Koreans Becoming a Soviet People 107
cial example was the ethnography department of the Geography Institute
(GI) under Lev Shternberg at Leningrad State University from 1920 to
- Shternberg and V. G. Bogoraz were professors at the GI who taught
ethnography courses espousing both socialist evolutionary ideas (Tylor and
Morgan) and primordialism. Sergei Kan, paraphrasing Shternberg, stated:
“Second, there are those unique characteristics of a national character that
remain unchanged during the course of a people’s entire history, regardless
of the changes in the environment and temporary circumstances of a people’s
life. These characteristics are biological and they are transmitted unchanged
from one generation to the next.” Shternberg also taught that “as far as its
national psy chol ogy is concerned, no ethnic group dis appears altogether,
regardless of the amount of interbreeding it experiences.”^112 Kan, who
authored Lev Shternberg: Anthropologist, Rus sian Socialist, Jewish Activist,
summed up the beliefs and work of Shternberg by writing: “He [Shternberg]
simply could not accept a more traditional Morganian/Tylorian view....
To accept such a view meant to accept that Jewish culture, or Nivkh culture
for that matter, would inevitably lose its unique characteristics, that its spiri-
tual worldview was destined to dis appear, etc. As a romantic Populist and a
moderate Jewish nationalist, he could not accept this. It does not mean that
he became a Boasian under Boas’ direct influence but that his views and
those of Boas were similar in a number of ways.”^113
Soviet views on race as represented by Shternberg also played an impor-
tant role in the shaping of Central Asian nationalities through the KIPS
Committee, which delimited the creation of new borders and nations in
Central Asia beginning in 1924.^114 Shternberg and Bogoraz were members of
the elite ethnographers on KIPS.^115 Both men worked with and were guided
to some extent by Franz Boas, whom they considered a mentor. The Soviet
Union also embraced the eugenics movement sponsoring courses, lectures
and conferences led by Soviet eugenicists as well as those from Britain, Ger-
many and the United States. Although the Bolsheviks formally renounced
eugenics and their science in 1930, they continued to teach “medical eugen-
ics” until 1937.^116
Unofficially, Soviet chauvinism was grounded in popu lar culture and
discourse. After the October Revolution, socialism and equality were pro-
claimed as realities of the Soviet state, but very little was done to discourage
or punish those among the cadres, officials, and general populace who had
violated these norms. Rus sian views of Slavic superiority stayed relevant in
popu lar culture through jokes, stories, and fables (rasskazy) in which national
minorities served as the butts of the jokes.^117 In the case of the Koreans of
the RFE, Soviet chauvinism and the marking of the “other” were most
transparent in the distribution and categorization of resources, land, and
