D.A. Klementz and the Production of Knowledge about Peoples in the Russian Empire

Abstract

The article discusses the production of knowledge about peoples in the Russian Empire in the context of debates on Orientalism and internal colonization. I argue about the three specific types of actors participating in these discourses: power, academic science, and public intellectuals. I focus on the career of D.A. Klementz who, over the course of his life, was a member of each of these groups of actors. Belonging to the milieu of pro-revolutionary intellectuals, he positioned himself as acting on behalf of the people and refused to cooperate with the government when conducting ethnographic research. When he became the de facto director of a department at the Russian Geographic Society, he acted as a representative of authorities toward the people; yet, he retained the stance of a public intellectual in matters of studying the subjects of the Russian Empire. Upon his appointment to the position of director of the Ethnography Department at the Russian Museum, he came to face the disapproval of his ethnographic theories by authorities.