Ethnogenetic problematics in the domestic science on peoples of late 19  early 20 centuries

The problem of peoples' origin and development is one of themost discussed in the Russian humanities. The term "ethnogenesis" began to be actively used in science in 1950-1960. Formation of theethnogenesis theory occurred at the same time as formation of the domestic ethnography; though the first versions explaining variouspeoples' origin with the support of the bible tradition appeared some centuries earlier. Questions of peoples' origin in the academic discoursewere raised by V.N. Tatishchev, further they were developed in M.V. Lomonosov's and N.Y. Bichurin's works. Since the secondhalf of the 19th century questions of ethnogenesis and ethnic history have strongly occupied one of the major places in domestic humanities.At that time three methods of research were most widespread: derivation to the ancestor; correlation of modern and ancientpeoples; "ancestral home" search. Addressing to the problems of Russian people's origin, the researchers involved data of physical anthropology,archaeology, and linguistics. At the beginning of the 20th century Russian ethnography turned to system analysis to solvethe problems of ethnogenesis. Among the first was an outstanding researcher of the Far East - S.M. Shirokogorov, who considered ethnosas a live organism, which is born, lives and dies. Without using the term "ethnogenesis", he distinguished two processes  formationof a new ethnos and its changes. For the first time he offered to distinguish ethnogenic processes and ethnic history. Ethnos change occurredin the ethnic environment change. During the same period the ethnogenesis problem was developed by the researchers' circle inthe European centres of science. In 1920s-1930s in Prague, Vienna, Paris, a movement of Eurasians was formed. The exhaustive developmentof the concept of Russian ethnogenesis was reached in G.V. Vernadsky's works. Marking the futility of search for "ancestralhome", or "parent language", the researcher offered a complex approach  with attraction of data of linguistics, physical anthropology,archaeology and geography. Based on the Eurasian perception that a symphonic person represents not an agglomerate of individual subjects,but their concordance (symphony), Eurasians considered that the origin of a new ethnos occurred during the global dialogue bymeans of language, history, institutes and customs. In the Soviet science the ethnogenesis problem became topical on the boundary ofthe 1940s-1950s when S.A. Tokarev and N.N. Cheboksarov published their article Methodology of Ethnogenetic Researches Based onData of Ethnography in the Light of I.V. Stalin's Works on Linguistics". Continuing the traditions of the domestic and European ethnographicscience, Russian researchers have formulated principles of a complex studying of ethnogenesis problems and ethnic history withthe use of data of various sciences, cartographical methods and the comparative analysis of language and cultural realities.

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