Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia

ISSN: 1061-1959 (Print) 1558-092X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/maae20

Ethnogenesis: Its Forms and Rules

Sergei Arutiunov

To cite this article: Sergei Arutiunov (1994) Ethnogenesis: Its Forms and Rules, Anthropology &
Archeology of Eurasia, 33:1, 79-93

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/AAE1061-1959330179

Published online: 08 Dec 2014.

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 SERGEI
ARUTIUNOV

Ethnogenesis: Its Forms and Rules

Today, a sudden surge in the interest of various peoples [narody] in

their distinctiveness, their history and territory, and their place in
world civilization can be observed in our country and in many other
countries. This natural process, healthy in its foundation, often ex-
presses itself in politicized forms and at times also can be found in
the midst of acute interethnic conflicts. The problems of [defining]
ancestors, sources, routes, times, and places for the appearance of
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one people or another, for their settlement and so forth-that is,

problems of what in science is termed ethnogenesis-become politi-
cal arguments or an instrument of propaganda. It is understandable
that used this way they far from always serve truth and justice; more
often the opposite is the case-they are used to inflame enmity and
aggressive emotions. To have clear, reliable points of reference in
ideological-political battles concerning ethnohistorical matters, for
analysis of often completely confusing mutual relations between
peoples across the centuries and millennia, it is useful to become
familiar with fundamental scientific concepts and principles con-
cerning ethnogenesis.

Ethnogenesis and its types

Inherent in the ethnogenesis of every people are its own unique

circumstances, characteristic of it and it alone. But there are also a
number of common patterns that are characteristic either of all peoples

Russian text 0 1992 by “Etnopolis.” “Etnogenez, ego formy i zakono-

mernosti,” Etnopolis, 1993, vol. I , no. 3, pp. 87-98. A publication of the Council
on Nationalities, Higher Council of the Russian Federation, and the Institute of
Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences.

79
 80 ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHEOLOGY OF EURASIA

in general or of specific forms of ethnogenesis, typical of the origin of

not all but, in any case, many peoples.
In Russia, high-priority attention has always been given to the
problems of ethnogenesis. This is probably related to the point that
sources concerning the formation of the Eastern Slavs and the An-
cient Rus' nationality [nurodnost 'Iare far more poorly documented
in written monuments, and have far less frequently been a subject of
examination of civic history, than have the sources of the formation
of the Romance and Germanic peoples of Western Europe. In addi-
tion, despite all the great variation in the social organizations of the
peoples that entered into the Russian empire, there never was the
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same sharp social gap, geographical (or territorial) disunity, every-

day-life and marital segregation, cultural opposition, and racial an-
tagonism within it between the Russians, on the one hand, and the
other peoples of the empire, on the other, that characterized rela-
tions between the ethnos of the metropolis and the population of the
colonies in the colonial empires of the West, especially the British,
French, and German.
Ethnogenesis, as understood within the Russian school of ethnogra-
phy, is an intensively flowing, dialectical process leading to the
appearance of a new ethnos on the basis of predecessor ethnic groups,
with new qualities characteristic of it, first of all with a new self-
awareness and self-designation. The ethnic separateness of original
groups ends during the course of this process. The subsequent
ethnic history of the newly emerged community represents a smoother
evolutionary process involving subsequent new qualities, most often
in connection with the inclusion within itself of new components
that, however, do not violate the continuity of community self-aware-
ness [identity].a
Taking part in the ethnogenesis of virtually any ethnos known
to us were various other ethnoses or their divisions, having under-
gone their own long path of ethnocultural development, in
turn, after their own ethnogenesis. In this manner, human ethnic
history consists of an incessantly drawn-out net woven from the
threads of individual ethnohistorical processes that converge from
various directions and diverge in various directions in the knots
of ethnogeneses. The appearance of the very first threads can be
hypothetically attributed only to the most distant past, and this,
it seems, emerged from an amorphous Early Paleolithic state
 SUMMER 1994 81

devoid of ethnicity. This prior [pervichnyi] process, as opposed to

the subsequent chain of ethnogeneses, can be termed “ethno-
gony.”
Ethnogenesis, as described by type of process, can be convergent,
divergent, or transformational. In the first case, the new ethnos is born
out of several heterogeneous groups of predecessors, as, for example,
the Dolgan, who evolved from the merging [sliianie]of four Tungusic
groups, and a Samodeic substratum related to the ancestors of the
Nganasan, with the inclusion of Yakut transmigrants and Yakuticized
Russian peasants adapted to the tundra. A classic example of diver-
gence is the formation of many Polynesian ethnoses (Hawaiian,
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Rapanui, and other), who settled out from the islands of Central Poly-
nesia to the west, north, and south among previously uninhabited is-
lands. Divergence can also be seen in the formation of the Kalmyk on
the steppes along the shores of the Lower Volga River, after they came
from western Mongolia and evolved into an ethnos in many ways
differing from the Mongolian Oirot ethnic groups that had remained in
Mongolia!
Transformation in pure form is a rare phenomenon. However, an
example is the Ancient Egyptians, whose ethnic history included a
multitude of conquests and influences that modified but did not fimda-
mentally break their ethnocultural profile. They essentially ceased to
exist by the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth centuries as
the result of Islamization, having been transformed into a completely
different ethnos--the Egyptian Arabs. This occurred despite the point
that, quantitatively, the inclusion of transmigrants from Arabia among
the Egyptians was completely insignificant. It seems that basically the
Udi-a small nationality in the Azerbaijan north-were formed
through transformation: they can be viewed as descendants of the An-
cient Caucasian Albanians who have been greatly transformed under
Armenian and Azerbaijani influence:
In the overwhelming majority of cases of the known knots of
ethnogenesis, both convergence and transformation, and often
divergence as well, are present in various proportions. The for-
mation of contemporary Eastern Slavic ethnoses-the Russian,
Ukrainian, and Belarusian-is a vivid example of the combina-
tion of all of these processes: the divergence of the Ancient Rus’
ethnic community into three parts; the transformation of these
parts in the course of convergence with Finnic, Baltic, and steppe-
 82 ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHEOLOGY OF EURASIA

nomadic substratic groups, and the inclusion and dissolution of later

interspersions.
Historically, a distinction is made between early and late types of
ethnogenesis. The former applies to the ethnic development of pre-
capitalist societies and ends with the formation of tribal groups (in the
early [pewobytnaiu] period) and nationalities (primarily in the Late
Antiquity and Early Feudal periods). More often that not, the original
ethnoses disappear in such cases, fully dissolving themselves into new
ones (for example, the Etruscans into the Romans and then into the
Italians; the Thracians and Asparukhian [Isperikhian] Turko-Bulgars
into the Bulgarian Slavs; the Cumans and Alans into Hungarians; the
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Goths and Dacians into Romanians, and so forth). However, there are
exceptions to this rule as well. The Greeks and the Armenians, quanti-
tatively predominating over the Turks in their ethnogenesis, did not
dissolve into them fblly, but continued to exist as distinct peoples on a
portion of their former territory.d
A deciding role in ethnogenetic processes of the second type, in-
volving ethnic community formation, in more recent times (developing
into bourgeois nations, as a rule) has been played by groups branching
off from already formed nationalities, as well as processes of accultur-
ation. The original ethnoses were preserved in such cases. For exam-
ple, the ethnogenesis of the majority of contemporary peoples of
America took place in such a way that English, Spanish, Portuguese,
and other ethnoses, which were the source of and fed immigration,
were preserved as independent peoples.
Most often, ethnogenesis represents an interconnection between
consolidation of autochthonic-that is, indigenous, local, non-
outsider-ethnic components, both related and unrelated, and the
influence of assimilating newcomers (or migrants). Azerbaijani
ethnogenesis thus combined consolidation of the autochthonic
Caucasian Albanian tribes with their assimilation by a newly
arrived Turkic component, in parallel with the dissolution of Iran-
ian and other foreign interspersions among them.
The concepts of a substratum, superstratum, and adstratum are
of great significance when analyzing the complex process of ethno-
genesis, involving heterogeneous original ethnic groups that play vari-
ous roles.
“Substratum” and “superstratum” are concepts that have come into
ethnography from linguistics. The basic linguistic thesaurus of an
 SUMMER I994 83

ethnos is usually inherited from the language of that component that

played the leading and deciding role in the ethnogenesis of the ethnos
in question. In spreading to new territories, residing there, and
assimilating an indigenous population that speaks another language,
the [dominant] ethnos includes within its language and culture a multi-
tude of characteristics inherent to this [local] population: rules of pro-
nunciation-that is, phonetic features-and many elements of
vocabulary, including designations for local natural and cultural
phenomena, anthroponyms, toponyms, and so forth. Peculiarities of
syntax and word-formation are included in the language to a lesser
degree, and peculiarities of word-modification even less. In the
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realm of nonlinguistic culture, individual customs, rituals, forms of

ornamentation, housing, and dress, types of weapons, and many
other things are borrowed from the ethnoses being assimilated. All
such linguistic and cultural borrowings constitute a substratum. For
example, in the Russian language, its grammatical structure and
basic stock of words represent a developed inheritance from the
language of the Ancient Slavic tribes of the first centuries A.D., prior
to the commencement of their intensive dialectal divergence. Along
with this, an intensive Finnic substratum can be observed in the
Russian ethnos and its language, going back to the ancient Finnic-
speaking population of the Volga-Oka inter-river zone and its con-
tiguous regions.
A cultural superstratum of a given ethnos can be formed if, dur-
ing the period of its ethnogenesis and early stages of ethnic history,
an ethnos falls fully or partially into the sphere of political or cul-
tural domination by another ethnos whose level of socioeconomic
development and/or sociopolitical prestige stands somewhat higher
at the time, yielding borrowings from the language and culture of
this ethnos (primarily in vocabulary, and at first mostly in an elitist
form, only later dispersed into a people’s common culture). Finally,
frequent marginal contacts have as their result various adstrata, or
interspersions, into the culture of an ethnos, but these do not create
as intensive and clearly distinguishable layers as do a substratum
and a superstratum.
Thus, in medieval Russian culture we can observe a powerfd Turkic
substratum that owed its appearance primarily to relations with the
Golden Horde and in general with the steppe-nomadic culture, while
Byzantine-Greek, North Caucasian, and West European (Polish, Ger-
 84 ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHEOLOGY OF EURASIA

man, and Scandinavian) borrowings form adstrata. Hungarian lin-

guistic and cultural legacy, based on a central nucleus inherited
from the ancient Magyars who had migrated to Europe in the tenth
century, includes an extremely powerful Slavic substratum, a certain
German superstratum, and small adstrata of Turkish, mixed with
Turkic, as well as Romance, Alan, and other origins.e In the Japan-
ese ethnos and language, alongside the primary cultural and linguis-
tic massifthat went back to proto-Japanese tribes who had migrated
from the Korean peninsula to the Japanese islands around the fifth
century B.C.,exists a not very clearly expressed Malay-Polynesian
substratum, and a bit of ar Ainu one, as well as a powerful Chinese-
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Korean superstratum. In recent times European-American cultural

borrowings of an adstratum nature have been added, yet without
much of a noticeable absorption of corresponding ethnic compo-
nents into the Japanese ethnos. Characteristic of the Armenian lan-
guage and ethnos, in addition to a nuclear part of the language and
culture going back to Ancient Asia Minor Indo-European tribes, is
an Urartian-Hurritian substratum, an Ancient Persian (primarily
Parthian) superstratum, Georgian and other Caucasian adstrata, and
others.
Ethnogenesis includes formation of the dominant physical type for a
given people, as well as its language and the principal features of its
spiritual and material culture. These three processes are present to-
gether in ethnogenesis, but their internal rules and the rate at which
they flow differ from one another. Language may be borrowed from
a group that takes a minimal part in biological mixing (the Bedouins
of Arabia in the ethnogenesis of the Egyptian Arabs, the French in
the ethnogenesis of the Haitians; the Yakuts participated little in
Dolgan [physical] ethnogenesis, but a Yakut dialect became the
Dolgan language). For many of the cultural features, for example
for specific aspects of family life, this [admixture] is already un-
likely. Finally, the anthropological type may be transmitted only
through biological mixing. Correspondingly, when resolving mat-
ters of ethnogenesis, it is imperative to have a comprehensive corre-
lation between the data and methods of ethnography, linguistics, and
anthropology, with broad-based inclusion-whenever possible--of
archeological and written source data. Of course, the more distant
the time of a given community’s ethnogenesis, the narrower and
more meager is the circle of sources. Concerning primal ethnogenetic
 SUMMER I994 85

processes-that is, the processes of formation for the most ancient

ethnoses from a pre-ethnic s t a t e w e can only guess. We are left with
the assumption that typical forms of ethnogenesis that we can identi@
to varying extents for known ethnoses also existed in the long chain of
their predecessors.

Self-awareness [identity]and self-designation:

the deciding factors in the creation of an ethnos

The term “ethnic history” is used along with the concept and term
“ethnogenesis.” A clear distinction is not always made between the
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two. However, a tendency has been noted in recent years toward using
the term “ethnogenesis” only to characterize the process that results in
a new ethnos evolving from a number of ethnoses, ethnic communities,
or their parts that had been in existence before then. The new ethnos
then perceives itself as distinct from any previously existing groups
and expresses this self-awareness through a new self-designation. As a
rule, this self-designation goes back to a previously known ethnonym
or other designation but acquires a qualitatively distinct content. Self-
awareness and its expressed self-designation specifically mark out and
identify a particular ethnos as the result of the interaction of various
social factors. And this is why ethnogenesis-that is, the establishment
of a given group as an ethnos-can be regarded as fully completed
from the moment of the appearance of such a more or less universal-
within the framework of a specific population group-self-awareness
and self-designation.
All subsequent processes comprise the hrther ethnic history of a
given ethnos. This might entail continuing inclusion within it of indi-
vidual outsider [inorodnye]groups or, on the contrary, separation from
it of certain groups and their transition into other ethnoses. This might
also mean further consolidation of the ethnos and sometimes, on the
contrary, the temporary weakening of intraethnic relations, which,
however, does not lead to the breakup of the ethnos as a single whole.
This might be the appearance or obliteration of the local characteris-
tics of small ethnographic groups within the ethnos, and so on.
Despite all of these phenomena that substantively alter the configu-
ration, structure, and aspect of an ethnos at various stages of its
ethnic history, as long as it manages to retain its self-awareness and
self-designation without interruption its existence is maintained, in
 86 ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHEOLOGY OF EURASIA

much the same way as an individual continues to remain the same

person despite the various age-related and other changes taking place
within him or her.
Thus, self-awareness and the self-designation that is inseparably
associated with it play the role of the principal demarcators of an
ethnos. At the same time, the point that the self-designation may
appear in the form of several dialectal versions, synonyms, and even
words in different languages is not critical. There are quite a few
cases (some, such as the Mordva, the Irish, and others, even text-
book cases) of different parts of one ethnos speaking different
languages and, correspondingly, calling themselves by different
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ethnonyms while retaining their ethnic unity. Asiatic Eskimos of the

older generation who do not know the Russian language call the-
meselves “Yupigyt” [Yupik, Yupigut], while many young Eskimos,
especially those from mixed marriages and those who have grown
up in an urban environment, who do not know the Eskimo language
and speak only Russian, call themselves “Eskimos.” Even though this
term is alien to the Eskimo language, originated in the Algonquin
language, and ended up in Russian through French-that is still not
relevant for the person speaking. In the collective ethnic self-aware-
ness of Asiatic Eskimos, the words “Yupigyt” and “Eskimo” are syn-
onyms, and designating oneself with these words is a sign of
continuing to belong to the Eskimo ethnos.f
When a researcher identifies an ethnos that exists today, [slhe does
so by using either the self-designation or a designation given from
without but acknowledged by the ethnos as a synonym for its self-
designation. Since such a designation exists and is recognized by
the group, that also means an ethnic community exists of one or
another type or level-which specific type or level needs to be
determined by the researcher based on objective indicators. In cases
when one is speaking of ethnoses with a lengthy and documented
history, the first mention of the ethnos in a written source itself is
evidence of the point that the ethnos was already an objective reality
at the moment in question (although, needless to say, such a men-
tion cannot answer the question of how long this ethnos had existed
prior to this mention).
Many ethnonyms that are accepted specifically as ethnonyms at the
present time, and have every right to be so accepted, might in ancient
epochs have had not an ethnic but some sort of other content; it might
 SUMMER I994 87

have designated not an ethnos but a different category, for example an

economic-and-cultural community. Such are the terms “Scythians” in
Ancient Greek sources or “Ostyaks” in medieval Russian ones: these
common names could refer to various peoples belonging to decidedly
different ethnic groups. But when critical analysis of a source allows
one to regard a given ethnonym or group of synonymous ethnonyms
specifically as an ethnonym-that is, as a designation for an ethnos-
then this signifies that at the moment in question, the ethnos did indeed
exist, had evolved, and that its ethnogenesis had already been com-
pleted by the time indicated.
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Historical levels of ethnogenesis

The formation of class societies and states is present together with the
formation of those stable ethnoses termed “nationalities” [nurodnosti]
in the Soviet literature. Although not yet sufficiently researched,
there can nonetheless be no doubt in principle about the substantive
structural differences between the nationalities of antiquity, with the
prevalence of the slave-owning [socioeconomic] structure, and the
later feudal nationalities. Specifically, with the beginning of feudal
formations came a large number of new nationalities, integrating
both entire communities and splinters from previously existing
tribes and ancient slave-owning ethnoses as well. Subsequently,
with the development of capitalist relations, prerequisites were cre-
ated for the development of nationalities into ethnic communities of
a new type-that is, nations. In Europe this process has either been
completed or is close to being completed almost everywhere. How-
ever, in other parts of the world the formation of new nations and
ethnogenesis-that is, the process of the evolution of new ethnoses-
is often continuing to this day.
Prevailing on the territory of Russia and the other republics of the
former USSR are ethnoses with completed ethnogenesis. Along with
this, it is hard not to see that for some ethnoses, including the Khakas
and Altai, this completion is more of an official-administrativethan a
real-historical nature. As concerns processes of nation creation, it
seems that they are gaining momentum precisely today, appearing as
one of the most important aspects of contemporary ethnic mutual rela-
tions and often also as a factor in interethnic conflicts. Not that long
ago it was officially declared that within the borders of the RSFSR [the
 8% ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHEOLOGY OF EURASIA

Russian Federation], including in Siberia, along the Volga River, and

in the North Caucasus, the formation of dozens of “socialist nations”
had been completed within the framework of the multitude of autono-
mous republics, oblasts, and okrugs. Today it has become obvious that
many of these ethnoses in actuality did not manifest all of the attributes
that a hll-fledged nation must manifest. In particular, many of them
did not have national schools or mass media and were losing their
cultural distinctiveness. It is only now that they are stepping onto a
road toward their ultimate evolution into nations.
It is understandable that this process stimulates a heightened
interest in the problems of one’s own ethnogenesis. I am convinced
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that for accurate interpretation, the establishment of any ethnos ought

to be regarded not from a narrow centrist position-that is, confined
to the framework of just one ethnos-but from a broad, regional one-
that is, to view ethnogenesis within a unitary framework of a
single historicocultural area. The efficacy of such an approach is
graphically demonstrated by the ethnic history of the Caucasus in par-
ticular.
Relevant tendencies may be conceived as follows. Today macro-
phils (linguistic superfamilies, [tree] “trunks”) on a transcontinental
scale, such as Nostratic and Sino-Caucasian, are being effectively
reconstructed thanks to the achievements of our linguistics3 In so
doing, linguists are discovering that the Kartvelian [Georgian-
linked] and North Caucasian languages, despite all the abundance of
acquired similarities, not only cannot be genetically brought to-
gether but even fall into different macrophils. This signifies that the
ancient linguistic state of the Caucasus and of the more southerly
regions contiguous to it represented a space that was completely
occupied by various branches of a proto-North-Caucasian language.
To these branches belonged the languages that were ancestral rela-
tive to modern Abkhaz-Adygei (the western North Caucasus and
Transcaucasus) and those that were ancestral to the Nakh-Dagestani
languages (the central Caucasus, Dagestan, and the eastern Trans-
Caucasus). Correspondingly, the Hattic language (Asia Minor) was
related to the first group and the Urartian-Hurritian languages
(northern Iran, the Armenian highlands, and northern Mesopotamia)
[were related] to the secondsh
Such a picture was apparently characteristic of the third-second
millennia B.C.However, not later than the beginning of the first millen-
 SUMMER 1994 89

nium B.C., a process began all over the Caucasus, with the exception
of its highest mountainous parts, which might be called the
Nostratization, or simply the Indo-Europeanization, of the Cauca-
sian peoples. These are conditional terms, inasmuch as the Kartvel-
ian languages do not belong to Indo-European, but if we take into
account that they are sufficiently close genetically, both in vocabu-
lary similaries and in a number of other structural aspects, the terms
can be applied conditionally.
Strictly speaking the Indo-Europeanization of Caucasian peoples
began long before the first millennium B.C. and outside the confines
of the Caucasus itself. It became evident in the replacement of the
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Hattic language by the Khettic-Nesitic, and in the replacement of

the Hurritians by the Midians [Medians] in northern Iran. On the
territory of the Caucasus itself, the Kartvelian element absorbs the
Abkhaz-Adygei substratum in the greater part of eastern Georgia. In
the central and eastern parts of the Transcaucasus, a relatively short-
lived influence of the Cimmerians and the Scythians is replaced by
a stable process of the Armenianization of the local population in
the Kura-Araxis inter-river area and its Iranization in the Sub-Cau-
casian provinces. (The formation of today’s Tats and Talysh is the
final echo of this process.) In the North Caucasus, the principal
factor in ethnic processes becomes an increasing Sarmato-Alan in-
fluence.
If these processes, which took up all of antiquity and the better part
of the Middle Ages, had continued into the modern era as well, most
likely only four large peoples would reside in the Caucasus today-
Georgians, Armenians, Iranian-speaking Azerbaijanis, and Alano-
Ovsians. Only in individual, remote high-mountainous corners might
there perhaps remain, as relics, some ethnographic groups that still
retained the conversational languages belonging to the North Caucasus
group.
However, the steady development of these assimilative-integrational
processes was interrupted by a new and most powerhl ethnic-forma-
tion factor, Turkicization. Actually, Turkic components can be ob-
served in the Caucasus at least as far back as the Hunnic time-that is,
from the third century A.D.-and later in the form of the Bulgars, the
Khazars, and so forth, but as far as ethnogenetic processes go, they
fdfill only secondary, primarily adstratic hnctions. Only starting in
the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries A.D. do Turkic elementwssen-
 90 ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHEOLOGY OF EURASIA

tially Kipchak ones in the North Caucasus and primarily Oguz ones in
the South Caucasus-begin to play the role of fundamental compo-
nents in ethnogenesis. Not only stopping the Alanization, Iraniza-
tion, and to some extent Armenianization that had been taking place
until then but in a number of cases intercepting and turning them
backward, the Turkic factor led to the formation of such ethnoses as
the Azerbaijanis, the Kumyks, the Balkars, and the Karachai, while
the languages of these peoples often became the linguafranca on
the vast expanses of the Caucasus. As a side effect of the influence
of these factors, the restoration of the significance of the original
North Caucasian languages and ethnicity and their reverse territorial
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expansion can be observed here and there, especially in the Abkhaz-

Adygei area.
Such is the general background of the ethnogenetic processes that
continued over the course of several millennia within the framework
of the Caucasian historicocultural region, so that the ethnogenesis of
each of its peoples taken individually can be adequately understood
and described only within the framework of this general background.
The Caucasus was taken here as an example simply because
the author is most familiar with it. Analogous general regional ethno-
genetic conceptions can and must be developed, if not for every
historicocultural region then for many of them, in particular the
Volga region [Povolzh ‘el, the Ural region [Priural ’el, and various
parts of Siberia.’
Today, unfortunately, another approach-which leads to inevitable
distortions-is becoming widespread. A tendentious interpretation
of data on the ethnogenesis and ethnic history of peoples prevails,
serving as the basis for conjectural extremist political positions and
territorial claims and leading to bloody conflicts.
In my opinion, an honest and responsible scholar must as a matter of
principle be against such a treatment of science, against the use of
arguments from ethnic history in political disputes. What motivates
this position? First of all, an individual’s rights are higher than those
of the community, and everyone has the right to live and enjoy all of
the benefits of life at the very least in one’s birthplace, irrespective
of whether one is of the first generation or the hundred and first. To
refuse or encroach on this right by referring to the point that one
does not belong to an original, indigenous community signifies the
resurrection of a worldview and rules of behavior characteristic of
 SUMMER 1994 91

the era of barbarism, and a break with the fundamental values of hu-
manism.
The use of the data of ethnogenesis in ethnopolitical disputes is also
unfounded for the reason that these very data are evidence of the
absence of a firm right of primogeniture among virtually any of the
peoples living today and, deriving from this, the right to undivided
possession of the territory occupied by them. We have already shown
earlier that with the possible exception of the most ancient times,
which have been hidden from our gaze, in all subsequent eras ethnoses
have evolved as the result of extremely complex processes of mutual
influence-biological, cultural, linguistic-during the course of migra-
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tion, and unifications and divisions. Even taking only one epoch of
great migrations of peoples, we can see in many ways a predetermina-
tion of today’s ethnopolitical picture in Eurasia. Hardly any people can
speak of their “purity of blood” and of their “immemorial occupation”
of their present territory habitation. If we were to look even at recent
history, and certainly at ancient history, we would see that with very
few exceptions any of today’s ethnoses has “competitors” who could
lay claim, not without grounds of their own, to a part, and even to all,
of their territory, and these [ethnoses], in their turn, are exactly the
same type of claimants relative to one or more other ethnoses. Refer-
ences to the data of ethnogenesis in order to resolve ethnopolitical
disputes are not only useless but also harmful: they merely serve to
confuse and aggravate them.
On the other hand, the concept of an immemorial ethnic territory is
also not just a hollow sound: a bond to a territory that is perceived as
one’s ethnic motherland or grandmotherland [rodina ili prarodina],
and to its individual elements (such as mountains, rivers, or cities)
enters into the culture of an ethnos as an inalienable component. Usu-
ally, this is specifically on a territory where the ethnogenesis of the
ethnos in question has occurred. Correspondingly, even claims that the
resources of the territory should primarily serve the goals of ethno-
cultural reproduction for a given ethnos should not be regarded as
totally unjust. The most intense conflicts arise specifically in those
places where two or even more ethnoses regard the same territory as
part of their ethnic environment, such as, in particular, in Nagorno-
Karabakh, South Ossetia, Bujak [Dnestr region border area], Bosnia,
and so forth. A peaceful resolution of these conflicts can be found only
on the paths of political management [uregulirovaniia]. As concerns
 92 ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHEOLOGY OF EURASIA

recourse to ethnogenesis, I must repeat that the flip side of presenting

historical arguments in favor of one ethnos among hostile others is
injustice, antihumanism, and cruelty in relation to another.

Editor’s notes

a. A discussion with author Sergei Arutiunov (February 1994) concerning the

best translation for the Russian samosoznanie led us to agree that both “self-
awareness” and “self-identity” are appropriate. Self-awareness connotes the
somewhat deeper level that is meant here, for self-identities can change not only
by situation but also over time relatively more easily than the kind of ethnic
self-awareness discussed here.
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b. This article was written for a broad readership and is thus without footnotes.
However, relevant sources can be found in the author’s Narody i kul’tury: razvitie
i vzaimodeistvie (Moscow: Nauka, 1989). On Dolgan, Yakut [Sakha], and
Nganasan interrelations, see A. A. Popov, “The Dolgans,” Peoples of Siberia, eds.
M. G . Levin and L. P. Potapov, English ed. and trans. Stephen P. Dunn (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1964 [original 1956]), pp. 655-69). The Yakut call
themselves “Sakha.” On the Kalmyk, see Michael Khodarkovsky, When Two
Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads (1600-1771) (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1992).
c. On debate about the Caucasian Albanians, see Nora Dudwick, “The Case of
the Caucasian Albanians: Ethnohistory and Ethnic Politics,” Cahiers du
Monde russe et sovietique, vol. 31, no. 2-3, pp. 377-83. For context, see also
M. M. Balzer and H. B. Paksoy, “A Region in Turmoil: Azerbaidzhanian
Historical Ethnography,” Soviet Anthropology and Archeology, vol. 29, no. 1,
pp. 5-68.
d. For a perceptive anthropological discussion of the implications of these
processes, see Michael Herzfield, Anthropology Through the Looking-Glass:
Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1987). Focus is on the Greeks, but not exclusively. The Bulgarian case
is particularly interesting, according to translator Stephan Lang: Khan Asparukh
moved Bulgarian ancestors to the region that is now Bulgaria in the late seventh
century and forced Byzantium to recognize them as a kingdom.
e. On medieval Russian culture and ethnic intermixes, see Nancy Shields
Kollmann, Kinship and Politics: 7%e Making of the Muscovite Political System,
1345-1547 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987). On Hungarian ethnogen-
esis, see Pal Liptak, Avars and Ancient Hungarians (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado,
1983).
f. Sergei Arutiunov confirms (February 1994) that this remains the case. In
Canada and the United States, “Eskimo” has come to be politically incorrect, with
“Inuit” being the strongly preferred, indigenous term. In the Russian Federation
case, “Yupigyt” is a more specific indigenous term, which is also glossed
“Y upik.”
g. For more on Nostratic, see Bernard Comrie, The Languages of the Soviet
Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 11. This broad over-
 SUMMER 1994 93

arching concept was first used by H. Pedersen and is associated with V. M.

Illic-Svitic.
h. Hattic is an ancient language of Anatolia. For the complexities of North
Caucasus language interrelations, see Ronald Wixman, Language Aspects of Eth-
nic Patterns and Processes in the North Caucasus (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1980).
i. This is also the approach taken in R. G. Kuzeev and Sh. F. Mukhamed‘iarov,
“Ethnolinguistic Relationships. The Ethnogenesis and Ethnoculturdl Relation-
ships of the Turkic Peoples of the Volga and Urals,” Anthropology and Archeol-
ogy of Eurasia, vol. 3 1, no. 1, pp. 24-39.
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