Research Strategies of Exiled Narodniks in the Siberian Ethnography in the Second Half of 19th – Early 20th Century

В статье рассматриваются исследовательские стратегии ссыльных народников, занимавшихся этнографическими проблемами в Сибири во второй половине XIX – начале XX в. На основе мемуарных текстов, переписки и материалов научных работ «невольных поселенцев» охарактеризована специфика постановки ими научных целей и задач. Особое внимание обращено на раскрытие мотивации, вовлекавшей ссыльных народников в изучение населения восточного региона, их теоретической и практической подготовки к научным исследованиям. Кроме того, затрагиваются особенности организации экспедиций с учетом ограниченности прав политических ссыльных, сложностей во взаимодействии с представителями имперской администрации на разных ее уровнях, освещаются трудности с публикацией народниками результатов своих научных исследований. Ethnographic research in the Russian Empire experienced its heyday in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and multiple ethnographers emerged from among the exiled Narodniks during this rise. Their research activities attract special attention because of the contrast between their lack of specialized, and more often even complete higher education, and the successes in science that they managed to achieve. In recent years, the study of the experience of exiled Narodniks as ethnographers has intensified in the fields of intellectual history and the history of ethnography, but their research strategies have not yet become the subjects of special study. Turning to the texts of the memoirs of ethnographers-Narodniks and other political exiles, as well as their articles in specialized magazines and published correspondence, the present article tries to answer the question of how they solved their research tasks without the appropriate basic theoretical and practical training. Considering that the Narodniks were not professional researchers and were spontaneously involved in the study of the indigenous population, special attention is paid to their research motivation, which was not limited to the need to conduct at least some kind of intellectual activity in the conditions of the exile. The success of the “involuntary ethnographers” has led to the attention to the resources they had at the beginning of their research, including full everyday involvement in the life of Siberian indigenous people and knowledge of at least one local language. The authors focused on the transition from “spontaneous” to organized ethnographic research, the difficulties that arose at the stage of organizing the expeditions and the nuances associated with the processing and publication of the gathered materials.