Researcher of Northeast China Vladimir Kormazov (1886–1960)

The publication is dedicated to the statistician, economist and ethnographer Vladimir Alekseevich Kormazov, who first conducted field research in Central Asia, then in northeast China, and repeatedly carried out complex studies and expeditions (1922–1935). His responsibilities included accounting for the commercial and industrial activities of the western line of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER). For several years, he was engaged in research in Bargi, the western part of the Heilongjiang province of China. In the monograph "Barga" he described the history of this region rich in natural resources, its climate, administrative structure, population composition, communications, main settlements, and economic structure. This material was then published in Chinese and Japanese. As a member of the Society for the Study of the Manchurian Region (OIMK), he was engaged in archaeological excavations and collected ethnographic collections for the Harbin Regional Museum. Kormazov was one of the first to describe the life of the Russian Three Rivers region. The ethnography of northwest China occupied an important part of his research. He not only described in detail the occupations of Chinese peasants, but also drew attention to the life of the indigenous peoples of the regions that bordered Russia. He studied the social life of the Chinese and Mongols, customs, collected fairy tales, songs and legends, as well as household items. The article notes the reasons for his emigration to the USA, his connections with emigration cultural figures I.I. Serebrennikov (Tianjin) and A.S. Lukashkin (San Francisco). In Seattle, Kormazov completed several important manuscripts, the most valuable being “Honghuzi Partisans in Manchuria, Korea, Mongolia and China.” The basis for the publication was the collection of V.A. Kormazov, stored in the Museum of Russian Culture (MRK) in San Francisco, also private collections.

V.A. Kormazov, Russian emigrant ethnographers, Russian China, OIMK, MRK