Ethnographic Commission

One of the four "pillars" of the Society is the Department of Ethnography, which appeared back in 1845. According to the provisional Charter, the circle of interests of the department included information about the former and current state of the peoples within the state, "in physical, moral, social, and linguistic regards." The Scientific Archive of the Society still contains several thousand manuscripts of ethnographic nature, collected from all over Russia. A detailed inventory with annotations on these materials was partially published a hundred years ago by the ethnographer Dmitry Konstantinovich Zelenin (three-volume edition “Opisanie rukopisej uchenogo arhiva Imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva” (eng. "Description of Manuscripts of the scientific archive of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society"), 1914–16: Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3). But this work was interrupted, and the fourth volume was published with the support of the RGS only a century later in 2019.

The development of ethnographic maps was another important focus area. Such famous ethnographic maps of European Russia as the ones by Köppen (1851) and Rittich (1875) were developed in the 19th century. The department published “Zapiski Imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva po otdeleniyu etnografii” (eng. “Notes of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in the Field of Ethnography”), the magazine “Zhivaya Starina” (eng. “Living Antiquity”), and the Ethnographic Collection.

In the 19th century, the Society had a plan to open an ethnographic museum, unfortunately, it was not realized. Objects intended for museum display and collected during expeditions (F.P. Litke’s, N.N. Miklukho-Maklai’s, Ch.Ch. Valikhanov’s, G.N. Potanin’s, etc.), were transferred to the Kunstkamera in 1891.

There was a Grand Gold Medal from the Department of Ethnography and Statistics. The Department of Ethnography is closely connected with the history of the formation of academic ethnographic science. This was especially evident in the work of Sergei Fedorovich Oldenburg, who was for a long time chairman of the department and at the same time secretary of the Academy of Sciences. The department established a permanent commission for the compilation of ethnic maps of Russia, from which, in the post-revolutionary period, a scientific institution (institute) under the Academy of Sciences was actually created: the commission for the study of tribal composition, which is one of the "progenitors" of the N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology RAS.

Read more about the pre-revolutionary stage in the history of Ethnography in the RGS in this article.

With the revival of the Russian Geographical Society in 2009, the re-establishment of its traditional commissions and branches began. At a meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Society in the spring of 2011, Chairman of the Board V.V. Putin proposed the re-establishment of the Ethnographic Commission. Valery Aleksandrovich Tishkov, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Scientific Director of the Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, agreed to become Chairman of the Commission.

The modern stage in the history of ethnography in the RGS began in 2013. One of the first initiatives of the reconstituted commission, which was then successfully implemented, was the establishment of the N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Gold Medal of the RGS. In subsequent years, thanks to the efforts of the commission members, this award was awarded to outstanding Russian and foreign ethnologists: Mihály Hoppál (Hungary, 2015), Daniil Davidovich Tumarkin (Russia, 2015), Ulla-Kristin Johansen (Germany, 2018), Sergei Aleksandrovich Arutyunov (Russia, 2019), and others.

/

The commission brings together leading Russian experts in the field of ethnology, anthropology, folklore studies and cultural geography, as well as members of thematic scientific commissions of the regional branches of the Society.

The commission's activities are aimed at developing scientific research and a deep understanding of Russia's geographical, ethnocultural, and historical identity, popularizing and preserving Russia's ethnographic, historical, and cultural heritage as a matter of national pride, collecting, processing and disseminating global and national ethnographic information in Russia and abroad, and examining ethnographic projects, programs, and events of the RGS.

A number of publications were published under the auspices of the Ethnographic Commission, including with the grant support of the RGS. This is a series of illustrated ethnographic albums: “Traditsionnaya kultura russkogo naroda v sredney polose Yevropeyskoy chasti strany” (2015) (eng. "Traditional Culture of the Russian People in the Central Zone of the European Part of the Country"); “Khorezm: istoriya otkrytiy i issledovaniy” (2016) (eng. "Khorezm: History of Discovery and Research"); “Tsentralnaya Rossiya v fotografiyakh Z.Z. Vinogradova” (2017) (eng. "Central Russia in Photographs by Z.Z. Vinogradov"); “Obrazy Rossii nachala XX veka v fotografiyakh kollektsii akademika D.N. Anuchina” (2020) (eng. "Images of Russia from the Beginning of the 20th Century in Photographs of the Collection of Academician D.N. Anuchin"; “Komi-permyaki na fotografiyakh vtoroy poloviny XIX – nachala XX v.v” (2021) (eng. "Komi- Permyaks in Photographs of the Second Half of the 19th – Early 20th Centuries"); as well as “Etnogeograficheskiy atlas Orenburgskoy oblasti” (eng. "Ethnogeographic Atlas of the Orenburg Region"); and other publications.

/

With the support of the commission, an animated documentary film by A.Y.Vakhrushev about the sea hunters of Chukotka, “Kniga Morya” (eng. “The Book of the Sea”), was created and expedition studies of landscapes and cultural evolution of island communities in the Far East, as well as the historical and cultural heritage of Russian America were undertaken.

At the meetings of the commission, reports are heard on the results of grant projects of an ethnological, anthropological, historical, cultural, and geographical focus, many of which were initiated by the commission.

The commission is actively involved in the preparation of the RGS festivals. For example, in 2015, as part of the II RGS Festival, the commission jointly with the “Rossiya – Kultura” TV channel held an "Ethnography Day". The guests of the festival saw a number of ethnographic films, were able to talk with ethnographers, receive comments from leading scientists, and listen to their lectures. In 2017, at the III RGS Festival, the ethnographic theme became the main theme – the slogan of the event was the phrase "The Soul of Russia is Its People!". The members of the commission took an active part in the preparation and holding of this event.

/

The members of the commission also participated in lectures at the RGS Youth Summer School, which was held at the cultural and educational center “Ethnomir” in the Kaluga Region.

The commission cooperates with the relevant public organization of Russia, which unites leading experts in this field of knowledge, the Association of Anthropologists and Ethnologists of Russia. Thematic sessions are organized at the congresses of the association. Thus, at the XII Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists of Russia (Izhevsk, 2017), a round table "Ethnographer as a Traveler" was held, where issues of organizing field ethnographic work, the role of theoretical training in the work of a researcher, ethical issues, and the educational function of ethnographic expeditions were discussed. At the XIII Congress (Kazan, 2019), an offsite meeting of the commission was held, where the issues of ethnographic education and the preservation of historical and cultural landscapes of Russia were discussed. The meeting ended with the premiere screening of the ethnographic film "The Book of the Sea", shot with the grant support of the RGS. A team of specialists led by a member of the commission, E.A. Rezvan, conducted a "census" of Russian ethnologists and anthropologists of the 20th century, creating a unique online bibliographic dictionary.