Paper short abstract:

The paper looks at the dynamics of relations between Soviet ethnographers and their foreign colleagues in the 1940-60s. It shows that the discipline acquired a global outlook and developed tactics aimed at attracting the minds of scholars from all three "worlds" of the Cold War geography.

Paper long abstract:

Stalinist regime had ambivalent effect on the Russian science. Repressions and governmental support collided to create a specific intellectual environment in which anthropological knowledge was highly politicized. Soviet ethnography, decimated in the 1930s, acquired new dynamics due to the war-related project of ethnic mapping of the territories of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany. This classified work was in direct connection with the post-war redrawing of European national borders. The institutional base of ethnography was further solidified with a launch of the book series "The Peoples of the World", an 18-volumes set completed in 1964. The writing of the volume "The Peoples of Central and South-Western Europe", joint projects, conferences and the German-language journal "Demos" provided the venue for collaboration within socialist bloc. Soviet ethnographers were also eager to establish their science as a template for scholars of the decolonizing "third world". The "Peoples of Africa", the first volume in the set, was widely advertised as a pioneering work that described the crimes of slavery and colonialism. In their relations with the capitalist west, Soviet ethnography pursued the politics of seeking alliance with left-oriented and Marxist scholars such as Leslie A. White and Eleanor B. Leacock, while harshly criticizing "personality and culture" studies, which were labeled "psycho-racism". The peak of international efforts of Soviet ethnographers was the Moscow international congress of ethnological and anthropological sciences held in 1964. Nevertheless, Stalinist legacies were preserved in dogmatic Marxist evolutionism and black-and-white perception of the development of world anthropology.