Russian writer and anthropologist (1865?1936)
Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz
(
Russian
:
Влади?мир Ге?рманович Богора?з
), born
Natan Mendelevich Bogoraz
(
Russian
:
Ната?н Ме?нделевич Богора?з
) and used the literary pseudonym
N. A. Tan
(
Russian
:
Н. А. Тан
; April 27 [
O.S.
April 15] 1865 ? May 10, 1936), was a Russian revolutionary, writer and anthropologist, especially known for his studies of the
Chukchi people
in
Siberia
. In English, his name was often rendered as
Waldemar Bogoras
.
[1]
[2]
[3]
Biography
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]
Bogoraz was born in the city of
Ovruch
in the family of a Jewish school teacher. Bogoraz changed his birthname from Natan to Vladimir after he converted to
Christianity
in adulthood. After finishing
Chekhov Gymnasium
in 1882, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law of
Saint Petersburg University
, but was dismissed for revolutionary activity with
Narodnaya Volya
and exiled to his parents' home in
Taganrog
. He spent 11 months at Taganrog prison for revolutionary propaganda. In 1886, he moved to
Saint Petersburg
, where he was arrested and later exiled into northeastern
Siberia
, near
Yakutsk
(1889?1899), where he studied the
Chukchi people
, their way of life, traditions,
language
, and beliefs, giving him valuable material for poems and
belletristic
essays. Allegedly, Bogoraz attained fluency in the Chukchi language and partial fluency in the
Even language
.
[2]
Bogoraz published his first literary works in the early 1880s, but he became famous by 1896–1897 under the literary pseudonym
Tan
for poems and novels published in various periodicals. In 1899, he published the book
Chukchi Tales
and in 1900,
Poems
. The ethnographical materials he published in periodicals of the
Russian Academy of Sciences
, such as "Specimens of Materials for Studying Chukchi Language and Folklore" and "Studies of Chukchi Language and Folklore Collected in Kolyma District," were a valuable contribution to the development of
linguistics
and made the author known around the world. In 1899, by recommendation of the Academy of Sciences, Bogoraz was invited by
New York City
's
American Museum of Natural History
for the
Jesup North Pacific Expedition
(1900–1901) aimed at studying the ethnography, anthropology and archaeology of the Northern coasts of the
Pacific Ocean
, where Tan-Bogoraz and his friend
Vladimir Jochelson
were in charge of the
Anadyr
region of Siberia, gathering materials for ethnographic studies of
Chukchi
,
Koryaks
,
Lamuts
and other indigenous Siberian peoples. He left
Russia
for political reasons in 1901 and settled in
New York City
, where he became curator of the American Museum of Natural History and produced his great works
The Chukchee
(1904?09) and
Chukchee Mythology
(1910).
Bogoraz returned to Russia in 1904. He helped to organize the First Peasant Congress and the Labour Group in the
Duma
. In 1910, a collection of his works in ten volumes was published. In 1917, he became professor of
ethnology
at
Petrograd University
. Bogoraz, with the help of
Lev Sternberg
, organized the first Russian ethnography center at the University.
[4]
During the 1920s and 1930s he did important anthropological work creating and teaching written languages for indigenous Siberian peoples and founded the
Institute of the Peoples of the North
in
Leningrad
.
In March 1929, at the Sixth Plenum of the Committee for Assistance to the Peoples of the Northern Regions (the "Committee of the North"), Bogoraz and his fellow "northerners" (ethnographers) were viciously attacked by the "orientalists" (mostly Russian
rabfak
students, "veterans of many a battle and keen on participating in the nationwide search for class enemies"):
At various meetings, the old revolutionary had been accused of turning the institute into a scientific laboratory; of trying to split the institute and gain personal power; of "populist culture-mongering [as opposed to Marxist socio-economic revolutionism] and of a sentimental approach to the peoples of the north"; of denying the existence of classes among the natives and, "as a result . . ., protecting them from the (supposedly harmful) influence of economic development." At the same time, Bogoraz's students and institute allies Ia. P. Koshkin (Al'kor) and E. A. Kreinovich were exposed as his spineless Communist clones and urged to "publicly and categorically disassociate themselves from [his] anti-Marxist views." More ambitiously, the "orientalists" charged the Committee of the North with not exercising proper political control and publishing "anti-Party and anti-Marxist" materials in their official organ
Sovetskii Sever
.
[5]
But Bogoraz and his allies defended themselves stoutly, and by claiming to adhere to the new political line (defining shamans as priests, applying a strict class analysis to the tribes, and laying the groundwork for collectivization) they managed to keep their positions, though they remained under close scrutiny.
[6]
He died of natural causes on May 10, 1936, at the age of 71 and was buried in the
Volkovo Cemetery
.
[2]
Notes
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External links and references
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