From the ‘invention of tradition’ to the ethnography of the state: the Podkamennaia Tunguska river, 1920s

Abstract

Much of the ethnographic material from the Soviet period has already been well documented by historians and anthropologists and is often treated as a commonly known case of the ‘invention of tradition’, the process whereby newly defined ethno-national territories were endowed by the Bolshevik state with new flags, histories and languages. In actual fact, ethnography plays an important role in the process of creation a sustainable image of ‘what came before’. This is done in social and museum perspective of empires and their treatment of national states and ethnic movements. The aim of this article is to shift the focus of ethnographic research from the ‘invention of tradition’ to a new problematization of state anthropology. This is done through examining ethnographic materials from North Siberia in the 1920’s. To begin with the author traces the diary entries of the 1926 expedition of Suslov to Podkamennaya Tunguskato, showing how ethnographic perspectives were recorded. This reflects, in part, the social life of the state, which in the 1920’s took on the form of an incredible scientific and reformist expedition. What are interesting to the observer are the constructed or ‘invented’ traditions that were created during the course of these journeys. To a large extent, the techniques used to draft these traditions were in the form of textual and political materials that do fairly accurately reflect the social organisation, ethnographic and state style of those years. Furthermore, the diffusion in relationship between various state bodies is examined. It is, after all, within this process of diffusion that these techniques were used. The analysis is also based on the micro-historic analysis of the archive materials of the Committee for Assistance of Northern Districts of the USSR. This includes a discussion of the ‘Temporary Statute Regarding the Management of the Indigenous Nationalities and Tribes of the Northern Districts” from 1926 and the projects in regards to the construction of soil-irrigation machinery and land tenure reform in an extended plenum in 1928.