Russian Ethnography
Among the Russian ethnographers who made a contribution to the description, systematization, and classification of knowledge concerning the Russian narod and other ethnoses of Russia, we should single out a few of the more eminent names. Such are Sakharov (1807–1863), to whose pen belongs one of the first collections of Russian legends;312 Pypin (1833–1904), author of the four-volume History of Russian Ethnography;313 the celebrated collector, publisher, and interpreter of Russian stories Afanasyev (1826–1871);314 the eminent folklorist and ethnographer Miller (1848–1913), a specialist of the Ossetian language and culture;315 the philosopher and critic Nadezhdin (1804–1856), one of the founders of the Russian geographical society and the author of programmatic ethnographic studies;316 Buslaev (1818–1897), a specialist of Russian folklore;317 Snegirev (1797–1868), who collected a wealth of material about Russian holidays;318 Zelenin (1878–1954), one of the first systematizer of ethnographic science and a forerunner of ethnology; the Slavist, Turkologist, and historian Golubovsky (1857–1907);319 the outstanding Turkologist and archeologist Radlov (1837–1918);320 the first-rate Slavist Pogodin (1872–1947);321 the folklorist Sumtsov (1854–1922);322 Loboda (1871–1931), a specialist of heroic epics;323 Dal’ (1801–1872), collector of folklore and compiler of a famous dictionary;324 Byzantologist and ethnographer Speransky (1863–1938);325 the philosopher Potebnya (1835–1891), who studied the ties between language, thought, and myth;326 Anichkov (1866–1937), specialist of Russian paganism;327 the prominent historian and philologist Shakhmatov (1864–1920);328 the linguist and slavist Sobolevsky (1806–1908);329 and the ethnographer and paleographer Karsky (1860–1931), a specialist of the White Russian narod.330
All of these authors and their works have preserved their worth. The problem is that Soviet Ethnography, which predominated in the 20th century, although it continued to add valuable material concerning the ethnic and historical problem, was constructed on dogmatic ideological principles and hurriedly rejected all those ideas that could not be inscribed in a materialist, Marxist approach in explaining the origin of ethnoses and cultures. Hence, all traces of pre-Soviet ethnographic thought were subject to “class” revision and reinterpretation. The results of this reinterpretation and “progress” in science were far from always adequate and acceptable. But the natural scientific process was artificially interrupted and distorted. Thus, today it is still a prospect to consider the worth of different ethnographic methods, classifications, or interpretations, characteristic of different authors and schools. It would be entirely unproductive to trust the readings of Russian ethnographers, folklorists, and linguists, which the relevant specialists carried out in the Soviet period. Therefore, in order to constitute a full-fledged ethnosociological discipline, it is advisable to turn directly to the sources of Russian ethnography and ethnology and to isolate without prejudice what is valuable, relevant, and important for a full-fledged restoration of the domestic scientific tradition.
Russian “Narodniks” and their Role in the Establishment of Ethnosociology
The scholars, writers, and social actors in the school of “narodniks” put the theme of the narod and narodni culture at the center of their attention. Among them were sociologists, economists, historians, and political activists, who created at the start of the 20th century the party of socialist-revolutionaries (SRs).
The narodniks, their work, and their historical theories, are important for ethnosociologists in that they tried to impart to the category “narod” a special conceptual, theoretical meaning, and to build on it their historical and social teachings, anticipating in some sense the task of ethnosociology. Moreover, many narodniks were keenly interested in sociology, and the first definition of sociology as such in Russian was given by the narodnik and sociologist Lavrov (1823–1900).
One of the theoreticians and main ideologists of Russian narodnichestvo was Herzen (1812–1870), who, having started with Westernism, significantly reconsidered his opinions at the end of his life, on the basis of his experience as an emigrant, and came to be convinced of the peculiar character and peculiar worth of the Russian narod, and especially of the peasant way of life.331
Another prominent ideologist of narodnichestvo was the economist and sociologist Vorontsov (1847–1918), the ideological inspirer of the group revolving around the journal “New Word.” Vorontsov specialized in the history of the Russian peasant community and its economic, social, and ethnic arrangement.332 In his works, Vorontsov convincingly showed that capitalism did not take shape in Russia and that the economic and social structure optimally intrinsic to Russian society is agrarian and peasant. Vorontsov’s works meticulously describe the economic order of Russian peasantry. Vorontsov saw Russia’s development and “progress” in the liberation of peasant labor and in the creation of a distinctive version of Russian peasant socialism.
The famous narodnik sociologist and publicist Mikhailovsky (1842–1904) held a similar position concerning capitalism. In his articles, he rigorously opposed Russia’s imitation of the European experience. He made the remarkable observation that Marx’s theory of the three phases of economic life was a historical conclusion made on the basis of the observation of European life, and its applicability is limited to Western society, while Russia, thanks to the specific character of the communal soul of the Russian, could avoid the capitalistic phase and develop according to its own script.333 Mikhailovsky’s ideas are important for Ethnosociology in that he tries to apply sociological methods to the study of the narod.
A pioneer of ethnographic studies in the form of “embedded observation” was the collector of narodni songs and traditions, writer and expert of the peasant worldview, Pavel Ivanovich, Yakushkin (1822–1872), a representative of early narodnichestvo, who wandered through Russian villages as an ophenya (a travelling merchant) with the goal of the deep study and description of Russian narodni traditions, legends, social peculiarities, and religious and mythological notions.334
The eminent Russian ethnographers Peter Savich Efimenko (1835–1908) and his wife, the first female honorary doctor of Russian history, Alexandra Yakovlevna Efimenko (1848–1918), sided closely with the school of narodnichestvo.335 In her works, the latter undertook an analysis of the social forms of life and economic order of White Russians and Ukrainians, and studied the qualities of character and psychological peculiarities of Russian and Ukrainian peasants. She emphasized “the exceptional inclination of the White Russian tribe to collectivism, its creativity in the sphere of social forms.”336
The economists and historians Posnikov (1846–1922), Sokolovsky (1842–1906), and Kapustin (1828–1891), who were close to the narodniks, made a significant contribution to the study of communal land ownership and the simplest and most ancient forms of peasant life.337 , 338 , 339
Another narodnik, Prugavin (1850–1920), a specialist in the ethnographic and sociological aspects of Russian Old Belief, studied the connection between religious notions and specific forms of folk life.340
Some narodniks exiled for their revolutionary activities made a systematic study of the social, religious, and economic aspects of Siberia and the life of Russian settlers, engaging in the collection, description, and systematization of ethnographical material during, and often after their exiles. Among their number were the specialists of the Yakut, shamanism, and Yakut customs, the ethnographers Khudyakov (1842–1876) and Seroshevsky (1858–1945);341 , 342 the researcher of archaic cults among the Sakhalin Nivkhi (the Gilyak), Sternberg (1861–1927);343 and the discoverer of the language and customs of the Yukagir, Jochelson (1855–1937),344 and the Chukchi, Bogoraz-Tan (1865–1936).345
By their theories and ethnographic studies, the narodniks prepared a fruitful ideational and methodological base for the consideration of the ethnos as the foundation of sociological analysis, in contrast with the Marxists, who operated in their historical analysis predominantly with the concept of the class. It was precisely because of this basic methodolo
gical contradiction that the majority of their works were subject to artificial oblivion and suppression in the Soviet period. According to the same principle, we should turn special attention to them during the proper development of the ethnosociological discipline in our time.
Classical Russian Sociologists on Ethnoses
The works of the founder of Russian sociology as a full-fledged academic science were an important source for the establishment of Russian Ethnosociology. We already saw that the Russian narodniks who occupied themselves with sociology (in particular, Vorontsov and Mikhailovsky) paid special attention to ethnography. Other Russian sociologists — Kovalevsky, Sorokin — also paid special attention to ethnic studies in different periods of their work.
The first-rate Russian sociologist Maxim Maximovich Kovalevsky (1851–1916) personally participated in ethnographic expeditions in the Caucasus and collaborated closely with the ethnographer Miller. On the basis of the results of his field studies of the ethnoses of the Caucasus, he wrote a number of ethnographic works connected with the study of laws and customs and the correlations between them in the societies of the Caucasus, problems of kinship and the specific character of kin life, and the structure of clans among some small Russian ethnoses.346 , 347 , 348
Kovalevsky was the first person in Russian science to raise the question of the correlation of the methods of Sociology and Ethnography, the interrelationship between these disciplines, and the determination of their principal objects of study.349
Kovalevsky’s disciple, the outstanding 20th century sociologist Pitirim Sorokin (1889–1968), who was keen in his youth on the ideas of the narodniks (and joined the party of the SRs), began his activities with a study of the ethnic problematic.
Ethnically, Sorokin was a Russified Komi, and it is natural that the peculiarities of the Komi ethnos provoked his spirited interest.
Sorokin wrote a number of ethnographic works about the religious notions of the Komi, advanced in the spirit of the evolutionary approach, which this great sociologist later rejected.350 In his analysis of the remnants of Totemism, Sorokin, in the spirit of Durkheim, distinguishes two main spaces, the profane and the sacred, on the analysis of which he bases his conceptions.351
But for us, what is important is that his interest in the ethnic problematic lies at the basis of his inclination towards Sociology.
Sorokin dedicated other works to the Komi ethnos, which concerned their cultural order and marital practices.352
Eurasianism as a Humanistic Paradigm: The Plurality of Ethnoses and Cultures
The problem of the ethnos stood at the center of attention of philosophical doctrine of Eurasianism (Trubetzkoy, P. N. Savitsky [1895–1965], G. V. Vernadsky [1877–1973], N. N. Alekseev [1879–1964], etc.).353
The Eurasianists based their theories on the conclusions of the late Slavophiles (Danilevsky, Leontiev, Lamansky) and brought their thesis of the “plurality of civilizations,” the absence of a universal path of development for all societies and cultures, the rejection of “Romano-Germanic” colonialism, imperialism, and racism to its logical limit. They advanced as an alternative the particular, original Eurasian civilization, for which both the rate of development and the goal and direction of this development arise from the internal structure of Eurasian civilizational values which have their own autonomous history and content.
A very important feature of the Eurasian doctrine was the idea that Russian Eurasian civilization was built not only by Slavs, but also by other ethnic groups, each of which made its contribution to this process, which must be evaluated on its own merits. The Eurasianists particularly emphasized the role of the Steppe ethnoses: the Alan, Turkic peoples, and Mongols, who imparted to Russian civilization an additional social and spatial dimension, having integrated the woodland Slavs and ethnoses of the great steppe into a single world power, that which the Eurasianists themselves called a “government-world” (gosudarstvo-mir).
In the context of the Eurasian worldview, the idea of the distinctive character of ethnic cultures as an unconditional primary value and the affirmation of a plurality of societies and civilizations was combined with the revealing of the sociological particularities of different political and ideological systems and heightened attention towards ethnoses, ethnic values and structures. In its scientific and systematic expression, the Eurasian method can be considered a phenomenon very similar to Ethnosociology. Eurasianism considers society a form of expression of the ethnos and recognizes the plurality of ethnoses as the foundation of a diversity of social and societal [sotsialnikh i obshchestvennikh] systems.
The Eurasianists were fierce opponents of all forms of racism — biological as well as technological, cultural, evolutionary, etc., and thus advanced the idea of the complete equality of cultures.
A significant difference between the Eurasianists and the earlier Slavophiles was their benevolent attitude towards the cultures of Russia’s small ethnoses and the call to revive and defend their spiritual and social particularities. Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetskoy advanced the idea of “all-Eurasian nationalism,” at the basis of which lay the idea of the conscious solidarity of Russian ethnoses in the fortification and development of the united “big space” of Russia-Eurasia.354
In another capacity, that same Prince Trubetskoy was the founder of Phonology and the Prague School of Structural Linguistics, along with Roman Jakobson, where the theoretical bases were laid for the entire orientation of Structuralism in Linguistics. Jakobson, in turn, sharing many of the ideas of Eurasianism, but not participating in it as an organized socio-political movement, exerted decisive influence on the methodology of Claude Lévi-Strauss and on the appearance of structural anthropology (as the French school of Ethnosociology).
The two sides of Trubetskoy’s work — Eurasianism and structural linguistics — are rarely considered together (some know Trubetskoy as a Eurasianist, philosopher, ideologist, and social actor, others as an outstanding scientist, a philologist and linguist), but, in fact, both are consequences of his total worldview. Trubetskoy thought of culture, civilization, and the ethnos, on one hand, and language, on the other, as a structure, predetermining the semantic load of all derivative forms. Language carries in itself the meaning of statements. The ethnos carries in itself the meaning of society, its phenomena, institutes, and processes.
It is possible to consider Eurasianism narrowly or broadly. If narrowly, then we are talking about a political trend in the Russian white emigration of the first half of the 20th century, which reached its apogee towards the end of the 1920s, fell into decline in the 1930s (due to the effect of inner contradictions), and disappeared in the 1940s. But Eurasianism can also be understood broadly, as a general world-view and scientific-paradigmatic device for understanding the world as a cultural and ethnic plurality, not having a single universal measure, where the measure of things in each concrete case is not the individual, nor the class, nor the race, but culture and ethnos. In the broad understanding of Eurasianism, structural linguistics is but one of numerous possibilities of the application of the Eurasian method to the scientific sphere. In this broad understanding, Ethnosociology can also be thought of as a scientific orientation in the framework of the Eurasian paradigm of the humanities.
On the Threshold of Russian [Rossiiskii] Ethnosociology
Summarizing our survey, we can trace which elements 20th century Russian Ethnosociology and Ethnology took shape from.
At its basis lies the humanistic paradigm, asserting the equality and equal worth of ethnoses and cultures. It is shared by the most diverse ideological orientations: conservative (Slavophiles), revolutionary (Narodniks), and conservative-revolutionary (Eurasianists).
In its fundamental characteristics, this paradigm is identical with the paradigm that lies at the basis of Ethnosociology, as it is broadly understood in the West (including Ethnosociology itself, Cultural Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Structural Anthropology, etc.). Boas, Thurnwald, Malinows
ki, Mauss, and Lévi-Strauss proceeded from precisely that same idea of the equality and plurality of cultures and the rejection of racism in all its forms (including the evolutionary or technological racism of the early anthropologists). This same principle was insisted upon, in one way or another, by the first Slavophiles (in the particular case of Russian culture), Danilevsky and Leontiev, the Russian narodniks, and, finally, in the most conceptualized and general form, the Eurasianists. It is precisely on the basis of this shared paradigm that we should look for the deep connections of these traditions, which have produced numerous orientations, schools, theories, and concepts.
Through the application of the humanistic paradigm of the “equality of cultures,” we should consider and classify the abundant and partially systematized ethnographic material collected by a few generations of Russian researchers on both Slavic ethnic groups (Great Russians, Little Russians, White Russians, as well as the ancient Slavic tribes of Eastern Europe) and other ethnoses of Russia. But in the course of the systematization of this sea of ethnographic data we should carefully check the quality of all the systematizations and taxonomies we already have. The scientific activist, Boas, in the USA, incidentally, started such an undertaking. He was troubled by the fact that the exhibitions of the Smithsonian ethnographic museum were arranged according to the logic of the vulgar evolutionary approach, which gave visitors a false impression of the meaning, significance, and content of the exhibited artifacts. In Ethnography — as in other humanistic and historical sciences — the position of the observer (gatherer, systematiser, organizer of museum exhibits, etc.) plays a decisive role. If the ethnographer does not at all understand the significance of some artifact or phenomenon, it is unlikely that he will mention it in his statements or display it in the exhibition. The same principle concerns the situation when he understands something incorrectly. But from the perspective of Ethnosociology, anyone who is guided by evolutionary theories or projects stereotypes of his culture on the culture he is studying probably misunderstands everything about it.
The Foundations Page 25