Fieldwork from the Perspective of Administrative Documentation of the Institute of Ethnography, Academy of Sciences of the USSR

Abstract

In this article, I consider the manner in which Soviet ethnographers responded to the combination of the difficulties in undertaking fieldwork and the need to meet the normative requirements and expectations of the Institute of Ethnography, Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The analysis will focus specifically on how ethnographers studying foreign countries worked on ethnographic texts, with a particular emphasis on the volumes of the “Peoples of the World” (Narody mira) series, during the period of the seven-year plan (1959–1965). I attempt an examination of fieldwork from the perspective of institutional bureaucracy, thus facilitating a reevaluation of the notion of “scarcity” of fieldwork and the articulation of its nuances. Indeed, the lack of fieldwork in the sense of actual trips and travels did not equate to its absence from the institutional discourse. I further wish to shift research attention from the archive of field materials and diaries to the archive of administrative documentation which, in my opinion, should be examined as painstakingly as fieldwork records in writing any history of fieldwork. Scrutinizing the transcripts of the meetings of the Academic Council of the Institute of Ethnography, I argue that these meetings provided an opportunity for Soviet ethnographers to discuss both the importance of fieldwork and the way ethnographic texts were to be written.