Ethnos on the Map: Geographical Imagination of the School of Fedor Volkov

Abstract

The article considers the role of ethnographic and anthropological cartography in the making of the “ethnos” theory. Identification of ethnographic / anthropological types on the basis of geographical correlation of anthropological, ethnographical, and linguistic data lay at the root of the methodology of Fedor Volkov and his students. The Commission for the Making of Ethnographic Map of Russia of the RGO became a “laboratory” where this methodology was developed. The article also analyses the use of this methodology by D. Zelenin, D. Zolotarev and C. Rudenko as well as the campaign against these scholars in the 1930s.