formation. This division was later rejected.

RANIION, because of its own reconstruction, had not caught up with all the new ideas and was dismissed. Some Moscow archaeologists joined GAIMK and built a little Muscovite department. Inspired by Marr, Leningrad archaeologists Ravdonikas and Krichevsky transferred ideas from the “new learning on language” to archaeology and built the theory of stadial (i.e., stages of history) development. This theory ignored the national specifics of cultures and their migrations and emphasized their fusions and sharp changes from epoch to epoch. It supported the current Soviet policy with regard to the maintenance of power in the multinational state inherited from the Russian Empire.

In the GAIMK periodicals of the time, theoretical articles and reviews (usually crushing) composed 47 percent of the contents, particular research themes 35 percent, and field reports 17.5 percent. However the enthusiasm for theory did not last long.

Soviet Archaeology: In the Service of Stalin’s State, 1934–1956

On 1 December 1934, Sergei Kirov, the ruler of Leningrad, the second-ranking person in the Communist Party and state hierarchy, and Stalin’s competitor, was killed. His murder was probably organized by Stalin, and in any case, Stalin used it as a pretext for a campaign of mass terror across the country. Stalin introduced Draconian laws, and all members of “Lenin’s guard” were annihilated along with hundreds of the participants in the Sixteenth Party Congress and nearly all of the army’s general officers. Terror was used initially against the top members of the Party, but it spread to involve ordinary people simply to bring the whole population under control. The cult of Stalin was introduced.

The repressions affected many archaeologists. Some, like Zhukov, had been eliminated even earlier; some, like Miller and Borovka, perished in detention; others, like Rykov and Teploukhov, committed suicide; and still others, including Rudenko, Latynin, Gryaznov, Bonch-Osmolovsky, and Sychev, languished in prisons and prison camps or were deported. It became very dangerous to have any scholarly position, and theoretical studies ceased immediately. Sociology was abolished, and sociological interests, described as “sociologization,” were regarded as harmful. Marr’s successors, Bykovsky and Kiparisov, were both shot.

There was a section of archaeology at the Institute of Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, which included the archaeologists Ravdonikas, aleksei p. okladnikov, Zamyatnin, and Bibikov. The section was allowed to issue the serial Sovetskaya Arkheologiya (later a journal) and then fused with GAIMK to form the Institute for the History of Material Culture (IHMK) within the framework of the Academy of Sciences. The mighty GAIMK became a demoted institution.

Archaeologists were advised to stick to the empirical facts, to stay close to the “real” history written by Soviet historians, and to use the same methods as the historians, which were based on historical materialism. With this in mind, Muscovite archaeologists, former builders of the “Marxist archaeology,” reoriented their archaeology from sociology toward history, aiming their studies at historical reconstructions on the basis of known archaeological facts and written sources. Arcikhovsky described archaeology as “history armed with the spade.” There were about 300 archaeological expeditions under way at this time. Knowledge about the former provinces of the Russian Empire greatly increased, and the monuments of Urartu, the barrows of Pazyryk and Trialeti, and the ancient center of Parthia Nissa were discovered in Russian Central Asia.

World War II (1941–1945) delivered yet another blow to the development of archaeology in Russia. Expedition activity ceased, and many archaeologists perished in the fighting. The German invasion annihilated many museum collections while others were taken to Germany and destroyed there. As a result of the siege of Leningrad, IHMK archaeologists Zhebelev, Podgaecky, Zograf, Rydzevskaya, Degen-Kovalevsky, and Golmsten starved to death, and others were evacuated in an emaciated state. After the war, the institute established a department in Leningrad, but its headquarters were transferred to Moscow. By this time, Stalin’s