In this volume the authors discuss the fascinating and eventful biographies as well as the significant scientific work of Waldemar Jochelson, Waldemar Bogoras and Lev Shternberg. They investigate the question of how these men became involved in ethnography towards the end of the 19th century, when they had to spend many years as political exiles in remote parts of northeastern Siberia. This early revolutionary commitment shed light on their empathetic and pioneering methods during their later fieldwork with local people. At the same time they incorporated important ideas from American cultural anthropology gained from their close collaboration with Franz Boas. Their initial aims and methods were also reflected in the ambitious community-oriented research programs that they later had conceptualized and launched together with other colleagues at Leningrad University.

Erich Kasten studied social and cultural anthropology and taught at the Free University of Berlin. He has conducted extensive field research in the Canadian Pacific Northwest and in Kamchatka and has curated international museum exhibitions. As the first coordinator of the Siberian research group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, he studied transformations in Post-Soviet Siberia. In ensuing projects for UNESCO and the National Science Foundation, he documented and analyzed indigenous knowledge. Since 2010 he has been the director of the Foundation for Siberian Cultures in Fürstenberg/Havel (Germany). More recently he has also applied himself to developing web archives and Internet interfaces with the purpose of enhancing access and sustaining endangered cultural heritage.

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