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Evolutionism and Historical Particularism at the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography

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Evolutionism and Historical Particularism at the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography Dartmouth College Dartmouth Digital Commons Dartmouth Scholarship Faculty Work Winter 2008 Evolutionism and Historical Particularism at the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography Sergei Kan Dartmouth College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa Part of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Intellectual History Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation Kan, Sergei, "Evolutionism and Historical Particularism at the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography" (2008). Dartmouth Scholarship. 645. https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/645 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Work at Dartmouth Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dartmouth Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Dartmouth Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 28 Evolutionism and Historical Particularism at the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography Sergei Kan n the history of anthropology, ‘‘the Museum Shternberg (1861–1927) who joined the MAE’s Period’’ has usually been described as ex- staff in 1901 and remained there until his death. I tending from the 1840s to the 1890s With Radlov being preoccupied primarily with (Sturtevant 1969:622). However, as George Stock- the more practical tasks of lobbying with govern- ing (1985:8) points out, ‘‘from the point of view of ment officials for more money and space and both the employment of anthropological personnel reporting on the museum’s progress to the and the support of field research, the great period Academy of Sciences that oversaw it, much of of museum anthropology only really began in the the day-to-day running of the MAE and especially 1890s.’’ The scholarly and the larger public articulating the vision for its development was debates surrounding the establishment and the done by Shternberg. subsequent development of each of the major An extremely erudite and politically engaged 19th-century museums reflected both key develop- public intellectual, Shternberg was one of Russia’s ments within anthropology in general and within leading cultural anthropologists (‘‘ethnographers’’ its local variants as well as within the larger ideo- in Russian terminology) of the first quarter of the logical and political milieu of the country in 20th century.2 While the corpus of his written work question. is relatively modest (especially in contrast to that While the history of the leading Western Euro- of Adolf Bastian or Franz Boas, with both of whom pean and North American museums is fairly well he has been most often compared), his active known to Anglo-American anthropologists (see, e.g., participation in Russian ethnological societies and Dias 1991; Freese 1960; Karp and Lavine 1991; scholarly meetings, his key role in developing pro- Penny 2002; Stocking 1985), Eastern European grams for systematic collecting of museum artifacts museums have rarely been the subject of serious and ethnographic data in general, and in training discussion within our scholarly community. A good the first generation of professional ethnographers case in point is the St. Petersburg Museum of in the pre-1917 Russia and in the USSR made Anthropology and Ethnography (MAE).1 Although him a major figure in his nation’s anthropology, its roots are in the ‘‘Kunstkamera’’ of the emperor especially in St. Petersburg/Leningrad. Although Peter the Great and its original collections were he was not the only Russian scholar to conduct significantly augmented between the 1830s and long-term ethnographic field research in a remote the 1880s, the MAE did not become a truly compre- part of the empire, Shternberg was one of the hensive modern museum of general ethnology most articulate advocates of ‘‘participant observa- (and to a lesser extent, archeology and physical tion’’ (or what he called ‘‘the stationary method’’) anthropology) until the turn of the century. Much of and of combining careful fieldwork with the the work of radically transforming it was accom- application of theoretical issues. He was also one plished under the leadership of Vasilii Vasil’evich of the first modern Russian ethnologists to articu- Radlov (1837–1918), who served as its director late a broad vision of that discipline, one that between 1894 and 1918 and especially its sole ‘‘senior included the study of culture in evolutionist and ethnographer’’ (i.e., senior curator), Lev Iakovlevich cultural historical frameworks and one attentive EVOLUTIONISM AND HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM 29 to structural-functionalist dimensions as well expeditions as well as the Museum’s numerous as the problems of intercultural relations (e.g., local ‘‘corresponding members’’ all of whom were borrowing, diffusion). encouraged to combine artifact-collecting with Central to Shternberg’s anthropology was his ethnographic research. As a Jew and a former life-long commitment to Morganian/Tylorian evo- political exile, he was prohibited from teaching lutionism (which he saw as a single theory), even in ethnology in the Russian system of higher educa- the face of the mounting criticism of this approach tion. However, he managed to lecture to university coming from within the Western, and eventually students and public school teachers within the Russian, anthropological traditions (see Artiomova MAE’s halls and, after 1917, was instrumental in 1991; Stocking 1995). This commitment is particu- establishing the first department of ‘‘ethnography’’ larly peculiar, given Shternberg’s close collegiate at the Leningrad University. Finally, it was largely ties with many Western anthropologists of the anti- thanks to his efforts that the MAE’s collections evolutionists camp, with Boas being foremost became the subject of scholarly research.6 among them.3 While Shternberg-the-theoretician After briefly examining the Russian ethnolo- was a dedicated evolutionist, as a field ethnograp- gist’s intellectual biography, I focus on the her (rather than an armchair theoretician) and a relationship between his ambitious vision of what left-wing Russian intellectual of the Narodnik an ‘‘academic museum of general ethnography’’ (Populist/Socialist) persuasion, he admired the so- was supposed to be and an image of the world’s non- called ‘‘primitive’’4 peoples’ character as well as Western peoples that he and his MAE colleagues many of their key social and religious institutions created in their displays. I demonstrate that for a and was not eager to see them disappear variety of reasons, some of them having to do with in the face of a rapidly advancing civilization, Shternberg’s own scholarly interests and others especially in its authoritarian Russian version. with the state of Russian ethnology and the exis- Herein lies a major difference between him and a tence of another rival museum in St. Petersburg, number of Western evolutionist museum curators, a significant discrepancy existed between this such as General Pitt Rivers, whose method of ‘‘ar- vision and reality. Of course, there were also some ranging objects linearly, in terms of externally mundane reasons for Shternberg’s inability to put defined formal or functional qualities’’ conveyed his vision into practiceFfrom the demands of the ‘‘an ethnocentric message of conservative evolu- Museum’s academic overseers and budgetary tionary gradualism’’ (Stocking 1985:8; see also constraints to the lack of a sufficient number of Chapman 1985). Shternberg’s admiration for the artifacts for representing all of the world’s cultures members of tribal societies linked to each other by in both ‘‘static’’ and ‘‘dynamic’’ perspectives.7 In the kinship bonds and religious ideology rather than end, he had to face some of the same ‘‘limitations of the coercive institutions of a state, brought him the museum method of anthropology’’ that also closer to such French socialist ethnologists as plagued other museum-based ethnologists, includ- Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss and even to ing Boas who, in the early 1900s, chose to leave Boas and the Boasians.5 the American Museum of Natural History for Having found himself almost by accident an Columbia University (Jacknis 1985). employee of the MAE, Shternberg attempted, with There are several reasons for exploring Shtern- all the passion of his character, to put his ambitious berg’s ambitious plan for revolutionizing Russia’s and rather contradictory vision of anthropology leading ethnographic museum and his limited suc- into practice. In the process, he did accomplish a cess in putting that plan into practice. Firstly, such great deal, particularly in the area of dramatically an exploration sheds light on both the similarities increasing and diversifying the MAE’s collections and the significant differences between late 19th through expeditions sponsored by both the MAE and early 20th-century ethnographic museums in and other museums, as well as through exchanges the West and in Russia and thus significantly with domestic and foreign museums. He was also broadens and deepens our understanding of the responsible for offering what amounted to mini- history of anthropology of that era. Secondly, it courses in ethnology and museum-collecting to serves as a case study of one museum curator’s MAE’s own curators about to embark on their attempt to balance the three major tasks that 30 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 31 NUMBER 1 most anthropological museums have always been
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