Miklouho-Maclay's legacy in Russian and English-language academic research, 1992-2017

Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay can be considered with some justification to have been a champion of the Papuans, the first resident researcher of New Guinea, an outstanding ethnographer, anthropologist, and explorer.

In Soviet scientific circles, a specific cult of this scholar was formed. He was thought to be a pioneer globally of ethnographic science, having conducted field studies in Melanesia 50 years before B. Malinowski. The name of Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay is given to the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy

of Sciences, and also to one of the most honored scholarly awards in the field of ethnography. The study of Miklouho-Maclay’s legacy emerged as a special research area—“Maclay studies”, involving reputable scientists such as N.A. Butinov, B.A. Valskaya, A.Y. Massov, B.N. Putilov, E.V. Revunenkova, and D.D. Tumarkin.

This article is devoted to historiographical analysis of the relevant publications that have appeared over the 25-year period from 1992 to 2017, building on a titanic archival-heuristic textual research work: the first edition of Miklouho-Maclay’s collected edition, which was released in 1950–1954, in what was apparently the “golden age” of Maclay studies. After the collapse of the USSR, Soviet mythologization of Miklouho-Maclay began to weaken, and a large number of more critical articles were published. At the same time, new myths began to be constructed; in particular, there appeared articles about his sexual relationships with inhabitants of the South Seas. Currently, interest in the “Maclay theme” in the Russian academic community is decreasing. Notably however, interest is arising among Australian researchers.

The aim of this study is to offer a critical assessment of the scholarly and non-scholarly literature on Miklouho-Maclay produced over the period in question in the Russian and English languages. Of special interest is a comparison of the differing approaches of Russian and Australian researchers to this topic. In terms of studying the legacy of Miklouho-Maclay, the “Russian-language” and “English-language” traditions are approximately equal as regards the number of publications and the available body of research literature. This situation seems to be uncommon for other branches of ethnographic (anthropological) knowledge. The present paper was prepared by an international team of researchers from Moscow and Canberra, with the goal of identifying the strengths of both approaches, and proposing future research directions.

Traditional approaches in Russia to Miklouho-Maclay’s legacy

Publication in six volumes of the second edition of the complete works of Miklouho-Maclay, which was undertaken from 1990 to 1999, became the most significant event in the field of studying the scientist’s legacy. D.D. Tumarkin, who headed the team, together with B.N. Putilov, N.A. Butinov, M.A. Chlenov, I.M. Zolotareva, I.M. Meliksetova and V.I. Belikov from Russia, H. Merkel from Germany, and R. Maclay, L. Bushell, and T. Flannery from Australia participated in its preparation. The six-volume edition includes earlier unpublished texts, with field notes and more than 200 new drawings. A number of dates significant for the understanding of the scientist’s life journey were refined. The compilers conducted a very important textual work: later alterations were removed from the earlier published texts; in case where different editions of the same articles existed, the main text was revealed, and meaningful discrepancies were given in footnotes; all studies were accompanied by detailed commentary. The first and second volumes include materials from expeditions, field journals and notes; and the third and fourth ones contain scientific papers by Miklouho-Maclay for a wide range of issues “concerning man and nature”, including anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, meteorology, biology, and botany. The scientist’s drawings were also published in these volumes.

The fifth volume, devoted to the epistolary heritage of Miklouho-Maclay, became a real scientific event. It includes 552 letters, among which 239 are published for the first time. Both Russian texts and translations from German, Dutch, French, and English are presented. A considerable amount of work in preparation of this volume was carried out by Putilov. The sixth volume contains photos of items from the ethnographic collections gathered by Miklouho-Maclay, and the drawings that were not included in the previous volumes. Four times as many photos were included as in the 1950s edition, with a total increase from 260 to 818.

At the same time, while discovering new areas of expertise, documents, and details of the scientist’s biography, the compilers of the second collected edition, like their predecessors, were very cautious about assessments of Miklouho-Maclay as a man of science. The edition is an excellent source-study, praised by the reviewers (Komissarov, 1998; Nikolaev, 2002); however, it remains difficult to see the real Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklouho-Maclay behind all the documents. This approach in Maclay studies, which we call “classic”, has persisted in a series of articles.

Among other works in this vein, there is a paper by a St. Petersburg researcher of culture of Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula, E.V. Revunenkova, “N.N. Miklouho-Maclay on the indigenous peoples and Malays of the Malacca Peninsula” (1994). Starting from the 1980s, she participated in the production of the “Complete Works of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay”. It was the first time an expert of Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula had taken part in preparing commentary on his texts. The paper by Revunenkova, published in the Etnograficheskoye Obozreniye journal, represents a scientific interpretation of the scientist’s contribution to the study of this region. Earlier, Miklouho-Maclay had been known largely as a researcher of the Papuans of New Guinea and other Melanesian islands (Stanyukovich, 2010).

In 1997, Etnograficheskoye Obozreniye published a selection of articles associated with the 150th anniversary of the birth of Miklouho-Maclay. The most notable among them is the publication “‘Second life’ of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay: Myths and Legends about a Russian Scientist in Papua New Guinea” by Tumarkin. The interest in legends about the scientist (“the second life of a white Papuan”) arose as early as the beginning of the 20th century. In 1903, a German doctor, B. Hagen, published brief recollections about how the scientist was described in the oral traditions and stories of the Astrolabe Bay people (1903). In the middle of the 20th century, Butinov reviewed a range of the available English and German publications in his article “Recollections of Papuans about Miklouho-Maclay according to the later travelers’ evidence”, which was included in the first edition of the collected works (1950). Exactly this line of research is continued by Tumarkin. He relies on information given by Australian and American travelers. In particular, the article presents the notes of an American Lutheran missionary, E. Hannemann, who worked in Astrolabe Bay in the 1940s. Tumarkin refers to “an undated typescript text, a mimeographed copy of which is kept in the library of the University of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby” (1997: 67). The collection of this information can be approximately dated to the early 1940s, since the Newsletter of the Miklouho-Maclay Society of Australia contains a small report “Concerning Maclay” by E. Hannemann (1983). In this report, there is a note made by R. Sheridan: “E.F. Hannemann. Grager-English phrasebook, Columbia, Ohio, the Board of Foreign Missions of the American Lutheran Church, 1945, p. 28. A story told by a local inhabitant named Borlo was written by Hannemann. Borlo was born in the Balambi village (Sio language). He was about 32 years old in 1974” (Ibid.: 8). Most probably, this is a mistake, and the last date should be read as “1944”. Other notes of legends about Miklouho-Maclay belong to R. Sheridan, the chairman of the Miklouho-Maclay Society of Australia, who visited Bili Bili Island in 1959, and described his trip in detail. Oral traditions recorded by folklorist M. Mennis and published in the journal Oral History , together with materials collected on the Astrolabe Bay islands by other researchers, are drawn upon.

Tumarkin not only introduced English-language sources into scientific use in the Russian language, but also subjected them to detailed analysis. At the same time, we should be critical about the methodological message of the article, stating that these stories are historical sources of information about the life of Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay, and that “at the mundane level, the folklore tradition concerning Maclay starts retreating and changing under the weight of real historical knowledge” (Tumarkin, 1997: 165). As will be shown hereafter, consideration of these stories in the context of a dialogue of cultures can be much more productive.

In 1998 and 2000, articles by L.A. Ivanova were published that provided a new attribution of certain artifacts from the collections of Miklouho-Maclay. This researcher re-defines one item designated as “a bamboo case containing two spines of skate” in the museum description as a “quiver for poisoned arrows” for the blahan weapon—a pipe for blowing darts, similar to the sumpitanu used by Dayaks (Ivanova, 1998); she also identifies the regional source of the purchase and the presenter of the pahu drum and the ataakakiko stand (Ivanova, 2000).

In 2011, a biographic monograph by D.D. Tumarkin “The White Papuan: N.N. Miklouho-Maclay in the Context of His Epoch” was released. This book marks a sort of a final point within the framework of this direction. It gives an extremely detailed description of the scientist’s life journey. The author leads us, following Maclay, along the narrow streets of German university towns, the deserts of Morocco and the Arabian Peninsula, the wilds of tropical forests, and the embankments and sand coasts of Sydney. Along with the protagonist, we meet important figures in English and German science. But the following question keeps worrying us till the end of the book: who is the man we are traveling with? What is he thinking about?

Critical reflections on Tumarkin’s book are offered in a review by B.N. Komissarov. First, he is surprised at the absence of generalizations, asking why “the information scattered over many pages of the monograph is not concentrated by him into two formidable and oppressive realities—‘the scientist and pain’ and ‘the scientist and hardships’”? Second, the reviewer points with regret to some awkwardness in debunking the scientist’s cult, which risks creating a new mythologized image of Miklouho-Maclay as a Don Juan of the South Seas. This is “an excessive striving by the author [D.D. Tumarkin] to ‘physiologize’ the image of Miklouho-Maclay, i.e. to reveal and describe with a misplaced methodicalness all cases of the explorer’s sexual contacts, and moreover, to pinpoint even quite platonic episodes when the latter, gazing at persons of the opposite sex, possibly experienced some erotic feelings” (Komissarov, 2013: 356). Paradoxically, this declared ultimate impartiality initiated the transformation of the old myth into a new form.

Attempts to revise the traditional view of the image of Miklouho-Maclay

A second approach to the study of Miklouho-Maclay’s legacy, which emerged during the 1990s, can be referred to as “revisionist”. One of the first works in which researchers tried to depart from the perception of Maclay as a specific cultural hero from the “dreamtime of ethnography”, was the paper on “Ballal-Maklai” (‘The Word of Maclay’) by V.I. Belikov (1997). The author cast doubt on the claim that Miklouho-Maclay had created an accurate dictionary of the Bongu language. The scientist knew “no more than about 350 words” and, in Belikov’s opinion, “the Bongu vocabulary contains a thousand words at most”. Belikov believes that the explorer probably used a simplified form of the language, “a peculiar pidgin”, rather than Bongu itself. Its lexis traced its origins to standard Bongu, but it contained “misunderstandings, quite natural for such complicated communication, multiplied by the prestige value of Maclay’s speech in the eyes of the Papuans”. The author of the report draws parallels with the Motu language of the southern coast of New Guinea.

On the one hand, the Russian pioneering explorer, who did not have language fixation skills, was unable to create such an ad hoc methodology in the field, and his linguistic achievements should not be overestimated. On the other hand, further contacts between Europeans and Papuans on the Maclay Coast, and particularly in Bongu, established that it was Miklouho-Maclay who provided the foundation on which subsequent dictionaries were compiled by linguists. For example, unlike A. Hanke, who proposed that all languages of the Maclay Coast could be divided into two large dialects, like “Swabian and Bavarian” (1905), the Russian scientist supposed that each village had its own language. Though accepting the conclusions that the meanings of the words written by Miklouho-Maclay were inexact, and that some of them pertain to a certain “researcher’s idiolect”, rather than to the Bongu language itself (Stanyukovich, 2016), there is no sense in agreeing with the undervaluation of the linguistic aspects of his fieldwork in general (Tutorsky, 2018).

Another “revisionist” article written by a professor of the Ethnology Department of Moscow State University T.D. Solovey is devoted to the scientific strategy of Miklouho-Maclay. The author proceeds from the statement (known since the time of N.V. Kaulbars, who was the first to work with the explorer’s archive after his death) that Miklouho-Maclay was not a scientist in the true sense of the word, and that he failed to generalize and develop a theoretical understanding of the empirical material gathered on his expeditions. The prime consideration of Solovey is the absence of any theory. In her opinion, the “journeys to Oceania that put Miklouho-Maclay on a pedestal as a hero cannot be called a studious and consistent research program by any stretch of the imagination” (2011: 74). Solovey suggests an idea (apparently, her own scientific creed)

that “contrary to popular belief… facts by no means precede a theory but quite the reverse: a scientist approaches facts already having a theory or hypothesis that can be expressed in a clear and consistent manner…”. And further: “Since rejection of any theory was generally the consistent position of Maclay, this devalued his interesting and comprehensive observations to a large extent…” (Ibid.: 80). His unwillingness to use theory to generalize about facts is, in the author’s opinion, the main reason why Miklouho-Maclay never managed to write his “magnum opus— the summarizing book” (Ibid.: 82). This conclusion cannot be accepted without comparing the scientist’s studies with the academic works of his contemporaries. In what follows, we return to the issue of the presence of theoretical ideas in his studies.

The productive aspect of the article is the author’s desire to deconstruct the Soviet myth about Maclay as a “cultural hero”, a kind of ethnography creator in general. For instance, the author emphasizes that “Miklouho-Maclay developed the plan of a journey to Oceania in 1869, i.e. at the age of 23”. In other words, he was a student who had recently got an education in European universities, rather than a fully formed scientist. Solovey points to the psychological makeup of the researcher: “His dominant psychological trait (craving for solitude) had a decisive influence on the life and exploratory activity of Maclay”. And further: “…not coincidentally, somber Schopenhauer was his favorite author” (Ibid.: 76). These facts provide further insight into the scientist’s personality and his scientific views.

At the same time, Solovey falls into some inaccuracies. For example, she writes that “after putting ashore, Maclay stayed alone in an absolutely unfamiliar environment for long months” (Ibid.: 77). This is not quite true because Olsen, a Swedish seaman, and a Polynesian named Boy (who later died) lived together with the scientist at Garagassi Point. Besides, local inhabitants, often from very remote villages, came to the scientist’s house time and again. Another improper generalization proceeds from the logic of stereotyped views about acculturation processes. Solovey writes: “As the Papuans became better acquainted with him, Maclay’s human traits strengthened in their perception of his image” (Ibid.: 79). In general, the article raises an important question as to whether the modern papers about Miklouho-Maclay provide a distinct portrait of the scientist. We have to deal with ideology-driven texts and cultural myths. At the same time, the article by Solovey, despite correct articulation of the problem, lacks proper argumentation.

A paper written by St. Petersburg professor A.Y. Massov is extremely interesting and pioneering. It is devoted to a brochure presented by Miklouho-Maclay to Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich of Russia at the beginning of 1887. This was a gift to his friend at court in the form of a work containing “a description of his (Miklouho-Maclay’s) scientific contributions, being largely complete at that time” (Massov, 2013: 112). Of primary importance for studying the scientist’s creative work is the fact that the brochure contains corrections made in his own hand that very distinctly show the social and scientific views of Miklouho-Maclay.

Analyzing the text and the author’s corrections, Massov came to several important scientific conclusions. First, it appears that a mistake was made in the Complete Works published in the 1990s: this text should have been reproduced using the publication not in the Golos newspaper, but in the journal Russian Geographical Society Herald , from which it was reprinted to release the abovementioned brochure (Ibid.: 114). Second, in the phrase “among the interesting and little-known inhabitants of New Guinea, a New Guinea aborigine, homo papua, appears the most interesting to me”, the scientist corrected the word “inhabitants” to “animals”, which reflects not a racist but rather a “naturalistic” understanding of humans, widely accepted in the 19th century (Ibid.). And finally, third, using the term “Polynesian race” (which included the Papuans) by Miklouho-Maclay was not an error, but a special feature of the terminology employed at that time (Ibid.: 115).

The general conclusion of the article is also important for us: “Unfortunately, the domestic literature still lacks any well-founded studies of the scientific beliefs and socio-political preferences of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay”. And further: “In 2011, D.D. Tumarkin in his monograph ‘The White Papuan’ made the first serious attempt to trace the scientific beliefs and evolution of the political views of the Russian explorer. However, this theme is not the main one in the work by D.D. Tumarkin; his book is primarily a scientific biography of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay” (Ibid.: 116).

Another innovative work is a collective monograph “The Old and the New in Research on the Ethnographic Work of N.N. Miklouho-Maclay” prepared by researchers of the Kunstkamera Museum and Moscow State University. Of particular importance for us are the first and second chapters of this book, written by a Russian expert in Australian studies and researcher of Melanesia, P.L. Belkov. In the first chapter, devoted to the development of Miklouho-Maclay as a man of science, the author suggests rejecting the joint consideration of his scientific and social views that is typical of conventional studies. A detailed description of these views pushes the scientific creed of the researcher into the background. Belkov points out that the myth about the naked empiricism and atheoretical nature of the Russian explorer has its origin in statements of a German ornithologist, a New Guinea company’s officer, O. Finsch (Staroye i novoye…, 2014: 17). Judging by the “Ethnologia” notebook started by Miklouho-Maclay before his travel to Pacific islands, he was familiar with ideas of many English-speaking (J. Rowford, G. Law, J. Prichard, A.R. Wallace), French-speaking (E. Renan), and German-speaking (T. Waitz, E. Gerland, K. Semper, F. Müller) theorists of the science of peoples. Belkov argues that we need a radically different approach to studying the scientist’s legacy—“research in infrared light” (Ibid.: 23) or, according to T. Kuhn, the one based on a search for the “enduring elements” in the earlier science (1962), i.e. for the idea of scientificity at that time. Finishing this chapter, the author writes: “Separate publication of the anthropological and ethnological notes by Miklouho-Maclay… became the first document in scientific history to establish the independence of the subject matters of these sciences” (Staroye i novoye…, 2014: 50). Thus, Belkov emphasized that the scientific activities of Miklouho-Maclay have their own theoretical significance.

The third chapter of this paper is an extremely interesting example of “focus replacement”; the focus of history or philosophy of science, rather than the ethnological focus. The author proceeds from the thesis he had already advanced, that theoretical (and also practical, in this chapter) ideas were present in Miklouho-Maclay’s work even if researchers could not always detect them. He does not agree with the traditional specialists in Maclay studies who think that Miklouho-Maclay’s scientific work on the ethnology of the Melanesians has never been written or has been lost. Belkov suggests a challenging idea that it is already well known to us: these are the “two (‘thick’) notebooks (ARGO. F. 6, Inv. 1, D. 24; D. 70)” (Ibid.: 99). Maclay himself characterized his drawings and collections of items as “the ‘program’ or ‘table of contents’ of a large work on the ethnology of the Melanesians that he planned” (Ibid.: 101). Thus, the scientific work by Miklouho-Maclay exists; moreover, it is almost ready for publication. All we need to do is to find a congenial “publisher”, who will be able to combine the notebooks with drawings and collections and, what is most important, to understand all information contained in the “field notes and drawings”. This thought is consistent with the ideas put forward by C. Ballard, who cites the example of returning Maclay’s drawings to Lelepa Island (Vanuatu).

Finishing our review of “revisionist” studies of the Miklouho-Maclay’s legacy, it should be noted that many ideas proposed as “new” in the Russian-language space will turn out to be “preliminary” or “traditional” in the English-language one. Meanwhile, truly new ideas, such as those expressed by Massov about revision of our concepts of the scientific status of knowledge at the end of the 19th century, and by Belkov about drawings (but not the text) as the main form of Maclay’s scientific work, find substantiation in studies by Australian researchers.

Articles about Miklouho-Maclay in English

The 1980s emerge as a particularly “golden decade” in English-language Maclay studies. In 1984, the most comprehensive English-language biography of the scientist was published, “The Moon Man” by E. Webster (1984), and the Newsletter of the Miklouho-Maclay Society of Australia was issued 4 times per year in Sydney throughout the entire decade. In subsequent years, the number of publications fell; however, some of them provided conceptually new approaches to studying the scientist’s legacy. We set aside the studies where materials collected by Miklouho-Maclay serve as a kind of introduction to the theme, such as the article by A. Street about hospitals (2016) and the publication by D. Gaffney about potters of the Madang District (2018).

From the second half of the 1990s, articles began to appear regularly in the English-language space, introducing the materials of Miklouho-Maclay into scientific discourse. Mainly, these are articles relating to certain geographic areas (the Torres Strait, Palau, Lelepa) and containing translations of the scientist’s texts that had previously been published in Russian only. Notably, having started from the simple translation of Russian-language articles (such as the publication by R. Parmentier and E. Kopnina-Geyer), the publications were subsequently accompanied by extensive historical and cultural comments (the article by A. Shnukal); and later, materials by Miklouho-Maclay became an independent target of research (article by C. Ballard). By way of exception, we shall focus on the general study devoted to Miklouho-Maclay and written by S. Fitzpatrick, since it is very similar to the article by A. Shnukal in terms of presentation.

In 1996, Isla: A Journal of Micronesian Studies published a translation of the Russian-language article by Miklouho-Maclay “The Palau Archipelago. Sketches of Travel in Western Micronesia and Northern Melanesia”, made by a postgraduate student of the University of Amsterdam, E. Kopnina-Geyer. The article is introduced by R. Parmentier, a researcher of Micronesia, who offers important comments on the work of Miklouho-Maclay on Palau Island. The author sees as his main purpose the introduction of materials published in Russian into the scientific discourse of the English-language academic community (Parmentier, Kopnina-Geyer, 1996: 72).

Without giving a direct assessment of Miklouho-Maclay’s work in Micronesia, Parmentier nevertheless notes the following: “Unfortunately, the studies conducted by N.N. Miklouho-Maclay coincided with the time between the periods of scientific activities of such giants as J.S. Kubary and A. Krämer” (Ibid.: 75). The opposition of ordinary “research” to the work of “giants” suggests that the author does not value highly the Russian scientist’s contribution to the study of this region. However, in the next paragraph, Parmentier reckons him as one of the first researchers who tried to study the “local view of customs” and to employ the “reflective anthropology” method. The Dutch scientist writes that Miklouho-Maclay prefigured the anthropological revolution conducted by B. Malinowski (Ibid.: 76). A very high assessment of the theoretical and methodological elements of his research, as well as non-recognition of the empirical aspect, contradict the “traditional” description of Miklouho-Maclay’s legacy in the Russian literature, where writers praise the empirical aspect and deny the significance of the theoretical.

In 1998, an overview by an Australian researcher A. Shnukal was published on Miklouho-Maclay’s approach to research on the islands of the Torres Strait. This region is often identified as a “site of origin of field ethnography”, the Cambridge expedition to the Torres Strait being considered the point of departure for scientific ethnographic studies in the field (Herle, 2012; Nikishenkov, 2006: 140–144). This publication is divided into several topical sections, each covering one aspect of Miklouho-Maclay’s activity. The “Edwin Redlich and Jimmy Caledonia” section provides the Russian scientist’s reports about discussion of the possibilities for commercial pearl-fishing in the strait by these people. The next section is devoted to calculation of the population size on the small island of Erub (now known as Darnley Island). The sections titled “Cranial deformations in the Torres Strait islanders” and “Biology of the dugong’s brain” contain the relevant materials provided by the scientist. The next section is almost completely represented by a translation of Miklouho-Maclay’s description of mother-of-pearl fishing in the Torres Strait.

The last section concludes with the following comment of Shnukal: “I was disappointed having found, not the new information I had hoped for, but a distillation of de Hoghton’s substantial report on the fisheries” (1998: 43). A similar thought concludes the whole publication: “However, while this conforms to and confirms existing material, as a source for the contemporary researcher of Torres Strait, Maclay’s writings are limited in novelty, quantity, and scope.” (Ibid.). The author neither gives an assessment of the scientist’s methods of work nor describes his theoretical ideas that may stem from the local features of the material. However, the empirical value of the studies conducted by Miklouho-Maclay is given a low assessment, as in the previous case.

The publication by Shnukal is in line with the paper of the well-known Australian researcher of Soviet history S. Fitzpatrick, issued in 2012. The latter proposes a peculiar “fan” or spectrum composed of each of Miklouho-Maclay’s various interests. The author of the article identifies seven “roles” or “identities” of the scientist: traveler, humanist, Tolstoyan, socialist, imperialist, scientist, and “white Papuan”. Characterizing the internal contradictions amongst these incarnations, she mentions the following fact: Miklouho-Maclay “suggested to Ferdinand von Mueller, German-born director of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens, that at the forthcoming Melbourne Exhibition, he might include a set of Aborigines— ‘just one representative of male and female sex and two children’”… Not for the entertainment of the audience, but for purposes, so that “‘detailed scientific descriptions’ of the subjects could be made and photographs taken” (Fitzpatrick, 2012: 175–176). The citation should be made more accurate using Miklouho-Maclay’s own text: “Delivery of one each 3, $, and two children from each of the northern, southern, eastern, and western parts of Australia as examples of the Australian species of the genus Homo will be of great interest for an anthropologist, and their detailed scientific description accompanied by a series of photographs would most certainly fill up a gap in the anthropology” (1996: 241). Undoubtedly, the use of living people as exhibits contradicts the ideal of humanitarianism; at the same time, the Russian natural scientist explains that this would be done in the name of science. Here again, we are faced with a fact similar to that mentioned by Massov. It is not that easy to reconcile these differences.

The last study to introduce Russian-language materials by Miklouho Maclay into the scientific use of the English-language community is the recently published article by E. Govor and S.K. Manickam, “A Russian in Malacca: Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay’s Expedition to the Malay Peninsula and the Early Anthropology of Orang Asli” (2014). It gives an overview of the Russian scientist’s travels across Melanesia and the Malacca Peninsula, as well as of his publications (predominantly in German) about the study’s results. The authors note that the materials provided by Miklouho-Maclay can hardly be related to some definite “anthropological tradition”, but at the same time, his gaze—focused on searching for “the Melanesian” in the culture and racial features of the Malay Peninsula’s inhabitants— represents an interesting approach seldom encountered in the anthropological and ethnographic literature of that time. The article contains a translation with commentary of the most significant extracts from the diary entries made by Miklouho-Maclay during his journey across the peninsula. In conclusion, the authors point out that the scientist’s materials are important for the history of views on the Malay Peninsula people, rather than for modern study of the Orang Asli. In addition, these entries reflect their everyday life. Thus, Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay is regarded as one of the travelers whose materials should also be taken into account in bona fide research, and not as a theoretician or a founder of a new direction in science.

The article “The Return of the Past: On Drawing and Dialogic History” by Ballard (2013) should be considered separately from other papers. It develops the ideas of a report first presented at the 18th conference of the Pacific History Association (Suva, Fiji, 2008) jointly with E. Govor. Its main idea is that the key element in Miklouho-Maclay’s legacy is his drawings. The scientist worked in those years when the canon of ethnographic or anthropological knowledge was just being formed. In many cultures, drawings are also considered knowledge. The anthropological community has underestimated their significance as a research method until recently. A “graphic turn” in anthropology, relating to studies conducted by W. Gunn (2009), M. Canfield (Field notes…, 2011), M. Taussig (2009), and other scientists, allows us to look at the roles of drawings in the field notes of researchers in new ways. Within this context, a real discussion opens up about the role and significance of drawings. Ballard observes: “How well at home Miklouho-Maclay would have felt in this discussion, as a field researcher whose drawings became not just a central component of his observational technology, but also a vital strategy in his engagement with host communities and the subjects of his sketches” (2013: 140). Translating this assertion into the Russian-language science discourse, it can be said that the issue of Miklouho-Maclay’s absent “magnum opus” is related to the inability of modern ethnographers and anthropologists to “read” everything that was created by him.

An example of how Miklouho-Maclay’s drawings can be read was proposed by Ballard with the use of several sketches made on a small island of Lelepa, near the coast of Efate Island, where Port Vila (the capital of the Republic of Vanuatu) is situated. At the end of the 19th century, Havannah Harbour, located between the islands of Efate, Moso, and Lelepa, was the main port of the island. Starting in 2001, the communities of Lelepa and Mangaliliu (a part of the same community that resettled to Efate Island, opposite Lelepa, in the 20th century) set out to inscribe “Chief Roi Mata’s Domain”, a cultural landscape including a cemetery on Artok Island, rock art in Fels Cave on Lelepa Island, and the historical site of Roi Mata’s settlement, on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Inclusion of this site on the World Heritage List involved the use of archival materials. To this end, Ballard brought “prints from glass plate negatives, maps and aerial photographs, transcripts of missionary diaries containing local birth, marriage and death registers, photographs and details of artifacts” to the Lelepa community (Ibid.). The most “intensely discussed” and “widely prized” of these materials were precisely the sketches produced by the Russian scientist, which contained not only representations of items, but also detailed trace drawings of ornaments, and the local names of their elements. Indeed, the drawings made by Miklouho-Maclay inspired a revival of wood-carving skills in the Lelepa community, lost after missionaries had destroyed slit drums they considered to be idols. In 2006, a wood-carver by the name of Manearu carved two slit drums that were subsequently installed in Chief Roi Mata’s Domain. In 2008, this site was inscribed on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites.

It should be noted that the “dialogic” aspect of drawing was also important for Ballard. The point is that the researcher’s field notes are seldom read by the persons being studied at the time; what is taken home often remains incomprehensible to the subjects of enquiry, and perhaps incorrect from the viewpoint of scientific objectivity. In the case of drawings, a dialogue is possible: if a researcher draws something incorrectly, local inhabitants can point this out and correct him. That is why drawing can be a more respectful method of research, involving the people being studied in the scientists’ work.

Conclusions

Analysis of the above articles brings us to the following conclusions. Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay was a highly unusual person for his time. The history of his travels to New Guinea became the basis for myths circulating, not only among the Papuans, but also in the Russian and European communities of that time, as well as in modern scientific circles. The reviewer of an English-language monograph about Miklouho-Maclay, A. Chowning, wrote: “Not surprisingly, considering the degree to which Maclay had become as such a mythological figure to members of his own society as to New Guineans, Webster perhaps over-emphasises his failings. Reading her book, it is difficult to understand why so many people admired and revered him, or even why his wife was so devoted” (Chowning, 1986: 149). In other words, apart from the Papuan legends about Maclay and the Soviet myth about the scientist and humanist, there is a myth about Maclay being a failure, which is typical of the English-language literature. During “Perestroika” in the USSR, this assessment was uncritically introduced to the Russian-language space. Another approach was laid down by G. Stocking, who described N. Miklouho-Maclay, B. Malinowski, and J. Kubary as “archetypes from the dreamtime of anthropology” (1992). Thus, the mythologization is related not only to Soviet cultural propaganda, but also to the fact that the scientist acted before the canons of anthropological science were established, and actually created them himself. Studying the mythologization of his image in various communities can become an independent goal of research, and comparison of its vectors will probably contribute to understanding of the essence of this phenomenon.

Judgements about the apparent absence of any theoretical basis in the studies and findings by Miklouho-Maclay is a result of this anti-mythologization process. The scientist’s materials are open to new forms of interpretation within the framework of postmodern concepts. First of all, this concerns drawings as a special method of dialoguing with the people of Oceania, which in terms of modern sociological method is much more inclusive than interviews and description. Today, when audiovisual anthropology, studying soundscapes and various sensitivities have become a real alternative to the “text-oriented translations of culture”, the theoretical relevance of the studies conducted by Miklouho-Maclay needs to be revisited. There is reason to hope that an illustrated work on the ethnology of Melanesians conceived by the scientist will be finally published, relying upon the approach of modern visual anthropology.

Who then should paint the portrait of Miklouho-Maclay in the context of his epoch, as proposed by many of the authors discussed here? Massov believes that this can only be done by a team of professionals from various disciplines. His opinion seems correct in terms of epistemology, since it is exactly such a team that will be able to gain insight into the scientist’s creative work, and understand the different facets of his interests. However, it is not quite correct from the standpoint of didactics (in the philosophical sense). Miklouho-Maclay was a whole person. Only a team of scientists united by a similar education and a common view of science can understand and communicate this notion to the readers. In our opinion, one of the most promising approaches to studying the legacy of Miklouho-Maclay is the anthropological method within the framework of several concepts. Cultural criticism will assist in comparing publications about the scientist and texts about the people of Oceania written by various researchers at the end of the 19th century with each other. Return of their cultural assets to the communities where studies were conducted will provide the possibility of involving the local inhabitants in the interpretation of the scientist’s materials. Visual anthropology will make it possible to discern in his legacy not only texts, but also numerous drawings. A historical concept will permit tracing the evolution of the views both of the scientist himself and of the whole anthropological community.