Russian Socialist, Jewish Activist
LIKE most of the other pre-revolutionary Jewish ethnographers, Shternberg entered this discipline by accident. Like them he had been arrested in the 1880s for Populist (Narodnik) activities and exiled to the empire’s eastern periphery. In his case, it was the Sakhalin Island where he became interest...
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| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.503.1275 http://history.kubsu.ru/pdf/n5-27.pdf |
| Summary: | LIKE most of the other pre-revolutionary Jewish ethnographers, Shternberg entered this discipline by accident. Like them he had been arrested in the 1880s for Populist (Narodnik) activities and exiled to the empire’s eastern periphery. In his case, it was the Sakhalin Island where he became interested in the local indigenous peoples (particularly the Gilyak or Nivkh) and collected a great deal of data on their social organization, religion, folklore, and language. Unlike their Western socialist counterparts, the Nar-odniks believed that a country, like Russia, where the peasants still greatly outnumbered the proletariat, did not have to experience the horrors of industrial capitalism. In fact, they viewed the Russian peasant commune as a quasi-socialist institution, which had to be protected and cultivated, so as to become the foundation of the future egalitarian society of small- |
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