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.