Folklore and Ethnology in the Soviet Western Borderlands: Socialist in Form, National in Content

Following World War II, the Soviet occupation and ensuing colonial governance influenced the subsequent evolution of numerous Central and Eastern European nations, integrating them into a framework of center-periphery relationships with Moscow. It constituted a shift from the worldwide trajectory of Western cultural and scientific advancement to Marxist-Leninist ideology and cultural practices. The official doctrine of historical materialism, grounded in the interpretation of Marxism in the Soviet Union (USSR), together with the approach of socialist realism supplanted a variety of methodologies, for instance, the historical-geographic method or so-called Finnish school, or the diffusionist approach. The USSR's mandate influenced both the ideological dimension and the scientific framework of the humanities, including folklore and ethnology (or, rather, ethnography: in the eyes of the Soviet authorities, ethnology was viewed as a bourgeois science that failed to meet the needs of Soviet society. Therefore, the Soviet government replaced the term “ethnology” with the preferred term of “ethnography”). It was especially strong and direct in the Soviet republics. However, the authorities were unable to foresee and regulate everything.The preceding description presents the reality that Folklore and Ethnology in the Soviet Western Borderlands explores through post-socialist, post-colonial lenses, concepts of modernization and modernity, and hybridity, as well as by challenging the binary classifications of cultural analysis from the Cold War era. Published 33 years after the Soviet Union's dissolution, this study of Soviet folklore and ethnology (ethnography) comes from an international and multidisciplinary team led by Toms Ķencis, with 15 authors from diverse fields: folklore studies (Simon J. Bronner, Elīna Gailīte, Ķencis, Kaisa Langer, Austė Nakienė, Janika Oras, Gatis Ozoliņš, Elo-Hanna Seljamaa, Digne Ūdre, and Gabriella Vámos); history (Pavlo Artymyshyn and Roman Holyk), philosophy (Joseph Grim Feinberg) and anthropology (Jennifer R. Cash and Ewa Klekot). They represent 10 former Soviet western border states, including five former Soviet Republics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Ukraine), the so-called People's Republics (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), and the German Democratic Republic (Eastern Germany).The monograph examines the interaction between folklore and power during various stages of the Soviet regime, from Stalinism to the late socialist era, while contextualizing these relationships in the geopolitics of the Soviet western border. The book's introduction effectively outlines the historical context of the study, its geographical settings, the methods employed, and a multidisciplinary angle, which together shape its form and content. The book is well-structured: four thematically interconnected parts (12 chapters in total) bounded by an introduction and an afterword that explores the influence of ideological models created by Soviet-era cultural theories on the emergence of twenty-first century, neo-imperial conflicts.The first part, “An Inherent Paradox: National Form and Socialist Content,” examines the concepts of national form and socialist content, which stem from Marxist-Leninist principles and their practical manifestations. The authors seek and discover an explanation for the meaning—conceptual, regional, or otherwise—included in the terms national and socialist content, and how they evolved during the Soviet period. The concepts and techniques discussed in this section provide context for describing ideologically structured Soviet reality (both simulacra and actual), which affected the development of folklore and ethnography. Therefore, the explanation of the growth of interest in folklore as an unintended consequence of Soviet modernism and policy (efforts to equalize rural and urban areas) is both essential and appropriate here.The second section, “Multivocal Socialism: Agents and Agendas,” challenges the Cold War-era binary categories of cultural analysis by describing the Soviet people's role and agency, and the conflict between their rights and the desire to create, believe, and act in the context of socialist reality. The authors study the examples of Estonian singer Laine Mesikäp, Latvian artist Jēkabs Bīne, and historians Oļģerts Tālivaldis Auns and Muntis Auns, to prove the existence of other strategies besides resistance and collaboration—such as remaining true to one's own system of values and knowledge and holding onto personal beliefs about religion despite living under pressure from the values imposed by the Soviet Union. Although other strategies had limited opportunity of being developed (all were more or less tied to collaboration or resistance), the example of Dievturi, “a folklore-inspired neo-pagan movement” in the Latvian SSR, demonstrates that there were niches in which to hide (p. 145).The third section, “Folk and the People: Education and Control,” combines chapters that focus on the Soviet regime's actual strategies for shaping the Soviet people and culture, using folklore and ethnography as applied disciplines. The authors pay attention to the fact that the national form of Soviet culture emerged only after passing through a multi-stage filter that included debates, competitions, and exhibitions. Submissive acceptance of the jury's decisions (e.g., the proper national clothing, stage dance-appropriate choreography, or correct proportions of a woodcarver's work) resulted in the hybridization or even loss of tradition. This part examines the supervised staging of traditions, their engagement in large-scale performances, the internal structure and power dynamics within amateur art groups, and the reaction to such performed traditions after the fall of the USSR.The last part, “Postwar Academia: Sovietization of the Discipline,” assesses the Soviet scientific system, including how the new order was imposed and solidified by destroying the old one, how the institutional system was designed, and how new research objects were defined. It provides insight into how ethnography and folklore were organized and controlled differently in the Soviet Republics, People's Republics, and the German Democratic Republic. This section demonstrates how the Soviet government's intervention in scientific classification (folkloristics—literary studies, ethnography—an auxiliary discipline of history) and the scientific infrastructure it established (institutionally separating them) drove a wedge between folkloristics and ethnography. This greatly influenced the development of anthropology and ethnology in the post-Soviet period, especially in the countries where research institutions were established based on the USSR model. This aspect of the problem may still be awaiting additional research.The study's framework, methods, and thematic presentation will undoubtedly interest not only students and scholars from the investigated region but also a larger audience of folklorists and ethnologists. The volume deserves to be included in “the new wave of disciplinary historiography of postsocialist Europe” (p. 2).The volume also contains an important message about the significance of academic freedom. Although folklorists and ethnographers working in the Soviet zone of influence were able to explore national culture—by exploiting loopholes in the system and censorship, even replacing the socialist content of Soviet culture with elements inspired by national culture—the conditions of academic freedom remain essential for research endeavors in any country, at any time, and under any political system.