introduction of moderate freedoms. But in archaeology nothing changed during the period of “perestroika” (reconstruction), except for the destruction of the socialist camp and then the fall of all the socialist regimes in Europe. Glasnost (quite considerable freedom of the press) and intensive contacts with the West increased the amount of information available to the Soviet people, and their preference for capitalism became evident.

Real transformations began in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin was elected president and the Soviet Union fell to pieces as a result of an attempt to overthrow the government in August. Communist power broke down completely, and the new government began radical economic reforms. The disintegration of the old economic system without a new system to take its place, and the disruption of old economic connections among national republics, were the very painful consequences of democratization and growing capitalism. They were also very destructive with respect to archaeology.

Independent national archaeological programs emerged in the Ukraine, Belorussia, Moldavia, all the Transcaucasia, central Asia, and the Baltic areas. The monuments that had been studied for a long time by many Russian scholars were now located in countries other than Russia. Archaeology was decentralized, and the role of local centers increased. The Institute of Archaeology was split into two independent institutes in Moscow and St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad, now St. Petersburg once again), and in the latter, the name Institute for the History of Material Culture (IHMK) was restored.

Another consequence for archaeology has been a sharp decrease in state allocations of funding for academic disciplines, including money for archaeology. The lack of state ideology has also deprived archaeologists of any material support. They have been forced to search for new sources of funding from western foundations, local sponsors, or their own earnings. The amount of foreign literature in specialist libraries decreased as the availability of foreign currency decreased.

On the positive side, communications with foreign colleagues have intensified, and the choice of methodology and direction in archaeology appears to be completely free now. The main journal has changed its name to Archaeology of Russia, but attempts to rebuild professional archaeological societies have not met with much success. The milieu that gave the societies their members and made them strong and influential has disappeared, and new sources of support for archaeology have not been formed as yet. Russian archaeology is at another turning point in its history.

The Development of Archaeological Thought
Antiquarianism

Peter the Great’s enthusiasm for antiquities as rarities was undoubtedly antiquarian in character. Although an interest in antiquarianism came to Russia two a half centuries later than it had come to Italy, two centuries later than to England, and a century later than to France, it took the same forms. Antiquities were sampled and connected at random with ancient peoples known from written chronicles. Scholarly activity proceeded in newly annexed or explored territories on the periphery—Siberia, the Urals, northwestern Russia—and the study of antiquities was seen as a part of geography and as part of broad encyclopedic interests, as they were in other countries. However Russian antiquarianism was different in two respects.

First, Russian antiquarian interest was originally directed toward local antiquities—at colonial antiquities—rather than toward classical Greek or Roman antiquities. This difference was connected with ethnographic interests. Classical antiquities attracted attention later, when Russia received part of the lands around the Black Sea where there were ancient Greek colonies, and Russian-Slavic antiquities received attention later still.

The second distinction existed because the motivating force in Russian antiquarianism was the czar and the state. In other European countries, collecting antiquities was initially a bourgeois intellectual hobby that was later taken up by the aristocracy. Antiquarianism in Russia spread, from the very beginning, from above as one of the important aspects adopted by the Russian state from the western European way of life.