Vladimir Peredolsky, The Jewish Question and the Problem of Race (Commemorating the 90th Anniversary of His Death)

Abstract

The article focuses on a controversial figure of the ethnographer and anthropologist Vladimir Peredolsky, a materialist, student of Eduard Petri and Peter Lesshaft, protector of the Yenisei natives against the Russian merchants, and, paradoxically, a staunch conservative, Director of the Russian Assembly male gymnasium. His popular scientific text Anthropology (1901) advocates Lamarckian views and largely foreshadows not only Boas’ ideas on the direct impact of the environment on the human body, but also much later Western theories negating the existence of human races, albeit on other grounds. Peredolsky uses Lamarckism as a quasi-scientific basis for opposing racial antisemitism, which flourished in Russia at that time, and essentially for substantiating a call for a return to a milder anti-Judaism, officially practiced during the reign of Alexander II (except its final part) and Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov). Peredolsky was appointed Director of Russian Assembly gymnasium only in 1913, when it had lost its manifest connection with the Black Hundred (epitome of Extreme Right and Anti-Semitism), other reasons of the appointment being his deep conservatism and connections with top-ranking officials. Owing to his moderate views, he was repressed, not immediately after the October Revolution (in fact, he was allowed to publish his works and teach at the university), but only in 1934. He died in a labor camp near Vladivostok in 1936.