Lev Shternberg: Anthropologist, Russian Socialist, Jewish Activist (Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology)

574 Pages·2009·4.49 MB·English

by  Sergei A. Kan

Lev Shternberg
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Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology
Series Editors
Regna Darnell
Stephen O. Murray
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lev shternberg
Anthropologist, Russian Socialist, Jewish Activist
sergei kan
university of nebraska press | lincoln and london
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© 2009 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska
All rights reserved
Portions of this book previously appeared in: “Evolutionism and
Historical Particularism at the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthro-
pology and Ethnography,” Museum Anthropology 31.1 (2008): 1–19;
“The Mystery of the Missing Monograph; or Why Shternberg’s
‘The Social Organization of the Gilyak’ Never Appeared among
the Jesup Expedition Publications,” European Review of Native
American Studies 14.2 (2000): 19–38; and “The ‘Russian Bastian’
and Boas; or Why Shternberg’s ‘The Social Organization of the
Gilyak’ Never Appeared among the Jesup Expedition Publica-
tions,” pp. 217–48, in Gateways: Exploring the Legacy of the Jesup
North Pacifi c Expedition, 1897–1902, ed. William K. Fitzhugh and
Igor Krupnik (Washington dc: Arctic Studies Center, Smith-
sonian Institution, 2001).
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kan, Sergei.
Lev Shternberg : anthropologist, Russian socialist, Jewish
activist / Sergei Kan.
p. cm. — (Critical studies in the history of anthropology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8032-1603-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Shternberg, Lev Iakovlevich, 1861–1927. 2. Anthropolo-
gists—Russia—Biography. I. Title.
gn21.s5k36 2009
301.092—dc22
[B]
2008049065
Set in Quadraat by Kim Essman.
Designed by Ray Boeche.
Jacket and title page: Photograph of Lev Shternberg taken
in Leningrad in 1924 for his foreign travel documents. St.
Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, 282/1/194:22.
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In Memory of
Yuli Moiseevich Glazman (1911–2001)
Joseph Ostashevsky (1945–2003)
Mikhail Fainshtein (1948–2003)
genuine representatives
of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia
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Each person’s life should be like a work of literature, regardless of whether it
has been completed or not. Hence, it can break off at any moment but still
represent a story that is instructive, beautiful, and rich in content.
From a letter by Lev Shternberg to Ivan Iuvachev
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Contents
List of Illustrations x
Series Editors’ Introduction xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction xv
1. The Early Years 1
2. Sakhalin 25
3. Beginning a Professional Career in the Capital 112
4. Scholarship and Activism during the 1905 Revolution 144
5. The Last Decade before the Storm 161
6. The Years of Turmoil, 1914–17 224
7. Building a New Anthropology in the “City of the Living Dead” 267
8. The nep Era and the Last Years of Shternberg’s Life 293
9. All Humanity Is One 392
Conclusion 439
Notes 447
References 489
Index 521
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