Title: An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and the USSR
Abstract: Roland Czvetkovski & Alexis Hoffmeister, An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and the USSR, Central European University Press, Budapest, 2014.Since the onset of de-colonization, scholars have begun to question the role played by anthropologists and ethnographers in Western imperial projects. Similar analyses of the role played of these disciplines in Tsarist Russia had to wait for the end of the Cold War to take place. Multiple causes impeded such efforts. For one thing, Russian anthropology and ethnography received relatively low attention during the epoch, despite the fact that scholarly exchanges between researchers from the West and those from the USSR proved fruitful for both sides. Furthermore, in the black & white world of Sovietology, and works that challenged the status quo, as the case of the revisionist historians prove, were vehemently challenged on non-academic grounds and their authors subject to ad hominem attacks. If one was to compare the Soviet regime with that of other countries, it was to be with either that of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, not with those of the West. The fall of communism, however, made it possible for authors to approach Soviet history in a new light.In recent years, works by authors such as Slezkine (1996), Hirsch (2005), van der Oye (2010), Kan (2009), and Northrop (2003) have greatly improved of our understanding of Soviet policy regarding minorities and the role played by scholarly knowledge in its implementation. A number of questions continue to linger in the field as various scholars tend to question whether one can apply or not ideas and concepts from post-colonialism to Russia and the Soviet Union.For those interested in the future of this kind of studies, the volume edited by Roland Czvetkovski and Alexis Hoffmeister is an essential read. Comprising thirteen essays thematically split into three categories (Paradigms, Representations and Peoples), the present volume approaches themes such as the role played by anthropologists and ethnographers in imperial policy, the manner in which minorities where affected by their efforts, or the state of these disciplines in the Soviet Union.As stated in the introduction, the point of the book is not to provide a history of Russian anthropology per se, but rather an image of the discursive patterns that developed during the Imperial and Soviet period within the discipline (though some essays, such as the ones by Marina Mogilner and Roland Cvetkovski are far more historical in character and require from the reader a certain familiarity with Russian ethnography, ethnology and anthropology in order to fully appreciate them).A number of essays directly address the applicability of Edward Said's theories regarding Orientalism to Russia and the Soviet Union. Sergey Abashin, in his essay on the scholarship of Uzbek ethnogenesis developed during the Stalinist period, expresses his desire to display a complexity that is veiled behind designations such as those used by Edward Said (p. 147). But theoretical complexity should not amount to lack of clarity: switching back and forth between names, ethnicities and historical periods, the reader gets lost in this informational muddle without fully grasping anything. …
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 14
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