Wiener B.E., Divisenko K.S. The Making of Urban Anthropology in Leningrad

Abstract

The paper deals with formation of urban anthropology in St. Petersburg. First paper on urban anthropology in St. Petersburg was published in 1926. Nevertheless a resolution of the Ethnographic conference of 1929 in St. Petersburg recommended Soviet ethnographers to investigate mainly pre-industrial groups of population. However there was at least one evident exception from this recommendation: in 1939, an exposition dedicated to Jewish culture in the Imperial Russia and the USSR opened in the State Museum for Ethnography. The SWW interrupted this line of development. A new interest towards urban groups of population began in 1950s when Moscow ethnographers launched a study of Ural laborers and then studies of cities in the Central Russia. A former member of this research group Natalia Yukhneva began to study ethnic statistics of St. Petersburg pre-revolutionary population and to investigate its ethnography. Due to political and economic changes on the edge of 1980s- 1990s, favorable conditions for urban anthropological studies formed which stimulated a creation of several groupings of urban anthropologists in St. Petersburg. The first of them appeared in the Center of Independent Sociological Research and consists mainly of sociologists by their training. The second group is Petersburg Judaica formed in the European University in St. Petersburg. The third grouping are students of Albert Baiburin. The use ethnographic semiotics for interpretation of their findings.