How Moscow did not become a world center of marxist anthropology: historian L.V. Danilova, theoretical discussions of the 1960s, and international contacts of soviet scholars

Abstract

The article analyzes theoretical and methodological discussions in Russian ethnography and historiography of the 1960s. The focus is on the fate of the historian L.V. Danilova and the collection, edited by her, “Problems of the History of Pre-Capitalist Societies” (1968), one of the brightest achievements of the non-dogmatic Marxism of the thaw era. On the basis of new archival materials, it reconstructs the project of the multi-volume publication “Laws of History and Specific Forms of the World Historical Process”, traces the roots of the “new direction” in ethnography, and offers a new reading of the activity of the history methodology sector of the Institute of History. International team of the would-be authors of this project could have made it a notable phenomenon in world Marxist thought. The author concludes that this did not happen because of the opposition of the conservative academic establishment.