Soviet Ethnography Research Articles

Book review “N.I. Vorobyev. Kazan Tatars. Kazan: Tatgosizdat, 1953”

The work under review is devoted to the characteristics of the material culture of the Kazan Tatars of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The author set himself the task to identify the main elements of the Kazan Tatars’ material culture, trace the history of its formation, and analyse its characteristic territorial and class differences. The work is based on the monograph of the same author, Material Culture of the Kazan Tatars, published in 1930. Since that time, the author has accumulated new material, critically revised previous conclusions, and essentially produced a new work (cit.: Smirnov A.P. (1954) N.I. Vorobyev. The Kazan Tatars. Tatgosizdat, Kazan, 1953. Sovetskaya etnografiya [Soviet Ethnography]. No. 3: 168–172. (In Russ.)).

Soviet museum ethnography at the VII International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographic Sciences: restoration and conservation of disciplinary heritage under the “gaze” of the West

(1964) is considered in the article as a discussion space within which ethnographers and museum workers presented and debated different views on the past and present of their discipline. Archival materials are explored through the concepts of restoration and conservation – rhetorical strategies that involve different forms of interpretation of disciplinary heritage and projects for action. Projects for the “revival” of the Museum of the Peoples of the USSR in Moscow and “Materials on Ethnography’s” edition in Leningrad mostly referred to the ethnography of the 1920s, which was suppressed and criticized during the transition to Marxist methodology in the 1930s. The restoration strategy led to the recognition of the unspoken lag behind Western anthropology and museum affairs. The reconstruction of fragments of the past was proposed as a solution to the problem. The conservation strategy, on the contrary, saw Soviet museum ethnography as ahead of foreign ones. The legacy of the “marxization” of the 1930s, according to this rhetoric, was the key to victories in the past and present, and its criticism and rejection deprived Soviet ethnography of its advantages. Museum practices of research and representation of the culture and life of collective farmers and workers, and the active use of mannequins and life-size dioramas to show social relations were recognized as such a positive legacy.

We “did not live by work alone”: an interview with N.S. Polishchuk

In an interview to S.S. Alymov, the ethnographer and philologist N.S. Polishchuk talks about her biography, academic career and work at the Institute of Ethnography in the 1960s-90s. The conversation covers topics such as the development of studies in the area of ethnography of the city and workers, the activities of the journal “Soviet Ethnography”, and the international contacts of Soviet ethnographers. N.S. Polishchuk further shares interesting information about the everyday life of scholars at the Institute of Ethnography, the fate of P.G. Bogatyrev, and much more.

Yurii Valentinovich Knorozov in the context of the soviet ethnographic science of the mid and late twentieth century

In an interview to S.S. Alymov, the ethnographer and philologist N.S. Polishchuk talks about her biography, academic career and work at the Institute of Ethnography in the 1960s-90s. The conversation covers topics such as the development of studies in the area of ethnography of the city and workers, the activities of the journal “Soviet Ethnography”, and the international contacts of Soviet ethnographers. N.S. Polishchuk further shares interesting information about the everyday life of scholars at the Institute of Ethnography, the fate of P.G. Bogatyrev, and much more.

Марризм и советская фольклористика (по материалам архива М.К. Азадовского)

The linguistic theory of the Soviet academician Nikolai Marr which in the 1930s captured Soviet humanities, including literary and folklore studies, had several stages: from an unrestrained glorification up to its complete defamation in 1950 (after Stalin’s article in “Pravda”). Heated discussions around the “paleontological method” resumed in Russia during the Perestroika and later, when most experts consider it as unfounded. The present publication is focused on the remembered evidence of Mark Azadovsky (1888–1954) who in the 1930s headed all folklore studies in Leningrad (in the Academy of Sciences as well as at the University) and who was at that time deeply involved in the principal events of folkloristic life and was well acquainted with its participants. His letter to the Moscow folklore scholar Vera Krupyanskaya (1897–1985), written in May 1952, represents a retrospective evaluation of Marr’s direction in Soviet folklore studies and gives, moreover, an answer to the question: who among the Soviet specialists in folklore could be regarded (and to what degree) as a real adherent of Marr’s school? After 1949, when Mark Azadovsky was subjected to public dishonor and dismissed from all of his academic positions, he had no possibility to express his views in public. However, he managed to indirectly influence the contents of one of the “anti-Marrist” articles typical of that time (“About the fallacious views of N.Ya. Marr and his followers in the field of the folklore studies” by Vladimir Chicherov). The story of this article, published in the magazine “Soviet Ethnography” (1952) presents an “intrigue” with some fascinating details.

АНТРОПОЛОГИЧЕСКОЕ ИЗМЕРЕНИЕ ПОЗДНЕСОВЕТСКОЙ ЭКОНОМИКИ: ДИРЕКТОР, ПЛАНОВИК, РАБОТНИК В ЭТНОГРАФИЧЕСКИХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯХ 1950−1980-Х ГОДОВ

The anthropological understanding of the Soviet economy began during its existence, drawing from various sci-ences, including ethnography. The relationship between Soviet ethnography and economic anthropology remains a topic of debate, as there was no consensus on this issue within Soviet science itself. Ethnographic science, for ideo-logical and methodological reasons, did not associate itself with Western anthropology. There was a conscious dis-tancing of ethnography from academic economics, which made it difficult to form economic anthropology in the modern sense. At the same time, from the 1950s to the 1980s, the ethnographers succeeded in uncovering a number of important issues, for example the multi-structural nature of the Soviet economy and the functioning of archaic production practices and relations within the planned economy. Much attention was paid to the consumer behavior of citizens in different parts of the country and the changes in everyday life. Collective values, intended to be strength-ened on the path towards communism, were also a focal point. The studies covered the diversity of economic prac-tices, but encountered challenges due to the absence of a language for describing strategies and tactics of economic behavior in Soviet reality. Instead, people used euphemisms, adapted ideologemes, figures of silence relating to cer-tain production and consumption practices that were not entirely legal. The issues of planning, motivation, exchange, perception of economic reality, and informal relations, important for economic anthropology, remained largely unex-plored. Moreover, there was a giant bias towards rural residents and archaic practices.

Cold War Anthropology From Both Sides of the Iron Curtain

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.

Отечественный опыт построения материалистической концепции этноса и перспектива ее философского углубления

In the second half of the 20th century, Soviet ethnography, built on materialistic foundations, encountered difficulties in defining an ethnos. Traditionally understanding it as a combination of various kinds of social communities (economic, territorial, linguistic, cultural, mental), it could not explain the discrepancies in their boundaries and identify their ethnic content as such. These difficulties were caused, first of all, by the heuristic limitations of the prevailing abstract-universal dialectical-materialist theory, capable of grasping in development only the general, neglecting the entire variety of the special and the individual. Ethnos is a concrete phenomenon, representing a unity of common, special, and individual aspects of social reality. The definition of its essence is possible only with the deepening of materialist theory, the transition to concrete-universal dialectic, which describes in development both the general and the compressed, generalized form of the entire diversity of the special and the individual. The most promising version of this deepening may be seen in the definition of ethnicity based on the dialectic of the generic and individual human essence. Given this essence, an ethnos can be defined as a separate society that produces itself as humanity for itself and others. This definition allows us to present ethnos as a unity of non-coinciding aspects of social life (various social communities) manifested in the unity of the main development trends (differentiation and in-ternationalization) aimed at the production of common cultural values.

School in the Soviet ethnographic research over the period from 1937 to 1953 based on the journal “Soviet Ethnography”

Examination of the role of school in Soviet ethnography remains a blank spot in the anthropology of education. However, despite the absence of this subdiscipline, the author indicates the interest of Soviet ethnographers in reorganization of educational sphere. Use of the method of content analysis of the journal “Soviet Ethnography” reveals the role of general education on the map of ethnographic science of the era of totalitarianism (1937– 1953). This stage is characterized by one of the major intrusions into science, which is clearly reflected in publications of humanities journals. The author highlights the common semantic structures – patterns and repetitive statements typical for most articles. These statement lead to the following conclusions: criticism of the prerevolutionary system of education, exclusion of religion from the system of education, and exposure of the problems in the system of education of foreign capitalist countries. At the same time, there was the task to emphasize the successes of Soviet education: elimination of illiteracy; growing number of schools, students, and teachers; and the role of schools in cultural development the Soviet Union. In face of ideological restriction, many ethnographers have identified separate issues and offered their recommendations for the Soviet system of education. These unique observations are the contribution made by the Soviet ethnographic science to the cultural interpretation of the school.

Kerstin Eidlitz KUOLJOK, The Revolution in the North. Soviet Ethnography and Nationality Policy, Uppsala, Uppsala University Centre for Multiethnic Research, distributed by Almqvist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1985. 185 pages (paper)

Kerstin Eidlitz KUOLJOK, The Revolution in the North. Soviet Ethnography and Nationality Policy, Uppsala, Uppsala University Centre for Multiethnic Research, distributed by Almqvist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1985. 185 pages (paper). An article from journal Culture (Volume 6, Number 2, 1986, pp. 3-128), on Érudit.

К ВОПРОСУ ИЗУЧЕНИЯ СЮЖЕТООБРАЗУЮЩИХ МОТИВОВ В ЭПОСЕ «ДЖАНГАР» (на материале сарт-калмыцкой, синьцзян-ойратской и калмыцкой версий)

Впервые представлен сравнительный анализ ряда сюжетообразующих эпических мотивов, характерных для сарт-калмыцкой, синьцзян-ойратской и калмыцкой версий эпоса «Джангар». Изучение сюжетообразующих мотивов, повествующих о героических коллизиях в эпосе, весьма актуально. Целью исследования является рассмотрение сюжетообразующих мотивов сарт-калмыцкой версии «Джангара» в сравнении с синьцзян-ойратской и калмыцкой версиями эпоса. Методологической основой исследования послужили принципы сравнительно-исторического изучения фольклора, теоретические положения о понятии «мотив», изложенные в работах отечественных фольклористов. Материалом для исследования послужил неопубликованный машинописный текст сарт-калмыцкой версии героического эпоса «Джангар» на языке оригинала, записанный А. В. Бурдуковым в 1929 г. от сказителя Бакхи Сарпекова. Для сравнения были привлечены опубликованные тексты песен калмыцкой и синьцзян-ойратской версий эпоса, а также личные полевые записи авторов олётской версии эпоса. Сюжеты сравниваемых песен посвящены описанию борьбы богатырей с врагами-мангасами. Прослежен ряд сходных по содержанию сюжетообразующих эпических мотивов: мотив нападения мангаса на нутук героя, мотив ломки копья богатыря (в сарт-калмыцкой версии эпоса, как и в синьцзян-ойратской, упоминаются гидронимы Или и Текес), мотив ультиматума (в сарт-калмыцкой версии, как и в синьцзян-ойратской, враг требует три ценных объекта, при этом дается право выбора), мотив богатырского поединка (в сарт-калмыцкой версии выделен мотив богатырского поединка, который, по сравнению с другими версиями эпоса, изложен очень кратко), мотив прибытия героя в родную державу (в сарт-калмыцкой версии, как и в синьцзян-ойратской, юного героя встречает ханша Авай Герел), мотив наречения именем (в сарт-калмыцкой версии героя-мальчика нарекает именем сам Джангар в присутствии всего нутука и дарит ему своего скакуна Бурхан Зерде), мотив исцеления (в сарт-калмыцкой версии исцеляет богатыря целомудренная ханша Авай Герел) и др. В результате проведенного анализа мы пришли к выводу, что мотивный фонд сарт-калмыцкой версии «Джангара» во многом схож с синьцзян-ойратской и калмыцкой версиями эпоса. Сюжетообразующие мотивы в рассматриваемых версиях эпоса не расторжимы, заключают в себе зачаток дальнейшего развития и часто конфликтное начало.

«ПРОСТО МОЛОДОЙ ТУРИСТ В НАШЕЙ СТРАНЕ»: ЛИНГВИСТ И АНТРОПОЛОГ НЕЗ-ПЕРС АРЧИ ФИННИ

Born in Culdesac, ID, Archie Phinney, a Nez Percé, was the first Native American to receive an undergraduate degree from the University of Kansas. He collaborated with prominent Smithsonian anthropologists J. N. B. Hewitt and T. Michelson as well as the great Franz Boas; visited Leningrad after being invited by Vladimir Bogoras in the context of an academic exchange program; defended his candidate thesis at the Institute of Anthropology, Archeology and Ethnography (MAE); and returned to serve as an Indian agent in different reservations in the USA. The USSR scholarship of Phinney fell on a difficult yet crucial period in the history of Soviet ethnography, when it was not yet completely closed and remained receptive to the influences of Boas’ School. Through Phinney and other American researchers like him, who visited the Soviet Union at that time, the Soviet practice of “indigenization” had a reverse effect on J. Collier’s liberal Indian New Deal. Phinney collaborated with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, when the latter was on the Indian Commissioner’s post. Today, Phinney’s figure again attracts interest after some oblivion. The department of anthropology at the University of Idaho, Moscow, occupies a building named in his honor. The scope of the paper is based on the Boas Paper collection — his correspondence with Phinney, Bogoras, Averkieva, Barton and others, stored at the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. The analyzed materials, representing the general atmosphere in the 1930s Soviet academic community, are still little-known to the Russian-speaking reader.

«ВЕСЕЛЫЕ КАРТИНКИ»: ИЗ ИСТОРИИ МУЗЕЯ АНТРОПОЛОГИИ И ЭТНОГРАФИИ И МУЗЕЯ ИСТОРИИ РЕЛИГИИ АКАДЕМИИ НАУК СССР (1932‒1933 ГГ.)

In the Leningrad of 1932–1933, two events took place in the academic world that would play an important role in the history of Soviet ethnography, museum construction and religious studies: the opening of the Museum of the History of Religion and the reorganization of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences. At that time, the Academy of Sciences considered it a priority to establish research institutes on the basis of academic museums. If a small collective of the new Museum of the History of Religion, headed by its director Vladimir Bogoras, welcomed such an undertaking, then the reform of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, its merger with the Institute for the Study of the Peoples of the USSR and the creation of the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR on their basis was quite painful for many MAE staff and led to the layoff or change in the status of the employees. The article publishes drawings and texts found in the Photo Library of the State Museum of the History of Religion, in the St Petersburg branch of the RAS Archive, and in the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian National Library, reflecting these events in a satirical form. The author presents cartoons from the wall newspaper of the Museum of the History of Religion (1932–1933), depicting Vladimir Bogoras, an ironic note by Bogoras himself about the participation of scientific workers in the exhibition work, as well as a poem by Eugeny Kagarov’s “The Revised Iliad”, which satirically presents personnel changes at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in 1933. The author of the article notes the importance of the discovered satirical works as a source that, like memoirs and letters, reflects subjective impressions and demonstrates a personal attitude to what is happening. In the article, these documents are commented on in detail, showing their importance for the study of the history of the Leningrad community of ethnographers and historians of religion in the early 1930s.

Missing Links. Indigenous Life and Evolutionary Thought in the History of Russian Ethnography.

The history of Russian social anthropology has long been best known for the work of three, late nineteenth-century "exile ethnographers," each sent to the Russian Far East for their anti-tsarist activities as students. All three men-Vladimir Bogoraz, Vladimir Iokhel'son, and Lev Shternberg-produced voluminous and celebrated works on Russian far eastern indigenous life, but it was the young Shternberg who had perhaps the most profound effect on setting the agenda for the canonic evolutionist line soon to take hold in late Russian imperial and early Soviet ethnography. This essay draws on archival, library, and field research to revisit the life and work of Shternberg in order to tell the story of "group marriage" that he documented for the life of one Sakhalin Island indigenous people, Gilyaks (or Nivkhgu, Nivkhi). Documented in this way by Shternberg, the Nivkh kinship system proved a crucial "missing link" for Friedrich Engels, who had long been eager to provide evidence of primitive communism as man's natural state. For Gilyaks, the die was cast. Their role as the quintessential savages of Engels' favor made them famous in Russian and Soviet ethnographic literature, and significantly enhanced their importance to Soviet government planners. This essay tracks that episode and its aftermaths as a pivotal moment in the history of Russian social anthropology and of evolutionist thought more broadly.

The Ethnographer Boris Aleksandrovich Vasiliev and his Essay “Five Days among Orochis”: Writing Strategies in Soviet Ethnography

The Ethnographer Boris Aleksandrovich Vasiliev and his Essay “Five Days among Orochis”: Writing Strategies in Soviet Ethnography

"American Dreams" of Early Soviet Ethnography: Some Reflections on Bogoras's Legacy

Dmitry Arzyutov discusses a phenomenon that he defines as "American dreams" of Russian ethnography in the early twentieth century based on the example of Waldemar Bogoras, one of the founders of early Soviet ethnography. The essay highlights three specific cases that frame the development of this discipline not through the familiar narrative of gradual isolation but as a story of sometimes problematic contacts and exchanges with American anthropologists. The contacts that were established during the joint Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897–1902) led by Franz Boas continued into the 1920s. Arzyutov shows that the main concepts of Soviet ethnography, such as "ethnogenesis" and "ethnic history," were products of the debates about the origin of the peoples of Arctica and Siberia between Franz Boas and the Russian expedition participants, Bogoras and, to a lesser degree, Lev Shternberg. The second case addresses Bogoras's unrealized project of establishing nature reserves-cum-reservations for the native peoples of Siberia. These were to combine the prerevolutionary idea of nature reserves (popular among Bogoras's geographer colleagues) with the North American practice of Indian reservations. Finally, the third case compares trajectories of the two students of Bogoras and Boas, Julia Averkieva and Archie Phinney. Their stories show how Marxism might have been differently understood and deployed in the transnational context, and how this difference could have generated intellectual and personal disagreements and conflicting versions of identity politics. The three cases taken together testify to the importance of shifting the optics of the history of anthropology from reconstructing national traditions and local genealogies toward tracing dialogue and mutual borrowings.

Favourite Research Topics of Estonian Ethnographers Under Soviet Rule

Abstract Estonian ethnography as one of the Estonia-related disciplines was tied with Estonian nationalism from the very beginning. Defined as a science investigating mainly the material side of vanishing traditional peasant culture in the 1920s, it fitted rather well with the Soviet understanding of ethnography as a sub discipline of history. Thanks to the major cooperation projects initiated and coordinated by ethnographers from Moscow, Soviet Estonian ethnographers could continue studying Estonian traditional peasant culture. Their favourite research topics (folk costume, peasant architecture and traditional agriculture) supported Estonian national identity, but also suited the framework of Soviet ethnography. Studying contemporary (socialist) everyday life was unpopular among Estonian ethnographers because the results had to justify and support Soviet policy. They did so unwillingly, and avoided it completely if possible. Despite of some interruption during the Stalin era, ethnography managed to survive as a science of the nation in Soviet Estonia.

The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution

The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution

A Soviet Think Tank: The Involvement of the Institute of Ethnography in Soviet Policy

This article examines the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union as a Soviet think tank that provided expertise and academic input to political and administrative institutions. The discipline of Soviet ethnography was also an applied social science that adapted its fields of research and methods to changing political demands. Although ethnographers worked within the limits of the political discourse, they opposed certain policies that they considered wrong. The escalating ethnic and national conflicts of the late 1980s increased the demand for ethnological and socio-ethnological expertise. However, as part of the system, Soviet ethnography was institutionally and conceptually unprepared to provide proper solutions.

The Concept of the “Field” in Early Soviet Ethnography: A Northern Perspective

The Concept of the “Field” in Early Soviet Ethnography: A Northern Perspective