«And who are the judges?» (about those who destroyed the science of primitive culture)

Abstract

The author of the article tries to understand how it could have happened in our country during the Soviet times, a harsh ideologization of academic studies on social evolution. She shows huge damage that some professionally unsound but politically and ideologically engaged publications, as well as the activities of their creators in general, have done to this area of ethnological research. Their names are given and expressive fragments from the 1930’s publications are quoted. Key issues of academic ethics and moral responsibility of scholars are raised. The author also points out the threats to ethnological studies that a pressure of ideology and politics can bring with it in our time.