Studies of ethnogenesis (or “the formation of peoples”) played a prominent role in the USSR for many years. Western scholars often are genuinely surprised at the development (if not overdevelopment) of such studies relative to other research programs. Why was the question of ethnogenesis so important for Soviets, especially for the intellectuals? Was this a response to purely academic challenges or stimulated by external forces? Also, were the ethnogenetic studies always emphasized in Soviet scholarship or were they introduced at a certain period of its development? Probably, only a few people remember now that Soviet scholars only began to study questions of ethnogenesis in the late 1930s. What happened then? What forced scholars to revise almost completely their former concepts and methodologies? In this respect, it is worth mentioning that many ideas, approaches, and theories that continued to dominate Soviet academic research until very recently were deeply rooted in developments during the late 1930s and 1940s. Thus, what happened at that time in the USSR greatly affected subsequent Soviet scholarship.

The intellectual climate and political background of early Soviet times

To answer these questions one needs to return to a somewhat earlier period and to explore the ideological climate in Soviet scholarship from 1920 through the early 1930s. At that time the so-called “Pokrovski school” was dominant in the historical disciplines, and the field of linguistics was involved in a critical transformation initiated by academician Nikolai Ya.