And finally, the latest kind of fairy tale is the heroic epic, which describes the social models and processes of early statehood with a clearly expressed social stratification, emphasis on the interdependence of estates, and the central position of the individual type of the hero or strongman.393
If we ignore the evolutionism and materialism in Propp’s explanations for the evolution of the economic structures of archaic societies, his method can be entirely integrated into ethnosociology. The structural and functional analysis of folklore and especially fairy tales is a valuable contribution, since it sheds light on the structure of archaic societies, i.e., on the ethnos, and allows us to reproduce its main sociological parameters.
In their archaic cores (hunting and agrarian), fairy tales relate to the preliterate culture of the ethnos. The heroic epic relates to the first derivation from the ethnos, the narod or laos. Propp’s successor, as we have said, was the structural Algirdas Greimas.
Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov: The Structuralist Study of Philology and Anthropology
The outstanding Russian Soviet philologists, linguists, and culturologists, who often wrote as co-authors, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov and Vladimir Nikolaevich Toporov (1928–2005), are eminent representatives of Russian structuralism. They applied the methodology of Roman Jakobson, Nikolai Trubetskoy, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Vladimir Propp to the study of mythologies, sacred texts, and different linguistic and philological traditions. In particular, Ivanov and Gamkrelidze wrote a major work on the reconstruction of the Indo-European language and the ancient Indo-European culture, mythology, and social system.394
Ivanov and Toporov co-wrote a series of important books about ancient mythological ideas and linguistic particularities, which made it possible to reconstruct the main parameters of ancient Slavic societies, i.e., to describe the initial forms of Slavic ethnic groups.395 Toporov’s book The Prehistory of Slavic Literature is an important work on this topic.396 For Russian Ethnosociology, these works have fundamental significance, since it is possible on their basis to reconstruct the structure of the ethnos, i.e., to clarify the parameters of the koineme in the history of the transformation of Russians society.
Ivanov and Toporov initiated and contributed to the project of the two-volume Myths of the Peoples of the World, which remains the most complete and authoritative encyclopedia on mythologies ever published in Russian.397
Ivanov’s Dual Structures in Anthropology are very significant for understanding the ethnos as a dual phenomenon (the duality of lineages is the most important fact about the endogenous society).398 This work has special significance for Ethnosociology, because it describes in detail the dual forms in the structure of the ethnos and other, more differentiated social organizations. In particular, Ivanov picks up the idea of the English ethnologist Arthur Hocart about the purely ritualistic functions of royal power in certain archaic societies.399 Ivanov further develops the idea that the most harmonious types of archaic societies separate status and direct political power, based on violence and direct submission. In these societies, the king enjoys great prestige and the highest status, but his authoritative rights do not particularly differ from those of the other members of society. The ritual character of royal power, according to Ivanov, precedes its establishment through direct and despotic authority. This idea overturns the usual evolutionary hypotheses that primitive societies are based on the principle of the direct dominance of the leader, the strongest. Ivanov, following Hocart, shows that in many cases, exactly the reverse is true: the statutory superiority and prestige of the king transform into the legitimization of violence as a result of the degeneracy and degradation of the original social systems. Violent rule is a kind of usurpation and deviation.400
Ivanov gives dues to the Soviet ethnologist and anthropologist Zolotarev, who built a theory on the basis of the study of dual systems (twin myths, binary oppositions, etc.) in the culture of archaic societies, having great significance for Sociology.401 Ivanov refers to Zolotarev’s unpublished manuscript, which contains the most important conclusions regarding dual structures and their decisive meaning for social orders.402
Ivanov’s anthropological work The Science of Man is a classic. In it, the relevant themes, methods, and theories of contemporary anthropology are laid out in summary from a structuralist perspective.
Ivanov is the head of the Russian School of Anthropology at the Russian State University for the Humanities.
In the Soviet period, Ivanov and Toporov (like Gumilev) were on the periphery of official science, since they championed the structuralist approach, fundamentally different, methodologically and in its ideological prerequisites from Marxism. In our time, the ideas of these eminent scholars should be given their due. Their contribution to Ethnosociology is invaluable.
Soviet Ethnography and the History of Ethnoses
Among Soviet ethnographers, we should identify a few outstanding researchers, who collected and classified a massive amount of ethnographic and ethnological material.
One eminent figure of Soviet ethnography, who preserved the traditions of the Russian ethnographic school in the Soviet period and thereby ensured partial continuity under conditions of severe ideological dictatorship, was Sergei Aleksandrovich Tokarev (1899–1985). He began his ethnographic and anthropological fieldwork among the peoples of Siberia, but later expanded his circle of interests to also include European peoples, Indian ethnoses, and the Australian aborigines.403 Tokarev familiarized Soviet scholars with the works and ideas of Western anthropologists and ethnographers and wrote general histories of Soviet Ethnography.404 , 405 He paid great attention to the religious ideas of archaic ethnoses.406 The monumental encyclopedia The Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR was released under his direction.407
The eminent historian and ethnographer, Boris Alexandrovich Rybakov (1908–2001), former director of the Institute of Archeology at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, devoted his scientific activity to the study of ancient Russian society, its social order and religious ideas. He wrote the classic works on the study of the Slavic ethnos, The Chronicles and Bylinas of Ancient Rus, The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs, and The Paganism of Ancient Rus, among others.408 , 409 , 410 His works are fundamental for the study of the structure of Russian society’s ancient roots.
We find very valuable reconstructions of the ancient stages of Russian history and its ethnic, social, and ethnographic peculiarities in the works of contemporaries Froyanov and Yudin, who became famous in the Soviet period and made a significant contribution to the study of the Russian ethnos.411 Yudin (1938–1995) was Propp’s student and follower and continued the structuralist approach to Russian history. He wrote penetrating works on the reconstruction of the functional meaning of central figures in Russian folklore.412 Igor Yakovlevich Froyanov is the author of such works on the history of eastern Slavic ethnoses as Essays on the Social and Political History of Kievan Rus, Ancient Rus: A Study of the History of Social and Political Struggles, and Slavery and Tribute Relations among Eastern Slavs, among others.413 , 414 , 415
We should also mention the excellent anthropologist and ethnologist Arkady Fedorovich Anisimov (1910–1968), who researched the peoples of Eastern Siberia and collected an enormous amount of data on the social arrangements of the Yakut and Evenk ethnoses.416 Anisimov also wrote general theoretical works on the religious forms and ideas of archaic peoples, on problems of “primordial thinking,” and so on.417
Ekaterina Dmitrievna Prokofiev (1902–1978) made a major contribution to Russian ethnography in her studies of the social organization of the Yakut, Tuva, and Selkup.418 She collected and classified extensive material on the shamanism of the Siberian ethnoses.
Gavriel Vasilyevich Ksenofontov (1888–1938) studied the Yakut and their social and religious ideas.419
Soviet Ethnology: Yulian Vladimirovich Bromley
The academic Yulian Vladimirovich Bromley (1921–1990), director of the Institute of Ethnography at the Acade
my of Sciences of the USSR, is interesting in that he was practically the only officially-recognized expert in the USSR on ethnoses and ethnology. Bromley wrote a series of scientific monographs devoted to the study of ethnoses, among which a few stand out: Ethnos and Ethnography, Essays on the Theory of the Ethnos, Contemporary Problems of Ethnography, Ethnosocial Processes, and also a textbook on Ethnography, for a long time the only permitted reading on this topic.420 , 421 , 422 , 423 , 424
Bromley was the main opponent of Gumilev’s theory of the ethnos. But Bromley’s and Gumilev’s statuses were incommensurable, since in the Soviet period the free-thinking Gumilev, the son of “enemies of the people,” was considered a marginal and “eccentric,” while Bromley was fully integrated in the Soviet scientific establishment. Thus, from a moral perspective, Bromley’s critique of Gumilev and his ideas, even if there was a grain of truth to it (in particular, in the criticism of his unjustified biologism and the inadequacies of his social approach) resembled not a scientific discussion, but a snitching or kind of repression. Under such circumstances, it is hardly worth considering the substance of the critique.
On the other hand, because of his status, Bromley was obligated to bring his ethnological and anthropological theories in line with the strict dogmas of Marxism. And since the ideas of Marx and Engels about ancient humanity and archaic societies were primarily based on Morgan’s evolutionary concepts, the dogmatic approach of Bromley and his school were, to a significant extent, predetermined. Outside the Soviet ideological context, his ideas could hardly be taken seriously, since they have no independent value.
Bromley developed a fanciful terminology, in which he distinguished ethnikoses (ethnoses) and ethnosociological organisms, i.e., ethnoses attached to politico-economic forms (in Marxist doctrine). Bromley considered the tribe (the original communal order), peoplehood (the slaveholding and feudal order), and the nation (the capitalist and socialist orders) as forms of the ethnosocial organisms.
It was a big problem for Bromley to fit the concepts “nation” and “nationality” into the Soviet reality, where these concepts reflected complex efforts to adopt Marxist theory to Russian history, efforts started by Lenin and continued by Stalin.
According to Marx and the usual use of the term, the “nation” is a form of the bourgeois organized violence in a class government — a political phenomenon. The German Marxist Karl Kautsky defended this position in his time in arguments with the Austrian Marxist Otto Bauer. Bauer objected to Kautsky that it is also possible to understand by “nation” ethnic groups. Bauer described the reality of the collapsing Austro-Hungarian Empire, where separate ethnic groups — Hungarians, Slavs, Romanians — prepared to form their own national governments, but had not yet done so. But Kautsky was proceeding on the basis of relatively mono-ethnic Germany, where the nation was thought of only as common citizenship.
The situation in the Russian Empire during Lenin’s time more closely resembled Austro-Hungary. As a result, in the Russian terminology of the Bolsheviks, Bauer’s use of the term “nationality,” prevailed, meaning both those nations that had already constituted governments and those ethnoses that were only striving to that end. For Lenin, and, it seems, for Stalin, the concept of “nationality” became a means to talk about the fact that Russia had bourgeois relations and nations had appeared but were soon overcome in socialist society and transformed into nationality. So, in the USSR the terms “nation” and “nationality” were extremely fuzzy. They signified a partly ethnocultural and partly political and administrative (national republics) community. This ambiguity impeded the free scientific study of ethnoses and nations in the USSR and affected Bromley’s half-formed theories, developed in accordance with official dogma.
The Institutionalization of Ethnosociology Today
In the current stage of Russian science, interest in Ethnosociology is being awakened with new vigor. We see evidence of this in its inclusion in the register of general disciplines and in the federal component for specialization in “Sociology.”
Today, there are a few Ethnosociology textbooks and training manuals.
The textbook by Arutyunyan, Drobizheva, and Susokolov, became the model work for the further development of the scientific instruction of Ethnosociology. It was written from different positions and represented the first approach to the study of this discipline. Because the authors held different opinions about the ethnos, the textbook bears the mark of eclecticism. Nevertheless, the merit of this textbook is that it served as a basis for the development of a federal standard and with it, the study of Ethnosociology was introduced into the university system, itself an important scientific event.
The training materials by Mnatsakanyana are built on a narrower foundation, relying on studies of interethnic and international conflict.
We should also mention the training materials of Tatunts, Perepelkina, Sokolovskii (Novosibirsk State University) and Denisova and Radovel’ (South Federal University, Rostov-on-Don).425 , 426
We should state that in contemporary Russia, Ethnosociology was not established correctly, although its presence among generally required disciplines confirms its importance. In this case, the fact of institutionalization anticipates the full-fledged and final formation of a scientific discipline, which is a stimulus to its development and to creative understanding.
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