Areal research in Russian ethnography: traditions and current state

The content of the article is determined by the history of Russian Ethnography in the history of the Russian state. The purpose of the author's research is to trace the formation and the development of the areal method as a way to describe and study the ethnic and cultural diversity of the country. The main sources of the article are the ethnographic maps and atlases published in Russia in the XIX-XX centuries, as well as the works of Russian scientists devoted to the substantiation of the principles of an areal research. Their history goes back to mapping the cultural and linguistic diversity of the Russian state. One of the conclusions of the article is the thesis that the interest in ethnic issues projected on the maps was associated with the formation of the Imperial space and its administrative-territorial structuring. The areal mapping as a form and a tool for describing the population of Russia appeared in the XVII century and is used up to the present day. The article also substantiates the position that the formation and the development of the areal method in Russian Ethnography was determined by the broad context - the development of the geography, the dialectology, the linguistic geography, the folklore. The approval of the concept of the "cultural area» was associated with the formation of the anthropogeography and the theory of "cultural circles». A milestone in its development was the work of the outstanding Russian / Soviet ethnographer V. G. Bogoraz-Tan. Based on an analysis of his works of the early twentieth century, it is concluded that the concept of ethnogeographic zones proposed in them has anticipated some trends in world and Russian Ethnology of the mid-twentieth century, including the development of the theory of economic and cultural types and the concepts of the cultural geography. The actualization of the method of areal mapping in Soviet science was associated with the introduction of the concept of economic and cultural types and historical and ethnographic areas, as well as with the approval of the theory of the ethnos. In the theory of ethnos, the thesis about the connection between peoples and cultures with the territories of their origin has become an axiom. This thesis is embodied in a series of a maps and an atlases published in Russia using the methods of the typology, the component analysis, and the areal modeling. The recognition of the possibility to combine the linguistic, cultural and ethnic areas in the past and present was corresponded to the concepts of ethnogenesis and ethnic history forming in the Russian Ethnography. At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, these concepts were corrected by the theory and the practice of the constructivism. From a new perspective, the concept of the ethnogenesis has lost its former relevance. In the methodology of modern Russian Ethnology the development of cultures and peoples of Eurasia are interpreted through the prism of the anthropology of movement. The areal approach has retained an important place among the relevant research technologies in this area. The areal method in its traditional and modern interpretation are steadily used In the Russian Ethnography. This conclusion has become the main one for this article.

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