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Getting to Know “The Peoples of the USSR”: Ethnographic Exhibits as Soviet Virtual Tourism, 1923-1934

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Francine Hirsch
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Abstract

In this article, Francine Hirsch examines the Ethnographic Department of the Russian Museum as a venue for virtual tourism, where museumgoers were able to become acquainted with “the Peoples of the USSR” and where Soviet ethnographers and Politprosvet activists attempted to work out an idealized narrative about the socialist transformation of the Soviet Union. Focusing on the period of the “Great Break,” Hirsch investigates the role of “the narrative” in the process of Soviet state formation and the role of mass participation in facilitating Soviet authoritarian rule. Hirsch treats the “ideological front” as a dynamic realm and shows how ethnographers, activists, and museumgoers attempted to reconcile disparities between “the real” and “the ideal” in the Soviet Union. In addition, she evaluates how the Soviet developmentalist narrative evolved after 1931, as ethnographers attempted to formulate a nonbiological, sociohistorical explanation for the persistence of traditional culture among certain population groups in an effort to counter German racial theories.

Type
Research Article
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 62 , Issue 4: Tourism and Travel in Russia and the Soviet Union , Winter 2003 , pp. 683 - 709
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2003

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References

The research and writing of this article were made possible by support from the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Social Science Research Council, and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. Earlier versions were presented at the workshop “Observing and Making Meaning: Understanding the Soviet Union and Central Europe through Travel,” University of Toronto, 18–20 October 2002; at the Russian and East European Reading Group, Stanford University, February 2003; and at the Russian History Reading Group, University of California, Berkeley, May 2003. I am grateful to the participants in these forums, to the referees for Slavic Revieiu, and to Frederick Corney, Mark Hessman, David McDonald, Tony Michels, and Amir Weiner for their comments and suggestions. The epigraph is taken from the archive of the Rossiiskii etnograficheskii muzei (REM), f. 2, op. 1, d. 388 (Response Book, Ukrainian Exhibit, 1931–1932), 1. 1.

1 REM, f. 2 , op. 1, d. 283 (Minutes and materials from meetings about the Workers' Sunday University), 1. 19ob. (Transcript of a December 1929 lecture about the Central Asian republics).

2 Stalin, I., Vofrrosy Leninizma (Moscow, 1933), 432–41.Google Scholar On the discourses of representation, see the essays by Ivan Karp, “Culture and Representation,” and Hinsley, Curtis M., “The World as Marketplace: Commodification of the Exotic at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893,” in Karp, Ivan and Lavine, Steven D., eds., Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington, D.C., 1991), 11–24, 344–65.Google Scholar Of course, this shift was in the making before the November 1929 speech. An April 1929 article in Vsemirnyi turist about summer tourism packages to the national republics proclaimed that “against a backdrop of brilliant nature and distinctive byt” it would be “easy to trace the rapid growth of the economy and culture of formerly oppressed nationalities.” “Ekskursii po SSSR letom 1929 g.,” Vsemirnyi turist, 1929, no. 4:120.

3 Recent work on the British and French empires discusses the juridical and other distinctions that differentiated the metropole's citizens from the colonies’ subjects. See, for example, Young, Crawford, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven, 1994), 44.Google Scholar The Soviet state (in official terms, a union) appropriated elements of administrative-territorial organization from—and also attempted to move beyond—these existing models of empire. For an elaboration of this argument, see Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, forthcoming). Soviet expositions of progress were supposed to demonstrate that “there is neither a metropole nor colonies in the USSR.” The quote is from the Narkomnats administrator, Anatolii Skachko. See Skachko, “Vostochnye respubliki na S.-Kh. Vystavke SSSR v 1923 godu,” Novyi Vostok, 1923, no. 4:485. The character of the Soviet state is a topic of current discussion and debate among historians. For other interpretations, see Simon, Gerhard, Nationalism and Policy toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union: From Totalitarian Dictatorship to Post-Stalinist Society (Boulder, Colo., 1991);Google Scholar Smith, Jeremy, The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917-1923 (New York, 1999);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Slezkine, Yuri, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 414–52;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Martin, Terry, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, 2001).Google Scholar

4 Il'in, M., New Russia's Primer: The Story of the Five-Year Plan, trans. Counts, George S. and Lodge, Nucia P. (Boston, 1931), 119–20.Google Scholar

5 See, for example, Codell, Julie F. and Macleod, Dianne Sachko, eds., Orientalism Transposed: The Impact of the Colonies on British Culture (Aldershot, Eng., 1998)Google Scholar, and McEwan, Cheryl, Gender, Geography andEmpire: Victorian Women Travellers in West Africa (Burlington, Vt., 2000).Google Scholar On expositions as a form of tourism, see Mackenzie, John M., Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester, Eng., 1990).Google Scholar

6 In 1934 the Moscow-based Tsentral'nyi muzei narodovedeniia (Central Museum of the Study of Peoples) assumed this role. The Ethnographic Department was renamed the State Ethnographic Museum in 1934 and continued to put together ethnographic exhibits of the Peoples of the USSR. Although 1934 marks the end of the Ethnographic Department (and is an endpoint for this article), the story of the museum and its exhibits continues. Another important ethnographic museum was Leningrad's Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography; this museum had a broader focus than the Ethnographic Department, focusing on the “peoples of the world.“

7 For coverage of these types of expeditions, see the journals Kraevedenie (1923– 1929), Sovetskoe kraevedenie (1930–1936), Vsemirnyi turisl (1929), and Vsemirnyi sledopyt (1925–1931). For a discussion of the connection between Leningrad's ethnographic museums and kraevedenie, see Staniukovich, T. V., 250 let Muzeia antropologii i etnografii imeni Petra Velikogo (Moscow-Leningrad, 1964), 103–4.Google Scholar

8 Expositions of progress also provided an experience of virtual travel or tourism. On Soviet expositions of progress, see Castillo, Greg, “Peoples at an Exhibition: Soviet Architecture and the National Question,” in Lahusen, Thomas and Dobrenko, Evgeny, eds., Socialist Realism without Shores (Durham, 1997).Google Scholar On international colonial expositions and world's fairs, see Lebovics, Herman, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900–1945 (Ithaca, 1992)Google Scholar, and Rydell, Robert W., All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago, 1984).Google Scholar Of course, this form of virtual tourism predates the computer age. For a discussion of the new literature on virtual travel in the computer age (and a use of the term very different from my own), see Urry, John, The Tourist Gaze, 2d ed. (London, 2002).Google Scholar

9 On the “Leningrad model,” see “Muzeinye s'fezdy, Kazanskii s“ezd,” Kraevedenie 4, no. 2 (1927): 391.

10 A number of the department's ethnographers were also members of the Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of Russia and the Borderlands (KIPS), formed in February 1917 to support Russia in the war effort. After October 1917, this commission began to work for the Bolsheviks and provided the regime with ethnographic maps that it used to negotiate peace treaties with the European powers in 1918. By the end of the civil war, the KIPS ethnographers were serving as consultants to numerous government institutions.

11 On the connections among census, map, and museum in general terms, see Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London, 1991), chap. 10.Google Scholar Anderson argues that, taken together, the census, map, and museum made up “a totalizing classificatory grid” (184). The Soviet case suggests that this might be overstated. Census, map, and museum could also be in tension with each other, even when the same experts were engaged in all three enterprises.

12 For a discussion of “state-sponsored evolutionism” and the role of these Leningrad-based ethnographers in census taking and border making, see Hirsch, Empire of Nations. On the Soviet (Marxist) historical time line, see also Weiner, Amir, “Nature, Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic Body in the Age of Socialism,” A merican Historical Review 104, no. 4 (1999): 1114–55,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Halfin, Igal, From Darkness to Light: Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary Russia (Pittsburgh, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 George Stocking has noted that all ethnographic museums are “institutions in which the forces of historical inertia (or ‘cultural lag’) are profoundly, perhaps inescapably, implicated.” Stocking, George W. Jr., Delimiting Anthropology: Occasional Essays and Reflections (Madison, 2001), 251.Google Scholar

14 Here I am in agreement with Peter Kenez's description of the Soviet Union as a “propaganda state” that sought to change mass consciousness. See Kenez, Peter, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917–1929 (Cambridge, Eng., 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Unlike other states that used propaganda, the Soviet regime was interested in the transformation of consciousness as opposed to the manipulation of public opinion. On the British case, see Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire. On the importance of participation to the success of the “Soviet project,” see Kotkin, Stephen, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995)Google Scholar, and Corney, Frederick, “Rethinking a Great Event: The October Revolution as Memory Project,” Social Science History 22, no. 4 (1998): 389–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the connection between propaganda and mobilization in the Soviet Union, see Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, rev. ed. (San Diego, 1979).Google Scholar

15 Mogilianskii, N., “Russkii etnograficheskii muzei i sobraniia Etnograficheskogo otdela Russkogo muzeiia Imperatora Aleksandra III,” Zhivaia starina 20, nos. 3–4 (1911): 495.Google Scholar On the early history of the museum, also see Otchet Russkogo muzeia za 1922 god (Petrograd, 1923), 3–47; Semenov-Tian-Shanskii, V. P., “Vladimir Ivanovich Lamanskii, kak antropogeograf i politikogeograf,” Zhivaia starina 24, nos. 1–2 (1915): 9–20.Google Scholar

16 Zaks, A. B., “Rech’ A. V. Lunacharskogo na konferentsii po delam muzeev,” in Smidt, S. O. et al., eds., Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1976 g. (Moscow, 1977), 214.Google Scholar Also Shangina, I. I., “Etnograficheskie muzei Leningrada v pervye gody sovetskoi vlasti [1918–1923 gg.],” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, 1987, no. 5:71–80.Google Scholar

17 Cheripin, N., ed., Etnograficheskii otdel Russkogo muzeia (Petrograd, 1923);Google Scholar Cheripin, N., ed., Otchetnaia vystavka etnograficheskogo otdela za 1923 g. (Petrograd, 1924).Google Scholar Parts of the description are from photographs of the exhibits, from REM's photo archive.

18 Cheripin, ed., Etnograficheskii otdel, esp. 14–16, 35–36, 40.

19 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 174a (Minutes of meetings of the soviet of the Ethnographic Department, 1925–1928), 11. 53ob., 73ob.–74, 85–85ob. Olchet Gosudarstvennogo Russkogo muzeia za 1923 i 1924 gg., (Leningrad, 1925), Otchet Gosudarstvennogo Russkogo muzeia za 1925 g. (Leningrad, 1926), Otchet Gosudarstvennogo Russkogo muzeia za 1926 i 1927 gg. (Leningrad, 1928). On the idea of the museum as a living textbook, see Otchet Gosudarstvennogo Russkogo muzeia za 1926 i 1927gg., 4.

20 Otchet Gosudarstvennogo Russkogo muzeia za 1923 i 1924 gg., 25.

21 N. P. Popov, Ekskursii v byl narodov SSSR (Ekskursii po Etnograficheskomu otdeln Russkogo muzeia), Ekskursionnaia baza Leningradskogo Gubpolitprosveta, GUBONO (Leningrad, 1925), 3.

22 Ibid., 3, 4.

23 For example, REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 174a, 11. 15ob., 20ob.

24 Ibid., 11. 20ob., 37, 38ob. In one case, a research team set out to Adygei oblast to locate Cherkess material and spiritual culture “in its natural state.” The researchers learned that the Cherkess, who lived among Russians, had “long ago changed their traditional cultural forms“; but they convinced several “Russified” families to part with traditional Cherkess heirlooms.

25 Sankt-Peterburgskii filial Arkhiva Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk (PFA RAN), f. 282, op. 1 (Lev Shternberg: Correspondence and materials of a scientific-organizational character), d. 65, 11. 2–7 (S. Rudenko, “The Nature of the Ethnographic Museum“). For a discussion about the reorganization of the Ethnographic Department, see also Kryzhanovskii, B. G., “Printsipy ekspozitsii etnograficheskogo muzeia,” Muzeinoe delo IV (Leningrad, 1926).Google Scholar

26 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 232 (Minutes of meetings of the Ethnographic Bureau party cell, 1927), 11.1–20.

27 V. V. Ekimova, the head of the party cell, was a member of the party and an “experienced propagandist.” Cited in Kriukova, T. A. and Studenetskaia, E. N., “Gosudarstvennyi muzei etnografii narodov SSSR za piat'desiat let Sovetskoi vlasti,” in Ocherki istorii muzeinogo dela v SSSR (Moscow, 1971), 29.Google Scholar Kriukova and Studenetskaia also discuss the origins of this cell. The politprosvet workers were connected to the Politprosvet Division of LONO, whose job it was to coordinate the political-enlightenment work of all soviet and professional organizations in Leningrad. The LONO Politprosvet reported to the Methodological Bureau of the Leningrad branch of the Communist Party. See, for example, Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko-politicheskikh dokumentov Sankt-Peterburga (TsGAIPD SPb), f. 24, op. 8, d. 71a, 1. 5 (Organizational plan of work for the Politprosvet of the Leningrad oblast LONO for 1927–29). Party cell members also reported to the Scientific-Methodological Soviet of LONO.

28 REM.f. 2, op. l,d. 232,1. 17.

29 Ibid., 11. 24–28.

30 The exposition was modeled on—and against—European colonial expositions. For a general overview of the exposition and its features, see Fedorova, M. I., Pervaia Vsesoiuznaia sel'skokhoziaistvennaia vystavka (Moscow, 1953).Google Scholar Also see komitet, Glavnyi vystavochnyi, Obshchaia Vsesoiuznaia sel'sko-khoziaistvennaia i kustarno promyshlennaia vystavka, Katalog (Moscow, 1923).Google Scholar Some of the Leningrad ethnographers had been consultants for the exposition. See, for example, PFA RAN, f. 135, op. 1, d. 9 (KIPS scientific materials and correspondence, 1923), 1. 85.

31 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 259,11. 16ob., 18, 24, 25, 38, 40, 42, 43, 48 (Minutes of meetings of the Ethnographic Bureau party cell). For the next two years the party cell was primarily occupied with preparing, discussing, and approving potential tours.

32 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 174a, 1. 143ob. On the theory of cultural evolutionism and museum exhibits, see the essays in George W. Stocking, Jr., ed., Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture (Madison, 1985).

33 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 144 (Programs and theses for the museum excursion, “Peoples of the USSR“), 11. 16–19.

34 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 259 (Minutes of meetings of the Ethnographic Bureau party cell, 1928), 11. 3ob., 16ob.

35 The methodological cell was later renamed the Methodological Bureau. REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 260 (Minutes of meetings of the Cultural-Enlightenment party cell of the Ethnographic Department, 1928), 11. 1–4. Also see the Otchet Gosudarstvennogo Russkogo muzeia za 1928 g., 17–19. The ethnographers Boris Kryzhanovskii, Dmitrii Zolotarev, and Aleksandr Miller were active in this political-enlightenment cell. The cell worked closely with the “Excursion Base” of the Political Enlightenment Division (Politprosvet) of LONO.

36 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 260,11. 1–15.

37 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 174a, 11. 148ob.–150ob.; d. 259,1. 48; d. 260,11. 10–15; d. 269 (Materials about the activities of the museum from 1928 to 1938), 1. 6, 12 (Reports on political-enlightenment work of the Ethnographic Department for 1928–30); d. 282 (Minutes of meetings of the Ethnographic Bureau party cell, 1929), 1. 10; Otchet Gosudarstvennogo Russkogo muzeia za 1928 g., 20. Also Kriukova and Studenetskaia, “Gosudarstvennyi muzei etnografii narodov SSSR za piat'desiat let Sovetskoi vlasti,” 30.

38 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 269,1. 12, d. 299 (Materials about the organization and work of the Ethnographic Theater), 11. 10–16. [Gosudarstvennyi Russkii muzei], Gosudarstvennyi elnograficheskii leatr (Leningrad, 1931), and [Gosudarstvennyi Russkii muzei], Etnograficheskii teatr (Leningrad, 1930).

39 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 260,11.10–15. Ethnographers in the early 1920s imagined creating an outdoor ethnographic museum with a live ethnographic exhibit. See, for example, D. Ianovich, “K voprosu o izuchenii byta narodnostei RSFSR,” Zhizn’ natsional'nostei 29 (127), 14 December 1921, 1.

40 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 299, 11. 29, 30; Elnograficheskii teatr, 2–6. In February 1929 the State Experimental Theater merged with the museum and became the Ethnographic Theater.

41 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 259,1. 18. Also Otchet Gosudarstvennogo Russkogo muzeiaza 1928 (Leningrad, 1929), 19. Other tours, such as “The Economy of the USSR in Connection with Nationality Policy: The Caucasus, Siberia, Karelia, and Turkestan,” and “Ukraine and Its Significance in the Economy of the USSR,” were also given regularly. See, for example, REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 259,11. 40, 49. In 1929, a new cycle of tours was prepared in conjunction with the antireligious campaign. See REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 319 (Minutes of meetings of the Cultural-Enlightenment party cell of the Ethnographic Department, January 1930), 1. 1.

42 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 282,1. 8; d. 232,11. 26–26ob.

43 For a discussion of how the party encouraged people to imagine themselves as part of the narrative of 1917, see Corney, “Rethinking a Great Event.“

44 Il'in, New Russia's Primer, 119–20.

45 At stake was a competition between two knowledge systems—that of former imperial experts and that of party activists steeped in Marxism-Leninism. Party activists criticized the old-regime ethnographers for directly borrowing ideas and techniques from European and American ethnography and for justifying colonial policies.” But they defended those old and young ethnographers who (at least in their estimation) had managed to master Marxism-Leninism. For a sense of the intensification of ideological struggle, see TsGAIPD SPb, f. 4406, op. 1, d. 1, 11. 1–3, 16–18, 29 (Protocols of the Bureau of the Party Collective [VKP(b)] under the State Russian Museum).

46 The term is Timothy Mitchell's. For a discussion of how the British empire used the “machinery of representation” to colonize Egypt, see Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge, Eng., 1988).

47 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi federatsii, f. A-2307, op. 14, d. 16 (Minutes of meetings of the Glavnauka [Narkompros] Methodological Commission on Museum-Enlightenment Work), 11. 1–5. Also REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 281a (Minutes of meetings of the soviet of the Ethnographic Department, 1929), 1. 9ob. The discussion about the role of museums continued at the Conference of Leningrad and Moscow Ethnographers in April 1929. On the conference, see Shangina, I. I., “Etnograficheskie muzei Moskvy i Leningrada na rubezhe 20kh-30kh godov XX v.,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 2 (1991): 72–73 Google Scholar

48 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 269, 1. 14; d. 287 (Minutes of meetings of the Commission to Reconstruct the Exposition of the Ethnographic Department, April-June 1929), 11. 1–5. Also see REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 281a, 11. 21ob.–22ob.; d. 269,11. 24–37.

49 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 287,11. 1–5. Ethnographers such as Aleksandr Miller argued that while the “ethnic trait” was “most important from a scientific perspective,” the “territorial principle” was “the only correct principle from an exhibiting perspective” since it would allow museumgoers to have a sense of visiting different regions.

50 Ibid., 11. l–2ob. The party and the Commissariat of Enlightenment provided the ethnographers with some research funds to expand their collection, but the department did not have the financial means necessary to reconsuuct its entire exhibit.

51 Ibid., 11. 3–3ob.

52 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 315 (Minutes of meetings of the Ethnographic Bureau party cell, 1930), 11. 7–10,29–33.

53 Ibid., 11. 14–15. Kryzhanovskii set out some of these ideas at a 22 June 1929 meeting of the soviet of the Ethnographic Department; see REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 281a, zhurnal 474.

54 My description is based primarily on photos from the museum's photo archive. For a discussion of this exhibit, see also Kriukova and Studenetskaia, “Gosudarstvennyi muzei etnografii narodov SSSR,” 37.

55 REM,f. 2,op. l,d.355 (Minutes of methodological meetings of the Ethnographic Department), 11. 10a. This particular comment was from Comrade Solov'eva from the Korosten Museum in Ukraine.

56 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 355,11. 43–44. The Moscow visitors were from the Tsentral'nyi muzei narodovedeniia.

57 Ibid.

58 See Leonov, V. P. et al., Akademicheskoedelo, 1929–1930 gg., vol. 1, Delopo obvineniiu akademika S. F Platonova (St. Petersburg, 1993).Google Scholar On the party's “seizure” of the Academy of Sciences, also see Graham, Loren R., Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History (Cambridge, Eng., 1993);Google Scholar Vucinich, Alexander, Empire oj Knowledge: The Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1917-1970) (Berkeley, 1984).Google Scholar

59 Leonov et al., Akademicheskoe delo. See also PFA RAN, f. 135, op. 1, d. 235 (Materials for exhibit on “15 Years of Soviet Science“), 11. 32–32ob.; f. 2, op. 1–1929, d. 33 (Academy of Sciences, Materials about KIPS), 1. 91. Also see S. N. Bykovskii, “Etnografiia na sluzhbe klassovogo vraga,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, 1931, nos. 3–4:3–13.

60 See, for example, REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 399 (Minutes of meetings of the Ethnographic Department's Methodological Bureau and Ethnographic Bureau party cell, 1932), 11. 15–17, 33, 47–49ob.

61 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 269,11. 38–42. (Materials for the Ethnographic Department's report to the director of the Russian Museum, 1931); d. 399,11. 31, 59. On the “Rudenko affair,” see Khronika, “Kriticheskaia prorabotka Rudenkovshchiny,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, 1931, nos. 1–2:167–68.

62 Between 1931 and 1933 more than half of the Ethnographic Department's ethnographers and museum experts were replaced. Shangina, “Etnograficheskie muzei Moskvy i Leningrada na rubezhe,” 77.

63 I looked dirough about fifteen of these comment books in the archive. The comments are in different hands with numerous misspellings.

64 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 269,11. 24–37. The party and the Commissariat of Enlightenment worked with pedagogues and psychologists to investigate what people learned from visits to museums and other cultural institutions. See Krasilina, G. N., “Iz opyta raboty sovetskikh muzeev po populiarizatsii i izucheniiu muzeinogo zritelia v 1920e-1930e gody,“ Muzei 2 khudozhestvennye sobraniia SSSR (Moscow, 1981).Google Scholar

65 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 386 (Response Book, 1931–1932), 11. 13ob., 23, 30ob.; d. 388, 1. 22ob.

66 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 388. 1. 9.

67 Ibid., 1. 5.

68 Ibid., 1. 19.

69 Ibid., 1. 1.

70 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 386,1. 26.

71 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 388,11. 6ob.–7.

72 Ibid.

73 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 423 (Response Book, 1932), 1. 14.

74 Ibid.

75 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 388,1. 5ob.

76 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 386,1. 18.

77 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 388,1. 7ob.

78 Ibid., 1.4.

79 Such published sources included the journals Etnografiia and Sovetskaia etnografiia. Yuri Slezkine, drawing on these and other published sources, describes a break that left ethnographers “bewildered” and led to the eventual “fall” of the discipline. See Slezkine, , “The Fall of Soviet Ethnography, 1928-1938,” Current Anthropology 32, no. 4 (1991): 476–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Elsewhere, Slezkine notes that the “banning” of ethnography was “inconclusive.” See Slezkine, , “N. la. Marr and the National Origins of Soviet Ethnogenetics,” Slavic Reviexu 55, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 845.Google Scholar

80 Rudenko was (falsely) charged with using ethnographic expeditions “for the organization of anti-Soviet activities in the peripheries of the USSR (lakutiia, Bashkiria, and so on).” Leonov et al., Akademicheskoe delo, viii. On Rudenko's arrest, see also Shangina, “Etnograficheskie muzei Moskvy i Leningrada na rubezhe,” 77. Rudenko was later released and resumed his research; he died in 1969.

81 Potapov also worked with Aleksandr Samoilovich, who headed the “Commission to Reconstruct the Ethnographic Department's Exposition.” In 1928 Potapov accompanied Samoilovich and Rudenko on an expedition to the Altai. PFA RAN, f. 135, op. 1, d. 28 (KIPS scientific materials and correspondence, 1928), 11. 173–74 (Report on KIPS' Altai expedition). For Potapov's biography and a list of his publications, see Myl'nikov, A. S. and Taksami, Ch. M., eds., LeonidPavlovich Potapov: K 90-letiiu so dniiarozhdeniia (St. Petersburg, 1995).Google Scholar

82 For a similar argument about the creation of a Soviet technical intelligentsia, see Bailes, Kendall E., Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917–1941 (Princeton, 1978).Google Scholar

83 On the rise of national socialist ideas in German universities, see Proctor, Robert, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).Google Scholar On the Soviet response, see Hirsch, Empire of Nations.

84 PFA RAN, f. 135, op. 2, d. 99 (Minutes of meetings of the Institute for the Study of Peoples [formerly KIPS]), 1. 233; d. 117 (Kolkhoz Subgroup of the Institute for the Study of Peoples), 11. 2, 29. One May 1932 program to research “cultural revolution in kolkhoz regions” described cultural revolution as a movement for “political enlightenment“ that aims to “alter peoples’ consciousness.” PFA RAN, f. 135, op. 2, d. 1029 (Program for studying cultural revolution on kolkhozes), 11. 10–10ob., 21–21ob. In this usage, “cultural revolution” in the national republics and oblasts was a Soviet version of the “civilizing mission” that aimed to create new structures, institutions, territories, and people through the introduction of new habits and practices. It was not “class war.” Mass enlightenment through “cultural revolution” was, however, supposed to awaken “backward populations“ and precipitate class struggle (against mullahs and kulaks, for example) in the localities. For a discussion of the term cultural revolution (which describes how the term was used by the Bolsheviks and later by historians of the Soviet Union), see Michael David-Fox, “What Is Cultural Revolution?” Russian Review 58, no. 2 (April 1999): 181–201, and the subsequent exchange between Sheila Fitzpatrick and David-Fox. For the classic articulation of the argument of cultural revolution as “class war,” see Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “Cultural Revolution as Class War,” in Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928- 1931 (Bloomington, 1978), 8–40.Google Scholar

85 The ethnographers set out to explain why progress was slower in these regions than in others without resorting to racial explanations. See, for example, PFA RAN, f. 174, op. 2, d. 156,11.172–77 (Explanatory note to the plan for the brigades for the study of the human being).

86 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 355, II. 78–80; d. 399,11. 66–68. PFA RAN, f. 135, op. 1, d. 99, 1. l ; d . 154 (Materials from the Institute for the Study of Peoples, 1931), 1. 10; d. 155 (Correspondence between the Institute for the Study of Peoples and other scientific institutions), 11. 25–27. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE), f. 260, op. 1, d. 3 (Reports from expeditions of the Commissariat of Agriculture's Kolkhoz Center), 11. 3–5.

87 Around the same time, the department's ethnographers also worked on a new, but less successful, Belorussian exhibit. See Hirsch, Empire of Nations.

88 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 355, 11. 20–21ob. This program took as its basic premise the position that clan-based settlement patterns and clan-specific use of “pastures, forests, and arable fields” were benefiting clan leaders, local Russian kulaks, and other “class enemies.“

89 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 355,11. 20–21ob., 24–25 (Meeting minutes and program: “The Survivals of Clan Structure: A Hindrance to Socialist Construction in Oirotiia“). Also see SSSR, Akademiia nauk, Trudy Instituta po izucheniiu narodov SSSR, vol. 1 by Potapov, L. P., Poezdka v kolkhozy Chemal'skogo aimaka Oirotskoi Avtonomnoi Oblasti (Leningrad, 1932).Google Scholar

90 This and other sources use the term po zakonu stadial'nosti. Of course, the endpoint was communism. REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 453 (Minutes of meetings of Methodological Bureau, 1933), 1. 15ob.; d. 399,1. 54.

91 L. Potapov, “Saiino-Altaiskaia vystavka (Leningrad),” in Sovetskaia etnografiia, 1932, no. 3:93–96. Also see Kriukova and Studenetskaia, “Gosudarstvennyi muzei etnografii narodov SSSR,” 38–39.

92 This exhibit, like the Ukrainian exhibit, highlighted collectivization as the important transitional moment.

93 Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture (Boston, 1874), 1:16 Google Scholar, cited in Geraci, Robert, “Ethnic Minorities, Anthropology, and Russian National Identity on Trial: The Multan Case, 1892–96,” Russian Review 59, no. 4 (October 2000): 539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Tylor's ideas, see Stocking, George W. Jr., After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888-1951 (Madison, 1995),Google Scholar and Honigmann, John J., The Development of Anthropological Ideas (Homewood, 111., 1976).Google Scholar On the study of “survivals” in the Soviet Union, see Slezkine, Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, 1994), 257–60Google Scholar, and Slezkine, “The Fall of Soviet Ethnography, 1928–1938.“

94 N. M. Matorin, “Sovremennyi etap i zadachi sovetskoi etnografii,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, 1931, nos. 1–2:3–38.

95 Potapov, “Saiino-Altaiskaia vystavka (Leningrad).” Also REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 460 (Plans for excursion on the theme “From the Primitive Communist Horde to Socialist Construction“), 1. 1; d. 355,1. 24 (Program “The Survivals of Clan Structure: A Hindrance to Socialist Construction in Oirotiia“).

96 See, for example, Potapov, Poezdka v kolkhozy Chemal'skogo aimaka Oirotskoi Avtonomnoi Oblasli. Most research expeditions after 1932 had questionnaires or ethnographic programs to study living survivals. See, for example, PFA RAN, f. 135, op. 2, d. 1029,11. 10–11, 21–21ob. (Program to study cultural revolution in kolkhoz regions).

97 REM, f. 2, op. 1, d. 399, 1. 60 (Minutes of meeting to discuss the Altai-Saian exhibit of the Ethnographic Department of the State Russian Museum).

98 Kriukova and Studenetskaia, “Gosudarstvennyi muzei etnografii narodov SSSR,“ 38-39.

99 Ibid. See also Potapov, “Saiino-Altaiskaia vystavka (Leningrad).“

100 See the introduction to Kenez, Birth of the Propaganda State.

101 Of course, Hannah Arendt understood this point. In recent years, her work has had an important influence on historians grappling with the nature of Soviet rule. Since 1991, the merits and flaws of the “totalitarian” and “revisionist” schools have been the topic of much discussion in the literature. For one example, see the editors’ note “Really-Existing Revisionism?” Kritika 2, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 707.

102 See Hirsch, Empire of Nations.

103 The idea of “survivals” (perezhitki) would remain important to the Soviet vocabulary of progress after World War II. For Kotkin's argument about “speaking Bolshevik,“ see Magnetic Mountain, chap. 5.

104 As evidenced by the other articles in this issue, new and interesting work is being done in this area. For other examples, see Sandomirskaya, Irina, “Proletarian Tourism: Incorporated History and Incorporated Rhetoric,” in Bryld, Mette and Kulavig, Erik, eds., Soviet Civilization betxueenPast and Present (Odense, Denmark, 1998).Google Scholar Also Diane P. Koenker, “Good Travel and Bad: Creating the Proletarian Tourist” (paper presented at the workshop “Observing and Making Meaning: Understanding the Soviet Union and Central Europe through Travel,” University of Toronto, 18-20 October 2002).