ЭТНОГРАФИЧЕСКАЯ ПРОБЛЕМАТИКА В ТРУДЕ Г.Н. ПОТАНИНА «ОЧЕРКИ СЕВЕРО-ЗАПАДНОЙ МОНГОЛИИ». НЕПРЕХОДЯЩАЯ АКТУАЛЬНОСТЬ И СОВРЕМЕННОЕ ВОСПРИЯТИЕ

Abstract

Фундаментальный труд Г.Н. Потанина «Очерки Северо-Западной Монголии»[1], особенно его второй и четвертый выпуски, представляющие собой свод этнографических материалов, занимает прочное место в отечественных тюркологии и монголоведении. Но это сочинение до сих пор не стало предметом серьезного научного анализа. В статье рассматривается этнографический аспект труда. ; The article is devoted to Essays on North-Western Mongolia, G.N. Potanins fundamental work which especially its second and fourth issues is a compendium of ethnographic materials and has an important place in the Russian tradition of Turkic and Mongolian Studies. Essays… have a complicated structure. It is clearly subdivided into three parts: ethnographic materials, tales and legends and extensive comments which are unfinished pieces of academic research. Potanins research interests focused on the Turkic tribes of the Russian Altai, such as the Altai, the Telenget, the Toyoles, the diverse ethnic and territorial groups of the Uryankhai (mostly the future Tuvins), the Mongol peoples, such as the Durbur (Derbets), the Darkhats, the Buryats, the Khalkha, and the Kirghiz (Kazakhs), the subordinates of both Russia and China. The inclusion of Buryats, Altai peoples, Kazakhs in the geographic framework of North-Western Mongolia was hardly accidental, as it reflected Potanins profound idea of Central Asia as of an integral organism including Mongolia, Altai (the whole of South Siberia), the Kazakh lands. Defining the geography of the territories he studied, the author approached this problem primarily as an ethnographer, not as a geographer. It was the cultural and linguistic continuity of Mongolias Northern parts and the South of West Siberia as well as the ethnogenetic affinities that allowed positing this region as some cultural and linguistic unity, irrespective of the political, orographic and landscape systems. As a matter of fact, Potanin used the ethnographic materials to delineate the Northern borders of Central Asia (in the traditional Russian understanding of the term) which encompassed the Turkicand Mongol-speaking Southern Siberia. No less important was the problem of the ethnic affiliation of the pre-Mongol population of the lands between the Altai and the Tian Shan that Potanin raised. In his opinion, the fact that Kazakhs lived there in the 19th century did not testify to their autochthony. Thus, two problems have been raised: of the nature of the pre-Mongol population and of the territory of the Kazakhs ethnogenesis. On the basis of his brilliant knowledge of Mongol ethnography and the cultures of various Turkic peoples of the Sayan and the Altai, Potanin carried out comparative ethnographic research. He did not compare the whole cultural complexes of Mongols and Turks of the Sayan and the Altai, on the one hand, and of the Kazakhs, on the other hand. He tried to find out the commonalities and the specifics in the details of these cattle-breeding cultures. It is the details that are the most illustrative ethnographic markers when isomorphic cultures are compared, as the details, in particular, retain the ethnic and cultural traces of the long-forgotten, extinct peoples. The studies of folk-lore of the peoples of North-Western Mongolia allowed Potanin to trace the subjects common for both Asian and Western cultures. From here followed a no less important Potanins thesis about the deep influence of the Orient on the cultures of the European peoples. The acceptance of this vision was incompatible with the Euro-centric view of the development of the human civilization shared not only by many of the contemporaries, but also by the posterity. The stereotype of a European as a Kulturtraeger became firmly entrenched in the evolutionary and Marxist concepts of the human development. Potanins scope of research interests, deep knowledge of the culture of the peoples of Central Asia, respectful attitude to them, new vision of the established scientific truths, academic courage allowed him to not only raise new academic problems, but also to suggest a way of their resolution.