Soviet Anthropology And Archeology

Selected articles from Soviet scholarly journals in English translation.

In Soviet Archaeology: Trends, Schools, and History, Russian archaeologist Leo S. Klejn looks at the peculiar phenomenon that is Soviet archaeology and how it differs to Western archaeology and the archaeology of pre-revolutionary Russia. Klejn shows that Soviet archaeology was not a monolithic block as Soviet ideologists attempted to represent it, but rather it was divided into competing schools and trends and, even under the veil of Marxist ideology,was often closely related to the movements occurring in western archaeology. As an archaeologist working during the turmoil of the Soviet government's rule over Russia, Klejn's scholarly account is laid out in ajournalistic manner, tracing the history of archaeology in Russian from 1917 to beyond 1991, as well as recounting the lives and fates of leading Soviet archaeologists in vivid descriptions with accompanying photographs.

This volume outlines the history of the Maritime Province from ancient times through the medieval period, from a general point of view, on the basis of archaeological materials and Chinese and other chronicles. There are chapters discussing the Upper Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Shell Mound periods; the transition to the Age of Metal; the rise of the P'o-hai state in the fifth to seventh centuries A.D., and its conquest by the Khitan state; and the rise and growth of the Jurchen (or Chin) empire from the mid-eleventh century, its defeat by the Mongols, and, briefly, the fate of the region afterwards. This book will appeal to historians, archaeologists, and all those interested in the past of the Far East. (Anthropology of the North: Translations form Russian Sources, No. 6)

This highly original case study, which adopts a material culture perspective, is unprecedented in social and cultural histories of the Soviet period and provides a unique window on social relations. The author demonstrates how Moisei Ginzburg's Constructivist masterpiece, the Narkomfin Communal House, employed classic Marxist understandings of material culture in an effort to overturn capitalist and patriarchal social structures. Through the edifying effects of architectural forms, Ginzburg attempted to induce socialist and feminist-inspired social and gender relations. The author shows how, for the inhabitants, these principles manifested themselves, from taste to hygiene to gender roles, and how individuals variously appropriated architectural space and material culture to cope with the conditions of daily life, from the utopianism of the First Five Year Plan and Stalin's purges to the collapse of the Soviet Union. This book makes a major contribution to: the history of socialism in the Soviet Union and, more generally, Eastern Europe; material culture studies; architectural history; archaeology and social anthropology.

Selected articles from Soviet scholarly journals in English translation.