Historical Ethnology

The article opens a special issue of the Historical Ethnology journal, dedicated to the work, ideas and approaches of L.M. Drobizheva, an outstanding scholar who is considered one of the founders of Soviet and Russian ethnosociology. Her research, distinguished by the depth of its conceptualization and the impeccability of its methods, laid the foundation for understanding the history of the peoples of the former USSR and contemporary ethnosocial processes from the perspective of ethno-sociological science.

The issue begins with a series of memoir papers which highlight various stages and aspects of her academic curriculum vitae and personal biography, her work ethics and humane qualities. It contains articles written by researchers from different regions of the country, which reflect the idea of her personality and legacy by those who worked and studied with her and interacted on various discussion platforms. The authors point out Leokadia Mikhailovna’s sincere dedication to ethno-sociological science, as she was charged with ideas for its development for the benefit of the country, honesty, integrity in upholding a scholarly point of view, and the ability to line-up a team of like-minded researchers behind her.

A number of papers are devoted to the importance of developing the theoretical foundations of ethnosociology, further understanding of its subject and methods, and clarifying the conceptual framework. Their authors speak out against the one-sided opposition of primordialism and constructivism/instrumentalism, advocate for special attention to the specifics of using terms in various socio-political, historical and cultural contexts, and the importance of understanding the new agenda of the ethnic field of Russia. Some of the articles present the results of empirical research, in which L.M. Drobizheva’s theoretical, methodological approaches and methodological developments are used to analyze the modern ethnosocial situation and interethnic attitudes.

The presented material proves the relevance of the approaches developed by L.M. Drobizheva, for whom the highest value was acquiring the knowledge of social reality with the purpose to improve Russian society. Her honesty, ability to summarize the key aspects of reality and support scholars’ most talented initiatives laid down the traditions that today fruitfully stimulate the search for adequate responses to the new challenges of the time.

The article is devoted to the formation and development of ethnosociology in Tatarstan, which is closely associated with the name of one of its founders, Leokadia Mikhailovna Drobizheva.

Ethnosociology, as a field that arose at the junction of ethnology and sociology, focuses on studying the development features of the peoples of Russia. Originated in the mid-1960s as a response to the changing political and socio-economic situation in the USSR, it has always expressed the demands of the times. The article reveals the areas and main issues of research in which ethnosociologists from the Marjani Institute of History of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences were involved.

The author reveals the professional and personal qualities of L.M. Drobizheva as the initiator and organizer of a number of ethnosocial projects in the country, which were aimed at studying the most relevant problems of our time. Those studies examined issues of state identity and ethnic identity, nationalism, problems of equality/inequality of social and ethnic groups, ethnic and social distances, interethnic relations. The results were presented in numerous publications, lectures, consultations, and helped in working out political decisions. L.M. Drobizheva made a significant contribution to the improvement of the federal foundations of the Russian state, which was rightlfully appreciated by the leadership of the Russian Federation and the academic community.

60 years of development resulted in the formation of a large School of ethnosociology, which includes fellow ethnosociologists from Moscow, St. Petersburg, the national republics of the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union. It also unites large Russian university cities with ethnosociology centers, where research is conducted, lectures on ethnosociology are given to students of various disciplines, such as history, sociology, cultural and political studies, etc.

The article examines fundamental and pressing issues in ethnosociology: firstly, the issues brought to light by the dramatic transformations that occurred in society in the post-Soviet period; secondly, the ones posed by one of the founders of Soviet ethnosociology, L.M. Drobizheva. The author provides the scholar’s personal profile compiled from an analysis of her creative legacy and personal impressions gained from the interraction with her, participation in joint discussions, and corresponding with her. In addition to Leokadia Drobizheva’s personal qualities pointed out by her students and colleagues (friendliness, a spirit of peacemaking and collectivism, and mutual support), the author highlights the following qualities: her distinctive professional style, high academic and purely human standards, nobility combined with firmness in defending her positions on fundamental issues, her social significance, and the sound prognosticity of her thoughts and actions.

The article shows that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the introduction of a new socioeconomic system were accompanied by a rejection of domestic traditions of ethnology and the assertion of a methodological and conceptual framework of social and humanistic studies, including ethnosociology, borrowed from the West. Anthropologism and constructivism with a focus on studying ethnicity and identity became dominant here. In those circumstances, L.M. Drobizheva identified the need to understand the specific subject matter of ethnosociology as an important condition for its preservation and development. Through the analysis of her views and by outlining the existing challenges for ethnosociology, the author cautions against the danger of turning ethnosociology into a tool for solving specific political problems and against absolutizing issues of ethnicity and identity within its field of study. He insists that it is the ethnic phenomenon as a whole and the ethnos as its bearer that are ethnology’s object of study, not ethnicity, which is their particular manifestation. It is proposed to define ethnosocial processes in their subjectivity, complexity and systematicity as the subject of ethnosociology.

The article presents a philosophical and methodological analysis of the crisis in contemporary studies of the ethnic phenomenon, with the purpose to advance towards the development of a new descriptive language. It demonstrates that the key reason for the theoretical dead end in ethnology is not a lack of empirical data but the inheritance of an outdated Aristotelian ontology and classical category theory. These foundations underlie the European scientific paradigm and manifest in both primordialism and constructivism. The author draws on both philosophical critique and the modern findings of cognitive science, which have shown that human thinking operates not through rigid categories with clear boundaries but through prototypes and metaphors. It is argued that these insights from cognitive research should be applied not only to everyday knowledge but also to the epistemology of scientific knowledge. To form a new vision, it is possible to use new realism concepts proposed within the ontological turn, which are consistent with cognitive research data. Within the described ontological model, the cultural-historical layer of being is singled out, where concepts exist intersubjectively as “condensations of meaning” extracted from practice. This approach allows for overcoming the subject-object dualism. In this paradigm, “ethnos” is neither an objective essence nor an arbitrary construct but an objective phenomenon within the reality of culture. Overcoming the crisis in describing the ethnic phenomenon requires not the accumulation of facts but a radical restructuring of the epistemology and ontology of the social sciences. Only such a turn will allow for the adequate description of systemic and meaningful realities without succumbing to either hypostatisation or relativistic constructivism.

This article is intended as a polemical essay. The presented points have two main objectives. The first one is to outline the areas of agreement and scholarly disagreement between the author and the ideas of renowned ethnosociologist Rogers Brubaker, expressed in his 2017 article on two types of political identity (nationalist and civilizational). The paper argues with the American sociologist that civilizationalism is supposedly displacing nationalism in the political strategy of right-wing populists in Europe. The author is even more dubious about attempts to equate the civilizational ideology of European right-wing populists with the civilizational ideas of Russian right-wing forces. From the author’s point of view, such an equation is inconsistent with reality and fails to take into account Russia’s historical and cultural characteristics. Secondly, the article is motivated by the author’s desire to remind the ethnosociological community of a number of important theoretical and methodological propositions by L.M. Drobizheva regarding the particular aspects of civic and state identification in Russia and the differences between Russian principles of such identification and those that developed within Western political culture. The distinguished Russian sociologist and ethnologist’s ideas are extremely relevant in the context of contemporary discussions about the specifics of civilizational identification in Russia and the West.

The article examines ethnocultural practices and interethnic attitudes of the Tatar population of the Kostanay region in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The study is based on a wide range of sources, including archival documents, periodical publications, and data from an ethno-sociological study (mass surveys and in-depth interviews).

The research has demonstrated that despite the closure of all mosques during the Soviet period, the persecution of Muslim clergy, and the implementation of state anti-religious campaigns, Tatars continued to maintain religiously rooted ethnocultural traditions. They preserved national rites associated with Islam and continued to celebrate major religious holidays, such as Kurban Bayram and Uraza Bayram. Among non-religious practices, the collective ritual kaz ömäse held a particularly significant place. Until approximately the 1970s, various traditional practices remained widespread, including collective women’s gatherings (aulak öy), rituals of going out into the steppe (dalaga chygu), matchmaking customs, and ceremonies associated with introducing the bride to the path leading to a water source.

During the period of ethnic renaissance (the late 1980s and early 1990s), the Tatar community of the region succeeded in establishing a national cultural center, as well as were able to create musical ensembles, broadcast informational radio programs, and organize the native language classes for children. Since 1994, the cultural center has annually organized the Sabantuy festival and other ethnocultural events.

At present, the study records a noticeable decline in ethnocultural competence, manifested in weaker knowledge of the native language, folklore, and family rituals among the younger generation. At the same time, interethnic relations in the region are characterized by a high level of ethnic tolerance. The factors influencing interethnic attitudes include assimilation processes and the policy of personnel indigenization.

Contemporary architectural practice increasingly turns to the aspects of the environment that define not so much its form as it defines the experience it produces – bodily perception, acoustic structure, and the rhythms of light and landscape. In multicultural cities, the need to work with local identity makes it essential to employ tools that allow culture to manifest not through direct visual citation but through the atmosphere and emotional memory of the place. The article examines the evolution of the authors’ design approach – from spatial event and symbolic form toward a methodology in which the focus shifts from formal expression to sensory perception and the experience of presence.

The aim of the study is to describe the formation of a phenomenologically oriented method and to demonstrate its application in the landscape design of the residential complex Frisson. The methods include a generalised analysis of the design practice of the architectural bureau ZARF, semantic interpretation of architectural imagery, spatial and landscape analysis, as well as the modelling of user scenarios and sensory transitions with attention to acoustic contexts. Earlier projects – the Festivalnyy Boulevard and the competition concept for the G. Kamal Theatre – are interpreted as stages in the development of the method and refinement of its tools.

The results show that shifting from visual codes to atmospheric design enables the creation of inclusive environments where identity is perceived through rhythm, light, sound, materiality, and the seasonal dynamics of the landscape. In the Frisson project, this approach is articulated through emotional sequencing, gradations of privacy, and the integration of acoustic and landscape elements.

The study concludes that this method has practical relevance for the design of residential and public spaces, as well as for further research in architectural ethnology and urban studies.

In the article, the authors reflect on the ways of further development of Russian ethnosociology, based on the analysis of the topics range at the sections and roundtable discussions, as well as the content of the reports presented at the conference “2nd Drobizheva Readings: Ethnic and Social Dimensions.” The event was dedicated to one of the founders of this branch of the Russian sociological science, L.M. Drobizheva. The forum demonstrated to what extent the research of contemporary ethnosociologists from different regions of the Russian Federation reflects the changes associated with the profound transformation of the world order and the emergence of a new political reality both in the country and at the global level.

The authors of the plenary reports and speeches associated the conceptual foundations of understanding the ethnosocial field of Russia primarily with the ideas of the state-civilization and new methodological approaches to the study of Russian identity. That identity was the central research object for Russian ethnosociologists, who presented comprehensive data on its current state at the conference. At the same time, the forum revealed a noticeable decrease in scholars’ attention to other types of identities and ethnic communities.

The subject matter of state-civil integration of Russian society has gained relevance for the current political agenda. The topic was highlighted as part of the analysis of the ethnosocial situation in the South and Southwest of Russia, in the new regions of the country, as well as in connection with the state of interethnic relations. The participants discussed migration processes in the context of serious restructuring of the Russian Federation migration policy.

Summary of the issues of the sections and reports indicated the importance of further improving the conceptual framework for studying complex ethnosocial phenomena. It revealed the need for Russian scholars to deepen their understanding of the rapidly changing socio-political reality. Such a deeper and more extended approach is designed to provide adequate, synchronized data regarding the impact of this reality on the consolidation of Russian society, the adaptation of ethnic communities to it, the meanings and manifestations of modern diverse identities, as well as its impact on interethnic relations, migration, and ethnocultural demands. The authors of the article drew attention to the statement articulated by L.M. Drobizheva that during transitional periods of society’s development, the boundaries of social differentiation become more prominent. The topic of social changes in ethnic groups and the relationships of their representatives in the context of the new political agenda is gaining not only academic, but also practical significance in Russia.