SOVIET ETHNOGRAPHY

 S. Tolstov

Translated from the Italian of Rassegna della stampa Sovietica, 1949,

The great October Socialist Revolution, which realised the Leninist-Stalinist principles of a national policy and which opened up the broad road of economic, political and cultural development to the many peoples of the former Tsarist empire, of the most diverse levels of development, also set Soviet ethnographic science highly responsible tasks. 

These tasks were most varied and anything but easy. It was a question of securing the participation in the construction of a new socialist culture, on an equal footing, of scores of peoples of the most varied historical pasts, with vastly differing ethnic and cultural traditions and d,fferently organised economies, and many of whom had had no state of their own in the past nor even a written language of their own before the revolution. A comp1ete study of the economic, social and cultural characteristics of these peoples in their whole historical actuality and individuality was needed. 

Rather than becoming simpler with the passage of time, the problem has become more complex. The development of a culture of the peoples of the USSR, national in form and socialist in content, made necessary a thorough study of the cultural heritage of each people. The consolidation of the new nations and new nationalities that were being formed in the course of socialist construction by formerly isolated ethnic groups and tribes determined the development of national self-consciousness and inevitably stimulated, in the masses of the people moving towards cultural develop­ment, an interest in their own past history. 

Awakened to new life, the peoples of ·the USSR were not content with vague legends and ethnogenic traditions; they rightly demanded from the scientists an answer to their questions about their own origins and historical development. Since many peoples lacked a written historical tradition, the task of reconstructing many forgotten pages of history awaited the ethno­graphers. 

At the time of the October Revolution Russian ethnography was rich in splendid traditions.* Developing under the influence of the humanistic liberal ideas of nineteenth-century democratic Russia, the ideas of Belinsky, Chernishevsky and Herzen, and to some extent under the influence of Marxist ideas, Russian ethnographic science was at that time divided into numerous scientific schools which had developed on the strength of great achievements; among these must be noted especially the schools of Anuchin and Kovalevsky in Moscow, and the schools of Sternberg and Bogoraz in Petrograd. 

From the opening of the Soviet epoch, however, our science was set tasks far beyond the resources of the Russian ethnographers which had been inherited from the pre-revolutionary period. Hence the attention that was devoted, from the very beginning of the Soviet State, to the problem of cadres in the field of ethnography. 

Immediately after the end of the civil war, centres of ethnographic instruction were set up in our country for the first time. In Leningrad, on the initiative and under the direction of Sternberg and Bogoraz, an Ethno­graphy Department was established. in the reorganised Geographical Institute; later, in Moscow, an Ethnographic Section was established in the Social Science Department and later an Ethnology Department was set up. The work of the Chair of Anthropology created by Anuchin in the Physics and Mathematics Department of Moscow University was undergoing develop­ment on a vast scale, and here cadres were developed not only in the field of physical anthropology but also in those of ethnography and primitive arcfieology. 

As well as in the university centres, great activity was developing in the field of ethnography in the Academy of Sciences, where (along with the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, which was rapidly expanding its own field of work) there was arising such an important ethnographic centre as the Commission for the Study of the Racial Structure of Russia, later reorganised into the Institute for the Study of the Peoples of the USSR, in turn amalgamated in 1933 with the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in the one great Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences. 

Ethnographic work occupied a very important position in the subject­matter of the most important academic centres (t:he Cqmmission for the Study of Natural Productive Resources and the Commission for Expedition­ary Research) through the organisation of expeditions, which, on a new basis, followed the traditions of the great academic expeditions of the eighteenth century. 

A completely new type of organisation of ethnographic work was being developed m the system of the Committee of the North. This organ of the Soviet Government-which had been entrusted with the very difficult task of reviving and drawing closer to the Soviet State and to socialist construc­tion numerically small and backward peoples, primitive in the real meaning of the word, living on the periphery of the Soviet Union, many of which, on the eve of the revolution, had been on the point of disappearing altogether-naturally had to turn first of all to the ethnographers. A whole galaxy of young ethnographers, mostly students under Sternberg and Bogoraz, were transferred to the Committee's far-northern bases and became stimu­lators of the socialist reconstruction of the north; they passed long years in the north, accumulating precious material for the monographic description of these little-known peoples called into new life by Soviet power. 

The Institute of the Peoples of the North, created in Leningrad, set itself the historic task of developing among the peoples on the northern borders of the Soviet Union, only yesterday still primitive, political men, men of culture, and highly skilled specialists. This Institute became the foundation for the organisation of another great ethnographic research centre, the Association for Scientific Research as part of the Institute itself. Another great ethnographic work was accomplished by the Moscow Institute for the Study of Ethnic and National Cultures of the Eastern Peoples, directed by N. Y. Marr. 

A particularly noteworthy development in ethnographical work was to be found in the constantly growing network of Soviet museums, both central and regional. Apart from the latter, most of which arose after the revolution, even the old and central museums have followed entirely new programmes and trends since the revolution. 

It is enough to mention that before the revolution the staff of the oldest ethnographic museum in the country (the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR) could count on few workers; in 1925 there were forty-two workers and in 1939 more than a hundred. 

The work of the Ethnographic Section of the Russian State Museum in Leningrad (now the State 'Museum of Ethnography) and of the Moscow Central Museum of Ethnography (now the Museum of the Peoples of the USSR) developed to the fullest extent. These museums developed activity, in the field of scientific research through expeditions, which in breadth of work could hold its own with that done by the Institute of the Academy. For example, in 1925 the Museum of Ethnography alone organised fourteen expeditions, and the Ethnographic Section of the Russian Museum organised eight expeditions, and five other trips of lesser importance. 

Coming important centres of ethnographic research work were the special museums of Kiev, Kharkov, Minsk, Tbilisi, Tashkent and other capitals of the union republics. The museums of the autonomous republics were not backward, indeed they often outstripped their elder brothers in research work, as may be said, for example, of the Museum of the Tartar Republic, in Kazan. 

Noteworthy centres of serious ethnographic work arose in many regional and district museums, in the Regional Museum of Moscow, in those of Riazan, Penza, Kaluga, Kostroma, Nizhni, Saratov, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Dmitrov (Moscow Region), Kasimov (Vladimir Region), and many others. 

In the majority of the autonomous Soviet republics joint Institutes of scientific research arose, in almost every one of which there was an ethno­graphic section. Important centres of ethnographic work also sprang up in special Institutes and in the Academies of Sciences in the union republics (between 1920 and 1930 in the Ukrainian Republic and the Republic of Belorussia). 

Between 1920 and 1930, the publication of ethnographic material developed on a broad scale. In Moscow, in 1926, the principal organ of the ethnographers of the USSR, the magazine Ethnography (from 193 I on called Soviet Ethnography), began to appear. The museum of the Academy published Collections of the M.A.E., replaced in 1931 by Works of the Institute of Ethnography. (The museums publications of the Collections was resumed, parallel with Works of the Institute, in 1947. The Russian Museum publishes Materials on Ethnography, rich in content and magnificent in design. The Ethnographic Section of the Association of Lovers of the Natural Sciences, Anthropology and Ethnography publishes its own Memoranda.) 

In the history of Soviet ethnography, the period from 1920 to 1930 must be considered as the period of the accumulation of forces and materials and of the solution of the primary problems associated with the economic and cultural building-up of the peoples of the USSR. Though this period greatly surpasses the results achieved by pre-revolutionary ethnography in the breadth of work (not to mention practical results), we cannot yet speak of fundamental differences in theoretical points of view between the new Russian ethnography and that of the beginning of the century. During these years the development of Soviet ethnography took place in the midst of sharp class-struggle. Representatives of bourgeois-nationalist groups often attempted to transform the ethnographic and geographic centres into a base for their nationalistic propaganda. This atmosphere of sharp class struggle also explains the tendency of a certain number of the old bourgeois professors to counterpose the concepts of the new bourgeois western schools to the Marxist interpretation of ethnographic phenomena. Towards 1930 there became very apparent a tendency to propaganda from the viewpoint of Grebner, Schmidt, Trabenius and other representatives of the so-called "School of Rings of Culture". This can be observed particularly in the "Ethnology Course" by P. F. Preobrazhensky, which came out in 1929. These trends even influenced V. G. Bogoraz, who published the highly confused book The Variations of Culture on Eartf (Fundamentals of Ethno­grapny) during this period; a refraction of the '' Theory of Cultural Rings" and an undoubted echo of L. Frobenius's "Morphological Cultures". 

The appearance of these and other similar works was facilitated by insufficient theoretical maturity on the part of Soviet ethnographers, by their inability to apply Marxist methodology to the practice of ethnographic research. 

Towards 1930, however, there may be noted the first symptoms of the theoretical turn marking the beginning of the true Soviet ethnological school as an independent theoretical current. The period between 1929 and 1939 was marked by a series of stormy theoretical discussions on the objectives and tasks of ethnography, which took place at the Communist Academy, at the Association of Marxist Historians, during the meeting of ethnographers in Leningrad in 1929, during the archeology and ethnography meeting held in 1932, and in the pages of the specialised journals Marxist Historian, Ethnography and Soviet Ethnography as well as in the GAIMK Chrronicle. In this period there was violent criticism of the modern school of ethno­

graphy, of western bourgeois anthropology, and above all of the various racist trends and so-called "rings of culture " schools as well as of the above­mentioned bourgeois-nationalist currents in Russia. In this period, in the process of revisory criticism of their own position by Soviet ethnographers there also developed the struggle to acquire a Marxist-Leninist dialectical­materialist methodology. 

It cannot but be noted that in the course of these discussions a com­pletely negative policy was developed by the pseudo-Marxist and unscientific school of Pokrovsky and also by a number of open saboteurs, fol­lowers of Trotsky and Zinoviev, who presented their unscientific theories as the last word in Marxism. Denying ethnography and archeology the right to exist by way of independent historical disciplines, and the attempt to substitute simple a priori sociological schemas in place of thoroughgoing research, while offering archeological and ethnographical examples chosen at random as illustrations to the said schemas, could not but substantially injure the development of Soviet archeology and ethnography. 

Soviet ethnographers emerged from the period of the discussions armed with new theoretical weapons, tempered in the struggle both against the reactionary currents existing in bourgeois ethnography at home and abroad and against pseudo-Marxist sociological schematism. [See ASJ xi, 3, p. 18, footnote.] 

The acquisition of a dialectical-materialist method was not slow in making itself felt in new studies which began appearing at the end of 1935. 

These works show the maximum interest in problems of social organisa­tion and culture. Towards 1930 there appears among the most important problems of Soviet ethnography that of the study of the specific forms of the co-existence of patriarchal and feudal or semi-feudal relations, which, in relation to specific modes of socialist construction among the peripheral nationalities, was one of the most urgent political tasks. 

Just before 1930 and during the decade following, and mainly at the beginning of 1935, several works were published which were devoted to the historico-ethnographic study of the social organisation of the various peoples of the USSR, to the analysis of the forms and traditions of the family order, of their relations to the elements of feudal and capitalist relations, and of their historical importance in the process of class-struggle and socialist con­struction during the Soviet epoch. All these works set themselves a co􀀁mon goa.!, t􀀂at of posing th􀀃 general histor􀀄cal proble?1s of primitive social orgamsation on the basis of the speofic material of a given 

specific people, of its function and type, of its survival in the feudal or capitalist past and the socialist present, of understanding and interpreting specific new material in the light of the Marxist-Leninist theory of society and its laws of development and, in turn, bringing forth suitable material for the further development of this theory. 

In addition to the elaboration of the problems already mentioned, and with the aid of material offered by the various peoples of the Soviet Union, a number of studies were published which were devoted to general problems of the history of primitive society, with frequent recourse to foreign material -Australian, Melanesian, American, and so on. Here we must mention particularly the basic studies by M. 0. Kosven, especially those devoted to the problem of the historical function of matriarchy, many brilliant and profound studies by the late E. I. Krikevsky, the works of A. M. Zolotarev and others. These works, as many of their titles show, were not limited to the study of social institutions alone in the strictest meaning of the word. In the works of Potapov, Kandaurov, Bemshtam and others we meet a new aspect of the study of the phenomena of material cultures, economic life, production technique, dwellings, and so on. In the works of Abramzon, Zolotarev, Tolstov and others, we find the study of religious beliefs. But in both cases these phenomena are examined in their indissoluble reciprocal relations, manifesting themselves in all their multiformity of specific facts, of fundamental laws of social development, of the forces and productive relations l:hat form the structure of society.

In all the works mentioned can be seen the general line of development of Soviet ethnography, the line of consistent historicism, the line of explana­tion given by historical materialism to phenomena taken in their movement, development, struggle and qualitative transformation. 

A characteristic of the Soviet school of ethnography is its consistent historicism. The opposition of ethnography to history, typical of many foreign trends in ethnography, is indissolubly bound up with the old reactionary concept whereby humanity is divided into "historical" or "cultured" peoples (Kulturvoelker) and "non-historical" or ••natural" peoples (Naturwoelker), only the latter being considered to be the object of ethnographic study. This division is not accepted by Soviet science, which studies all the peoples of the world throughout the whole of human existence and views humanity as the creator of history. Naturally, the history of peoples lacking a written language of their own is studied- by methods different from those used in the study of the history of peoples in possession of their own written historical traditions and having left written monuments of their own past. As with archeological monuments, ethnographic monuments require a guide. B.ut the difference consists only in the character of the souvces, in the methods of study, not in the object or in general methodology. 

In studying the culture of any people Soviet ethnographers analyse it historically, uncovering the strata of different periods of historical develop­ment, reading in them a reflection of the whole complex of its preceding history. For some time now the Soviet ethnographers have advanced beyond the evolutionary method. Only in the light of the history of each people does the historical import of each element in its culture become clear, and we well know how far wrong the evolutionists have gone (even scholars like Morgan whose method is far above that of the evolutionists) in separating single manifestations of culture from historical content (as with the Malay system of kinship). Of late there has appeared in foreign ethnographic  literature--especially in the American-the tendency to "rehabilitate " evolutionism, eliminating only the "excesses", by which is meant the Morgan (Lewis) viewpoint. 

This historicism of Soviet ethnography has nothing in common with the pseudo-historicism of some trends of contemporary foreign ethnography, or of the "cultural-historical" school in its different variants. This school, whose theoretical standpoint was first formulated by F. Grebner, took its point of view, as is well known, from Rikkert and denied every law of history, transforming the latter into a mass of individual phenomena and events. 

Soviet ethnographers take as their point of departure the Marxist­Leninist concept of the historical process. Without neglecting the multi­formity of this process, determined by the most varying historical factors, they see in this process the manifestation of very precise laws of the progressive development of the history of society, laws more complicated than, but as inevitable as, those of nature. The discovery of still unknown aspects of these laws is the aim both of ethnographic research and of history and research in general. Knowledge of the already discovered laws of Marxist-Leninist theory is the key to the comprehension of the seemingly chaotic picture that any specific culture often presents. 

Soviet ethnography rests on historical-materialist methodology in the field of specific historical research into the genesis and development of the ethnic culture of each given people; it is mainly in these particulars that it differs from the tendencies now in fashion in foreign ethnography. In the first quarter of the twentieth century the typical tendency of bourgeois ethnography was that of pseudo-historicism, of historicism in the Rikkertian sense, directed against any attempt to discover the general laws of social development; at first glance the second quarter of this century seems to differ from it by a directly opposite tendency, that of emphasising anti-historicism. This is indeed characteristic of the two most influential schools of contemporary bourgeois ethnography, that is the "functional school" and the so-called "psychological school." Chapple and Coon, followers and continuers of the English "functional school " in America, define the "conquests " of B. Malinowski-the father of functionalism-and his adherents as follows : "A change [i.e. in ethnography] took place about two decades ago, when many influential persons began to realise that anthro­pology* could be used in colonial administration, particularly in the field of regulating the relations between whites and the so-called ' primitive ' peoples. One of the first governments to exploit this discovery practically was the British Government, which has laid down rules under which colonial administrators working with native peoples must be qualified anthropologists. A truly fortunate circumstance for both the government and the indigenous peoples [! s. T.] was the fact that many people coming under this ruling were pupils of Professor Bronislav Malinowski's." (Chapple & Coon, Principles of Anthrop·ology.)

The "fortunate circumstance " consisted in the fact that B. Malinowski knew how to adapt ethnography to colonial administrative needs by main­taining four basic " theoretical " positions extremely useful to the masters of the colonies: I. It is unnecessary to be concerned with the history of colonial peoples, because such history does not exist and even if it did, it would be impossible to know; 2. The aim of ethnographical study, the "culture ", is given by the total functioning of social institutions and habits, determined (through psychology) by the physiology of the individuals making up the society; 3. Hence, the social life and culture of every colonial people consti­tutes a system having a given equilibrium which cannot and must not be upset, because it is easier to govern the "indigenous " peoples with the aid of local chiefs and traditional social institutions; all that is required is to explain the function of these institutions and customs and thus bring them into proper service; 4. Since the introduction of elements of European civilisation (for example, scholastic study above the limits required to facilitate white exploitation of black workers) disturbs this equilibrium, it must be avoided and backward peoples left to their backwardness, thus avoiding expense and maintaining peace. 

While the second world war was flaming, the American followers of Malinowski proposed a further application of the "positive experience " in "applied anthropology "-the application of the "theory " and practice of functionalism, not only among the ,colonial peoples, but also among Europeans and Americans; "the next step toward the enlargement of the field of activity was the discovery that what had seemed suitable for the primitives was equally applicable to our own society." [ op•. cit.]. The authors give special credit in this field to Prof. W. L. Warner, who applied his method of work carried out among northern Australians "as successfully and much more usefully " to the study of American and European society. "To him must be credited the main influence in the application of anthropological methods in the researches made by the Western Electric Company and described by Prof. E. Rosslesberger, of the Harvard University School of Business Administration, and by V. J. Dickson, of Western Electric, in their book Management and the Worker."

And thus the " scientific methodology " of colonial administration is "more usefully " applied to the management of workers by a capitalist company. 

This is not the place to examine in detail the Chapple & Coon book, or the work of those who inspired them. However hard they try to reconcile "functionalism " somehow or other with the " historical school " of the followers of Boas, defending the complicated thesis by which "the use of the time-scale constitutes the basic measure for measuring human relations ", we shall find here also the same "theory of equilibrium ", history reduced to "violations " and "re-establishment" of this equilibrium; to establish ultimately that a classless society exists in America : "For example, in England, although there is representative government, the existence of classes hinders the development of a truly democratic system. It was the same in the United States 150 years ago .... Since then, class differences have gradually disappeared .... It would be difficult to prove the existence of social classes in the United States ". 

This profundity, with its " time-scale ", its " impulses and reactions ", its discussions on the scientific ordering of social and political life, was plainly necessary in order to prop up a threadbare propaganda method that no longer seems to convince the American community. The "culture-patterns " and "culture-models " of the American ethnographic psychologists and above all the "leader " of this reactionary current-Ruth Benedict-are nothing more than a variant of Rassenseele's racist "concept ", the "race " soul, a variation that differs from German racist theory only in the absence of any direct bond between this " soul " and the physical characteristics of the race. It must not, however, be forgotten that alongside the pseudo­materialist " biological " current of German racism there existed in that racism a very strong mystical-spiritual tendency which considered race to be first and foremost a psychological ,category. Sp􀄆ngler, one of the founders of Nazi ideology, is also one of the spiritual fathers of present-day American "ethno-psychology ". Not for nothing does Benedict compare her "culture-models" with such Spenglerian ethno-psychologic categories as the "Apollonian " and " dionysiac " soul, and so forth. 

Like the racists, the ethno-psychologists consider "culture-models", that is the psychologic type of each people, a non-historic, anti-historic category, a practically immutable substance, not determined by history, but, on the contrary, determining history. 

That American " ethno-psychology is by no means an innocent exercise in tabulation is plain from the fact that the works of the " psychologists " are prepared and published by the most weighty institutes and publishing houses. Thus Ruth Benedict publishes a book, under the poetic title The Chrysanthemum and The Sword, devoted to the study of the mode of thinking and "behaviour" of the Japanese; the book was written under the aegis of the Office of Strategic Services. G. Bateson, in an organ as far removed from ethnography as the Atomic Scientists' Bulletin (1946, Vol. II, 5, 6, 7, 8), publishes an article entitled Pattern of an Armaments Drive, in which he tries on the one hand to define the ethno-psychological premises of the arms race (after having established three ethno-psychological types which determine the character of this drive in various peoples, who are of course the Anglo-Saxons, the Germans and the Russians) and, on the other hand (on the basis of an ethno-psychological analysis of the governmental forms among the Papuans of New Guinea and among the American Indians), proposes his recipe for "limiting nationalism" by means of a powerful world government-a recipe that is not new, as we well know, and is original only because based on arguments taken from ethnography and psychology. 

If functionalist anti-historicism is indissolubly bound up with the hope of conserving the forms of social organisation of the colonial peoples and placing their customs and reactionary institutions at the service of imperialist monopolies, the duties of "psychological anti-historicism" are even more far-reaching; the " ethno-psychologists " are also laying the theoretical basis for treating such notable modern phenomena as fascism, aggressive mili­tarism, and so on, on a racial-psychological plane. From the viewpoint of these writers, it was not monopoly capitalism but the German racial-psycho­logical complex that provoked the rise of nazism and Hitlerite aggression. 

It will easily be understood that the theoretical viewpoints of the Soviet ethnographers are diametrically opposed to this dominant tendency in present-day bourgeois ethnography. It is interesting to note that Soviet ethnography, as we have seen, has developed and is developing under the banner of " applied problems". But it is not a question of problems related to the colonial oppression of backward peoples and the preservation of their primitive and feudal institutions, which are useful only to the imperialists. Nor is it a question of at all costs conserving the reactionary social insti­tutions within the country itself, guaranteeing power to a small group of imperialist exploiters over the masses of the people, over "ordinary folk ", the real creators of modern civilisation. The character of applied problems as dealt with by Soviet ethnographers (problems whose solution helps the Soviet State and the party, in the building of a new socialist society, to make all, even the most backward, peoples of the USSR participate actively and equally in the whole cultural and social life of the country, and bring them to a fresh level of development) has also determined the direction of theoretical thinking in the field of Soviet ethnography. In opposition to the "ethno-psychologists " who consider the culture of each people as something determined once and for all by the " psychic model " concerned; in opposition to the functionalists, who see in such culture a system that is immobile because of the equilibrium of its component elements, which are determined by the same psychic model, race; unlike either of these, the Soviet ethnographers see in the social structure and culture of each people a combination of contradictorv elements in which there are as many new and progressive as there are old, and considers this to be the basis of its development and movement. This is the substance of Soviet ethnographic historicism and its difference not only from the anti-historical concepts of the present-day reactionary foreign ethnographers but also from the classic evolutionary concepts. 

Soviet ethnography has not confined itself and does not confine itself to the narrow framework of ethnographic sources alone. For the solution of a given problem (whether relative to the people's origin, to the determination of its ethnographic territory, to the origin and deveiopment of any given characteristic social institution, or of any custom, belief or feature of its material or spiritual culture), it is necessary to refer to the data of other historical studies, to written documentary or narrative sources, to archeo­logical monuments, and so on; any artificial self-imposed limits on ethno­graphy, any refusal to make use of such data, can but damage ethnographical work. 

This path has always been followed by the most advanced Russian ethnographers and archeologists in the past. The work of D. N. Anuchin, particularly his monographs The Bow' and Arrow, Contributions to the History of Art and Beliefs of the Ural Chud, Ancient Legends of Russia, Unknown Men of the East, and so on, demonstrate the excellence of this method. A brilliant example of the historical-complex solution, based on ethnogra hic and archeological material, of one of the problems in the history o fpopular Rtlssian ornamentation, is the well-known work Sarmatian Elements in Popular Russian Art, by V. A. Gorodtsov. 

The new element lies in the fact that Soviet students are not limited to establishing merely a historical succession of facts, but clarify the laws of historical development concealed behind such facts. This line of Soviet ethnographic research marks the creative work of the great majority of Soviet students, who are usually both ethnographers and historians simul­taneously, equally well equipped for ethnographic work in the true meaning of the word and for the study of written monuments and archives and also archeological material. 

This has even given rise to embarrassment in a certain circle of ethnographers and resulted in declarations that ethnography had lost its own specific character. Actually it is a manifestation of theoretical progress in Soviet ethnography which is changing into a truly historical science and winning place of honour among the other branches of historical science. Moreover, a contrary process must also be noted, that is an ever-increasing attention to ethnographic material among historians, in the strictest accepted meaning of the term, and among archeologists, many of whom became excellent ethnographers. 

Soviet ethnographers who have dedicated their creative efforts to the study of the culture of a given people or group of peoples, in working at their subject for whole decades and multiplying the number of useful sources in their research, become recognised specialists in the general history of that people. Thus we have Outline of the History of Oiratia from the pen of the ethnographer S. A. P. Potapov; the ethnographer S. A. Tokarev writes Outline of the History of the Yakut People; the ethnographer N. A. Kistiakov, Outlines of the History of Karategin; the ethnographer A. N. Bernshtam has now won fame as a student of archeological monu­ments and has written the history of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and of the Seven Rivers. The ethnographer V. N. Chernetsov is an expert on the archeological monuments of North-western Siberia, and is working on a huge work on the ethnogenesis of the Ugri of Ob, which takes every kind of historical source into account. The ethnographer B. A. Dolgikh is doing serious archive research into the history of the peoples of Central Siberia that he has studied. L. A. Dintses is discovering ample material in archeo­logical monuments and written documents in his research into the Russian people's art. The archaeologist A. P. Okladnikov writes many very interesting works on the ethnography of the Yakuts, referring to ethnographic material in his archeological research. The archeologist B. A. R ykov records a great deal of ethnographic data to interpret facts about the culture and ancient art of the Slavic tribes. This merging of specialties, their close mutual collaboration, both in contact between institutions and specialists and in meetings between specialists, has given and continues to give ever richer results, which makes it possible to raise and resolve many different ethno­graphical and historical problems of both general and particular bearing. 

The historical-ethnographic monograph has become an essential form of comprehensive ethnographic work. A splendid example of the new type of monograph is found in the many works of the famous student of the Altai people and of Southern Siberia, L. P. Potapov, particularly his Outlines of the History of Skroria (Leningrad 1936) and his mono­graph, not yet published, entitled Th<e Inhabitants of Altai. A more modest example of the tasks proposed, but just as typical of a brief historical-ethno­graphic monograph, is Features of the Culture of the Kirghiz People by S. M. Abramson, recently published (Frunze, 1946).

To this same type of work belongs the much-commented-upon work by S. A. Tokarev, Thie Social Organisation of the Yakuts in the Seventeenth Century, which, though some of the author's conclusions are disputable, must be considerea a model of ethno-historical monograph work based on the scrupulous study of an enormous amount of ar,chive material, illustrated with data from the author's ethnographic expedition, and of ethnographic literature, and which in turn throws new light on facts observed by ethno­graphers. 

A whole series of historical-ethnographic works of this kind, most of which are not yet published, have been produced during these last years. Examples are Dr. R. Nazhdik's The Li11es of the Peasant Serfs of the Ukraine on the Eve of the r86r Reforms, E. R. Binkevich's History of Circas­sian Dwellings, T. C. Stratanovich's The Dungani of th'e Kirghiz Republic, M. V. Sazanova's Agrarian Relations of the Khanate of Khiva between the Fourteenth Century and the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, T. A. Zhdanko's Family and Tribal Structure and Territorial Distribution of the

Karaka[p,aks between the Nineteenth Century and the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, A. S. Morozova's Slavery, among the Turkmens and Uzbeks of Khiva in the Eleventh Century. In these works the authors unite their own personal on-the-spot ethnographic research with their personal studies of archive and other historical literary material. Original forms of ethno-historical research are S. R. Mirnov's The Revolt of the Mahdi in the Sudan and A. I. Blinov's Maori Warriors, in which the ethnographer authors deal in a new way with problems which have hitherto been purely historical, problems of political history, illustrating anew with a great deal of ethno­graphic material many aspects of the political events studied which up to now have remained obscure. 

The inclusion in ethnographic research of a precise chronology, which makes possible an objective evaluation of the historical conditions of the formation and transformation or disappearance of given social or cultural phenomena or customs, brings an important element into the work of Soviet ethnographers and enables them to avoid many of the errors com­mitted by their predecessors and by contemporary foreign colleagues in evaluating the "antiquity " or "newness " of any one ethnographic factor.

ONE of the central problems of Soviet ethnographic science since 1930 has been the problem of ethnogenesis in the broadest acceptance of the term. It was no accident that Soviet ethnography chose as its essential object some specific people (tribe, ethnic group, nationality) considered as itself the creator and carrier of culture, as being historically formed, which makes it necessary to study the historical development of the people and the culture in question. 

The Stalin theory of the nation understood as a community of men, historically developed from various races and tribes in a given epoch, has proved the absolute fallaciousness of the racist-nationalists concept of the origin of modern nations, the absolute baselessness of any research on "pure " racial and ethnic elements to be found in these nations, and has been a model of the historical solution of problems of the genesis of the ethnic communities that preceded the tribal nations and the nationalities of earlier society and the social division into classes that preceded capitalism. 

An important place in the development of a general theory of the ethnogenetic process is occupied by the works of Professor A. D. Udaltsov, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, who has devoted many of his works to the ethnogenesis of the Indo-European peoples, particularly the Slavic and Germanic peoples. Under A. D. Udaltsov's direction the Ethnographic Commission of the Academy of Sciences has developed its own work of co-ordinating and collating the research done in this field by representatives of various specialised fields of science. An important part in the elaboration of ethnogenetic problems was played by the recent four great sessions of the Ethnogenesis Com­mission : (1) The 1940 Session on the Ethnogenesis of the peoples of the North. (2) The 1942 Session on the Ethnogenesis of the Central Asian peoples. (3) The 1943 Session on the Ethnogenesis of the Slavs. (4) The 1944 Session on the Ethnogenesis of ludo-European peoples. 

If to these works are added those of many students of the ethnogenesis of the Caucasian peoples (Academician Dzhanashia, Professor Kuften, and others, on the ethnogenesis of the Georgians, Professor Piotrovsky on the ethnogenesis of the Armenians) we have every reason to affirm that Soviet scholars have accomplished enormous work in this field, laying the founda­tion not only for a specialised school in problems of historical ethnography but also resolving in practice many problems on the origin and historical formation of the greater part of the peoples of the Soviet Union, for many of whom these problems had never been raised before the revolution, or had remained at very low levels. 

Of the greatest importance is the contribution made by Soviet ethno­graphers (and, we add, by the archeologists) to the elaboration of general problems of primitive society. We have already mentioned many of these works, both those dealing with specific historical events and those that generalise the material accumulated by science. Many works have been devoted to the periodisation of the history of primitive society. The works of Academician I. I. Meshchaninov; of corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR V. I. Ravdonikas, of acting member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian Republic P. P. Efimenko; of E. Y. Krichevsky, ot R. L. Bogaevsky, of A. M. Zolotarev and many others, which have provoked lively scientific discussions and have helped to create a complete concept of the history of primitive society based on ethnographic and particularly on al'cheological material assembled since Morgan and Engels (neither of whom dealt with archeological material at all). In the course of the scientific discussions arising in this range of problems, Soviet ethnographers have been able to counter many viewpoints of the latest foreign schools of thought, among which is, for example, the tendency to treat the familial order in general, and the maternal-parental in particular, not as a basic form of social organisation in the formation of the primitive community but as an insignificant episode in primitive history, and to substitute every sort of "totemistic society ", "pre-gentilic com­munity ", and so forth. Credit is due to P. P. Efimenko, who demonstrated the existence of the matriarchal order in the first paleolithic era; credit is due to E. Y. Krichevsky, M. 0. Kosven and A. M. Zolotarev, who profoundly criticised the " totemistic society " then in vogue and demonstrated that totemism is no more than the religious ideology of gentilic society, and who caused a revision of these mistaken viewpoints and the return on the basis of new material to the concepts put forward by Morgan and Engels; as is well known, the two latter referred matriarchal organisation to four out of the six stages they described in primitive society, excluding only "the lower stage of barbarism ", when more primitive forms of social groupings existed. 

Practical discoveries by Soviet ethnographers have mobilised a vast fund of new material in support of the concept of the unity of the historical process, in support of the theory of the primitive phases of human history understood as a socio-economically based primitive community, proper to all peoples at the dawn of their history and preceding class forms of society. To the efforts of present-day representatives of reactionary trends in foreign ethnography, such as treating manifestations so common as the primitive community order, matriarchy, dual organisation, totemism, and so on, merely as particular phenomena belonging only to single "cultural rings ", Soviet ethnographers have counterposed new theoretical reseal'Ch and a notable arsenal of recently discovered ethnographic facts which demonstrate the inconsistency of these reactionary concepts. 

Of particular importance was the discovery of the institutions and traditions of matriarchy among the northern Asiatic and north-eastern peoples who, according to V. Schmidt, are the classic representatives of "paternal right ", "northern pre-culture " and the "culture of pastoral nomadics ". On Schmidt's chart of "rings of ethnological culture ", this territory represents the only "happy island ", the only zone, where the brutality of "maternal right " has not penetrated, and on this basis Schmidt and his followers affirm the historical importance of the existence of peoples not having known the institution of matriarchy in their own past. 

The work accomplished by Soviet students during the last fifteen years has, however, destroyed this "island ". Thus, in 1936, A. F. Anisimov demonstrated the existence of many matriarchal survivals among the Evenki -survivals of matriarchal matrimony, descent through the sister, the superior position of women, the cult of the feminine spirit, protectress of the hearth (Togo Musunin), and of the feminine spirit, protectresss of the gens (Bugadi Musunin)-reconstructing the social matriarchal economy of the ancient Evenki, which reminds us of the analogous economy of the Iroquois studied by Morgan. The descent to the sister's son, the cult of the feminine household spirit (Posa Mama, Protectress of the Fire), and the matriarchal traditions in funeral ceremonies, were noted in 1939 by A. M. Zolotarev among the Ukhi. In 1946, K. V. Viatkina discovered a large number of matriarchal traditions in the social organisation and religious beliefs of the Buryat-Mongols (the cult of the feminine progenitress, the legend of the Amazons, feminine witchcraft, the function of woman in the cult of the domestic fire, descent to the sister's son, reflections of norms of maternal right in kinship nomen­clature, and so on. Analogous material was collected by Soviet ethno­graphers in other areas of our country among the peoples of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Western Russia. It is particularly important to note the researches carried out by N. Y. Marr, M. 0. Kosven, E. 0. Kagarov, and others, which show the complete fallaciousness of the " theory " of primitive 

patriarchy among the " Aryans " (that is, among the Indo-European language populations), a theory whi,ch is well known to have constituted one of the 

essential factors in " Aryan " racism. 

A notable victory by Soviet ethnography in the study of the gentilic order was the discovery (based first on Russian and later on foreign material) of the universality and antiquity of one of the principal elements of gentilic organization, that is the so-called dual organisation. This form of tribal splitting-up into two exogamic sections was, of course, considered by Engels to be the primary fori:n of exogamic-gentilic organisation. The Austrian Catholic school, following Grebner, sees in this an institution proper to the " two classes cultural ring " related by the followers of this school to agriculture. Rivers considers it to be the result of the mechanical reunion in one territorial area of tribes of different origins who preserve their traditional isolation even when ethnic differences disappear, that is an institution created out of substantially casual and external conditions, not within the progressive development of every primi­tive society taken by itself. As a result of the work of Soviet ethnography, it has been made dear that dual organisation (or rather its traditions in beliefs and folk lore) is typical of peoples most diverse in their ethnic traditions, developmental levels and economic organisation. This pheno­menon was met among the Turkmens (Tolstov 1935), among the Evenki (Anisimov 1936), among the Khanty and Mansi (Chernetsov 1939), among the Ukhi (Zolotarev 1939), among the Kirghiz (Abramson 1946), among different Caucasians (Kosven 1947), among the Karakalpaks (Zhdanko 1947), and elsewhere, that is among the nomadic hunters and settled fishermen of the Ugri and Tungusi Manchurian language groups, among the semi-settled, nomadic, and settled peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus, and the basis of language among the Turks, Iranians and Japhetic peoples-in other words among peoples of different races representing different economic forms. 

Particularly rich and varied is the material collected and studied by Soviet ethnographers relating to the late forms of the gentilic order, to the survivals of gentilic organisation within feudal and capitalist relations and in the period of socialist construction. We have outlined above the most note­worthy works devoted to this group of problems which, by their substance, are closely related to the practice of socialist •construction in formerly back­ward regions of the Soviet Union, which for this very reason particularly attract the attention of Soviet students. The dialectical-materialist viewpoint, the consistent historical materialism in research, typical of Soviet ethno­graphy, applied to the phenomena studied, made it possible to understand complicated and at first sight contradictory material. Soviet ethnographers have been able to show up un-Marxist tendencies in dealing with survivals of the gentilic order among many peoples. On the one hand it was a question of nationalistic "theories ", which considered the gens as a species of cell ready at hand for the socialist regime (and thus masked the existence, in the recent past, of elements imbued with feudal-capitalist relations as well as the gens, among many peoples of the Soviet east) and also a question of the recourse to survivals of gentilic mutual aid either for the exploitation of consanguinity on the part of a narrow semi-feudal group in the gens or for the political influence of the exploiting elements over the exploited masses of the "Kishlak" and the "Aul ". On the other hand, it was a question of Trotskyite theories which denied any function to the gentilic survivals and described pre-Kolkhoz social organisation among the pastoral peoples of the east and even among the hunting people of the north as " feudalism " and even as " capitalism ". 

Soviet students have been able to understand the characteristics of social organisation in the peoples studied, in all their complexity and contradic­tions, in the dynamic history of their transformation. They have been able to discover the causes of their ,conservation and of the character of gentilic survivals in the different conditions existing among the different people of the USSR. The historical-materialist method followed in the resea:r,ches has made it possible to darify the changes that have come about, in the course of historical development, in the social functions of given archaic social institutions, the contradictions and struggles between traditional forms and their content in the course of their changes. These researches have not only darified the actual processes but have also thrown a retrospective light on preceding stages in the development of these pheno­mena, making it possible to understand many problems hitherto unresolved, both in the actual history of single peoples of the USSR and in the history of the later gentilic and dassical society in its complexity, particularly among peoples where economic and not agricultural forms predominate. The elaboration of the problems relative to the form of development of slave relations in the first class society, and of feudal society among pastoral peoples, and to the function of communal gentilic survivals of this process, is of great credit to Soviet students, and above all to the ethnographers (Bernstam, Potapov, Abramson, Tokarev, and others). 

The work of Soviet ethnographers in the field of material and spiritual culture presents the same characteristics as their work in ethnogenesis and social history. In the field of the history of dwellings the new research methods have given rise to particularly noteworthy results. An example of this kind is offered us in the works of Kisliakov and Kandaurov on the habitations of the Tagiki and of Nikolskaya on the habitations of the Avari, and so on. The same can be said on the study of many phenomena of spiritual culture, for example of the beliefs and religious ceremonies whose historical importance was manifested in a new light after their study had been closely related to that of specific characteristics of the social economic regime, to the historical past, to the ethnic organisation and relations of the people in question. 

OUR task here is to clarify by means of many definite examples the general trend of Soviet ethnography, a development which is an integral part of Soviet Marxist-Leninist historical science. Soviet ethnography, like all Soviet science, devotes itself wholly to the service of the people, following in its development the great ideals of Soviet humanism. This is the source of its objectivity, of its truly scientific character. This is the source of Soviet ethnographers' true historicism, which studies each specific ethnic culture as a product of the historical creation of the people in its progressive move­ment and changes, in its actual historical social character, seeing it at the same time as a manifestation of the laws of social development discovered by the genius of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. 

It would be a profound mistake to rest on our laurels, neglecting the difficulties that confront our science, our weaknesses and our failures. We cannot fail to mention the fact that, despite great victories in preparing ethnographic cadres, their number is still extremely small in relation to the tasks to be accomplished. In many of our republics we lack qualified ethnographers; ethnograf}hy is taught in only a few universities; in many museums-both local and large-furnished with noteworthy ethnographic collections there is a lack of ethnographic specialists among the staff. Nor is it right that there should be no Soviet university text-book on ethnography, the preparation of which is a task that must not be delayed. We cannot but note the great backwardness in several sectors of ethnographic science, and above all in the working out of the theoretical problems of primitive religions. 

It is also necessary to observe the backwardness met in ethnographic research as regards the great changes happening before our eyes in the cultural organisation of the peoples of our great socialist motherland. What the ethnographers have accomplished and are accomplishing in this field is more than modest in relation to the proportion of processes to be studied. Yet it would be very difficult for an ethnographer to find a more interesting problem than that which presents itself in the guise of scores of peoples not long ago exploited, backward, often on the brink of ruin, who have been able to become, in an extremely brief period, and on the basis of equal rights, members of the great Soviet family, participating in the construction of socialist civilization, forming and making flourish a new socialist culture in all the richness and -variety of its national forms. This task is great in its proportions, exceptional in its newness. Until it has been accomplished we must be the real innovators in the field of science, working indefatigably to collect and scientifically interpret the rich material. open to us. 

All the objective conditions for realising this task exist. The success of our cause depends upon ourselves alone. 

Abridged. Translated from the Italian of Rassegna della stampa Sovietica, 1949, 7-8, pp. 78-100, by R. SAYERS.