"A Household God in a Socialist World" Lewis Henry Morgan and Russian/Soviet Anthropology

'l'he artic le discusses Lhe reasons ((>r high appraisal of Lewis Henry Morgan 's cLh nological heritage in Russian/Soviet social scholarship. Morgan's social evol u­ tionism, attached to Marxism by Frederick Engels, sounded attractive for the Soviet scholarship, which pulled Morgan's ideas out of the context of the nine­ teenth century thought and planted to the social scholarship of the 1930s1. 980s. From the early 1930s anthropological officialdom in the former USSR canon i zed Morgan's ideas, especially his matriarchy thesis and the prophesy about the returning to the classless society in the new advanced form. Until the early 1980s Lhe Soviet anthropology, reduced to the study of the "primitive commun i st formation", developed in the rigid framework of the Morgan-Engel's concept. The article is based on the original Russian/Soviet sources.

"Reinterpreted by Engels, Morgan became the most important ancestral figure for Soviet eth nology, and he is a revered -though perhaps rarely read -authority in the broader tradition of Marxist theory." Adam Kuper, The In vention of Primitive Society (1988: 72).
Scholars have indicated that the social scholar ship in the fo rmer totalitarian society of the Soviet Union displayed considerable attention to the history of the primordial society. This subject, at first glance, lacks any political rele vance. On the other hand, it is a good illustra tion of the fact that all types of intellectual activities, even those not connected directly with the ruling ideology, could not escape the totalitarian grips. The rationale is very simple. If we are to take for granted the collective essence of the ancient kin structure, the short period of the class-dominated relations in the long term perspective might seem temporary, or more accurately, represents the precondition for the return to the primordial system, except on a new bdsis. In short, the anthropological and sociological research became a rationaliza tion for the future totalitarian utopia. This was especially true concerning the fo rmer Soviet Union where all branches of the social scholar ship were tightly connected with the dominant Stalinist ideology called Marxism-Leninism. This kind of scholarship was not related to the methods of Marxism. Rather, it served to prove the principles of the state's ideology. The situa tion is very typical for any totalitarian regime (Gellner 1988(Gellner : 1988Trautmann 1987: 252-253;De Wolf 1992: 4 73-4 75).1 Each area of social science had its own bor ders, within which scholars were allowed to pursue their own research. Thus, for example, when in the beginning of the 1930s, the totali tarian suppression of the social sciences in the USSR was in many respects finished, anthro pology lost its broad cultural approach and was reduced to the study of "primitive communist formation" (Slezkine 1991: 481).2 In one of the collective monographs we find substantiation for the ideological importance of this "primitive communism" -"to the fo unders of scientific communism, it was additional evidence in favor of the inevitability of transition from capitalist society to the communistic one" (Ter-Akopian 1991: 163).
Marx and Engels received this evidence in An(·ienl Society, the work of an Am erican an ihropol ogiRi, Lew is Henry Morgan. As Th om a H R. Tra uimann pu t it, Morgan 's ::;ocial evoluiion i::;m could be "Herv iceable io ihoHe who wi::;h io find in it a rgumen ts fo r socia l ch a n ge" (Traut man n 1987: 251 ). The m asie ri n g ofhis works by fo unders of the Marxism advanced Morga n 's writings to the very center o f'ihe i deol ogy in the Soviet Union in the 1930s-1970s. 'f his essay concerns the absorption of Morgan's ideas by the Ru::;::;ian a nd Soviet social scientists, an th ropologists, h i s to ri a n ::; , sociologi sts, who con sidered Morgan Jor a long time "a household god in a socialist world" (Ibid.). The analysis of this and similar cases might provide an additional illustration of the Soviet totalitarian control over intellectual activities when the regime used "scientific arguments" rather than direct suppression of scholars. In addition , this case can illuminate adaptation of Western ideas to the Russian environment.

Marx's and Engels' reinterpretations of Morgan
It is well known that Frederick Engels credited L.H. Morgan, who is considered the fo under of American ethnology, with independently dis covering materialistic understanding of histo ry, which was earlier invented by Karl Marx in Europe. With minor modifications Engels com posed his own The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1972) around the Mor gan conception of human progress. The Origin laid the fo undations for Marxist anthropology: the "primitive communistic" nature of the pri mordial society, matriarchy as the necessary fo rm of organization (later replaced by patriar chy with the coming of the early class society), and linear evolutionary development of society through stages of progress. Like Morgan, Engels was convinced that the governing tendency in the history of human marriage was the diminishment of legitimate sexual partners for men and for women as social evolution progressed, with the monogamous fa mily as a final result, corresponding to the society of private property. Engels seems to have been so consumed with Morgan's discov ery of collective kinship that he accepted the Iutter's matri archy ih e::; i ::; u n critically a::; being re l ated d irect l y io the collectivist organization ofihe primordial society. The only developm ent that Engels added was material on the ancient G erman H , Greeks and Romans. He also sharp ened the materialistic interpretation, el iminat i n g Morgan fr om the "last remnants of idealis tic husk." However, contrary to common opinion, Marx's view of the primordial society was far more complex than the simplistic versions of Morgan and Engels. Marx approa ched the subject more creatively. He acknowledged Morgan's great contribution to the theory of gens and their early egalitari an character, but unlike Morgan/ Engels he did not state thai matriarchy p reced ed patriarchy. Instead , it was Marx's view that the first social ranks and divisions did exist in classical collective kins. For Engels and Mor gan these ranks and divisions appear only dur ing the period of transformation of the kinship groups (kins) into class society (the so-called "military democracy period", according to En gels). It was this idea that was introduced into the ABC of Soviet anthropology. Marx also com posed the comprehensive synopsis of Morgan's Ancient Society, in which he elaborated on the concepts of American anthropology's fo unding fa ther (Krader 1974). Marx also intended to write a special study on this subject, emphasiz ing the conflict between fa milies and gentes rather than the evolutionary sequence of patri archy after matriarchy. On the contrary, En gels, claiming he was obliged to fu lfill the will of his late fr iend to write the book on primordial society, fo llowed Morgan more closely both in concept and even in terminology. This fa ct was already noted by scholars (Bloch 1983: 48;Du naevskaya 1991: 181).
However, Marx's synopsis became known to researchers only in 1946 after it had appeared for the first time in Russian. By this time, however, in primordial studies, Engels'/Mor gan's school of thought was dominant and abso lutely opposed the main ideas expressed by Marx in his synopsis. Despite the aforemen tioned differences between Marx and Engels, both of them shared the common conviction that Morgan gave them ethnographic fo unda tions for their own conceptions of collectivism in the ancient kin society. "Why was th is proof of the one-time existence nfprimiiive communism so imporian i io Marx?", Helen Constas asked in 1967 only io re::;pond, "Bccau::;e the fact thai ii had once existed in the past became a guaran tee that it would surely once again exist in the fu ture, through the working of the dialectic of history. The incorporation ofMorgan thus served an important purpose fo r Marx: it intensified Marxist eschatology ... " (Proceedings o{ the Sev enth In ternational Anthropological Congress, IV, 1964 : 460).
In spite of the obvious elements of social evolutionism in hisAn.cient Society, Soviet Marx ist authors specially stipulated that Morgan should not be placed in the company of other prominent evolutionists such as John Lubbock, Edward Taylor or Herbert Spencer. The reason for such an exception lies in Morgan's attempts to put technological progress at the core of societal development, the corner stone of the whole Marxist theory. He also recognized not only the gradual evolutionary sequence but the "qualitative leaps", and at the end ofhis classic treatise made a prophesy about the fu ture dis appearance of the contemporary society. In stead, he envisioned the development of a new structure resembling the fo rmer collectivist kins, or, in Morgan's own words, a society embodying 'a revival, in a higher fo rm, ofthe liberty, equal ity and fr aternity of the ancient gentes' (Mor gan 1985: 522). One Soviet author, Ter-Akopi an, who conducted research on the role of"prim itive communism" in Marx's and Engels' con ceptions, even noted that Morgan was the first researcher into primordial society to express a socialist perspective in human society's devel opment (Ter-Akopian 1991: 199). Therefore, in view of Marxist authors, as an unintentional prophet responsible for the dis covery of the essence of primordial society, Mor gan stood apart fr om his own time and rose above all other contemporary thinkers (Ter Akopian 1991: 28;Tokarev 1978: 59). In Soviet anthropological discourse even Morgan's pupils and fo llowers, such as John W. Powell, were criticized for their deviation fr om the fo unding fa ther's basic conceptions. Soviet authors de picted him as the thinker who possessed the true understanding of historical events, in con-trast to his later evol utionist fo llowers, who beca me "apologists of the Am erican capital ism". It was the obvious contradiction with the Marxi::;t principles themselves, which postulate the princi pic ofhistoricism. Another prominent Soviet anthropologist wrote on the significance of Morgan fo r Marxist scholarship: "It was the optimistic beliefin the human being, in progress of society, and in triumph of reason, that is, in the victory of communist societal organization, that, most of all, brought Mor gan's ideas closer to those of founders of Marx ism, and most of all, gave this American scholar such high esteem" (Tokarev 1978: 62).
It is interesting to note the typical evolutionary, even Enlightenment terminology of this pas sage.
As is very well known, the development of social scholarship put evolutionism under strong criticism at the turn of the century. The new fa ctual data broke the linear conception of de velopment and pushed scholars to relativism. The Boasian Historical School provides the best example of this trend. "Father" Franz and his pupils concentrated their efforts on the study of specific cultures rather than on speculations about global development of mankind. Further more, relativists came to recognition of equality of all cultures, while evolutionists commonly shared the concept of their hierarchy. The lan guage, methods and the manner of the materi als' presentation in the works of Taylor, Mor gan, Engels, and other social scholars of that time bore the natural markers of the epoch and could hardly "stand apart" fr om it. They more or less unanimously did their researches accord ing to the established cliches. These studies usually represented "piles" offactual data some times picked up fr om distinct historical periods. Most probably Roman/ancient Greek chroni cles and memoirs of European travelers to the "savage" areas served as the sources fo r such works, the latter providing the relevance for the fo rmer. The goal was to demonstrate the unity of development of ancient Europe and the mod ern "savages". This view, for its own time, con stituted on the whole the new important step in social sciences, which refuted attempts to mod-ernize history, conceptions or static/degenera tion in the development of' "undeveloped" peo ples ofthat. ti me. Later, however, the evolution ist ideas th emselves encountered the ch allenge of relativist anthropology. The new positivist social scholarship primarily opposed two ai:i pecis of the old anthropology, the concept or matriarchy and th e percepti ons about the line ar evolution of' th e society.
Soviet ethnology, nevertheless, absorbed many evolutionist doctrines and kepi intact Morgan's teach ing in contrast to the change in world scholarship. Jn add i tion, in the Soviet Union, where Marxism was transformed into the state's ideology, hii:i concepts, in Frederick Engels' version, became the standard theoreti cal model for the whole generation of anthropol ogists fr om the late 1920s. Through their stud ies they were supposed to provide only factual evidence for Morgan's ideas. As one Soviet eth nologi cal authority noted, "it seems th ere is no country like the Soviet Union where the name of Morgan is so popular" (ProceedinRs of the Se venth Intern ational Anthropological Con gress, IV, 1964: 492).

Russian perceptions of Morgan's writ ings
In the second half ofthe last century, prior to the establishment of his authority in the Soviet scholarship, Morgan's kinship conception had large appeal for Russian scholars ofliberal and democratic orientation. Among them were such prominent researchers and thinkers as the so ciologists Maksim M. Kovalevski, Peter Lavrov, the anthropologists Nikolai Ziber and Leo Y. Sterenberg. Incidentally, it was Maksim Kova levski who, being on fr iendly terms with Karl Marx, introduced him for the first time to Mor gan's classic Ancient Society. At that time the book was relatively little known in Europe (Kovalevski 1909: 11). The attention towards Morgan and the evolutionism seems to have contained more than purely academic interest. Morgan's ideas on the linear progress, that finally leads to the restoration of the communal fo rms oflife, provided additional support for the arguments about inevitable movement of the society to a better collectivist fu ture.
While at the turn of'the century, in E u ropean countries and the Un ited States, Morga n 'H con ceptions as well as evolutionary theory on the whole lost their inlluencc, in Russia these ideas continued to dominate a large part of anthropo logical research. Apparently, we might partial ly explain this situation by the fact that Rus sian social scholarship lagged behind Western theory : the indirect reHection of the general underdevelopment of the society and economy. In anthropology only oral ethnography and ((Jlklore experienced the strong influence ofthe "historical school". ln other fields the evolution ism remained the major academic tool. To karev illustrated this fa ct by the dynamic of transla tions of main Western anthropological works in Russia. In the pre-evolutionary period we could hardly find any book translations discussing ethnology. Later on, at the second half of the last century, all major treatises of Western evolutionists became available for the Russian audience. However, at the turn of the century, when relativism and agnosticism replaced evo lutionism with its ideas of progress, the signif icant part of the Russian scholarly community lost interest in the contemporary works ofWest ern anthropologists, and the translation work stopped. As a result, the relationships between Russian and Western anthropology loosened (Tokarev 1966: 361). "Russia was the only coun try, where his teaching [Morgan's] was accepted and received fu rther creative development", proudly wrote Mark Kosven, a very influential popularizer of the Morgan's matriarchy theory fr om the 1930s to the 1950s (Ter-Akopian 1991: 32). Furthermore, it is interesting to note that after the first publication of Ancient Society in the United States, two translations were print ed, one in Germany in 1891, and the other in Russia. It is peculiar that the Russian transla tor used this German text as the original, and Morgan's treatise in the Russian variant had the title Primitive Society.
The first Russian scholar to employ Mor gan's ideas for his research was Nikolai Ziber, whose views stood closely to Marxism. At first, he taught at the Kiev University, then moved to Switzerland, where he spent much of his aca demic career. In 1883 he published Essays on History of Primitive Economic Culture, where, fo cusing un the economy of "primitive commu nism", in a typical evolutionary manner he attempted to provide abundant fa ctual evi dence in �:�upport ofthe matriarchy thesis and collective essence of the primordial society. Zib er extensively used Morgan's periodization of human progress and even his terminology. Praising Morgan and other evolutionists with similar views, he argues that the subject of matriarchy had received such deep analysis that it no Junger demanded any new theoretical reevaluation. "All our tasks for fu ture research," he stressed, "include, on the one hand, accumu lation of a quantity of fa ctual materials con firming the collective kin theory, and, on the other, insights into the economic basis of vari ous kin unions" (Ziber 1883: 291). He even fo rmulated his summary remarks at the end of the book as a carbon copy of the Ancient Socie ty's concluding prophecy: "We may doubtlessly come to the conclusion that the new type of commodity slavery created by capitalism for industrial purposes represents the most hate ful and vilest fo rm that has ever existed". lt was somehow possible, he continued, to justify the ancient fo rms of slavery, in Rome or Greece, rather than to rationalize "capitalist slavery", "enrichment of the class of civilized monsters" (Ibid.: 504).
In some respects , he came up as the prede cessor of Frederick Engels, since Ziber, having finished his study in 1881, became the first European apologist of "primitive communism" prior to the appearance of the Origin of Family.
"The scientific significance of Ziber's work", stated To karev, "is especially considerable since he for the first time posed a question about the character of production relationships, property fo rms in the primitive pre-class society, the problem, which neither Morgan nor Engels clearly defined" (Tokarev 1966: 355 ). Therefore, it was natural that in the Soviet Union Ziber's Essays had come out twice, in 1923 and in 1937 (Nikolski 1929: 15;Tokarev 1966: 355).
The well-known scholar, Maksim Kovalevski, was also exposed to Morgan's ideas for a long time. Soviet historiography depicted him as a "bourgeois positivist influenced by Marxism" because at first he was fr iends with Marx and Engels, and later left his radical views. Kova-levski fo cused primarily on the comparative analysis of communal fo rms of ownersh ip in different cultures. In addition, he wrote a few works on the disintegration of kin society. How ever, the major role here belongs to Leu Y. Sterenberg, who academically and administra tively contributed to the fo rmation of the early Soviet anthropological scholarship through his numerous students. He started his own re search at the end of the last century in Russian Far East, where he was in exile for his revol u tionary activities. Sterenberg analyzed kin ship systems of the Siberian indigenous peoples, and the Nivkh people of the Sakhalin Island in particular.
Specifically, he discovered the remnants of the so-called "group marriage" among Sakha lin and Amur River natives. This type of mar riage, according to Morgan/Engels, constituted a step towards the fo rmation of a monogamous fa mily. Engels even translated Sterenberg's paper on this topic fo r a German social-demo cratic magazine, and praised in his notes this support ofMorgan's conceptions. Moreover, Ste renberg became acquainted with Ancient Soci ety's theories through Engels' Origin while serv ing a short prison term in an Odessa city prison (Sterenberg 1933: X). At the same time, as the shift in ideas towards relativism occurred, a small group of Russian scholars started to re consider "matriarchy" and "primitive commu nism" under the stress of new ethnographic data. For example, Kovalevski, who traveled and lived abroad fo r a long time, became one of the first prominent scholars to share this here sy. Despite this, in 1905 he wrote that matrilin eal kinship had dominated the native life all over the Western Hemisphere, and could also be fo und on Madagascar and the Tonga Islands (Butinov 1965: 181).

Soviet absorption of Morgan
The very character of the Morgan's evolution ary concept, universality, totality, and finally its eschatological essence, had strong appeal for the Soviet totalitarian scholarship. To lstov, the leading Stalinist anthropologist and an admin istrative "bloodthirsty turk" (Slezkine 1991: 4 79), stressed in 1946: "Unl:om promised struggle for the Morgan tra dition in anthropology, frlr ra i :;; ing our scholar ship to the highest level, f(,r gen uine introduc ti on of scientific methodology of Mcl l"Xism-Len in ism i n to :mth ropological studies represent a ch aracter i stic feature of the dev elopmen t of anth ropol ogy in our country" (TolRtov 1946: 7).
Another sch o l a r, popular in th e Sov iet anthro pological establishment in the 1960s and 1970s, continued : "One can come to the objective truth only goi ng along the road l ai d by L.H. Morgan and Freder ick Engels. All other ways only leads to the deviation fr om the creation of unified and gen uine teaching about primordial society" (Se menov 1968: 184).
It should be noted that Soviet anthropology allowed and even demanded modifications of Morgan's/Engels' views. But this reevaluation concerned only minor details, the general prin ciples were assumed to be above any criticism. Thus, fr om the 1940s to 1960s Soviet scholars basically left alone Morgan's speculations about particular fo rms of kinship evolution (so-called "group marriage", "panulua fa mily", etc.), which anthropological observations never proved. Engels himself indicated that Morgan's con cepts would demand corrections in the spirit of new ethnographic data. However, it was also Engels who defined the limits for this fu ture revisionism, adding that reevaluation should not concern Morgan's basics: collectivism of the primordial society and matriarchy. According to Tolstov, "we consider the basic postulations of Morgan's teaching about the primitive society to be strongly verified" (Tolstov 1946: 10), and in the "spirit of Engels and Lenin" he provided the Marxist periodization of the primordial society: 1. The epoch of primitive herd, when the man and the very structure of the society had not yet been fo rmed. 2. The classic gentes (kin) society of "primitive communism". 3. The "military democracy" stage (the term belonging to Engels), of transition fr om the 182 primordial Rociety to the society of rudi men tary cl asse:o;/r-a nks. Earlier Morgan's periodi zation fo rmulated the fo llowing stages: 1. "Savage ry", when people subsi sted mainly on wild life. 2. "Barbarity" , the peri od oflhe initial fo rms of cultivation and production. 3. "Political society" or civilization: th e appear ance of private property, state, government, etc.
Morgan connected radical changes in societal development with various technological inven tions. Praising him for this novelty, neverthe less, Soviet Marxists considered th at view "im mature". Il was Frederick Engels who, hav ing connected primitive technology with people's relations in the process of production, was cred ited for the "deep" elaboration on ideas con tained in Ancient Society. However, on the whole, the Soviet anthropology viewed Morgan's con cepts as extremely relevant for the contempo rary scholarship, especially such aspects as collectivist nature of the primordial society, lack of individual fa milies and movement fr om matriarchy to patriarchy as the reflection of transition fr om the classless society to a slav ery/feudal structure. According to Julia Av er kieva, one of the ardent proponents of"matriar chy thesis", all primordial studies consist of two absolutely different periods: before the appear ance of Ancient Society and Engels' Origin, and after publication oftheseworks (Averkieva 1979: 11). In this sense, Morgan's ideas really became "The Book of Genesis" for Soviet anthropology. Furthermore, until the early 1980s Soviet ethnological "output" even in fo rm, shape and content strongly reminded the classical evolu tionist works of the nineteenth century. In addi tion, Soviet scholars hardly practiced anthropo logical case and community studies, which un avoidably could lead to the relativist view of culture and society. Instead, scholarship canon demanded universal approaches, and as a re sult, numerous generalization studies mush roomed in anthropological research. From ide ological positions, the officialdom of the Soviet ethnology rebuked all attempts to reevaluate the basics of the kin theory. Scholars who tried to argue that matriarchy not necessarily repre-sented coll cci iv i ::;t kin structure ofthc primor dial society not n ecessa rily constituted the con notation of matriarchy received label s of"imita tors ofbu urgcui s thought" and "rcv isiunists". ln the totalitarian scholarship the latter word lacked the neutral meaning it has in the West ern academic comm unity. In the Soviet ethno logical discourse the collectivist essence of the early society b�came the synonym of matriar chy and vice-versa. Therefore, any challenge to this concept was treated as a d�fense of individ ualism and private property that directly led to the apology of exploitation. On� ofthe authors, who specialized in writing theoretical studies on primordiality, stated: " ... while Scientific Communism received through the historical research of primitive society genuine evidence on inevitable doom of capitalism, the apologists of anti-communism naturally had to make attempts to reconsider these data" (Pershitz 1967: 17).
Therefore, like in the other fields of Soviet social scholarship, the academic polemics be tween Marxists and relativists transferred into a politico-ideological dispute. The appearance of major translations of Morgan's works in Rus sian in the first half of the 1930s was not accident. The consolidation ofthe Soviet total itarian regime at this time also concerned uni fication and standardization ofhumanities and social sciences. In 1933 Mark Kosven published a biographical study of Morgan. The next year translations of Ancient Society and Houses and House Life of American Aborigines came out.
Besides, in 1935, after careful preliminary work, a part of Morgan's correspondence was pub lished (Kosven 1933;Morgan 1934;Morgan 1934a). Furthermore, in 1937Furthermore, in -1938 Elena Blom kvist, a Soviet student of Native Americans, translated into Russian his classic League of Iroquois. However, the book did not appear in Russia until 1983(Morgan 1983. We may pre sume that League with its numerous "imma ture idealist flaws" obviously did not represent a useful ideological tool for Soviet anthropology.
The editor of Houses and House Life, intro ducing this work to the Russian reader, ex pressed strong hope that all Soviet anthropolo-gists would usc Morgan's works as books of ready referen ce: "In our time, when the primitive communism issue acquired large theoretical and political significance, when bourgeois and social-fa scist scholarships are united in their fu rious malice against teaching on primitive communism, nut avoiding in their struggle a direct fa lsification of facts, the appearance of Houses and House Li(e in Russian will play an important role because it will provide high quality material on the communistic character of primitive tribes" (Morgan 1934a: VIII).
This ideological discourse gave the official eth nology a good opportunity to refute all present and fu ture challenges to the established ideas since, fr om an ideological point of view, to crit icize the relativist conceptions of such scholars as Bronislaw Malinowski or Franz Boas by means of simple academic polemics was not an easy task. This criticism unavoidably could lead to the plurality of views, lack of ideological correctness or theoretical unification. There fo re, it was better to state that "bourgeois pro fe ssors" intentionally distorted ethnographic materials to attack Morgan's conceptions, which in turn was a challenge to Marxism. Soviet anthropologists, who specialized in criticism of the "bourgeois ethnology," even emphasized that Morgan's books "officially" or intentionally were silenced in the United States. This was an bizarre attempt to ascribe to Western scholar ship the same canons, which dominated in Soviet ethnology.
Lenin's view about the degeneration of the whole Western thought fr om the beginning of the century provided the starting point for the criticism of all "bourgeois theories". According to Lenin, the decline ofbeliefin ideas of progress reflected the general decay of the capitalist society that came into its last stage, imperial ism, the eve of the socialist revolution. In other words, everything that came after the inven tion of Marxism carried a stamp of degenera tion. Consequently, scholars who did not share Marxist views were considered the defenders of declining society.
In his biography of Morgan Mark Kosven stressed that "struggl e aga inst Morgan's con ceptions, this "struggle of' ideas" is the s i mple reflection of class struggle" (Kosven 1933: 68). Moreover, Av crkicva, who dedicated all her theoretical and topical writings to the defense of Morgan's heritage", even stated that "histor ically and philosophically, these scholars IMor gan's evolutionisi followers in the United Statesl represented more mature thinkers than Amer ican anthropologists of the twentieth century" (Averkieva 1979: 65 However, considering the American attitudes towards Morgan, we should not forget that fr om the 1960s onward, with the general rise of left, left-liberal ideas, and the growth of popularity of Marxist concepts in the academic communi ty, a few scholars made attempts to reassess his conceptions, stressing their relevance to the contemporary scholarship. However, as Adam Kuper noted, in the American anthropological tradition debates about Morgan primarily evolve around his kinship theory (Kuper 1988: 74). Trautmann's study (1987), for example, pro vides an illustration of this approach. In recent scholarship Robert Bieder seems to have pro vided the best brief analysis of Morgan's place in the history of American anthropology (Bieder 1986: 245-246). But these attempts certainly has nothing to do with the ideological approach of the former Soviet ethnology, which developed another tradition, inagurated by Engels, which concerned with social evolution and the "origin of the state". In the same way, the appearance of nco-evolutionism in American anthropology became a reaction against extremes of relativ ism rather than a return to Morgan's ideas in their classic fo rm.
The Soviet ethnological establishment also made insistent attempts to link the very per sonality of Morgan with his "communistic ide as" to make the utopian consistency complete. At first, fr om the biographical study by Kosven, who borrowed basic assessments of' Morgan's personality from another Morga n's biogra pher, Theodore Stern, it became common to depict the founder ofAmerican ethnology as a contra dictory person. On the one hand, he was a "bourgeois", "capitalist" who by tradition dem onstrated his religious piety. On the other, in contrast to many of his contemporaries, "vi cious unscrupulous professors", he displayed "academic honesty", and came to the "natural" conclusions in the spirit of "spontaneous mate rialism". Thomas 'l'rautmann neatly remarked that "Morgan's charm for Marx was exactly that he was a ''Yankee Republican" and a capitalist, in that his contributions were therefore beyond suspicions (Trautmann 1987: 255).
Incidentally, Soviet social scholarship often used such arguments about "spontaneity" of "honest bourgeois scholars" to prove the "scien tific character" of Marxism-Leninism or better to say, the Soviet totalitarian version of Marx ism. This assessment of Morgan dominated in Soviet anthropology until the mid-1960s, when Semenov attempted to reconsider this view. As is known, in the late 1950s Leslie White, a major and consistent proponent of Morgan con cepts in the United States, published large part of his correspondence and diaries. One can learn fr om these materials that Morgan had been rather active in Indian affairs, in addition to his defense of the Iroquois in his youth. Diaries also exposed his critical approach to wards the United States Indian policy and European ruling circles. This social criticism evidently did not go beyond the normal liberal attitude to the governmental policies of the period.
However, the temptation to link the person ality of the scholar with his "communistic" con ceptions was irresistible. In connection with the 150th anniversary of Morgan's birthday Se menov made such an attempt. While Kosven depicted him as an ordinary bourgeois, Semen ov went to the other extreme, calling Morgan a "revolutionary democrat". In the Marxist Leninst jargon this assessment meant that a person approached very closely towards "genu ine" Marxist teaching. Following this logic, Se menov even stated that after the mid-1870s Morgan made a crucial step towards Commu-nism! (Semenov 1968: 23-24). The author picked up all available har::;h quotations and critical statements of Morgan about contemporary so ciety, and buill a con::;i::;tent chain of hi::; "natu ral" drift towards "socialist orientation". Hav ing fa iled to find in his writings and notes critical comm ents directly relating to the Amer ican political system, Semenov widely employed Morgan's European diaries.
In th ese notes Morgan strongly criticized European aristocracy, church bureaucracy and expressed Rympathetic feelings to the Paris Commune revolutionaries massacred by the French military in 1870. At the same time, in the same comments he praised American de mocracy! These remarks forced Semenov to produce additional explanations. Otherwise, the "integrity" of Morgan's personality could have fa llen apart. The Soviet ideologist fo und his way out, speculating about Morgan's sup posed homesickness for the United States dur ing his long travel across Europe and his belief in so-called "American agrarian Communism". Helen Constas was right arguing that this sup posed "inconsistency" in the afore mentioned views, in reality, presents evidence that Mor gan in his notes stood for the equality of oppor tunities rather than against private property (Proceedings of the Seventh International An thropological Congress. Moscow, IV, 1967: 457).
In this context, his harsh statements against European aristocracy find reasonable explana tion.

The Prophet reconsidered
Later, after a slight destalinization, a large number of Soviet anthropologists raised on Morgan's/Engels' ideas, continued to demon strate their adherence to these views. Matriar chy and collectivism of the "primitive society" were considered untouchable. However, fr om the beginning of the 1960s there appeared first scholars who attempted to reevaluate both de tails and corner stones of Morgan's conception. The important role in this process belonged to the 7th World Anthropological Congress held in Moscow, where Soviet anthropologists for the first time were widely exposed to the variety of Western theories. Soviet and Western partici-pants even organized a special session excl u sively on the significance of Morgan's heritage for the contemporary scholarship. It is also important that the complete texts of these de bates became available to the Soviet audience, which could fo rm its own opinion of primordial studies without anybody's interpretations.
Prior to and after the congress a group of scholars fr om the Moscow Institute of Ethnog raphy attempted to publish results of their research, where they fo und the lack of matrilin eal kinship in the cultures under consideration.
One of them, N.A. Butinov, a student of tradi tional society ofN ew Guinea, indirectly started to rethink Morgan's matriarchy. He expressed his views in a monograph The Origin and Eth nic Composition of Na tive Population of Ne w Guinea (Butinov 1962). Major anthropological purists, Julia Av erkieva, A. Pershitz, Leo Fainberg, and N. Cheboksarov, delivered a strong ideological rebuke to Butinov's book, blatantly stating that Soviet ethnology would not accept the sociological schemes of Western anthropology. Moreover, they continued, "Buti nov's work worried wide circles of Soviet an thropologists." That response also contained a direct conviction, "The author [Butinov] drifted to the camp of direct opponents of Marxist teaching about primordiality" (Averkieva, Per shitz, et al. 1963: 201). Butinov carried on a polemic with his critics within the strict limits of Marxist discourse, the established rules of the game in Soviet totalitarian scholarship. He specifically expressed doubts over the direct connection between the collectivist nature of the "primitive society" and matriarchy since his own research showed that New Guinea people lived in collective kin communities within the patrilineal kinship system.
His opponents attempted to assert that pa triarchy constituted the later institution, a log ical consequence of the colonizers' influences on the natives. They also blamed him for extend ing specific Australian and New Guinea cases to the primordial society's history as a whole. Summarizing the results of the polemic, the editorial board of Soviet Ethnograp hy, the offi cial journal of Soviet anthropology, stated in typical ideological cliches: "We want to avoid the comparing of quotations belonging to th e fo unders of Marxism. In our opinion, it is rather well known that Engels considered matrilineal kin as preceding to pa triarchy and Lenin did not oppose this view as well" (Suvetskaya Etnograf£a 1965: 187).
In similar cases, after such conclusions all de bates were considered to be finished. However, two other anthropologists, V.N. Bahkta and V. R. Kabo took th e side of B utinov. They began argu ing the divers i lied character of primordial communities based both on kin and territorial structures. Incidentally, all three scholars spe cialized in anthropology of the Pacific region (Bloch 1983: 116).
Defenders of Morgan's thesis in their own case studies attempted to challenge the revi sionist views. For example, Av erkieva (1974) in her book North American Indians. From Kin to Class Society employed Native American an thropology to assert the early matrilineal or ganization of all American Indian nations. Us ing the traditional Marxist-evolutionist dis course, she (like Morgan and Engels) utilized Greek and Roman chronicles as well as compar ative data on Ancient Asia's nomads. In addi tion, she dedicated a special chapter to criticism of the Boasian "historical school" and contem porary nco-evolutionism in the United States. However, at the turn ofthe 1970s Soviet ethnol ogy was gradually losing its ideological consist ency. Working in the limits ofMarxist tradition, anthropologists started to bring relativist con cepts into their concrete research. Besides, the "primitive communism fa ctor" lost a large part of its ideological significance. The very expres sion "primitive communism" disappeared fr om all major books and reference editions in the 1960s and 1970s (Ter-Akopian 1991: 163). Writ ings, that still used this cliche, put it into quotation marks.
Interestingly enough, from the 1930s to 1970s the strength of ideological attacks on revision ists ofMorgan softened as the totalitarian grips loosened. Let's compare, for example, two dis courses. In 1933 attacking Robert Lowie Kos ven used the fo llowing words, "Current official American ethnology under the leadership of its recognized chief, self-satisfied and fr ivolous, Robert Lowic, who became fa mous fo r bci ng the first to crusade against Morgan in America, directs all its efforts to overthrow the teaching about kin." However, in the 1970s Av crkieva, one of the Marxist purists of the Soviet anthro pology, already wrote, "In 1919 one new th eore tician ILowie l of the historical school came up with an attempt to prove the primord ialit y of patriarchy. Generalizing the opinions of his colleagues, he pointed out that American eth nology considers the question of the historical relationship of matrilineal and patrilineal in stitutions closed" (Kosven 1933: 66;Av erkieva 1974: 15-16).'1 By the mid-1980s a greater part of Soviet scholars de fa cto refuted Morgan's/Engels' con ceptions. Only a small number of scholars, who made their carries through the criticism of so called "Western revisionists in anthropology" continued to put fo rward arguments in fa vor of "primitive communism" as a mandatory socio economic fo rmation through which all peoples passed at different time periods before embrac ing the class society. Some of these scholars nowadays try to shadow their past ideological campaigns, stating that they had been motivat ed exclusively by "pure scholarship" (sec Se menov 1992: 31).
Incidentally, the current criticism of the to talitarian heritage in Russian anthropology represents additional interest. The attempts to defy remnants of Soviet ethnology are carried on in a typical Russian manner, with tradition al extremes. For instance, the current Director of the Moscow Ethnological Institute asserts that Russian anthropology should be radically reshaped according to Western concepts (Ger man, American?). Today Russian anthropolo gy, earlier called "Ethnography", even changed its name to "Ethnology". A few critics of such measures rightly observed that these drastic attempts might destroy some positive fe atures of the scholarship, for example its historical approach (Shnirelman 1992: 390).
The treatment of Morgan's ideas in Russia provides an illustration of the "applied" and "practical" attitude to science and social schol arship in the Russian tradition, which had designed scientific knowledge to promote cer tain "j ust cause". This role dramatically in-creased in the Soviet totalitari a n :oociety, where Anthropology Rtarted to :ocrve ideological goal:,; of the govern ment. Taken out of its historic epoch and :opecific con text, Morgan's ideas start ed to pl ay an absolutely ditlorent role at a different time. In a similar way, many other scholarsh ip concepts brought fr om the West to the Russian/Soviet soil shared the similar fa te. Marxist studies on the transition of the North west Coast Indians fr om the kin society to the class-based structure (Averkieva 1966;1971;1992). Stamped as an "unloyal" and "suspicious" scholar, who traveled abroad, later in the end of the 1940s she had to go through Stalin's concen tration camps. Evidently, Av erkieva as many of her colleagues, fa lsely accused in various "crimes", by their orthodox and dogmatic Marxism, at tempted to convince everybody in their loyalty.
See a short biographical sketch of Av erkieva in Mark A. Sherman's "Introduction" to Av erkieva (1992: XVII-XX).
4. It is also interesting to observe how militant ideological discourse that purists used to criti cize their home opponents (in this case Butinov) softened fr om the early 1960s to the second half of the 1970s; compare, for example, Av erkieva, Pershitz, a.o. (1963) with Pershitz (1980).