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Nurture Is Nature: Lev Gumilev and the Ecology of Ethnicity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Mark Bassin*
Affiliation:
University of Hannover

Abstract

In this article, Mark Bassin explores Lev Gumilev's theory of ethnicity. Developing his ideas in the context of post-Stalinist debates about the relationship of society to the natural world, Gumilev maintained that the etnos was a wholly natural, quasi-biological entity. Although this naturalism involved an important genetic dimension, Gumilev denied that ethnicity was determined by race and emphasized instead its ecological quality as an organic part of biogeocenoses or natural-landscape ecosystems. Although he remained marginalized in his day by the Soviet ethnographic establishment, his essentialist perspective is powerfully appealing for post-Soviet audiences, who find his “ecology of ethnicity” singularly useful for the purposes of ethnopolitical discourse.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2009

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22. Lev N. Gumilev and Aleksandr M. Panchenko, Chtoby svecha ne pogasla: Dialog. (Leningrad, 1990), 6.

23. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 226; and Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 24.

24. Lev N. Gumilev, “Letter to the Editors of Izvestiya Vsesoyuznogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva,” Soviet Geography: Review and Translation 15, no. 6 (1974): 376; and Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 227.

25. Gumilev, “'la, russkii chelovek,'” 271; Lev N. Gumilev, “Etnogenez i etnosfera,” Priroda, no. 1 (1970): 47.

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27. Gumilev, “Etnogenez i etnosfera” (no. 1), 49. See also Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 91, 131.

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29. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 21.

30. Gumilev, “Etnogenez i etnosfera” (no. 1), 50; Lev N. Gumilev, “Etnogenez: Prirodnyi protsess,” Priroda, no. 2 (1971): 80.

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34. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 227 (quote), 85, 87-88.

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38. Gumilev, Konets i vnov1 nachalo, 75 (emphasis in the original). See also Gumilev and Panchenko, Chtoby svecha nepogasla, 6; and Lev N. Gumilev and V Iu. Ermolaev, “Problemy predskazuemosti v izuchenii protestov etnogeneza,” in Iurii A. Kravtsov, ed., Predely predskazuemosti (Moscow, 1997), 241.

39. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli, 143-45, 250-53.

40. Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 75. See also Lev N. Gumilev, “Biosfera i impul'sy soznaniia,” Priroda, no. 12 (1978): 99.

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47. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 90.

48. Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 346. See also Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 132, 217, 219; Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 27; and Gumilev, “'Menia nazyvaiut evraziitsem … , ‘ “ 139.

49. Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 347.

50. Titov, “Lev Gumilev, Ethnogenesis and Eurasianism,” 62.

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58. Weiner, Little Corner of Freedom.

59. Gumilev, “'la, russkii chelovek,'” 131, 258, 304.

60. Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 182-83; Gumilev, “'Menia nazyvaiut evraziitsem…,'“133.

61. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 307. See also Gumilev, Lev N., “On the Anthropogenic Factor in Landscape Formation,” Soviet Geography: Revieiu and Translation 9, no. 9 (1968): 595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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63. V A. Michurin, “Slovar’ poniatii i terminov teorii etnogeneza L. N. Gumileva,” in Lev N. Gumilev, Etnosfera: Istoriia liudei i istoriia prirody (Moscow, 2004), 572. See also Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 289-91.

64. Gumilev, “O termine etnos,” 53; Gumilev, “G. E. Grumm-Grzhimailo,” 120.

65. In Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), Gumilev cites the full passage from Berg's Nomogenesis quoted above on at least two occasions (37, 180) and uses Berg's language throughout his own text. In an earlier work, he reproduced this same passage verbatim but without quotation marks or attribution. Gumilev, “Etnogenez i etnosfera” (no. 1), 51; Lev N. Gumilev, “Etno-landshaftnye regiony evrazii za istoricheskii period,” in Gumilev, Ritmy Evrazii, 270.

66. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 173; Gumilev, “Etno-landshaftnye regiony evrazii za istoricheskii period,” 270.

67. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 167.

68. Ibid., 37; Gumilev, “G. E. Grumm-Grzhimailo,” 120. While mainsueam Soviet ethnography generally included attachment to a particular territorial homeland as a necessary constituting feature of ethnicity, it never viewed the relationship in Gumilev's terms, as one of naturalistic determination. Kushner, Pavel I., Etnicheskie lerritorii i etnicheskie granitsy (Moscow, 1951)Google Scholar; Bromlei, Iulian V., Ocherki teorii etnosa (Moscow, 1983), 5758 Google Scholar; and Bromley, Julian and Kozlov, Viktor I., “The Theory of Ethnos and Ethnic Processes in Soviet Social Science,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 3 (July 1989): 427-28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69. Gumilev, “On the Subject of the ‘Unified Geography,'” 42-43, 45.

70. E.g. Gumilev, “Etno-landshaftnye regiony evrazii za istoricheskii period,” 257-59; Gumilev, “Etnogenez i etnosfera” (no. 1), 52-54; Gumilev, Konets i vnov’ nachalo, 122-24;

71. Gumilev made this point in a letter to the Eurasian geographer Petr N. Savitskii. Lev N. Gumilev, “Letter to P. N. Savitskii, 19 December 1956” (Personal archive of author).

72. Lev N. Gumilev, “Mongoly i merkity v XII veke,” Studia orientalla et antiqua, no. 416 (1977): 74-116, at http://www.gumilevica.kulichki.com/articles/Article78.htm#Article78 (last accessed 30 August 2009).

73. Gumilev, “'la, russkii chelovek,'” 254.

74. Gumilev, “Etnogenez: Prirodnyi protsess,” 82.

75. The term ecological niche was first used by the California biologist Joseph Grinnell (1877-1939). Joseph Grinnell, “The Niche-Relationships of the California Thrasher,” The Auk 34, no. 4 (October 1917): 427-33. For more contemporary uses of the term, see Chase, Jonathan M. and Leibold, Mathew A., Ecological Niches: Linking Classical and Contemporary Approaches (Chicago, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schoener, T. W., “The Ecological Niche,” in Cherrett, John M., ed., Ecological Concepts: The Contribution of Ecology to an Understanding of the Natural World (Oxford, 1989), 79113.Google Scholar

76. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 180.

77. Gumilev, “Nikakoi mistiki,” 66. See also Gumilev and Ivanov, “Etnicheskie protsessy,” 54-55.

78. Gumilev, Lev N., “Istoriko-filosofskie trudy kniazia N. S. Trubetskogo (zametki poslednego evraziitsa),” in Trubetskoi, Nikolai S., Istoriia. Kul'tura. Iazyk (Moscow, 1995), 36.Google Scholar

79. Gumilev and Ivanov, “Etnicheskie protsessy,” 54; Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 132, 167.

80. Gumilev, “On the Subject of the ‘Unified Geography,'” 41.

81. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 173.

82. Iu. V. Bromlei, “Chelovek v etnicheskoi (natsional'noi) sisteme,” Voprosy filosofii 7 (1988): 19; la. V Bogdanov, “Ot idei L'va Gumileva k natsional'noi ideologii Rossii” (2002), at http://www.left.ru/2003/7/bogdanov83.html (last accessed 30 August 2009).

83. V. I. Kozlov, “Chto zhe takoe etnos?” Priroda, no. 2 (1971): 72-73; A. I. Pershits and V. V. Pokshishevskii, “Ipostasi etnosa,” Priroda, no. 12 (1978): 108.

84. V I. Kozlov, “O biologo-istoricheskoi kontseptsii etnicheskoi istorii,” Voprosy istorii, no. 12 (1974): 85; Bromlei, Ocherki teorii etnosa, 214; Pershits and Pokshishevskii, “Ipostasi etnosa,” 107, 110.

85. Pershits and Pokshishevskii, “Ipostasi etnosa,” 111-12.

86. S. I. Bruk and N. N. Cheboksarov, “Metaetnicheskie obshchnosti,” Rasy i narody. Ezhegodnik, no. 6 (1976): 15-41; Bromlei, Ocherki teorii etnosa, 82, 373, 375; Bromlei, Iulian V., Etnosotsial'nye protsessy: Teoriia, istoriia, sovremennost’ (Moscow, 1987), 37 Google Scholar; Heikkinen, Kaija, “Ethnicity and Nationalism in Contemporary Russian Ethnography,” in Chulos, Chris J. and Piirainen, Timo, eds., The Fall of an Empire, The Birth of a Nation: National Identities in Russia, (Burlington, Vt., 2000), 101-2.Google Scholar

87. Iurii Iu. Veingold, Sovetskii narodnovaia istoricheskaia obshchnost’ liudei: Sotsiologicheskii ocherk (Frunze, 1973); Kaltakhchian, S. T., “Sovetskii narod,” in Boishaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1976), 25 Google Scholar; Kim, M. P., Sovetskii narod: Novaia istoricheskaia obshchnost’ liudei (Moscow, 1975).Google Scholar For discussions of this policy, see Simon, Gerhard, Nationalism and Policy toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union: From Totalitarian Dictatorship to Post-Stalinist Society, trans. Forster, Karen and Forster, Oswald (Boulder, Colo., 1991)Google Scholar; Suny, Ronald Grigor, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar; Connor, Walker, “Soviet Policies toward the Non-Russian Peoples in Theoretic and Historic Perspective: What Gorbachev Inherited,” in Motyl, Alexander J., ed., The Post-Soviet Nations: Perspectives on the Demise of the USSR (New York, 1992), 3049 Google Scholar; Hodnett, Grey, “What's in a Nation?Problems of Communism 16, no. 5 (September-October 1967): 215.Google Scholar

88. Gumilev, Etnogenez i biosfera zemli (1989), 305. See also Gumilev and Ivanov, “Etnicheskie protsessy,” 54; Gumilev, “'la, russkii chelovek,'” 257.

89. Shnirel'man, Victor A., The Myth of the Khazars and Intellectual Antisemitism in Russia, 1970s-1990s (Jerusalem, 2002).Google Scholar

90. Russian nationalists’ acute interest in Gumilev's ecological research on the Khazars is indicated by the fact that his major exposition of this theme—his massive Ancient Rus’ and the Great Steppe—grew out of a manuscript on the Khazars that had been commissioned by the conservative-nationalist journal Nash sovremennik. It was not published, apparently because its particular antisemitic thrust was deemed too radical. Lev N. Gumilev, Drevniaia Rus’ i velikaia step’ (Moscow, 1989). On the significance of Gumilev's chimera concept for Soviet antisemitism, see Bassin, “Lev Gumilev and National Identity,” 152-57; Shnirel'man, Myth of the Khazars, 44-59; Rossman, Vadim, “Lev Gumilev, Eurasianism and Khazaria,” East European Jewish Affairs 32, no. 1 (2002): 3051 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chernykh, E. N., “Postscript: Russian Archaeology after the Collapse of the USSR. Infrastructural Crisis and the Resurgence of Old and New Nationalism,” in Kohl, Philip L. and Fawcett, Clare, eds., Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology (Cambridge, Eng., 1995), 139-48.Google Scholar It is extremely interesting to note that scientific antisemitism in Germany provided a precedent of sorts for Gumilev's ecological-environmental approach to thejewish “problem.” See the work of the Hamburg geographer Siegfried Passarge, Dasjudentum als landschaftskundlichethnologisches Problem (Munich, 1929).

91. See Mozhaiskova, Irina V., Dukhovnyi obraz russkoi tsivilizatsii i sud'ba Rossii: Opyl metaistoricheskogo issledovaniia, 4 vols. (Moscow, 2001-2002)Google Scholar; Moiseev, Nikita N., Sud'ba tsivilizatsii: Put’ razuma (Moscow, 2000)Google Scholar; and Butenko, Anatolii P. and Kolesnichenko, Iulia V., “Mentalitet rossiian i evraziistvo: Ikh sushchnost’ i obshchestvenno-politicheskii smysl,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, no. 5 (1996): 96.Google Scholar For an attempt to fill out Gumilev's “incomplete” biological conceptualization of etnos, see Kirill Maklakov, “Teoriia etnogeneza s tochki zreniia biologa,” Ural, no. 10 (1996): 164-78, at http://www.magazines.russ.ru/ural/1996/10/maklakov-pr.html (last accessed 30 August 2009).

92. Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict, 2. See also Viktor A. Shnirel'man, “Rasizm vchera i segodnia,” Pro et contraQ, no. 2 (September-October 2005): 55-56.

93. Shnirel'man, “Ksenofobiia, noyvi rasizm i puti ikh preodoleniia,” 11. See also V. R. Filippov, “Velikii fantazer: L. Gumilev i profanatory ego teorii” (unpublished paper), at http://www.viu-online.ru/science/publ/bulletenl5/page25.html (accessed 20 June 2008; no longer available).

94. E.g. Avdeev, Vladimir B., Rasologiia: Nauka o nasledstvennykh kachestvakh liudei (Moscow, 2005)Google Scholar; Avdeev, Vladimir B., Metafizicheskaia antropologiia (Moscow, 2002)Google Scholar; and Avdeev, Vladimir B. and Sevast'ianov, Aleksandr N., Rasa i etnos: Russkim zhenshchinam posviashchaetsia (Moscow, 2007).Google Scholar

95. For an unequivocal denunciation, see Konstantin Kasimovskii, “Russkaia rasa,” Shturmovik 18, no. 30 (1996), at http://nationalism.org/rusaction/rusrace.htm (last accessed 30 August 2009).

96. “Lev Gumilev: Pro et contra,” in Aleksandr N. Sevast'ianov, Etnos i natsiia (Moscow, 2008), 42-50.

97. Mal'kova, V. K., Obrazy etnosov v respublikanskikh gazetakh: Opyt etnosotsiologicheskogo izuchenia (Moscow, 1991).Google Scholar Also see Pal Kolst, “Territorialising Diasporas: The Case of the Russians in the Former Soviet Republics,” Millennium:Journal of International Studies, 28 no. 3 (1999): 607-31, at http://www.folk.uio.no/palk/Millennium.htm (last accessed 30 August 2009).

98. Rogers Brubaker among others has heavily stressed the valorization of ethnoterritorial attachment for the configuration of nationalism in the late Soviet period. Brubaker, Rogers, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, Eng., 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Kaiser, Robert J., The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton, 1994).Google Scholar

99. S. P. Romanchuk, “Sakral'nyi landshaft,” Gumanitarnyi ekologicheskii zhurnal 4, no. 1 (2002): 112-14; Fragner, Bert G., “'Soviet Nationalism': An Ideological Legacy to the Independent Republics of Central Asia,” in Schendel, Willem van and Zi'ircher, Erik Jan, eds., Identity Politics in Central Asia and the Muslim World: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Labour in the Twentieth Century (London, 2001), 23.Google Scholar

100. Kolst0, “Territorialising Diasporas.” Serguei Oushakine's very interesting work on “ethno-vitalism” in post-Soviet Russia similarly emphasizes the importance of Gumilev's ethno-ecology for contemporary conceptualizations of etnos as a “biogeographical given.” Sergei Ushakin, “Zhiznennye sily russkoi tragedii: O postsovetskikh teoriiakh etnosa,” Ab Imperio 4 (2005): 243; Serguei Oushakine, “From Russian Tragedy to Vital Forces: Theorizing Post-Soviet Ethnicity” (unpublished paper).

101. Nursultan A. Nazarbaev, “Ideia, kotoroi prinadlezhit budushchee,” Evraziia, no. 1 (1995): 5-11; Nursultan Nazarbaev, “Evraziiskii soiuz: Strategiiaintegratsii,“£r;razHa, no. 1 (1996): 3-8; Laruelle, Marlene, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Washington, D.C., 2008), 171-87.Google Scholar

102. Ermekbaev, Zharas A., Teoriia etnogeneza i evraziiskie idei L. N. Cumileva vprepodavanii istoricheskikh distsiplin (Astana, 2003), 16, 30Google Scholar; Akhmetov, Kadyr A., Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev: Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo (Astana, 2002), 17 Google Scholar; Zholdasbekov, Myrzatai and Kairzhanov, Abai, Evraziiskaia teoriia L. N. Gumileva (Astana, 2002), 14.Google Scholar

103. S. A. Abdymanapov, Zhizn’ i deiatel'nost’ L. N. Cumileva (Astana, 2004), 17-18 (quote), 13, 16, 21.

104. Aron Atabek, “V Kazakhstane est’ tol'ko odin narod i odna natsiia—kazakhi, vse ostal'nye—diaspory,” Internet-Gazeta “Zona KZ” (18 November 2004), at http://zonakz.net/articles/?artid=7484 (last accessed 30 August 2009; emphasis in the original).

105. On the popularity of this historiography, see Mikhail Tripol'skii, “Ob izvrashchenii istorii: Khazarskii kaganat, evrei i sud'ba Rossii,” Novoe russkoe slovo (9 December 1994), at http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/debate/ArticlelO.htm (last accessed 30 August 2009); Aleksandr Baigushev, “Khazarskie strasti: K russko-evreiskomu dialogu,” Zavtra 34, no. 66 (23 August 2006).

106. Igor’ Shishkin, “Simbioz, kseniia, i khimera,” Zavtra4, no. 60 (1995): 4.

107. Ibid.

108. Ibid.