Antropologicheskij forum, 2024, no. 61

A Review of SERGEI KAN, LEV SHTERNBERG: ETNOLOG, NARODNIK, BORETS ZA PRAVA EVREEV [LEV SHTERNBERG: ANTHROPOLOGIST, RUSSIAN SOCIALIST, JEWISH ACTIVIST], transl. from English by A. Glebovskaya. St Petersburg; Boston: Bibliorossika; Academic Studies Press, 2023, 694 pp. (Contemporary Jewish Studies)

Igor Kuznetsov

Institute of Linguistics, RAS
1 Bolshoy Kislovskiy Lane, Moscow, Russia
i.kuznetsov()iling-ran.ru

Abstract: This book written by Sergei Kan is dedicated to Lev Shternberg (1961–1927), who was a major Russian ethnographer and public figure, one of the founders of the so-called Leningrad school. The Russian translation of the book is reviewed. The large-scale study, rich in archival sources from all possible collections (American Philosophical Society, American Museum of Natural History, the Kunstkammer, RAS Archives, etc.), has been written in the best traditions of the prominent historian George Stocking’s approach. The reviewer notes several undoubted merits of Kan’s work. The main one is an attempt to place the Russian scholar’s research in the context of the Western anthropology of his time. One of the most profound ideas of the book concerns the assessment of Morgan’s influence on Sternberg’s work, and, in a broader perspective, on the development of the social sciences in Russia and the USSR, where, according to the author, social evolutionism played a much more progressive role than in Europe or the USA. That theory served rather to confirm the necessity of social reform, and neither then nor later was it associated with the reaction in the natural sciences, Eurocentrism, and white racism that Boas saw in it. At the same time, the edition under review contains a few inaccuracies and factual errors, some of which were already present in the original edition, while others have arisen due to a not entirely accurate translation.

Keywords: history of anthropology, Lev Shternberg, Franz Boas, evolutionism.

To cite: Kuznetsov I., ‘A Review of Sergei Kan, Lev Shternberg: etnolog, narodnik, borets za prava evreev [Lev Shternberg: Anthropologist, Russian Socialist, Jewish Activist], transl. from English by A. Glebovskaya. St Petersburg; Boston: Bibliorossika; Academic Studies Press, 2023, 694 pp. (Contemporary Jewish Studies)’, Antropologicheskij forum, 2024, no. 61, pp. 221–229.

doi: 10.31250/1815-8870-2024-20-61-221-229

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/061/kuznetsov.pdf