Notes from His “Snail’s Shell”: The Zabaikal’ Fieldwork of S.M. Shirokogoroff and the Ground-Work for “Etnos-Thinking”

Abstract

This article surveys the fieldwork of Sergei Shirokogoroff and his wife Elizabeta in northeastern Zabaikal’e in 1912 and 1913 to document the people whom he identified as Orochens. According to his own reflections, Sergei Shirokogoroff felt his ideas on etnos and his acquaintance with Tungus shamanism, occurred at this time. Through surveying manuscripts and letters written from the field, or shortly after, the article weights the atmosphere of competition and introspection that may have lead him and his wife to seek out ever more isolated peripheries from which to theorize. Nevertheless, this first encounter with Orochen hunters and shamans would form the kernel of his theory of cultural resilience and degradation which would be a constant theme in his life’s work.