Sergey Alexandrovich Tokarev and the Intellectual Landscape of Soviet Yakutia: A Historical and Hermeneutic Reconstruction

10.33876/2311-0546/2024-4/45-63

Authors

  • Ekaterina Romanova the Institute for Humanities Research and Indigenous Studies of the North. Russian Academy of the Sciences. Siberian branch — Federal Research Centre "The Yakut Scientific Centre" https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6973-0608
  • Lena Stepanova the Institute for Humanities Research and Indigenous Studies of the North. Russian Academy of the Sciences. Siberian branch — Federal Research Centre "The Yakut Scientific Centre" https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2826-6295

Keywords:

Soviet Yakutia, intellectual landscape, biographical and hermeneutic reconstruction, northern studies and Yakut ethnography, scientist’s strategy, national narrative

Abstract

This article is devoted to the Yakut period in the biography of the famous scientist S. A. Tokarev. The Archive of the Yakut Scientific Center of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences contains a corpus of a few ego-documents related to the period of collaboration between Professor Sergei A. Tokarev and the Yakut Institute (1935-1959), the personal fund of the repressed ethnographer and orientalist Gavriil V. Ksenofontov and the historian Vasilii N. Chemezov. The study employs the methodology of "new biographical history" (social personal history), through which the formation of S. A. Tokarev's individual scientific strategy during the period of early Soviet society's construction is traced. The intellectual biography is reconstructed in the historical and hermeneutic space of the studied era, which allows the authors to reveal the social context of the historical narrative in which S. A. Tokarev’s scientific worldview was formed. The new interpretation of the scientists’ biography highlights the moment when the academic northern studies commenced in Moscow and the development of regional ethnography in Siberia, while S. A. Tokarev was actively involved in the scientific discourse between the «center» and the «periphery» on both sides of the complex integration process.

Author Biographies

  • Ekaterina Romanova, the Institute for Humanities Research and Indigenous Studies of the North. Russian Academy of the Sciences. Siberian branch — Federal Research Centre "The Yakut Scientific Centre"

    Romanova, Ekaterina N. — Dr. of History, Chief Researcher in the Center for Intellectual History and Culture, the Institute for Humanities Research and Indigenous Studies of the North. Russian Academy of the Sciences. Siberian branch — Federal Research Centre «The Yakut Scientific Centre of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences» (Yakutsk, Russian Federation). E-mail: e_romanova@mail.ru ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6973-0608

  • Lena Stepanova, the Institute for Humanities Research and Indigenous Studies of the North. Russian Academy of the Sciences. Siberian branch — Federal Research Centre "The Yakut Scientific Centre"

    Stepanova, Lena B. — Ph.D. in History, Senior Researcher in the Center for Intellectual History and Culture, the Institute of the Humanities Research and the Indigenous Studies of the North, Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Branch — Federal Research Centre «The Yakut Scientific Centre of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences» (Yakutsk, Russian Federation). E-mail: solo007_79@rambler.ru ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2826-6295

    For citation: Romanova, E. N. and L. B. Stepanova. 2024. Sergey Alexandrovich Tokarev and the Intellectual Landscape of Soviet Yakutia: A Historical and Hermeneutic Reconstruction. Herald of Anthropology (Vestnik Antropologii) 4: 45-63.

    Funding: The research was carried out using scientific equipment of the Federal Research Centre ‘Yakutsk Scientific Centre of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science.

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Published

22.12.2024

Issue

No. 4 (2024): Herald of Anthropology

Section

The Scientific Life of Sergei A. Tokarev