Антропологическое измерение позднесоветской экономики: директор, плановик, работник в этнографических исследованиях 1950−1980-х годов

Вестник Пермского университета. Серия: История. 2023. Т. 63. № 4. С. 49–60.

Сметанин А. В., Kimerling A. S.

Anthropological understanding of the Soviet economy began in the period of its existence. This happened within the framework of various sciences, including ethnography. The question of the relationship between Soviet ethnography and economic anthropology is debatable. There is reason to assert that there was no consensus on this matter in Soviet science itself. In general, ethnographic science did not associate itself with Western anthropology for ideological and methodological reasons. There was a conscious distancing of ethnography from academic economics, which made it difficult to form economic anthropology in the modern sense. At the same time, ethnographers of the 1950−1980s. managed to uncover a number of important issues, for example, the multistructural nature of the Soviet economy and the functioning of archaic production practices and relations within the planned economy. Much attention was paid to the consumer behavior of citizens in different parts of the country and changes in everyday life. Another object of attention was the collective values that were to be strengthened as we moved towards communism. The studies covered the diversity of economic practices, but the difficulty of studying them was due to the fact that in Soviet reality there was no language for describing strategies and tactics of economic behavior; instead, people used euphemisms, adapted ideologemes, figures of silence relating to not entirely legal practices of production and consumption. The issues of planning, motivation, exchange, perception of economic reality and informal relations, important for economic anthropology, turned out to be practically uncovered. There was a giant bias towards rural residents and archaic.

Keywords: ethnography, экономическая антропология, meanings, economic anthropology, смыслы, Soviet science, советская наука, советская этнография, экономика СССР, economy of the USSR, cultural determinant of economic activity, культурная детерминанта экономика СССР, культурная детерминанта хозяйственной деятельности

Publication based on the results of: Экономическая антропология советского общества послевоенного периода (2021)