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Ethnicity and Anthropology in the Soviet Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Ernest Gellner
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Extract

InThePastDecade, a minor revolution has taken place within Soviet Anthropology. ‘Ethnography’ is one of the recognised disciplines in the Soviet academic world, and corresponds roughly to what in the West is called social anthropology. This revolution has as yet been barely noticed by outside observers (1). Its leader is Yulian Bromley, a very Russian scholar with a very English surname, Director of the Institute of Ethnography of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The revolution consists of making ethnography into the studies of ethnos-es, or, in current Western academic jargon, into the study of ethnicity—in other words the study of the phenomena of national feeling, identity, and interaction. History is about chaps, geography is about maps, and ethnography is about ethnoses. What else ? The revolution is supported by arguments weightier than mere verbal suggestiveness; but by way of persuasive consideration, etymology is also invoked.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , December 1977 , pp. 201 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1977

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References

(1) It has been the subject of an article by Dunn, Stephen P., New Departures in Soviet Theory and Practice of Ethnicity, in Dialectical Anthropology, I (11 1975), p. 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and of another by Ms Tamara Dragadze, of the University of Leeds, to be published in a forthcoming volume of the proceedings of a Conference of Soviet and Western Anthropologists under the auspices of the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and held at Burg Wartenstein in July 1976.

(2) Bromley, Yulian, “Towards the Question of the Subject-matter of Ethnographic Science”, paper presented at the Warten-stein conference, July 1976, and published in English in Ethnography and Related Sciences (Moscow, U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, 1977)Google Scholar.

(3) Cf.Vucinich, Alexander, Social Thought in Tsarist Russia (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

(4) Cf. loan Lewis, The Myth of Social Anthropology, forthcoming.

(5) Cf. Current Anthropology, VII (1966), 560–576Google Scholar.

(6) Russian anthropologists in any case repudiate the term ‘evolutionist’, but mainly, I think, because it suggests to them the doctrine of smooth continuous development as opposed to dramatic revolutionary discontinuities. That issue is of course irrelevant here. I use ‘evolutionism’ to designate an approach concerned above all with the development paths, as opposed to a synchronicist concern with the balance of power at any one given time. In this usage, it covers any theoretical approach which concentrates on the evolutionary line, irrespective of whether the line is a smooth curve or a zig-zag with sharp corners.

(7) Cf. A. Vucinich, op. cit.

(8) Theoretical Problems of ‘Economic Anthropology’, in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, VI (1974), nos. 2–3Google Scholar.

(9) Semenov, Yuri I., Kak Vozniklo Čelovečestvo (Moscow, Nauka, 1966)Google Scholar;Proishoždenie Braka i Sem'i (Moscow, Mysl, 1974)Google Scholar.

(10) This point is illustrated by the fact that the most interesting discussion of typological problems in anthropology was in fact written by an historian, Danilova, L. V., in Diskussionnye Problemy Teorii Dokapitalističeskih Obščestv, in Problemy Istorii Dokapitalističeskih Obščestv (Moskva, Nauka, 1968)Google Scholar. See also my ‘The Soviet and the Savage’, T.L.S., Oct. i8, 1974 and Current Anthropology, Dec. 1975). The theoretical problems are the same in historiography and anthropology, and an historian feels no embarrassment and no ineptitude in telling anthropologists what they are about. This is hardly conceivable in the West.

(11) Western Marxists overtly deplore the lack of a Marxist theory of nationalism or at any rate of a good one. Cf. Tom Nairn: ‘The theory of nationalism represents Marxism's great historical failure […]. It is true Dethat other traditions of Western thought have not done better’. In ‘The Modern Janus’, New Left Review, LXXXXIV (1975), p. 3Google Scholar, and his The Break-up of Britain, Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (London, N.L.B., 1977)Google Scholar.

(12) Cf. Weinberg, Elisabeth, The Development of Sociology in the Soviet Union (London 1974)Google Scholar.

(13) Cf. for instance Kubbel, L. E., Songtiajskaja Deržava (Songhai Realm) (Moscow, Nauka, 1974)Google Scholar, and my discussion of it in ‘Class before State’ to be published as part of the Festschrift for Professor Schapera, I., edited by Shack, W. and Cohen, P., and also in this issue of the Journal, pp. 299–322Google Scholar.

(14) Cf. Smith, Anthony, Theories of Nationalism (London, Duckworth, 1970)Google Scholar or my own Thought and Change (London, Weidenfeld, 1969)Google Scholar, ch. vi or Contemporary Thought and Politics (London, Routledge, 1974)Google Scholar, ch. vi or Tom Nairn, op. cit.

(15) Bromley, Yu. V., Etnosi Etnografija (Moscow, Nauka, 1973)Google Scholar.

Arutiunian, Yu. (responsible editor). Social'noe i Nacional'noe, (Moscow, Nauka, 1973)Google Scholar.

Bromley, Yu. (responsible editor), Sovremennye Etničeskie Processy v SSSR [Contemporary Ethnic Processes in the USSR] (Moscow, Nauka, 1975)Google Scholar.

(16) Bromley, Yu. V., Soviet Ethnography: Main Trends. ‘Social Sciences Today’, Editorial Board, USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow 1976Google Scholar.

(17) Čeboksarov, N. N., Problemy Tipologii etničeskih obščnostej v trudah Sovetskih učenyh, Sovetskaja Etnografija (1967), No. 4, p. 96Google Scholar, translated in Soviet Anthropology and Archeology, Fall 1970, No. 2. Gumilev, L. N., O termine ‘etnos’, in Doklady Geografičeskogo Obščestva SSSR, No. 3, (1967) (Leningrad)Google Scholar. In fact, this whole issue of the geographers' journal is devoted to ethnicity, and also contains a further article by Gumilev on ‘Ethnos as a phenomenon’. Gumilev wrote a further article in No. 15, 1970, of the same journal, entitled ‘Ethnos and the category of time’. Gumilev has an intriguing personal background: he is the son of N. Akhmatova. I am indebted for this information to Professor T. Shanin of Manchester.

(18) Soviet Ethnography: Main Trends, op. cit.

(19) Ibid.