A new article has been posted The CESS blog by Rinat Shayakhmetov, The History of Soviet Anthropology in Kazakhstan
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION:
In this special post Rinat Shayakhmetov, grandson of the first Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan Zhumabay Shayakhmetov and himself a researcher of Soviet Kazakhstan, presents a narrative history of his uncle Noel Shayakhmetov, one of Kazakhstan’s first scientists working in the field of physical anthropology. Based on his own oral history interviews, archival resources from letters to photos, and museum materials, R. Shayakhmetov presents a personalized account of foundational figures in the field of skull reconstruction in the 20th century, and provides a rare and valuable resource and reflection on the development of this field in Soviet Central Asia (i). In its consideration of the projects, priorities, and lineages of learning in the academy, this piece also speaks to the broader use of physical anthropology in the ideological construction of nationality, cultural memorialization, and the framework of scientific history itself in the FSU (ii; cf Anderson and Arzyutov 2016; Ssorin-Chaikov 2019).
Notes:
(i) A Russian version of this article was published at Tengrinews: https://mix.tn.kz/mixnews/kazahskiy-uchenyiy-vosstanavlival-cherepu-litsa-nashih-375792/ The full text of the English version presented here was prepared by Rinat Shayakhmetov and published with his permission. All images are also used with his permission.
(ii) We encourage our readers to consider such biographic histories alongside other recently publicized archival materials of the academy such as the expedition notes of Muhiddin Faizulloev in Tajikistan, compiled and translated at Heidelberg University (https://faizulloev.freizo.org/).
References:
David G. Anderson and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2016. “The Construction of Soviet Ethnography and ‘The Peoples of Siberia’ in History and Anthropology 27 (2): 183-2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2016.1140159
Ssorin-Chaikov, Nikolai. 2019. “Reassembling history and anthropology in Russian anthropology: part 1” in Social Anthropology 27 (1). DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12628
