In Soviet times, anthropologists in the Soviet Union were closely involved in the state’s work of nation building. They helped define official nationalities, and gathered material about traditional customs and suitably heroic folklore, whilst at the same time refraining from work on the reality of contemporary Soviet life. Since the end of the Soviet Union anthropology in Russia has been transformed. International research standards have been adopted, and the focus of research has shifted to include urban culture and difficult subjects, such as xenophobia. However, this transformation has been, and continues to be, controversial, with, for example, strongly contested debates about the relevance of Western anthropology and cultural theory to post-Soviet reality. This book presents an overview of how anthropology in Russia has changed since Soviet times, and showcases examples of important Russian anthropological work. As such, the book will be of great interest not just to Russian specialists, but also to anthropologists more widely, and to all those interested in the way academic study is related to prevailing political and social conditions.

Table of contents

Introduction Albert Baiburin, Catriona Kelly, Nikolai Vakhtin

1. Writing the History of Russian Anthropology Sergei Sokolovsky

2. Female Taboos and Concepts of the Unclean among the Nenets. Elena Liarskaya

3. ‘The Wrong Nationality’: Ascribed Identity in the 1930s Soviet Union Albert Baiburin

4. The Queue as Narrative: A Soviet Case Study Konstantin Bogdanov

5. ‘I Didn’t Understand, But It Was Funny’: Late Soviet Festivals and their Impact on Children Catriona Kelly, Svetlana Sirotinina

6. The Practices of ‘Privacy’ in a South Russian Village (a Case Study of Stepnoe, Krasnodar Region) Alexander Manuylov

7. Believers’ Letters as Advertising: St Xenia of Petersburg’s ‘National Reception Centre’ Jeanne Kormina, Sergei Shtyrkov

8. ‘The Yellow Peril’ as Seen in Contemporary Church Culture Mariya Akhmetova

9. ‘Don’t Look at Them, They’re Nasty’: Photographs of Funerals in Russian Culture Olga Boitsova

10. Historical Zaryadye as Remembered by Locals: Cultural Meanings of City Spaces Pavel Kupriyanov. Lyudmila Sadovnikova

11. Yerevan: Memory and Forgetting in the Organization of Post-Soviet Urban Space Levon Abrahamian

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