Lev Shternberg: Anthropologist, Russian Socialist, Jewish Activist

Introduction

xv Introduction I am often asked why, after two decades of researching and publishing on the culture and history of the Tlingit people of Alaska, I decided to write an intellectual biography of a Russian ethnologist who lived a century ago. There are several answers to this question. To begin with, ever since I took a graduate course at the University of Chicago on the history of Anglo-American anthropology with George W. Stocking and wrote a paper on Lev Shternberg’s scholarly legacy, I have been interested in the history of my discipline. In fact, several of my articles and edited volumes deal with various topics from the history of North American and Russian anthropology (Kamenskii 1985; Kan 1990, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2003, 2004a, 2006; Kan and Strong 2006). More importantly, as a Russian-speaking, American-trained anthropologist, I have always wanted to bring the fascinating and often tragic history of Russian-Soviet anthropology to an English-speaking audience. As Darnell and Gleach recently pointed out, “While the number of books and articles on the history of anthropology has increased significantly in the last decade, most of them continue to deal with the central place models” involving the development of anthropology at central locations in the United States and Great Britain (Columbia University, Washington dc, London), and to a lesser extent in France and Germany (Paris and Berlin) (2005:vii–viii). I fully agree with these authors that such an approach is indeed a major shortcoming, since the history of anthropology should encompass a “diversity of practitioners; diversity of national, theoretical, and methodological traditions; diversity of subdisciplines and ways to merge and cross them” (Darnell and Gleach 2005:vii–viii). xvi introduction One national tradition that has so far remained largely outside the scope of Western academic research is the Russian one. The language barrier is only one reason for this omission. Equally important is the intellectual gap that existed between Russian and Western anthropology from the early 1930s to the mid1980s . Western anthropologists knew little about the work of their colleagues in the USSR, while the latter had to study the history of their own discipline mainly within the ideological constraints of Soviet Marxism and Russian nationalism (see Tokarev 1966; Gellner 1979; Koester and Kan 1982). In addition, access to many of the major archives had been closed or restricted for foreign and even domestic researchers for decades. During the perestroika and the current post-Soviet periods, however, a number of works on the history of Russian anthropology have appeared in English. Written by both Russian and Western scholars, they tend to concentrate on the Stalinist and post-Stalinist eras and largely ignore the prerevolutionary Russian and early Soviet periods, when the foundation for much of twentieth-century Russian anthropology was laid (Gellner 1988; Slezkine 1991; Tishkov 1992; Tishkov and Tumarkin 2004). Moreover, even in the post-Soviet era, significant differences between Russian and Western approaches to the history of Russian cultural anthropology (“ethnography”) remain.1 Western scholars working in this field are mainly historians who examine their subject within a larger context of Russian political , social, and intellectual history (Slezkine 1991, 1992; Clay 1995; Knight 2000; Geraci 2000, 2001; Hirsch 2005). Most of the new Russian works in this area are by anthropologists. With surprisingly few exceptions, these studies have not critically examined the scholarly legacy of Russian-Soviet anthropologists . Much of the current Russian work on the subject remains purely descriptive and follows the Soviet hagiographical tradition, despite the removal of ideological pressure on the work.2 Many of the publications on the history of Soviet ethnology are written by scholars who matured during the Soviet era and tend to be reluctant to criticize their former teachers and colleagues (for example , Kozlov 2003; Tishkov and Tumarkin 2004). Particularly disappointing is the fact that two more recent collections of essays on the lives of Soviet ethnologists who were persecuted by Soviet authorities include several works about scholars who had played a significant role in destroying their colleagues’ careers and even lives prior to their own arrests (Tumarkin 1999, 2003; cf. Knight 2000). Finally, there is not a single monograph on the history of late imperial Russian or early Soviet ethnology.3 xvii introduction In addition to the scarcity of substantial works on the history of Russian anthropology, there are no book-length biographies of Russian or Soviet ethnologists except for Nikolai Miklukho...