page_title: History of anthropology by country
section_title: Russia
hierarchical_section_title: History of anthropology by country / Eastern Europe / Russia
caption_attribution_description: English: Building Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg Русский: Здание Российской Академии Наук в Санкт-Петербурге Deutsch: Gebäude der Russische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Sankt Petersburg Français&#160;: Bâtiment de l'Académie russe des sciences en Saint-Pétersbourg
context_page_description: Anthropology is the study of various aspects of humans within past and present societies. This study is practiced in multiple countries, each of whom has their own history of how anthropology has developed in their respective countries.
context_section_description: The beginnings of anthropology in Russia can be traced back to the establishment of the Russian Academy of Sciences under Peter the Great in 1725. Following the Academy of Sciences, many museums were also created with the impetus for studying culture, including the Ethnographic Bureau of the Russian Geographical Society in the mid-19th century. The 1840s also saw the creation of physical anthropology and archaeology as sub-disciplines of anthropology. In 1864 the first university department for anthropology in Russia was created at Moscow University. The first specialized journal for Russian anthropology, (trans.) The Ethnographic Review (Etnograficheskoe obozrenie), was created in 1889. As Russia did not have state-supplemented funding in the 19th century, much of the financial support came from aristocrats such as Count Aleksey Uvarov and Prince V. N. Tenishev.
  In the early 20th century, St. Petersburg and Moscow would be centers for the development of anthropology—focused on ethnology and ethnography—with the formation of the Department of Ethnology in Leningrad (1928), Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (1924), the publication of the journal Ethnography (1926), the Anuchin Institute of Anthropology at the University of Moscow (1922), etc. Anthropology in Russia was also influenced by Western anthropological perspectives, such as Franz Boas.
  Following the Communist Party takeover, Russia began to favor ethnology over anthropology. Ethnology was the study of different ethnic groups within the state, which supported the push for homogenization and national unification of the Russian state. Marxist theory replaced Western anthropological theory, and various university departments were closed as Russia experienced an ideological reconstruction. In the mid-20th century, with undercurrents of the Cold War, social and cultural anthropology were rejected from ethnographic study, but ethnography was re-institutionalized and strengthened in universities and institutions across Russia.
  In the latter half of the 20th century, Russian ethnography to other parts of the world in which Soviet influence was strong, such as Eastern Europe. The Perestroika in 1985 led to another bout of reconstruction for anthropology, and Russian science in general. Institutes were renamed and reconfigured to match this new trend. Social anthropology also began to make a comeback, leading to identity problems for social anthropology as a discipline in a country with such a strong ethnographic tradition that had excluded it for years.
  The 1990s, a time of great social and political change for Russia with the end of the USSR, were a time for critical introspective views on the recent past. With this, Russian anthropology turned towards more contemporary interests, where it still is today. Even with these contemporary interests, Russian anthropology still finds itself heavily influenced by the ethnology of its past and attempting to reconcile what it means to be a “social” anthropologist in this environment.
caption: Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg
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