the characteristics of the celebration rituals in the works of V. Turner who tried to see man as a whole, not only as a rational being. In the works of S.S. Averincev the author detected specific emotions in the perception of holiness, as opposed to the »meek« and »terrifying« perception of holiness found in the Western civilization, or the »rational« one in the Byzantine world.

An ethnographer's early years: Boris Dolgikh as enumerator for the 1926/27 polar census

To celebrate the centenary of the birth of Boris Osipovich Dolgikh, the great Russian ethnographer of Siberia, this article gives an account of his first field expedition to the Kets, Evenkis, Nganasans, and Dolgans of central Siberia. The author, himself a former student of Dolgikh, argues that Dolgikh's work as an enumerator for the 1926/27 census forged his identity as an ethnographer. He also implies that the expedition for the 1926/27 census was a cradle for the careers of many other scientists. The article is framed by a history of Soviet science by the editor. It also serves as an introduction to the unique polar census expedition, which the editor argues is better understood as ‘an inscription’ of Siberian aboriginal peoples than as a statistical census in the traditional sense.

“No Place to Go”: Taxation and State Transformation in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia

Previous articleNext article No Access“No Place to Go”: Taxation and State Transformation in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia*Yanni Kotsonis Yanni KotsonisNew York University Search for more articles by this author New York UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 76, Number 3September 2004 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/425440 Views: 90Total views on this site Citations: 10Citations are reported from Crossref ©2004 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Andrés Biehl, José Tomás Labarca Global Uncertainty in the Evolution of Latin American Income Taxes, (Nov 2017): 89–122.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60119-9_4 Bibliography of Secondary Sources, Historical Research 90, no.247247 (Jan 2017): 250–266.https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2281.12174Tatiana Borisova, Jukka Siro Law between Revolution and Tradition: Russian and Finnish Revolutionary Legal Acts, 1917–18, Comparative Legal History 2, no.11 (May 2015): 84–113.https://doi.org/10.5235/2049677X.2.1.84Brigid O’Keeffe Gypsies as a litmus test for rational, tolerant rule: Fin-de-siècle Russian ethnographers confront the comparative history of Roma in Europe, International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice 38, no.22 (Jun 2013): 109–131.https://doi.org/10.1080/01924036.2013.804638Anna M. Mirkova “Population Politics” at the End of Empire: Migration and Sovereignty in Ottoman Eastern Rumelia, 1877–1886, Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no.44 (Sep 2013): 955–985.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417513000479Catriona Kelly What Was Soviet Studies and What Came Next?, The Journal of Modern History 85, no.11 (Jul 2015): 109–149.https://doi.org/10.1086/668800Olga Velikanova Rural Consolidation against Soviet Politics: The Peasant Union Movement in the 1920s, (Jan 2013): 118–159.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137030757_5Choi Chatterjee, Karen Petrone Models of Selfhood and Subjectivity: The Soviet Case in Historical Perspective, (Jan 2013): 205–229.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304339_11Peter Holquist “In Accord with State Interests and the People's Wishes“: The Technocratic Ideology of Imperial Russia's Resettlement Administration, Slavic Review 69, no.11 (Jan 2017): 151–179.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0037677900016739 Daniel Beer Blueprints for Change: The Human Sciences and the Coercive Transformation of Deviants in Russia, 1890–1930 Daniel Beer, Osiris 22, no.11 (Jul 2015): 26–47.https://doi.org/10.1086/521741

Nationality Statistics and Russian Politics in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

In the first half of the nineteenth century the polyethnic nature of the Russian Empire was not a serious problem for its ruling elite. However, ongoing modernization processes and various nationality problems forced the government to pay attention to the ethnic variety of the state. Endeavours to rule the large empire more effectively and certain political reasons led to the taking of nationality censuses. The present paper deals with the causes of the censuses in the Northwest Province of the Russian Empire (in what is now Lithuania and Belarus) in the mid-nineteenth century, with the changes that the gathering of the material underwent and with the use of the collected data for political purposes. Nationality statistics should not be seen merely as an ideological tool. The authorities were in need of nationality statistical data to ensure more effective administration and assessment of the results of their nationality policies. Nevertheless, nationality censuses served ideological aims, too. That was attested by the increasing mistrust of the authorities in statistical data, presented by ‘the Poles’ (mostly by the Catholic clergy). Although Russian ethnographers had placed emphasis on language as a criterion handy for the imperial government in the definition of the nationality of the common people, even in the mid-nineteenth century priority was often given to faith rather than language. That demonstrated how deep-rooted was the equation between faith and nationality in Russian public discourse at that time. Meanwhile as far as the social elite was concerned, national identity was specified by faith, culture, political aspirations and language, too. Although ideologically it was sometimes more convenient to emphasize the Russian or Lithuanian origin of the majority of the gentry, ethno-political reality prevented this from being done with any consistency. Nationality statistics were used in order to ‘prove’ that the region was allegedly not Polish but Russian. Other arguments, largely historical, were used as well.

Бремя Бритого Человека, Или Внутренняя Колонизация России

SUMMARY: In his article Alexander Etkind scrutinizes the applicability of Said’s theory of Orientalism to the history of Russia and, critically revising the basic premises of that theory, suggests an array of political, cultural, and intellectual phenomena in Russian history that could be placed in and interpreted within the perspective of Orientalism. Etkind starts with recapitulation of Said’s theory, pointing to the well-known fact that it was based on the specifics of the colonial relationships within the French and British modern empires. He notes that historical Orientalism, alon with postcolonial discourse, tends to reify seemingly discrete entities of the colonizing West and the colonized East, thus obscuring national differences among the modern colonial and semi-colonial powers. Applied to a historical variety of colonial and post colonial situations beyond the realm of typical colonial empires, the thesis of Orientalism reveals its core, which, according to Etkind, is a complex of practices designed to create and manipulate the cultural distance, which can be formulated in geographic, racial, ethnic, religious, and class terms. Marrying Said to Gellner, Etkind states that in a traditional society and on a scarcely populated territory of the Russian empire the colonization and orientalization were directed inward rather than outward; that is, the population of the core of the empire was viewed as culturally different (in case of romanticism, as inferiority or superiority) by the westernized elite and subjected to a civilizing mission of the state. Etkind illustrates this thesis by drawing on an array of examples, including the settlement of foreign colonists, the military colonies during the reign of Alexander I, the historiography of “Russian colonization,” and the relationship between external expansion and internal colonization. Tracing the intellectual origins of the thesis on internal colonization, the author turns to Chaadaev and his radical interpretation of the process of Europeanization of Russia as a colonial one. Emphasizing the centrality of intellectual and cultural production for maintaining and manipulating cultural distance, Etkind analyzes the discourse of “the people” as developed both by Russian intelligentsia of the populist creed and in Russian ethnography, suggesting that beginning with the Slavophiles and ending with the collapse of the Ancien Regime in 1917 the educated and political elite of Russia fell under the influence of a postcolonial attitude toward the colonized people, which contributed to the “internal” decolonization of Russia. In conclusion, Etkind argues that colonialism and the associated practices of cultural distancing returned in a cyclical manner during the Soviet period.