Antropologicheskij forum, 2025, no. 67

ETHNOLOGICAL STATIONS OF THE 1920S: TOWARDS А HISTORY OF THE STATIONARY METHOD IN SOVIET ETHNOGRAPHY

Stanislav Petriashin

The Russian Museum of Ethnography
4/1 Inzhenernaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
s.petryashin()ethnomuseum.ru

Abstract: The paper examines the history of ethnological stations in the context of the influence of the natural sciences on the development of the stationary method in Soviet ethnography of the 1920s. The study is intended to complement the dominant narrative in historiography, according to which the history of the stationary method in early Soviet ethnography is reduced to the history of the “Leningrad school of ethnography” of L. Ya. Sternberg and V. G. Bogoras. The ideas behind creating ethnological stations were formed in the last third of the 19th — early 20th centuries in German and Russian science under the influence of examples of successful work of biological and meteorological stations. These ideas, however, gained popularity and were partly implemented only in the 1920s. In the projects of some Soviet ethnographers and folklorists, stations were linked with stationary research and the involvement of local students in field work. The complex and contradictory relationships between central and local institutions are revealed using the examples of the Upper Volga expedition of D. A. Zolotarev and his project to create five ethnographic stations at the Ethnographic Department of the Russian Museum. Inequality in financial, scientific and organisational terms made it extremely difficult to attract specialists in local studies to stationary work and to set up ethnographic stations. An analysis of the work of ethnological stations founded by the Volga scientific societies shows significant differences between the ideas of ethnographers from the capital and those of local specialists in regional studies. The latter understood the stationary method differently and often preferred other methods of collecting materials on the culture of peasants and townspeople.

Keywords: ethnological stations, D. A. Zolotarev, local studies, stationary method, Soviet ethnography.

To cite: Petriashin S., ‘Etnologicheskie stantsii 1920-kh gg.: k istorii statsionarnogo metoda v sovetskoy etnografii’ [Ethnological Stations of the 1920s: Towards а History of the Stationary Method in Soviet Ethnography], Antropologicheskij forum, 2025, no. 67, pp. 28–58.

doi: 10.31250/1815-8870-2025-21-67-28-58

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/067/petriashin.pdf