Paper short abstract:

The paper argues that issues of ethnology in Lithuania and Latvia before the Second World War reveals wide playground of Eduards Volters (1856–1941) between imperial and Soviet regimes, different academic circles, and national politics. The disscussion is based on discourse analyses.

Paper long abstract:

The paper argues that issues of ethnology in Lithuania and Latvia before the Second World War reveals wide playground of Eduards Volters (1856–1941) between imperial and Soviet regimes, different academic circles, and national politics. Volters was one of the founders of Lithuanian ethnography. He was interested in Latvian ethnographic-statistical studies. The Latvian ethnographer, linguist, folklorist and archeologist studied in Leipzig, Kharkiv, and Moscow universities. Later, based in the University of Saint Petersburg, as a member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, he carried out ethnographic research in the north-western regions of the Russian Empire, where Lithuanians and Latvians was settled. At the same time together with Jonas Basanavičius, Volters was involved in political awakenning of Lithuania until 1918. Volter worked on programmes for Lithuanian and Latvian studies. After the revolution in Russia, Volter emigrated to Lithuania, where, based in Lithuania’ universities, developed ethnology before the Second World War. Valters’ concepts of ethnography, statistics, anthropology and archeology influenced ethnology even after the Second World War through the works of his students who emigrated to the USA. We focus on the following questions: (1) how did Volters motivate the choises between imperial and nation-building interests, (2) did Volters ethnology from the perspectives of evoliutionism, diffusionism and nationalism relate to European academia, (3) what Volters’ concepts impacted the theory of Lithuanian studies in Lithuania and later in USA. The disscussion is based on discourse analyses and archival data in relation to the history and theory of anthropology and ethnology.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation analyses the museological activities of the Estonian ethnologist Ferdinand Linnus (1895–1942) in the 1930s and in the beginning of the 1940s. I will focus on the question of his collaboration with Soviet authorities in 1940–1941 in reorganizing Estonian museum network.

Paper long abstract:

My presentation focuses on the museological activities of Ferdinand Linnus (1895–1942), the long-time director of the Estonian National Museum (ENM). I analyse his thoughts on museology in the 1930s independent Estonia and during the Soviet occupation, 1940-1941. I am interested in how his ideas were dependent on the ruling powers and ideologies.

By the 1930s, Linnus had become one of the leaders of Estonian ethnology and the promoter of local museum life. He was familiar with contemporary ethnological and museological approaches in Northern Europe. He spoke about those issues in the press and at public events.

The Soviet Union occupied Estonia in 1940. Museums had to start working on the right ideological foundation. They faced nationalization and redistribution of collections, the morale of staff was checked. While in most museums the directors were replaced, Linnus stayed put. Even more so, he became one of the leaders of the reorganization of the Estonian museum network. The Soviet authorities probably took advantage of his extensive expertise. But could it be the other way around, that Linnus used the opportunity offered by the new regime to implement his earlier ideas? In order to answer this question, I will mainly analyse the archival material of F. Linnus that has recently come into ENM`s possession.

The hypocrisy of the Soviet power is shown by the fact that already in the summer of 1941 several museum workers were arrested and taken to the prison camps, among them F. Linnus, who died already in the following year.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation is focusing on the fate of key academic institutions of Estonian ethnology and the choices made by individual researchers in 1941–1944, to find out the functions of ethnology for different actors in Nazi-occupied Estonia.

Paper long abstract:

Estonian ethnology developed as a small but important branch of Estonian studies in the 1920s and 1930s. There were two centers, closely linked to each other – Tartu University and Estonian National Museum. Estonian ethnologists tended to be conscious patriots with clear national identity. Nazi Germany occupied Estonia from the summer of 1941 until the autumn of 1944. It is important to notice that it occurred after a year of the Soviet occupation. Nazis took ethnology quite seriously and tried to use it to substantiate their ideology and actions. How did Estonian ethnology and ethnologists fare under German rule? To what extent were they able to continue with their current research topics? What were the Nazis' plans for ethnological research on Estonians and Estonia? Did they try to exploit Estonian ethnologists? To what extent did Estonian ethnologists cooperate with the Nazis? Who did they have in mind as the audience for their research? In short, what were the functions of ethnology for the different actors in Nazi-occupied Estonia? To answer these questions, I will focus on the fate of key academic institutions and the choices made by individual researchers.

Paper short abstract:

The paper will examine the activities and environment of the Latvian Soviet ethnographers during the field work in the first decades after the WWII facing the gap between the Soviet simulacrum and reality. The sources of the research are the diaries of ethnographers and members of the expeditions.

Paper long abstract:

After the Second World War and Latvia's occupation by USSR, ethnography, like other sciences, entered the system of the Academy of Sciences. By changing institutional affiliation and at the same time working and learning (there were no professional ethnographers in Latvia), ethnographers were subject to strict rules of procedure for plans and reports. The five-year and annual plans also included fieldwork and monographs prepared on their basis, which would prove the dominance of the Soviet regime over the previous ones. Since 1947, in the expeditions carried out in the territory of Latvia, one of the requirements was to keep fieldwork diaries, in which the things seen during the day must be recorded. Life in the countryside – the hard work of the collective farmers, the empty houses left by the deported residents, the struggle of the representatives of the Soviet power and the national partisans, hunger and poverty – differed significantly from the narrative of the Soviet power and made it difficult to achieve the goal set in the work plan of the ethnographers. Observations reflected in the diaries often were not put to the worksheets to be submitted to the Repository of Ethnographic Materials. Documentation of material culture objects came to the fore.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the phenomenon of an émigré anthropologist, close student of Malinowski, who left Poland soon after WWII. Despite the possibility of entering the anthropological mainstream, his academic trajectory broke down and he remained a marginal figure albeit a remarkable scholar.

Paper long abstract:

This paper, based on archival sources, is an attempt at expounding the motivation, choices and fate of an émigré Polish anthropologist, whose position seems to have been marginal and mediating at the same time. Józef Obrębski (1905-1967) left Poland in 1946, on the eve of the takeover of the Polish field of social science by the Communists, according to the Soviet pattern. He was neither a DP nor a political refugee in the strict sense. He left the country legally. His colleagues from Malinowski’s seminar at the London School of Economics, in which he participated in the early 1930s, invited Obrębski to deliver lectures in Oxford and afterwards to conduct fieldwork in Jamaica in cooperation with the West Indian Social Survey. This project could have resulted in establishing his position in the field of Western anthropology. But it never came to fruition and instead Obrębski worked at the UN Trusteeship Department in New York as a Polish representative. He maintained close contacts with his colleagues in Poland, mainly sociologists, and considered returning to Warsaw after the 1956 revolution. Only in 1964 did he receive US citizenship. For the last decade of his life he taught sociology and anthropology at several NYU colleges, but he never found himself in the mainstream of American anthropology. In this paper I am analysing the phenomenon of Obrębski’s marginality in connection with the breakdown of his academic trajectory. This analysis can be seen as a contribution to the history of East European ethnology/anthropology in exile. 

Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the correspondence between ethnologists Milovan Gavazzi and Milenko Filipović, emphasizing the individual destinies of the two ethnologists and their strategies for dealing with challenges in a time of great socio-political turmoil in the 20th century.

Paper long abstract:

In the “short twentieth century“ period, a series of comprehensive social and political changes took place in Southeastern Europe. In just a few decades in the period from 1918 to 1945, several states were formed and several political regimes changed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. This paper will try to show the individual destinies of two ethnologists focusing on the correspondence between the Croatian ethnologist Milovan Gavazzi and his Serbian colleague Milenko Filipović. It is a continuous and content-rich correspondence that chronologically covers the period from 1930 to 1969. During that period several states were formed and dissolved (e. g. Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Independent State of Croatia, Socialist Yugoslavia). In that case, the Second World War represented an important historical turning point that decided the fates of the two ethnologists. In the interwar period, both ethnologists often worked outside their profession's narrow framework. However, in the shadow of the new socialist regime, their influence within the profession was gradually undermined due to various forms of repression after the Second World War. Therefore, I will focus on 1) the individual destinies of these two ethnologists, which became intertwined through the force of circumstance, as well as 2) the strategies that each of them used in order to cope with the challenges of the aforementioned period of great socio-political turmoil. The paper is methodologically grounded on the analysis of archival materials, mostly correspondence and written documentation, as well as academic literature in the field of the history of ethnology.

Paper short abstract:

The paper re-reads the two histories of Romanian ethnology published during Communism (Gheorghe Vrabie, 1968 and Ovidiu Bîrlea, 1974), exposing the political side of these works as moral compromise and as profitable participation in the larger political game of the time.

Paper long abstract:

The paper re-reads the two histories of Romanian ethnology published during Communism (Gheorghe Vrabie, 1968 and Ovidiu Bîrlea, 1974), exposing the political side of these works as moral compromise and as profitable participation in the larger political game of the time. Although these authors enjoy distinct reputations (Vrabie is regarded as a rather “obedient” researcher, while Bîrlea is seen more as the ”steppenwolf” of his generation, a dissident and antiestablishment figure), both histories produce explanations, make evaluations, use concepts and perspectives that actually synthesize and strengthen the epistemic principles of communist ethnology. While both authors seek not to abandon the rigors of an honorable disciplinary discourse, they prove sincere and honest in perpetuating the nationalist and sometimes exceptionalist views of the interwar period, in which both Vrabie and Bîrlea were formed as intellectuals and which were reactivated by communist/ nationalist propaganda of the 70’s. Caught in this kind of ”game”, Vrabie and Bîrlea share much more than they were ever ready to admit. Moreover, since institutional, disciplinary and intellectual traditions are strong, some of the communist epistemic values still survive in euphemized, disguised forms, mostly connected to the problems of heritage and national identity.

Paper short abstract:

In our report, we consider the role and influence of international cooperation on the activities of the Georgian ethnologist and canonized Man of God Ekvtime Takaishvili and the methods of his interaction with different political regimes.

Paper long abstract:

Two world wars and a revolution in Russia in the 20th century led to changes in the established world order. Rapidly changing political regimes brought with them new attitudes and values. Under such conditions of uncertainty, international cooperation played a special role.

In our presentation, we will consider the role and influence of international cooperation on the life and work of the Georgian ethnologist, historian and archaeologist Ekvtime Takaishvili (1863 - 1953) at different periods of his life, in particular in Tsarist Russia, in independent Georgia in 1918-1921, during his emigration in France and in the Georgian SSR. On the one hand, foreign contacts gave him a chance for salvation, on the other hand, they served as a pretext for accusations of anti-Soviet activities.

Of particular interest are the methods of his interaction with various political regimes during his mission as the guardian of national treasures taken to France after Georgia lost its independence in 1921. Evktime Takaishvili managed to protect the exhibits of cultural heritage from the encroachments of Georgian emigrants, from collectors and museums, hide them from Nazi Germany, prevent the confiscation of jewelry by France and convince the authorities of the Soviet Union to return the collection to their historical homeland in the Georgian SSR.

He was outside of politics and nationalism. The Orthodox faith and love for Georgian culture helped him survive all the trials and remain true to his principles. In 2002, the Georgian Orthodox Church canonized Ekvtime Takaishvili as a saint.