“Ancient beliefs” of the Kola Sami in the works of Soviet ethnographers V. V. Charnoluskiy and N. N. Volkov

The paper deals with the problem of interpreting ethnographic facts and factors influencing such interpretation. The study is necessary due to the relevance of the debated issues of modern anthropology related, firstly, to the language of the description of what is commonly called “religious beliefs”, “religious notions”, and “religion” and, secondly, to the methods of field ethnography that studies this subject. These questions had already existed at the stage of the Russian and Soviet ethnography formation. The aim of the study was to identify common and specific features in the descriptions and interpretations of the religious ideas of the Kola Sami in the texts of researchers who lived during the same time period and belonged to the same social group. The works of Soviet ethnographers V V Charnoluskiy and N. N. Volkov written during the 1930s were studied. Ethnographic research was influenced not only by external historical and political factors but also by socialization within L. Ya. Sternberg and V. G. Bogoraz’s school of thought, as well as the diversity of views and academic open-mindedness of the leading scholars, biographical trajectories, circumstances of field research, the ideological factor, political convictions of researchers, and the level of professionalism, which enabled to use the possibilities of the evolutionary paradigm. The article for the first times compares the Soviet ethnographers’ views on the religious ideas of the Kola Sami. The comparison of the works of two researchers leads to the conclusion that they interpreted the same ethnographic subjects and religious representations of the Kola Sami in their own way, despite working in the same field with similar subjects, plots, and materials. A multi-factor approach and the interpretative analysis of texts enable us to overcome the stereotypical assessments of the Soviet ethnographers’ works.