Article contents
Nurture Is Nature: Lev Gumilev and the Ecology of Ethnicity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
Abstract
In this article, Mark Bassin explores Lev Gumilev's theory of ethnicity. Developing his ideas in the context of post-Stalinist debates about the relationship of society to the natural world, Gumilev maintained that the etnos was a wholly natural, quasi-biological entity. Although this naturalism involved an important genetic dimension, Gumilev denied that ethnicity was determined by race and emphasized instead its ecological quality as an organic part of biogeocenoses or natural-landscape ecosystems. Although he remained marginalized in his day by the Soviet ethnographic establishment, his essentialist perspective is powerfully appealing for post-Soviet audiences, who find his “ecology of ethnicity” singularly useful for the purposes of ethnopolitical discourse.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2009
References
1. Suny, Ronald Grigor and Martin, Terry, eds., A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford, 2001)Google Scholar; Martin, Terry, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Ithaca, 2001)Google Scholar; Hirsch, Francine, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, 2005)Google Scholar; Slezkine, Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, 1994)Google Scholar; Martin, Terry, “Borders and Ethnic Conflict: The Soviet Experiment in Ethno-Territorial Proliferation,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 47, no. 4 (1999): 538-55Google Scholar; Hirsch, Francine, “The Soviet Union as a Work-in-Progress: Ethnographers and the Category ‘Nationality’ in the 1926,1937, and 1939 Censuses,” Slavic Review 56, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 251-78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slezkine, Yuri, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” in Eley, Geoff and Suny, Ronald Grigor, eds., Becoming National: A Reader (New York, 1996), 203-38Google Scholar; and Weiner, Amir, “Nature, Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic Body in the Age of Socialism,” American Historical Review, 104 no. 4 (October 1999): 1114-55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. Martin, Terry, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism,” in Suny, and Martin, , eds., A State of Nations, 81.Google Scholar
3. Eric D. Weitz, “Racial Politics without the Concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges,” Amir Weiner, “Nothing but Certainty,” and Hirsch, Francine, “Race without the Practice of Racial Politics,” all in Slavic Review 61, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 1–29, 44-53, 30-43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. Weiner, “Nothing but Certainty,” 52-53; Weitz, “Racial Politics,” 3.
5. Weiner, “Nature, Nurture, and Memory,” 1115-16.
6. For a fuller discussion, see Bassin, Mark, “Blood or Soil? The Völkisch Movement, the Nazis, and the Legacy of Geopolitik,” in Bruggemeier, Franz-Josef, Cioc, Marc, and Zeller, Thomas, eds., How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Athens, 2005), 204-42.Google Scholar
7. Gasman, Daniel, The Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Steinmetzler, Johannes, Die Anthropogeographie Friedrich Ratzels und Hire ideengeschichtlichen Wurzeln (Bonn, 1956)Google Scholar; and Bassin, Mark, “Imperialism and the Nation-State in Friedrich Ratzel's Political Geography,” Progress in Human Geography 11, no. 4 (September 1987): 473-95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8. Eidenbenz, Mathias, Blut und Boden: Zu Funktion und Genese der Metaphern des Agrarismus und Biologismus in der nationalsozialistischen Bauernpropaganda R. W. Darrés (Bern, 1993)Google Scholar; Bramwell, Anna, Blood and Soil: Richard Walther Darré and Hitler's “Green Party” (Bourne End, Eng., 1985)Google Scholar; Ebeling, Frank, Geopolitik: Karl Haushofer und seine Raumxvissenschaft 1919-1945 (Berlin, 1994)Google Scholar; Murphy, David T., The Heroic Earth: Geopolitical Thought in Weimar Germany, 1918-1933 (Kent, 1997)Google Scholar; and Bassin, Mark, “Race contra Space: The Conflict between German Geopolitik and National Socialism,” Political Geography Quarterly 6, no. 2 (April 1987): 115-34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9. Lavrov, Sergei B., Lev Gumilev: Sud'ba i idei (Moscow, 2000)Google Scholar; Demin, Valerii N., Lev Gumilev, 2d ed. (Moscow, 2008)Google Scholar; Bassin, Mark, “Lev Gumilev and Russian National Identity during and after the Soviet Era,” in Grosby, Steven Elliot and Leoussi, Athena S., eds., Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations (Edinburgh, 2007), 143-60Google Scholar; Wiederkehr, Stefan, “Die Rezeption des Werkes von L. N. Gumilev seit der späten Sowjetzeit: Russlands Intelligencija auf der Suche nach Orientierung,” in Ritter, Martina and Wattendorf, Barbara, eds., Sprünge, Brüche, Brücken: Debatten zur politischen Kultur in Russland aus der Perspektive der Geschichlswissenschaft, Kultursoziologie und Politikwissenschaft (Berlin, 2002), 51–66 Google Scholar; Laruelle, Marlène, “Histoire d'une usurpation intellectuelle: L. N. Gumilev, ‘le dernier des eurasistes'? Analyse des oppositions entre L. N. Gumilev et P. N. Savickij,” Revue des Études Slaves 73, nos. 2-3 (2001): 449-59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shnirel'man, Viktor and Panarin, Sergei, “Lev Gumilev: His Pretensions as a Founder of Ethnology and His Eurasian Theories,” Inner Asia 3, no. 1 (2001): 1–18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laruelle, Marlene, “Lev Nikolaievitch Goumilev (1912-1992): Biologisme et eurasisme dans la pensee russe,” Revue des Etudes Slaves 72, nos. 1-2 (2000): 163-89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kochanek, Hildegard, “Die Ethnienlehre Lev N. Gumilevs: Zu den Anfangen neurechter Ideologieentwicklung im spatkommunistischen Russland,” Osleuropa 48, nos. 11-12 (1998): 1184-97Google Scholar; Bruno Naarden, ‘“I Am a Genius, But No More Than That': Lev Gumilev (1912-1992), Ethnogenesis, the Russian Past and World History,” Jahrbucherfur Geschichte Osteuropas 44, no. 1 (1996): 54-82; Alexander Titov, “Lev Gumilev, Ethnogenesis and Eurasianism” (PhD diss., University College London, 2005); and Graham, Loren R., Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union (New York, 1987), 250-57.Google Scholar
10. Strictly speaking, Gumilev was not entirely alone, for the ethnographer Sergei Shirokogorov (1887-1939) also attempted to develop a natural or biological theory of ethnicity. Shirokogorov's perspective was, however, in no way Soviet, for his training predated the revolution and he emigrated to China in the early 1920s. Shirokogorov, Sergei M., Etnos: Issledovanie osnovnykh printsipov izmeneniia etnicheskikh i etnograficheskikh iavlenii (Shanghai, 1923)Google Scholar; Shirokogorov, Sergei M., Ethnical Unit and Milieu: A Summary of Ethnos (Shanghai, 1924)Google Scholar. On Shirokogorov, see Bromley, Yulian, “The Term Ethnos and Its Definition,” in Bromley, Yulian, ed., Soviet Ethnology and Anthropology Today (The Hague, 1974), 55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ssorin-Chaikov, Nikolai V., The Social Life of the State in Subarctic Siberia (Stanford, 2003), 189 Google Scholar; and Tishkov, Valery, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame (London, 1997), 2–3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Gumilev's own critical evaluation of Shirokogorov, see Gumilev, Lev N., Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 2d ed. (Leningrad, 1989), 69–70.Google Scholar
11. No less an authority than Valerii Tishkov, the director of the Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Ethnography, emphasizes the degree of Gumilev's current celebrity status and the broad influence of his thinking. Indeed Tishkov, who is highly critical of Gumilev, expresses astonishment that western experts on Russia fail to pick up on this. Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict, 2-3. For further testimony to Gumilev's immense influence on post-Soviet understanding of ethnicity, see L. M. Drobizheva, “Etnichnost’ v sovremennom obshchestve: Etnopolitika i sotsial'nye praktiki v Rossiiskoi Federatsii,” MirRossii, no. 2 (2001): 169; Shnirel'man, V. A., “Ksenofobiia, noyvi rasizm i puti ikh preodoleniia,” Gumanitarnaia mysl’ Iuga Rossii, no. 1 (2005): 6-19.Google Scholar One specialist has recently reckoned that the popularity of Gumilev's theory of ethnogenesis in post-Soviet Russia “cannot be overestimated.” Birgit Menzel, “The Occult Revival in Russia Today and Its Impact on Literature,” Harriman Review 16, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 8.
12. Matley, I. M., “Nature and Society: The Continuing Soviet Debate,” Progress in Human Geography 6, no. 3 (1982): 367-96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Graham, Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior, 221-44.
13. Stalin, Iosif V., “Anarkhizm ili sotsializm?” Sochineniia (1906; Moscow, 1946), 297-302.Google Scholar Mark Adams dates the Stalinist bifurcation of the natural and the social from the “Great Break” of the late 1920s. Adams, Mark B., “Eugenics as Social Medicine in Revolutionary Russia,” in Solomon, Susan Gross and Hutchinson, John F., eds., Health and Society in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington, 1990), 219.Google Scholar For discussions of Stalin's views on the relationship of society to the natural world, see Matley, Ian M., “The Marxist Approach to the Geographical Environment,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 56, no. 1 (March 1966): 97–111 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chappell, John E., “Marxism and Geography,” Problems of Communism 14, no. 6 (1965): 12–22 Google Scholar; and Bassin, Mark, “Nature, Geopolitics, and Marxism: Ecological Contestations in the Weimar Republic,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21, no. 2 (1996): 315-41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14. Anuchin, V. A., Teoreticheskie problemy geografii (Moscow, 1960)Google Scholar; and Anuchin, V. A., “Sootnoshenie obshchestva i prirody v geograficheskoi srede i filosofskie problemy geografii,” Voprosyfilosofii, no. 4 (1975): 80–91.Google Scholar
15. Graham, Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior, 227-37, 244-47; and Graham, Loren R., Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History (Cambridge, Eng., 1993), 232.Google Scholar
16. Gumilev, Lev N., ‘“la, russkii chelovek, vsiu zhizn’ zashchishchaiu tatar ot klevety,'” in Gumilev, Lev N., Chernaia legenda: Druz'ia i nedrugi velikoi stepi (Moscow, 1994), 258.Google Scholar
17. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 20. See also Lev N. Gumilev, “Ot istorii liudei k istorii prirody,” Priroda, no. 11 (1971): 117.
18. Vernadsky, Vladimir I., The Biosphere, trans. Langmuir, David B. (1926; New York, 1998)Google Scholar; Vladimir I. Vernadskii, Zhivoe veshchestvo i biosfera (Moscow, 1994); Bailes, Kendall E., Science and Russian Culture in an Age of Revolutions: V. I. Vernadsky and His Scientific School, 1863-1945 (Bloomington, 1990)Google Scholar; George S. Levit, Biogeochemistry—Biosphere—Noosphere: The Growth of the Theoretical System of Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (Berlin, 2001); Fedorov, V. M., “Vernadskii, Vladimir Ivanovich,” in Maslina, M. A., ed., Russkaia filosofiia: Slovar’ (Moscow, 1995), 84–85.Google Scholar
19. A. N. Medved', “Idei V. I. Vernadskogo i nauchnoe tvorchestvo L. N. Gumileva,” Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki, no. 3 (1994): 119-21.
20. Lev N. Gumilev, “O termine etnos,” Etnosfera: Istoriia liudei i istoriia prirody (1967; Moscow, 2004), 40, 41; Lavrov, Lev Gumilev, 325; and Lev N. Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo: Populiarnye lektsiipo narodovedeniiu (Moscow, 2001), 45.
21. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 20; Lev N. Gumilev, “Zakony vremeni,” Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 3 (1990): 8; Gumilev, “'la, russkii chelovek,“’ 277.
22. Lev N. Gumilev and Aleksandr M. Panchenko, Chtoby svecha ne pogasla: Dialog. (Leningrad, 1990), 6.
23. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 226; and Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 24.
24. Lev N. Gumilev, “Letter to the Editors of Izvestiya Vsesoyuznogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva,” Soviet Geography: Review and Translation 15, no. 6 (1974): 376; and Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 227.
25. Gumilev, “'la, russkii chelovek,'” 271; Lev N. Gumilev, “Etnogenez i etnosfera,” Priroda, no. 1 (1970): 47.
26. Lev N. Gumilev and K. P. Ivanov, “Etnicheskie protsessy: Dva podkhoda k izucheniiu,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, no. 1 (1992): 52-53.
27. Gumilev, “Etnogenez i etnosfera” (no. 1), 49. See also Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 91, 131.
28. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 18, 21, 51, 175; Gumilev, “O termine etnos,” 38-39; and Lev N. Gumilev, “On the Subject of the ‘Unified Geography’ (Landscape and Etnos, VI),” Soviet Geography: Review and Translation 9, no. 1 (1968): 40.
29. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 21.
30. Gumilev, “Etnogenez i etnosfera” (no. 1), 50; Lev N. Gumilev, “Etnogenez: Prirodnyi protsess,” Priroda, no. 2 (1971): 80.
31. Gumilev, “O termine etnos,” 44.
32. On the history of Soviet genetics, see Zakharov, I. A., Kratkie ocherki po istorii genetiki (Moscow, 1999)Google Scholar; Peter Kneen, “Physics, Genetics and the Zhdanovshchina,” Europe-Asia StudiesbQ, no. 7 (November 1998): 1183-1202; Mark B. Adams, “Eugenics in Russia, 1900- 1940,” in Mark B. Adams, ed., The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia (New York, 1990), 153-216; Mark B. Adams, “From ‘Gene Fund’ to ‘Gene Pool': On the Evolution of Evolutionary Language,” in William Coleman and Camille Limoges, eds., Studies in the History of Biology (Baltimore, 1979), 3:241-85; and A. E. Gaissinovitch and Mark B. Adams, “The Origins of Soviet Genetics and the Struggle with Lamarckism, 1922-1929,“/ourwa/ of the History of Biology 13, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 1-51. The history of Lysenkoism is treated by Zhores A. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko (Garden City, N.Y, 1971), and David Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).
33. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 217, 227, 455, 477; Gumilev, “On the Subject of die ‘Unified Geography,'” 43-44.
34. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 227 (quote), 85, 87-88.
35. Personal communication from Andrei Rogachevskii. Also see Rogachevskii, “Lev Gumilev i evreiskii vopros (po lichnym vospominaniiam),” Solnechnoe spletenie, no. 18/19 (2001): 363.
36. On Timofeev-Resovskii, see Daniil Granin, Zubr (Leningrad, 1987); Vladimir I. Korogodin, Gennadii G. Polikarpov, and Vassilii V Velkov, “Commentary: The Blazing Life of N .V Timofeev-Resovskii,” Journal of Biosciences25, no. 2 (June 2000): 125-31; Vadim A. Ratner, “Nikolay Vladimirovich Timofeeff-Ressovsky (1900-1981): Twin of the Century of Genetics,” Genetics 158, no. 3 (July 2001): 933-39; Berg, Raissa L., “In Defense of Timofeeff-Ressovsky,” Quarterly Review of Biology 65, no. 4 (December 1990): 457-79CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Weiner, Douglas R., A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev (Berkeley, 1999)Google Scholar; Medvedev, Zhores A., “Nikolai Wladimirovich Timofeeff-Ressovsky (1900-1981),” Genetics 100, no. 1 (January 1982): 1–5 Google Scholar; and Reif, Wolf-Ernst, Junker, Thomas, and Hofifeld, Uwe, “The Synthetic Theory of Evolution: General Problems and the German Contribution to the Synthesis,” Theory in Biosciences 119, no. 1 (March 2000): 41–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37. Timofeev-Resovskii, N. V., Nekotorye problemy radiatsionnoi biogeotsenologii (Sverdlovsk, 1962).Google Scholar On Timofeev-Rezovskii and Vernadskii, see Vincent Fedorov, “Vladimir Vernadsky,” in Valery A. Kuvakin, ed., A History of Russian Philosophy from the Tenth through the Twentieth Centuries (Buffalo, 1993), 525.
38. Gumilev, Konets i vnov1 nachalo, 75 (emphasis in the original). See also Gumilev and Panchenko, Chtoby svecha nepogasla, 6; and Lev N. Gumilev and V Iu. Ermolaev, “Problemy predskazuemosti v izuchenii protestov etnogeneza,” in Iurii A. Kravtsov, ed., Predely predskazuemosti (Moscow, 1997), 241.
39. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 143-45, 250-53.
40. Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 75. See also Lev N. Gumilev, “Biosfera i impul'sy soznaniia,” Priroda, no. 12 (1978): 99.
41. N. V. Gumileva, “Dokumenty,” in Lev Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (Moscow, 1994), 624-25.
42. Lev N. Gumilev, “Nikakoi mistiki,” in Lev N. Gumilev, Chtoby svecha ne pogasla: Sbornik esse, interv'iu, stikhotvorenii, perevodov (Moscow, 2002), 62, 64; Gumilev and Panchenko, Chtoby svecha ne pogasla, 12; Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 144; Gumilev, “Biosfera i impul'sy soznaniia,” 99.
43. Gumilev, “Etnogenez i etnosfera,” Priroda, no. 2 (1970): 46; Gumilev, “Biosfera i impul'sy soznaniia,” 98n; Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 308; Gumilev, Lev N. and Ermolaev, V. Iu., “Gore ot illiuzii,” in Gumilev, Lev N., Ritmy Evrazii: Epokhii i tsivilizalsii (Moscow, 1993), 179.Google Scholar
44. Gumilev, Lev N., ‘“Menia nazyvaiut evraziitsem… ,'” Nash sovremennik, no. 1 (1991): 132.Google Scholar
45. On the history of Gumilev's remarkable friendship with Timofeev-Resovskii, and its dramatic breakdown over disagreements about the nature of ethnicity, see Gumileva, “Dokumenty,” and N. V. Gumileva, “Vospominaniia,” in Lavrov, Lev Gumilev: Sud'ba i idei, ed. E. M. Goncharova (Moscow, 2003), 457-85. Gumilev often referred to Timofeev- Resovskii in his work: Gumilev, “Zakony vremeni,” 7; Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 56, 219; and L. N. Gumilev, “Poisk neprotivorechivoi versii,” in Gumilev, Chernaia legenda, 214.
46. Gumilev, “'la, russkii chelovek,'” 258.
47. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 90.
48. Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 346. See also Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 132, 217, 219; Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 27; and Gumilev, “'Menia nazyvaiut evraziitsem … , ‘ “ 139.
49. Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 347.
50. Titov, “Lev Gumilev, Ethnogenesis and Eurasianism,” 62.
51. Gumilev, Lev N., “G. E. Grumm-Grzhimailo i rozhdenie nauki ob etnogeneze,” Priroda, no. 5 (1976): 121.Google Scholar
52. Gumilev, “Nikakoi mistiki,” 58-59. See also Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 142; L. N. Gumilev, “'Chtoby svecha ne pogasla,'” Chtoby svecha nepogasla, 10; and Gumilev, “'la, russkii chelovek,'” 271.
53. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 90 (quote), 295.
54. Dokuchaev, Vasilii V., Kucheniiuozonakhprirody: Gorizontal'nye i vertikal'nyepochvennye zony (St. Petersburg, 1899)Google Scholar; Vucinich, Alexander, Darwin in Russian Thought (Berkeley, 1988), 154-55.Google Scholar
55. “A biogeocenosis refers to any delimited [konhretnyi] region of the earth's surface that contains a specific system of interaction of all the components of living nature (flora, fauna, and micro-organisms) with inert matter (the lithosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere).” Vladimir N. Sukachev, “Obshchie printsipy i programma izucheniia tipov lesa,” in Vladimir N. Sukachev and Sergei B. Zonn, eds., Metodicheskie ukazaniia k izucheniiu tipov lesa (Moscow, 1961), 9-75, cited in “Sukachev Vladimir Nikolaevich (1880-1967),” online at http://www.biogeographers.dvo.ru/pages/0238.htm (last accessed 30 August 2009); Sukachev, Vladimir N., “O sootnoshenii poniatii ‘geograficheskii landshaft’ i ‘biogeotsenos,'” Voprosy geografii 16 (1949): 45–60 Google Scholar; Sukachev, Vladimir N., “Biogeotsenos kak vyrazhenie vzaimodeistviia zhivoi i nezhivoi prirody na poverkhnosti zemli: Sootnoshenie poniatii ‘biogeotsenoz', ‘ekosistema', ‘geograficheskii landshaft', i ‘fatsiia',” in Sukachev, Vladimir N. and Dylis, Nikolai V., eds., Osnovy lesnoi biogeotsenologii (Moscow, 1964), 5–49 Google Scholar; Raney, Franklin C., “Geobiocenology,” Ecology 47, no. 1 (January 1966): 170-71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Sukachev and early Soviet ecology science, see Douglas R. Weiner, “Community Ecology in Stalin's Russia: ‘Socialist’ and ‘Bourgeois’ Science,” his 75, no. 4 (December 1984): 684-96; Weiner, Douglas R., Models of Nature: Conservation and Ecology in the Soviet Union (Bloomington, 1988).Google Scholar
56. Lev S. Berg, Geograficheskiezony Sovetskogo Soiuza, 3d ed. (Moscow, 1947), 1:5, cited in Shaw, Denis J. B. and Oldfield, Jonadian D., “Landscape Science: A Russian Geographical Tradition,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97, no. 1 (March 2007): 112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
57. Leo S. Berg, Nomogenesis, or Evolution Determined by Law, trans. J. N. Rostovtsov (1922; Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 265 (emphasis in the original).
58. Weiner, Little Corner of Freedom.
59. Gumilev, “'la, russkii chelovek,'” 131, 258, 304.
60. Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 182-83; Gumilev, “'Menia nazyvaiut evraziitsem…,'“133.
61. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 307. See also Gumilev, Lev N., “On the Anthropogenic Factor in Landscape Formation,” Soviet Geography: Revieiu and Translation 9, no. 9 (1968): 595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
62. For Gumilev's terminology, see Gumilev, “O termine etnos,” 44, 52-53.
63. V A. Michurin, “Slovar’ poniatii i terminov teorii etnogeneza L. N. Gumileva,” in Lev N. Gumilev, Etnosfera: Istoriia liudei i istoriia prirody (Moscow, 2004), 572. See also Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 289-91.
64. Gumilev, “O termine etnos,” 53; Gumilev, “G. E. Grumm-Grzhimailo,” 120.
65. In Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), Gumilev cites the full passage from Berg's Nomogenesis quoted above on at least two occasions (37, 180) and uses Berg's language throughout his own text. In an earlier work, he reproduced this same passage verbatim but without quotation marks or attribution. Gumilev, “Etnogenez i etnosfera” (no. 1), 51; Lev N. Gumilev, “Etno-landshaftnye regiony evrazii za istoricheskii period,” in Gumilev, Ritmy Evrazii, 270.
66. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 173; Gumilev, “Etno-landshaftnye regiony evrazii za istoricheskii period,” 270.
67. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 167.
68. Ibid., 37; Gumilev, “G. E. Grumm-Grzhimailo,” 120. While mainsueam Soviet ethnography generally included attachment to a particular territorial homeland as a necessary constituting feature of ethnicity, it never viewed the relationship in Gumilev's terms, as one of naturalistic determination. Kushner, Pavel I., Etnicheskie lerritorii i etnicheskie granitsy (Moscow, 1951)Google Scholar; Bromlei, Iulian V., Ocherki teorii etnosa (Moscow, 1983), 57–58 Google Scholar; and Bromley, Julian and Kozlov, Viktor I., “The Theory of Ethnos and Ethnic Processes in Soviet Social Science,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 3 (July 1989): 427-28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
69. Gumilev, “On the Subject of the ‘Unified Geography,'” 42-43, 45.
70. E.g. Gumilev, “Etno-landshaftnye regiony evrazii za istoricheskii period,” 257-59; Gumilev, “Etnogenez i etnosfera” (no. 1), 52-54; Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 122-24;
71. Gumilev made this point in a letter to the Eurasian geographer Petr N. Savitskii. Lev N. Gumilev, “Letter to P. N. Savitskii, 19 December 1956” (Personal archive of author).
72. Lev N. Gumilev, “Mongoly i merkity v XII veke,” Studia orientalla et antiqua, no. 416 (1977): 74-116, at http://www.gumilevica.kulichki.com/articles/Article78.htm#Article78 (last accessed 30 August 2009).
73. Gumilev, “'la, russkii chelovek,'” 254.
74. Gumilev, “Etnogenez: Prirodnyi protsess,” 82.
75. The term ecological niche was first used by the California biologist Joseph Grinnell (1877-1939). Joseph Grinnell, “The Niche-Relationships of the California Thrasher,” The Auk 34, no. 4 (October 1917): 427-33. For more contemporary uses of the term, see Chase, Jonathan M. and Leibold, Mathew A., Ecological Niches: Linking Classical and Contemporary Approaches (Chicago, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schoener, T. W., “The Ecological Niche,” in Cherrett, John M., ed., Ecological Concepts: The Contribution of Ecology to an Understanding of the Natural World (Oxford, 1989), 79–113.Google Scholar
76. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 180.
77. Gumilev, “Nikakoi mistiki,” 66. See also Gumilev and Ivanov, “Etnicheskie protsessy,” 54-55.
78. Gumilev, Lev N., “Istoriko-filosofskie trudy kniazia N. S. Trubetskogo (zametki poslednego evraziitsa),” in Trubetskoi, Nikolai S., Istoriia. Kul'tura. Iazyk (Moscow, 1995), 36.Google Scholar
79. Gumilev and Ivanov, “Etnicheskie protsessy,” 54; Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 132, 167.
80. Gumilev, “On the Subject of the ‘Unified Geography,'” 41.
81. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 173.
82. Iu. V. Bromlei, “Chelovek v etnicheskoi (natsional'noi) sisteme,” Voprosy filosofii 7 (1988): 19; la. V Bogdanov, “Ot idei L'va Gumileva k natsional'noi ideologii Rossii” (2002), at http://www.left.ru/2003/7/bogdanov83.html (last accessed 30 August 2009).
83. V. I. Kozlov, “Chto zhe takoe etnos?” Priroda, no. 2 (1971): 72-73; A. I. Pershits and V. V. Pokshishevskii, “Ipostasi etnosa,” Priroda, no. 12 (1978): 108.
84. V I. Kozlov, “O biologo-istoricheskoi kontseptsii etnicheskoi istorii,” Voprosy istorii, no. 12 (1974): 85; Bromlei, Ocherki teorii etnosa, 214; Pershits and Pokshishevskii, “Ipostasi etnosa,” 107, 110.
85. Pershits and Pokshishevskii, “Ipostasi etnosa,” 111-12.
86. S. I. Bruk and N. N. Cheboksarov, “Metaetnicheskie obshchnosti,” Rasy i narody. Ezhegodnik, no. 6 (1976): 15-41; Bromlei, Ocherki teorii etnosa, 82, 373, 375; Bromlei, Iulian V., Etnosotsial'nye protsessy: Teoriia, istoriia, sovremennost’ (Moscow, 1987), 37 Google Scholar; Heikkinen, Kaija, “Ethnicity and Nationalism in Contemporary Russian Ethnography,” in Chulos, Chris J. and Piirainen, Timo, eds., The Fall of an Empire, The Birth of a Nation: National Identities in Russia, (Burlington, Vt., 2000), 101-2.Google Scholar
87. Iurii Iu. Veingold, Sovetskii narod—novaia istoricheskaia obshchnost’ liudei: Sotsiologicheskii ocherk (Frunze, 1973); Kaltakhchian, S. T., “Sovetskii narod,” in Boishaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1976), 25 Google Scholar; Kim, M. P., Sovetskii narod: Novaia istoricheskaia obshchnost’ liudei (Moscow, 1975).Google Scholar For discussions of this policy, see Simon, Gerhard, Nationalism and Policy toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union: From Totalitarian Dictatorship to Post-Stalinist Society, trans. Forster, Karen and Forster, Oswald (Boulder, Colo., 1991)Google Scholar; Suny, Ronald Grigor, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar; Connor, Walker, “Soviet Policies toward the Non-Russian Peoples in Theoretic and Historic Perspective: What Gorbachev Inherited,” in Motyl, Alexander J., ed., The Post-Soviet Nations: Perspectives on the Demise of the USSR (New York, 1992), 30–49 Google Scholar; Hodnett, Grey, “What's in a Nation?” Problems of Communism 16, no. 5 (September-October 1967): 2–15.Google Scholar
88. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 305. See also Gumilev and Ivanov, “Etnicheskie protsessy,” 54; Gumilev, “'la, russkii chelovek,'” 257.
89. Shnirel'man, Victor A., The Myth of the Khazars and Intellectual Antisemitism in Russia, 1970s-1990s (Jerusalem, 2002).Google Scholar
90. Russian nationalists’ acute interest in Gumilev's ecological research on the Khazars is indicated by the fact that his major exposition of this theme—his massive Ancient Rus’ and the Great Steppe—grew out of a manuscript on the Khazars that had been commissioned by the conservative-nationalist journal Nash sovremennik. It was not published, apparently because its particular antisemitic thrust was deemed too radical. Lev N. Gumilev, Drevniaia Rus’ i velikaia step’ (Moscow, 1989). On the significance of Gumilev's chimera concept for Soviet antisemitism, see Bassin, “Lev Gumilev and National Identity,” 152-57; Shnirel'man, Myth of the Khazars, 44-59; Rossman, Vadim, “Lev Gumilev, Eurasianism and Khazaria,” East European Jewish Affairs 32, no. 1 (2002): 30–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chernykh, E. N., “Postscript: Russian Archaeology after the Collapse of the USSR. Infrastructural Crisis and the Resurgence of Old and New Nationalism,” in Kohl, Philip L. and Fawcett, Clare, eds., Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology (Cambridge, Eng., 1995), 139-48.Google Scholar It is extremely interesting to note that scientific antisemitism in Germany provided a precedent of sorts for Gumilev's ecological-environmental approach to thejewish “problem.” See the work of the Hamburg geographer Siegfried Passarge, Dasjudentum als landschaftskundlichethnologisches Problem (Munich, 1929).
91. See Mozhaiskova, Irina V., Dukhovnyi obraz russkoi tsivilizatsii i sud'ba Rossii: Opyl metaistoricheskogo issledovaniia, 4 vols. (Moscow, 2001-2002)Google Scholar; Moiseev, Nikita N., Sud'ba tsivilizatsii: Put’ razuma (Moscow, 2000)Google Scholar; and Butenko, Anatolii P. and Kolesnichenko, Iulia V., “Mentalitet rossiian i evraziistvo: Ikh sushchnost’ i obshchestvenno-politicheskii smysl,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, no. 5 (1996): 96.Google Scholar For an attempt to fill out Gumilev's “incomplete” biological conceptualization of etnos, see Kirill Maklakov, “Teoriia etnogeneza s tochki zreniia biologa,” Ural, no. 10 (1996): 164-78, at http://www.magazines.russ.ru/ural/1996/10/maklakov-pr.html (last accessed 30 August 2009).
92. Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict, 2. See also Viktor A. Shnirel'man, “Rasizm vchera i segodnia,” Pro et contraQ, no. 2 (September-October 2005): 55-56.
93. Shnirel'man, “Ksenofobiia, noyvi rasizm i puti ikh preodoleniia,” 11. See also V. R. Filippov, “Velikii fantazer: L. Gumilev i profanatory ego teorii” (unpublished paper), at http://www.viu-online.ru/science/publ/bulletenl5/page25.html (accessed 20 June 2008; no longer available).
94. E.g. Avdeev, Vladimir B., Rasologiia: Nauka o nasledstvennykh kachestvakh liudei (Moscow, 2005)Google Scholar; Avdeev, Vladimir B., Metafizicheskaia antropologiia (Moscow, 2002)Google Scholar; and Avdeev, Vladimir B. and Sevast'ianov, Aleksandr N., Rasa i etnos: Russkim zhenshchinam posviashchaetsia (Moscow, 2007).Google Scholar
95. For an unequivocal denunciation, see Konstantin Kasimovskii, “Russkaia rasa,” Shturmovik 18, no. 30 (1996), at http://nationalism.org/rusaction/rusrace.htm (last accessed 30 August 2009).
96. “Lev Gumilev: Pro et contra,” in Aleksandr N. Sevast'ianov, Etnos i natsiia (Moscow, 2008), 42-50.
97. Mal'kova, V. K., Obrazy etnosov v respublikanskikh gazetakh: Opyt etnosotsiologicheskogo izuchenia (Moscow, 1991).Google Scholar Also see Pal Kolst, “Territorialising Diasporas: The Case of the Russians in the Former Soviet Republics,” Millennium:Journal of International Studies, 28 no. 3 (1999): 607-31, at http://www.folk.uio.no/palk/Millennium.htm (last accessed 30 August 2009).
98. Rogers Brubaker among others has heavily stressed the valorization of ethnoterritorial attachment for the configuration of nationalism in the late Soviet period. Brubaker, Rogers, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, Eng., 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Kaiser, Robert J., The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton, 1994).Google Scholar
99. S. P. Romanchuk, “Sakral'nyi landshaft,” Gumanitarnyi ekologicheskii zhurnal 4, no. 1 (2002): 112-14; Fragner, Bert G., “'Soviet Nationalism': An Ideological Legacy to the Independent Republics of Central Asia,” in Schendel, Willem van and Zi'ircher, Erik Jan, eds., Identity Politics in Central Asia and the Muslim World: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Labour in the Twentieth Century (London, 2001), 23.Google Scholar
100. Kolst0, “Territorialising Diasporas.” Serguei Oushakine's very interesting work on “ethno-vitalism” in post-Soviet Russia similarly emphasizes the importance of Gumilev's ethno-ecology for contemporary conceptualizations of etnos as a “biogeographical given.” Sergei Ushakin, “Zhiznennye sily russkoi tragedii: O postsovetskikh teoriiakh etnosa,” Ab Imperio 4 (2005): 243; Serguei Oushakine, “From Russian Tragedy to Vital Forces: Theorizing Post-Soviet Ethnicity” (unpublished paper).
101. Nursultan A. Nazarbaev, “Ideia, kotoroi prinadlezhit budushchee,” Evraziia, no. 1 (1995): 5-11; Nursultan Nazarbaev, “Evraziiskii soiuz: Strategiiaintegratsii,“£r;razHa, no. 1 (1996): 3-8; Laruelle, Marlene, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Washington, D.C., 2008), 171-87.Google Scholar
102. Ermekbaev, Zharas A., Teoriia etnogeneza i evraziiskie idei L. N. Cumileva vprepodavanii istoricheskikh distsiplin (Astana, 2003), 16, 30Google Scholar; Akhmetov, Kadyr A., Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev: Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo (Astana, 2002), 17 Google Scholar; Zholdasbekov, Myrzatai and Kairzhanov, Abai, Evraziiskaia teoriia L. N. Gumileva (Astana, 2002), 14.Google Scholar
103. S. A. Abdymanapov, Zhizn’ i deiatel'nost’ L. N. Cumileva (Astana, 2004), 17-18 (quote), 13, 16, 21.
104. Aron Atabek, “V Kazakhstane est’ tol'ko odin narod i odna natsiia—kazakhi, vse ostal'nye—diaspory,” Internet-Gazeta “Zona KZ” (18 November 2004), at http://zonakz.net/articles/?artid=7484 (last accessed 30 August 2009; emphasis in the original).
105. On the popularity of this historiography, see Mikhail Tripol'skii, “Ob izvrashchenii istorii: Khazarskii kaganat, evrei i sud'ba Rossii,” Novoe russkoe slovo (9 December 1994), at http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/debate/ArticlelO.htm (last accessed 30 August 2009); Aleksandr Baigushev, “Khazarskie strasti: K russko-evreiskomu dialogu,” Zavtra 34, no. 66 (23 August 2006).
106. Igor’ Shishkin, “Simbioz, kseniia, i khimera,” Zavtra4, no. 60 (1995): 4.
107. Ibid.
108. Ibid.
- 9
- Cited by