Challenges in empire: Eduards Volters’ ethnography on Lithuania,1882–1918

Abstract

This article argues that Eduards Volters (1856–1941), an important ethnographer working in the first part of his career with the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, helped demonstrate the value of first-hand observation, social connection, and social context to ethnography through his research in Lithuania from 1882 to 1918. He did so at a time few of his contemporaries embraced his methods. The article seeks to show Volters’ developing theoretical and political strategies during a period of developing Lithuanian nationalism in an emerging Lithuanian nation—a nationalism with which he was in deep sympathy. I focus on the following questions: the meaning of Volters’ travels to Lithuania Minor and Lithuania; his contributions to what are now called borderland identities studies and his critical methodological and theoretical approach to the ethnography of his day. That critical approach involved ethnography as a part of political activism on the part of both researcher and research subjects. The piece will contribute to the critique of centralization of imperialism studies and will explore by comparison Volters’ relationships with both intellectual predecessors and his contemporaries in Lithuania, Europe, and beyond.

Introduction

On 15 December 1887, Latvian ethnographer, linguist, folklorist, and archeologist Eduards Volters (1856–1941) described the challenges in ethnography, and the role social connections played in his discoveries after a journey to the northwestern region of the Russian Empire:

The Lithuanian genus – past and present – has been little researched. […] Despite the complexity of the multifaceted study of the Lithuanian genus which I had set out to accomplish, a whole host of fortunate circumstances, such as the sincerity of local people who had grown accustomed to my visits over three years of expeditions, and the warm greeting [I received] from Lithuanians and Samogitians, [resulted in] the acquisition of valuable Lithuanian manuscripts by Simonas Daukantas as well as unpublished works by Bishop Motiejus Valančius (Volters, 1887: I–2). ¹

Volters defined his research object as “Lithuanian genus” or, in other words, Lithuanian identity (tautybė) in historical perspective. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, conceptions of Lithuania differed from ours as Lithuanian historian Darius Staliūnas noted in 2015. Those concepts were both varied and contested by the late nineteenth century, thanks to a history of multiple partitions which had distributed people who considered themselves Lithuanian into various shifting territorial jurisdictions in Russia, Poland, and Austria, where they coexisted alongside other ethnic/linguistic groups.

In fact, Volters, based in the University of Saint Petersburg, was working in a time and place where ethnic identities and concepts of nationhood were both emergent and fiercely contested. At the borders of the Russian Empire long periods of population movement and migration had produced both a mixing and a fragmentation of ethnic groups. Russian imperial policies of assimilation and domination were being countered by rising tides of local ethnic nationalism. Thus questions about what constituted a “nation,” and how nationhood was expressed culturally and politically were of vital concern both to Russian authorities and to nationalist intellectuals, writers and activists of the border regions—with echoes from other parts of the European intellectual tradition. The new methodologies of ethnography, and one of its early practitioners, Eduards Volters, were squarely in the midst of these cultural and political debates. Over time Volters focused more and more on Lithuania, as his scholarship evolved from a research agenda set by imperial Russia to one deeply influenced by Lithuanian patriots. In the second half of his life Volters left Russia for Kaunas, Lithuania, where he taught and promoted Lithuanian culture as well as the practice of ethnography.

To be sure, when Volters began his work there already existed an understanding of an ethnic Lithuania. ² In the first half of the nineteenth century, the local population in Tsarist Russia understood Lithuania as the territory encompassing the former lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; by the late nineteenth century interest in the idea of an ethnographically defined Lithuania took hold ³ (Staliūnas, 2015: 8–9). The Dutch traveler, linguist, and ethnographer Age Meyer Benedictsen (1866–1927) emphasized that it was unknown how many millions of Lithuanians lived in the governorates of the Russian Empire's Northwestern Krai (in the regions of Vilnius, Kaunas, Grodno, and others), in the Suwałki Governorate of the Kingdom of Poland, and also in Prussia (Benedictsen, 1997: 16). Latvian lands in the Vitebsk Governorate also included a large number of Lithuanian inhabitants. Lithuanian was spoken in four Russian-controlled governorates and in a small section of a fifth. ⁴ Lithuanians were concentrated in an area of about eight thousand square kilometers, of which three thousand belonged to the Kingdom of Prussia and the rest to the Russian Empire. Within that area Lithuanians lived alongside other ethnic groups. Volters was the first to examine the ethnographic statistics of the populations in these governorates. He did so as an official of the Russian Empire, and in doing so combined research on ethnic groups with exploration of contemporary ideas of nation-building (Milius, 1993: 16–17)—ideas partially developed in collaboration with Lithuanian scholars, clerics, and notables in the course of research.

Volters did his first work at a time when the Tsarist government had imposed a ban, beginning in 1864 and lasting until 1904, on Lithuanian and Latvian language publications printed in the Latin alphabet in the European governorates of the Russian Empire. The government also introduced restrictions on education in native languages and had banished Polish from public life entirely. Recalling the impressions of Benedictsen, no one was allowed to keep any Lithuanian books published after the promulgation of the law. Those who disobeyed were fined, imprisoned, or deported. The activities of small schools attached to Catholic churches were also banned. Under the pretext that Russia would liberate the Lithuanian nation from the rule of Polish nobility and priests, a program of Russification was launched. Thus, two million Lithuanians, who had no representatives to defend their language and press on the other side of the border, were entirely dependent on the mercy of their rulers. The Polish elite, Jews, and Germans had no interest in the independence of the Lithuanian people or its education. Nevertheless the first monthly Lithuanian newspaper, Aušra began circulating in 1883, ⁵ in Ragainiai, in the German part of Lithuania, and from that day onward we can speak of an “awakening Lithuania” (Benedictsen, 1997: 184–186, 215–216, 221).

Volters faced challenges in doing his first ethnographic fieldwork, both from Russian colleagues and from skeptical Lithuanians. His efforts to gain favor with the Imperial Russian Geographical Society of the Russian Empire, ⁶ which eventually commissioned him to conduct the first ethnographic research on Lithuanian and Latvian identity, made some Lithuanian intellectuals view him, as a Russian imperial official, with caution, ambiguity, and sometimes—hostility. Father Silvestras Gimžauskas an influential Lithuanian educator, linguist and folklorist would send cautionary letters to his colleagues, advising them not to work with Volters, whom he considered a tool of Tsarist policies working against the Lithuanian national rebirth. On the other side Michaił Kojałowicz, a member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society and professor at the St Petersburg Theological Academy, accused Volters of anti-government activities during expeditions and called for his expulsion from the Geographical Society. Other colleagues, however, respected and supported Volters and his work, among them the renowned Lithuanian poet Father Maironis, who supported Volters and his unique studies. Bishop Antanas Baranauskas and many other priests collaborated with Volters (Milius, 1993: 18–19). As Volters’ social networks among Lithuanians expanded, it was recognized that Volters spoke many languages, was well-educated and examined Lithuanian language, literature and history seriously.

As part of his work on Lithuanian studies at the Russian Imperial Geographical Society Volters joined the leader of Lithuanian nation-building, Jonas Basanavičius, and other Lithuanian intellectuals in creating the Lithuanian Scientific Society and promoted the undertaking of Lithuanian ethnographic research in the pages of the unsanctioned monthly newspaper Aušra (Savoniakaitė, 2019b). Volters also collected and publicized material about the issue of the Lithuanian nation appearing in Russian newspapers and articles on Lithuanian national rebirth appearing in the American press (Volters, F 17-10). ⁷ According to Lithuanian historian Vytautas Merkys, conditions under Tsarist rule made it nearly impossible to study any anti-Tsarist movement directly (Merkys, 1975: 10).

We raise the bold hypothesis that Eduards Volters should be considered one of the founders of literate Lithuanian and Latvian communities, and that the challenges of his ethnography and social connections are an issue of anthropological knowledge. British anthropologist Jack Goody's concept of “literate communities” draws a dichotomy between “illiterate” and “literate” social groups (Brass, 1996; Goody and Watt, 1981: 46) and argues that “writing” helps a community reach political goals (Goody, 1981: 8). In the words of Norwegian anthropologist Thomas H. Eriksen, social and cultural anthropology was associated for many years with the study of “remote areas” and small communities, most of which had neither their own written languages nor established states (Eriksen, 2017: 3). As Lithuanian intellectuals began, in the late nineteenth century, to refer to “their own statistics” (Varpas and Uk-o editorial, 1902), and to consider their own ethnography, ethnology and anthropology, Volters, his research agenda and his network of prominent intellectual informants and colleagues were clearly influential in creation of such a “literate community” (Savoniakaitė, 2019b).

How did Volters, an employee of the Tsarist Russian Imperial Geographical Society, come to develop such a research and political agenda? Volters was born in Āgenskalns, near Rīga, the son of a Latvian German pharmacist, and was thus himself somewhat culturally peripheral in Tsarist Russia. He graduated from the Rīga Gymnasium in 1875 and began studying linguistics at Leipzig University. In 1877, he left for Tartu (then Dorpat) University and passed his candidate exams in Russian literature. He studied at Moscow and Kharkiv universities in 1880 and in 1883 successfully defended his dissertation in linguistics and received his master's degree in Slavic philology, having spent a formative period in 1882 working on a master's thesis at the University of Königsberg (Karaliaučius, Kaliningrad). Volters’ academic activity as an ethnographer can be divided into two periods. From 1882 to 1918, he worked within the Russian Imperial academic system as a privatdozent, or associate professor, in the Slavic Languages Department at St Petersburg University. From 1919, following the October Revolution in Russia, until his death in 1941 he resettled in an independent Lithuania and worked as a professor at the University of Lithuania, now Vytautas Magnus University (Sauka, 2016: 64). ⁸ There Volters helped to institutionalize ethnographic study and ideas about the Lithuanian nation, exploring, among other subjects, Lithuanian and Latvian national identities, place names, family customs, customary law, songs, and mythology.

In 1882 while working for his master's thesis at Königsberg, Volters was encouraged to begin his ethnographic studies in Lithuania by the German linguist and researcher of the Slavic and Baltic languages, August Leskien, and the German linguist, archaeologist, and ethnographer Adalbert Bezzenberger (Bezzenberger, 1882; Volters, 1887). Volters was enveloped in the same academic environment in the University of Königsberg where German thinker and philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder's (1744–1803) ideas on linguistic anthropology, philosophy, and education had evolved more than a century earlier (Gjesdal, 2017). At that time, his interest in folk creativity was influenced by the proto-Romantic Sturm und Drang movement, saturated with ideas about individuals’ subjective possibilities to freely express their thoughts in literature and music of the Enlightenment. Collections of Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian folk songs show that Herder gathered them first during his trips to Königsberg and Riga and published them in his book Stimmen der Völker (Voices of the People) (Herder, 1978; Käschel, 1978). Herder is considered to be the founder of a third ethnological perspective based on the notion of the romantic nation (Kaschuba, 2012: 32–33). This perspective on ethnology, which had a profound impact in Northern and Eastern Europe (Vermeulen 2015: 321–322; Leggewie 2012: 24–26), also influenced Volters’ theoretical approach to ethnography, his rejection of the concept of race (see Savoniakaitė, 2021: 111–123), and his view of education as creating a “literate community” (Goody, 1981). This is particularly clear in his later academic ⁹ work.

For Volters, the University of Königsberg and its intellectual heritage was central to the foundation of his theoretical approach to ethnography. This was based not only in the linguistic anthropology of Johann von Herder, but also in Immanuel Kant's study of geography. According to Dutch anthropologist Han F. Vermeulen, Kant began teaching a course in geography in 1755 which also encompassed what we would now call anthropology (Kant, 1912 [1777]: 443). ¹⁰ Kant did not use the terms ethnology or ethnography and displayed little interest in history. For Kant, the study of nations and races was part of geography and his anthropology was seemingly an alternative to contemporary psychology (Vermeulen, 2015: 375–377). Volters followed this path, never examining psychological aspects of national identity as some of his contemporaries did (Savoniakaitė, 2021), but was always interested in linguistic geographic concepts.

Russian anthropology was closely associated with the German tradition (Eriksen, Sivert 2001: 48). A discussion about Immanuel Kant's empirical as well as ethnographic concepts on studying race were initiated by the German naturalist Georg Forster (1754–1794), a participant in James Cook's second expedition around the world, and an evolutionary polygenist. ¹¹ Moreover he lived and worked in Vilnius from 1785 to 1787. In letters to Herder, Forster criticized Kant's view that the study of national groups was not important within an overall philosophical narrative about “man” (Vermeulen, 2015: 375–377). In Forster's opinion, Kant provided a one-sided explanation for the origin of man, based on a system of his own creation (Genzelis 1973a: 55–56), and that without observation, research could become speculative (Forster, 1786).

How were these concepts of nation, race, and geography reflected in Volters’ ethnography, influenced as it was by both German and Russian academia? From a theoretical point of view, I refer to Tim Ingold's ideas that “ethnographicness is no more intrinsic to fieldwork than it is to the encounters of which it is comprised. The conflation of ethnography with fieldwork is indeed one of the most commonplace in the discipline, and all the more insidious because it is so rarely questioned” (Ingold, 2014: 386–387). Yet Volters’ research involved multifaceted academic social relations built around debates about national identity and what would now be called ethnographic methods. Academics graduating from universities in Germany and the Russian Empire were linked by a shared theoretical discourse (Bastian, 1860, 1881; Pogodin, 1901; Savoniakaitė, 2019b; Vermeulen, 2015). Volters was the first scholar who lectured and encouraged ethnographic studies of Lithuanians. At the same time, however, Volters’ own views on ethnographic theory were never debated broadly (Bušmienė, 1973; Gieda, 2019; Nakienė and Žarskienė, 2007; Nezabitauskis, 1928; Valaitis, 1932).

My discussion of Volters’ ethnography focuses on his two main investigations of Lithuania from in 1882–1918: firstly, on the analysis of his travel to Lithuania and Lithuania Minor; secondly, on his borderland nationality studies conducted in the Suwałki Governorate. For historical comparison I will discuss Volters’ critique of theory in ethnography and his ethnographic legacy. Finally I introduce the specific concepts underlying Volters’ ethnography: his concepts of nation in empire, his use of ethnographic statistics, his ideas about the role of observation in research and about the importance of social connections (what might now be called social networks) linking ethnographer and those studied to produce superior information.

An ethnographic trip to Lithuania Minor, Lithuania, and Samogitia

In 1887 Volters defined Lithuanians as “Russian Lithuanians,” asserting that their vocabulary and grammar had yet to be studied. At the same time, he also referred to them as a “Lithuanian tribe” and claimed that, both in the past and the present, the “Lithuanian tribe” had not been sufficiently examined (Volters, 1887: II). There had been criticism within Russia about the quality of ethnographic knowledge presented in case studies by Latvian ethnographer and lawyer Jūlijs Kuznecovs, working in Lithuania from 1862 to 1872. His program was titled “Ethnographic and Historical Knowledge in the Northwestern Governorates” (Milius, 1993). Criticism compelled the Imperial Russian Geographic Society to dispatch Volters to do better, by studying “Lithuanian and Latvian identity.” The positivists (Chubinsky, 1878: 3; Steinmetz, 2004; Veselovsky, 1880) had criticized Kuznetsov's over-abundance of epistemological data and the multifaceted nature of his research which, they insisted, prevented the summarizing of ethnographic and historical knowledge while hampering the drawing of conclusions.

Volters was influenced by positivists, but did not hold a consistent positivist position. Alexander Nikolayevich Veselovsky, a renowned nineteenth century Russian and European literary theorist, pioneer of comparative literature research, and a former student at Moscow University (Meletinsky, 1998: 13) wrote that expeditions undertaken by the Imperial Russian Geographic Society treated “nationalities” in all regions alike. Expedition studies were criticized for their repetition of details about the same religions in different locations and for their narrowness and lack of objectivity of collected information. Veselovsky argued that not all issues revealed by ethnographic or popular poetic data had been explored (1880: 3–6). It was suggested that one focused expedition with a better prepared program of research questions might be more useful than a series of joint ethnographic-statistical expeditions.

In 1883, Volters began studying the domestic life of Lithuanians residing in the border regions (referred to as rubezhniki in Russian) of Lithuania Minor. Volters spent a month in the environs of Klaipėda where he observed local life, and interacted with the academic community there (Volters, 1885). His report included descriptions of birthing customs and medicinal practices, superstitions in the northern Klaipėda district, and wedding traditions (Volters, 1887: 9; Milius, 1993: 16–18). He continued extended ethnographic research in Lithuania between 1884 and 1887 using similar but not identical approaches, according to German ethnologist Wolfgang Kaschuba. Contemporary scholars in Europe and the United States were studying individual groups by focusing on the folk origins of “nations,” using such methods as ethnographic observation, descriptions of geological and geographic data and analysis of medical information contained in economic, statistical and historical documents (Kaschuba, 2012: 26–32).

In his 1887 book titled Ob etnograficheskiu poiezdkie po Litvi i Zymdi lietomi 1887 goda (Regarding the ethnographic trip to Lithuania and Žemaitija in 1887), Volters emphasized that the purpose of his travel was to study the ethnographic and linguistic aspects of Samogitian-Lithuanian national relics and law. He asserted that the positive ethnographic results of four months of travel through the Northwestern region meant the successful resolution of some historical ethnographic questions as well as the collection of information about ancient and fourteenth century relics. Volters did this by analyzing Lithuanian history books, the ethnography of Russian Lithuania, Lithuanian place names, geography, archeology, and mythology. His 1887 book contained numerous articles about Lithuanian history, castles, castle mounds, law, and the unique Lithuanian language (Volters, 1887: 1–4). ¹²

Volters’ research demonstrated his interest in society's relationships—an interest that had been steadily increasing within the scientific community for more than a century. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, according to British anthropologist Alan Barnard, philosophers and legal scholars went beyond the “facts” and concerned themselves more with abstract relationships between individuals and society, between society and rules, and between people and nations. This discourse laid a foundation for anthropology. The Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, for instance, had made a distinction between the “natural condition” and the “social condition” (Barnard, 2000: 16–22).

Volters believed the “natural condition” was revealed in his study of place names. He collected linguistic and lexical data on the Dzūkija dialect spoken by Lithuanians, which led him to historical conclusions about relationships between the ancient Sudovians and Prussians. In Lithuanian folk song lyrics Volters distinguished “Sudaviškei,” the name of an old Lithuanian village in the Suwałki Governorate (Volters, 1887: 3–4). Linguistic and lexical data also helped him assert the antiquity of word origins, a typical feature of early nineteenth century Enlightenment cultural nationalism (Brass, 1996; Hroch, 2012; explored in more depth in Savoniakaitė, 2019a).

In Volters’ view, the “social condition” and language of any given “nation” were first and foremost identified through language. He was thus laying the groundwork to establish the reality of a Lithuanian nation. In 1886, he created a program titled “Establishing the characteristics of the Lithuanian and Samogitian languages” (Volters, 1887: 5), drawing on the testimony of old books (widely valued in Europe) to validate his conclusions. And, guided most probably by the theoretical guidelines of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society, he also sought to establish suitable ethnographic-statistical research programs, primarily in the field of language, utilizing ethnographic observation, discussions with the local population in situ ¹³ and analysis of historical sources.

Volters turned to an examination of customary law to help explain issues of rural familial and community customs of the “genus.” He identified a structure he called Lithuanian Greater Families, and turned to court documents to show how villages resolved inter-family conflicts such as ownership of a particular bee colony. Elderly rural neighbors resolved their differences in domestic courts. He noted that these domestic courts were both more effective and less costly than district courts, which often failed to convene and required considerable outlays of vodka and time (Volters, 1887: 6). Volters’ skillful extrapolation from court documents helped him pose questions about Lithuanian relationships within families, wedding customs which joined families, and the prevailing views within society and the “genus” about an individual's place within the community and the local economy. He asked, for instance:

(1) Who is a son-in-law? What conflicts arise when another person is welcomed into a home? (2) What sort of relationship existed between young people and the elderly (karšinčius, išimtininkas)? (3) What views did the nation have on inheritance? Were there aspirations to single ownership, were farms passed on to the youngest or oldest son? (4) How did the nation view women and their rights of inheritance? Were there stories about respecting women? In order to provide for their surviving children, did widows inherit the entire farm or just a portion? (5) Would a father recover the dowry in the event of a childless wife or the death of a daughter? (6) What sort of disputes arose over bee hives? What did people think of beekeepers? Was there a belief that beekeepers should not be required to go to court? (7) What forms did symbolic acts of injustice take (such as the cutting of a horse's tail)? (8) What kind of relationship existed between landlord-peasants and their workers? (9) Were there voluntary transactions regarding awards for children born out of wedlock (40–60 roubles or a milk cow?) (Volters, 1887: 8).

Volters collected his data by sending out questionnaires to local courts in the Vilnius and Kaunas governorates, and received more than 300 replies (Volters, 1887: 8). The success of this ethnographic trip rested in part on the levels of local cooperation Volters was able to mobilize. The implication of his work was that any group which developed and administered its own local system of laws was, indeed, a nation. In structuring his research thus, Volters was embracing the wider European intellectual concept of a “social contract,” rooted in debates about the importance of language, law, kinship and education in human relationships. British anthropologist Alan Barnard, who sees the origins of anthropology in concepts of “social contract,” says the present anthropological understanding of human origins, society, and cultural diversity emerged from that concept. This in turn can be traced back to eighteenth century debates regarding the origins of language and the nineteenth century discourse about connections between humans and primates–discussions that also encompassed issues of “races” with supposedly different origins (Barnard, 2000:15) although Volters was not interested in the concept of “races,” unlike some of his contemporaries.

Volters began his career in the context of Russian Empire political strategies of control which demanded broad knowledge of the empire's ethnic groups, their statistics and economic life. As a state employee, Volters was actively involved in creating an ethnographic data archive on ethnic groups within Russian Empire. Its aim was to define the ethnographic boundaries of Lithuanians, Latvians, Belorusians, each seen as a “genus.” The Northwestern Division of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society, opened in Vilnius in 1867, is considered one of the first institutions to begin collecting such comprehensive ethnographic data on Lithuanian birth rituals, family law, folk medicine, songs, etc. in its research archives. Due to Volters’ efforts, forty-five reports compiled by nineteenth century intellectuals were included in these archives as well as other researchers’ information on Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians. In 1884 Volters was elected a full member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. In 1893, he proposed the creation of a Lithuanian and Latvian Commission under the Imperial Russian Geographic Society to draft ethnographic-statistical research programs (Milius, 1993: 16–23) suggesting the ways research itself was instrumental in constructing and reifying national identities.

Later, much like mid-nineteenth century anthropology in general, Volters developed an interest in human evolution (Barnard, 2000: 15; Ssorin-Chaikov, 2008: 194–195). As in the British tradition, according to Anthony Jackson, Volters considered anthropological studies to be more objective than folklore research (Jackson, 1987: 2–5), although he leaned toward holistic studies and remained practical. For instance he suggested that anthropological studies of Lithuanians and Latvians, close to one another in language but different in semantic type, should be broadened into a the statistical search for all types in Lithuanian regions, and combined with archaeological studies of Western Prussia and ancient Prussians in Prussian Lithuania (Volters, 1906: 9).

A no less important perspective on current theories on diffusionism appears in Volters’ late nineteenth century discourse on the dispersion of cultural variations, although he posed the issue as one for further research since he had not done all the needed work himself. In his study of mythology, Volters wrote about a common formula found in Lithuanian and Latvian folk tales: Perkūnas’ (the God of Thunder) struggles with Piktibe (the Devil), or Perkūnas kills the Devil using thunder. As he compared myths, Volters noted that ancient Lithuanians had a particular reverence for Perkūnas, much as the Slavs worshipped Perūnas. During his trips Volters heard stories about Perkūnas and the Devil in every district, and eventually identified these stories as unique characteristics of Lithuania and Samogitia. He proposed recording all folk tale variations in order to determine the geographic spread of the stories about Perkūnas and the Devil. But in a comment that revealed his own interests in historic ethnography, Volters asserted that “most importantly, this material gives us the opportunity to review and comment on the knowledge of medieval writers” (Volters, 1887: 9).

Ethnographic statistics: Borderland identity studies in the Suwałki governorate

If Volters’ work was noteworthy for his use of observation, local documents, folklore and archeology, and the inclusion of the public in his research, he also pioneered the use of ethnographic statistics. In 1889 Volters deployed his own ethnographic-statistical research in the Suwałki Governate, to explore Lithuanian and other nations as nations, not races the way Russian ethnographer Nikolaj N. Charuzin did. Volters pinpointed issues of identity formation, impacted by assimilation and political processes. He changed the interpretation of the region's historical and ethnographic geography by including special questions on ethnographic data in statistical surveys. First under the direction of Arist Aristovic Kunik, an academician at the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, Volters began examining the ethnographic data collected by Piotr I. Keppeni, whose Russian Empire project was aimed at determining the “genetic” makeup of the inhabitants of Lithuania and Belarus. It also sought to ascertain “local” names in the “domestic” language used by area residents (Volters, 1901: 1). Volters took a different approach. The Governor provided him with a list of inhabited areas in the Suwałki Governate and Volters called on local “statistical committees” operating in the Governorate for collaboration. At the instruction of the respective Governors, forms and questionnaires were printed with slightly different ethnographic content for the Vilnius, Kaunas and Suwałki Governorates (Volters, 1901: 2–3).

Volters’ 1901 publication Spiski naselennykh mest Suvalskoy gubernii, kak matiera dlya istoriko-etnograficheskoy geografiya kraya (Lists of inhabited areas in the Suwałki Governorate as material for the historical and ethnographic geography of the region) asserted that both the Vilnius and Suwałki Governorates were home to a large number of ethnic Poles. He traced historical migration patterns and examined historical documents about population movement and state borders (Volters, 1901: 3–6, 1906). He examined the legacy of land reform programs, and the social changes resulting from the consequent migration and economic restructuring of rural areas. He understood that the area was not ethnically homogenous nor were its various ethnic cultures static. Instead he demonstrated how they were in flux, shaped by ongoing political and economic processes.

The Suwałki Governorate program was noted for its intriguing ethnographic comparative theoretical approach to the study of identity. Volters, relying partly on the ethnographic statistical program used by the German ethnographer Franz Tetzner of Leipzig University in his study of the Sorbs, studied “locals” as well as those who did not reside permanently in the area. All individuals were asked about the linguistic specifics and names of local places, about nearby lakes and rivers, about which “genus” they belonged to, what language they spoke at home, about their religion, their levels of literacy and, if illiterate, what ancient monuments or castle mounds they could identify as linked to their genus, and the historical significance of those monuments. There was also an effort to compile a methodological record of assimilation and the migration processes resulting from land reform programs. The assistance of local statistics committees produced data which differed from previously collected census data (Volters, 1901: 1–7).

In doing such research, Volters was obliged to grapple with the perpetual question of what attributes actually defined identity, in a fluid situation of migration, assimilation and imperial domination. Volters proposed that identity studies be focused on the superficial knowledge of other languages, proficiency in Polish language, and the rate of attendance at Lithuanian language masses (expanded upon in Milius, 1993: 60). He further concluded that identity was most strongly reflected in the degree of Lithuanian religiosity.

As a graduate of Leipzig University, Volters’ use of the term “genus” grew out of more than a century of important research within the Russian Empire. For instance, as part of an ethnographic program titled “De historia gentium,” the influential German historian and researcher of Siberia, Gerhard Friedrich Müller, had first asked people about their boundaries, their territory's climate, and intermingling of peoples of different character. He studied the origins of each people according to their own tradition, “natural belief,” “manners and rites,” economics, language and “literacy.” He sought to learn about place names in the local native languages, their pronunciations and etymology. Finally, “individuals of both sexes from each people and tribe” were to be painted in customary dress, while traditional clothing samples were taken to St Petersburg (cited from Vermeulen, 2015: 164–165). As an official of the Russian Empire, Volters in his turn collected material culture exhibit pieces for the Kunstkamera (Galiopa and Fišman, 2009).

Volters’ new interpretation of ethnographic statistics was rooted in older European intellectual traditions. In the early eighteenth century German universities in Göttingen, Leipzig, Halle and Jena, presented “statistics” as a new field of study associated with research in law, linguistics, ethnology, history, geography, physical anthropology and natural history (Vermeulen, 2015: 221). By the middle of the century it became its own legitimate science. Definitions of “peoples” and “nations” were sought in natural law and the “law of nations.” Interests were directed toward relations between peoples and countries, as in Müller's historia gentium, rather than toward political history. An important focus of research—in the context of Russian imperial policies—was the rights of ethnic minorities (Vermeulen, 2015: 328–329). The German ethnologist Adolf Bastian, well known to the Russian Empire academic community, asserted that science demands “well-considered statistics, statistics that would immediately [detect] the organic growth of spirit” (Bastian, 1860: 428). Unlike Bastian (in 1881), Volters did not associate social evolutionary ideas with diffusion and psychology. He studiously sought “well-considered ethnographic statistics” for every context, creating programs and questions for specific research tasks in an effort to avoid ethnocentrism as a “true representation of the world” (Mignolo, 2018: 195).

Some of Volters’ followers took up Herder's ideas, based on the concept of the romantic nation. The physicist and ethnographer Ignas Končius, a student who worked with Volters on ethnographic expeditions, continued Volters’ approach to ethnographic observations and statistics in his own unique way. In his series of works entitled Statistica crucium et cappellarum in Samogitia 1912–1932 (Statistics of Samogitian Crosses and Chapels) (Končius, 1934) he developed original ideas about the “soul of the land” and the “soul of the nation.” Končius’ statistical studies on Lithuanian identity and religion also concluded that identity was strongly reflected in Lithuanian religiosity, parallel to Volters’ and Teztner's conclusions. Končius’ invocation of a centralized administration was, I believe, influenced by Volters’ notion of the “literate community” as a legitimate object of study, in contrast to an older, romantic notion that only “the folk” were worth studying.

The political and philosophical roots of Volters’ ethnography

Over the length of his academic career, Volters’ outlook and academic stance gradually evolved. As an official of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society, Volters was an insider, of sorts, in an ethnography linked since the 1860s to imperialist concepts of control and assimilation of subject populations through intimate social knowledge. By the same token ethnographic statistical research programs also arose in response to historical political interests in cameralism, the creation of a centralized administrative state interested in assimilation, control, and erasure (Staliūnas, 2009: 177). Nevertheless Volters both learned from, and eventually critiqued, the work of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society—a point to be dealt with later in this section. It is also worth remembering that after 1918 Volters lived and worked exclusively in an independent Lithuania.

At the same time that he was involved in the Russian imperialist enterprise, Volters also tended toward a “natural history” understanding of his work, parallel to early anthropology established by such travelers as the eighteenth century naturalist Georg Forster (Kaschuba, 2012). Indeed Volters called his first ethnographic studies a “journey,” expanding on debate about the reliability of research started by Forster. Volters was immersed in other intellectual currents as well such as Auguste Comte's early nineteenth century positivist concepts combining Baron de Montesquieu's interest in social science with interests in physics, chemistry, and biology. Comte called this discipline sociologie, a new field that came to encompass the ideas of de Montesquieu, de Saint-Simon, and other French writers—mainly evolutionists (Barnard, 2000: 22–23). Sensualism—the concept that human cognition grows from the perception of the senses—had strong roots in the old Vilnius University and was one of the theoretical sources of positivism. After the closure of the University in 1832, eclecticism took hold. Jonas Šliūpas, a physician, lawyer, and figure in the Lithuanian press and politics (Genzelis, 1973b: 63–69), became involved, like Volters, in the Lithuanian literate community. He joined in nation-building activities and criticized clerical leaders. The Lithuanian Romantic priest and poet Maironis, who supported Volters’ research efforts, fought against Comte's positivism, but did not stop the spread of positivist ideas. Volters thus began his career in ethnographic research on behalf of the Russian Empire but did so while enmeshed in eighteenth and nineteenth century Western European philosophical concepts about human identity, society, political liberty, and the nature of enquiry itself.

Volters rejected both the contemporary concepts of race and the positivist critique of religion, characteristic of a third late branch of anthropology, based on Herder's philosophy and on linguistic anthropology. Povilas Višinskis used the concept of race to characterize a Lithuanian “race.” (Savoniakaitė, 2011). Eduards Volteris discussed a notion of ethnography defined many years later by Ingold:

First, let me declare my hand by stating what ethnography means. Quite literally, it means writing about the people. Though we anthropologists would likely not turn to the dictionary for an authoritative definition, others well might, and this is what they would find: “a scientific description of races and peoples with their customs, habits and mutual differences.” ¹⁴ … In thickening our descriptions, and allowing a real historical agency to the people who figure in them, we might want to qualify the sense in which these accounts could be considered to be scientific. Ethnographic description, we might well say, is more an art than a science, but no less accurate or truthful for that. (Alpers 1983), …. Much of this debate has fallen under the rubric of the so-called “crisis of representation” (Ingold, 2014: 385).

In truth, as a Latvian studying Lithuanians, Volters was something of an outsider. He conducted ethnographic field studies in Lithuania and Samogitia for four years, returning every year and thereby seeking to avoid what we today understand to be the pitfalls of reflexivity. Instead Volters turned both to observations and to social contacts—the networks of local people with whom he interacted over the years. This method of observation might today be labeled participant observation. As in the British tradition, according to Anthony Jackson, Volters considered anthropological studies to be more objective than folklore research (Jackson, 1987: 2–5), but he leaned toward holistic studies, of the kind done by Bronisław Malinowski (1979). It was particularly important for linguistic research, where it was vital to correctly record names and observed realities, but more broadly important for Volters’ entire ethnographic enterprise.

The ethnography of Volters’ travels to Lithuania Minor, particularly Lithuania and Samogitia, is more multifaceted and comparative compared to the statistics he collected on the borderland groups in the Suwałki governorate. His 4-year trip to Lithuania explored archaic and rare social phenomena and involved his long-term integration into a community through multiple field studies and visits and observations of court proceedings (Volters, 1887: 7). Indeed this may be considered an early form of the case study method still used in anthropology to illuminate social structure through the lens of conflict and conflict resolution. By enlisting the research cooperation of educated, politically involved local people, and incorporating a great deal of written material, both old and new, Volters was instrumental in creation of what Goody calls a politically literate community (Anderson, 1991; Goody, 1981; Goody and Watt, 1981: 46).

In an 1885 letter to the editors of the illegal Lithuanian newspaper Aušra, Volters wrote that, he sought to “advance the Lithuanian nation and educational interests solely from a purely ethnographic report about Lithuanians in the Vilnius, Kaunas, Grodno and Suwałki governorates, expecting similar results, at worst, as those found in Chubinsky's collections,” and he then sought to compare his work to that of Oscar Kolbergs’ studies of Poles (Kaunas and Matijošaitienė, 2011: 410–411). Kolbergs’ ethnographic groups' cultural field studies were notable for their field notes, letters, and travel itineraries. Kolbergs’ observations (Smoluch, 2014: 42–46), and indeed much of Volters’ work, parallel Malinowski's.

Volters’ critique and his new concept of observation in field work as well as his focus on linguistics was shaped by an ethnographic-statistical expedition undertaken in 1870 by the Imperial Russian Geographic Society's Southwestern Division to Western Russia and the Grodno Governorate, which then included the Lithuanian municipalities. ¹⁵ As expedition leader Ukrainian ethnographer and poet Pavlo P. Chubinsky emphasized, the target of important new expedition research should be the stories of the Malorusskie (Little Russians, as Ukrainians were then referred to), since few such stories had been recorded (Chubinsky, 1878: 3; Veselovsky, 1880: 1). Chubinsky argued that ethnographic research could be conducted in two ways:

By presenting one's subjective impressions as the results of observation, or by gathering material about the different facets of the people's lives and thereby providing an opportunity to view the nation independently of the observer's own impressions. I chose the second method for the following considerations: (1) To date, there is a lack of comprehensive ethnographic study […] With regard to statistical data, it was most important to study the economic situation of the peasants in the Southwestern governorates, as well as the state of industry and the Jewish question there… The area of my travel lies adjacent to the Austrian border […]. During my travels, I tried not to miss a single aspect of the people's life there, paying particular attention to issues that had been less studied previously. I sought to learn about phonetic and grammatical specifics of language, changes in domestic surroundings, and folk monuments, focusing principally on ritual songs and mythical stories; I described court traditions; I gathered information on the peasants’ economic condition, how much they earn, what industry exists, the significance of the Jews in the region, etc. (cited from Veselovsky, 1880: 2–3). ¹⁶

Volters criticized the Imperial Russian Geographical Society’ ethnographic-statistical concept of “ethnographism” because he felt it that although it revealed a growing interest in both the elite and popular cultural knowledge and in popular folk life (Bakhtin, 1984; Meletinsky, 1998; Veselovsky, 1880: 4) it corrupted observation. His own notion of “ethnographism” was interlaced with social relations, observation, and the building of a “literate community.” According Ingold, “ethnographicness” involves a judgment: that there is a retrospective conversion of the learning, remembering and note-taking involved into pretexts for something else altogether. This ulterior purpose, concealed from the people whom you covertly register as informants, is documentary. It is this that turns your experience, your memory and your notes into material—sometimes spun quasi-scientifically as “data”—upon which you subsequently hope to draw in the project of offering an account. The risks of double-crossing entailed in this ethnographizing of encounters, and the ethical dilemmas consequent upon them, are well known and much discussed (Ingold, 2014: 386); one can debate the quantity of “data” saved by Volters’ literary interests, such as preserving Lithuanian language terms for “literate community.” The term “knowledge” used in ethnographic and historical programs referenced the correlation of ethnographic-statistical research to the concept of Völkerkunde, or “knowledge of peoples” (Savoniakaitė, 2019b), except that the term “peoples” had been replaced by “nations.” Volters was primarily interested in human coexistence, law, and the “genal” composition and identity of a population and for him participation and observation, as Ingold wrote, brought different kinds of data, respectively objective and subjective (Jackson, 1987: 51; citation from Ingold, 2014: 387, 393) in the political aspects of ethnography, particularly in the study of borderland identities.

Volters, meanwhile, focused on research quality over quantity of “data,” using his texts to emphasize the importance of a multifaceted recording of “local” characteristics (Volters, F17-294). In his book Ob etnograficheskiu poiezdkie po Litvi i Zymdi lietomi 1887 goda (Regarding the ethnographic trip to Lithuania and Žemaitija in 1887), he found particular value in the fact that studies were supported by both the local population as well as local representatives of the Russian Imperial government. In this way, he was able to interact with Lithuanians beyond rural villages to study peasant culture. He engaged intellectuals in discussions about history and linguistics and received gifts, including old books (Volters, 1887: 1, 15–16) ¹⁷ and other antiquities. Volters’ concept of ethnography was thus a broader one rather than simply relying field studies.

By comparison, peasant “traditions” in rural and urban areas have long remained an important issue in the anthropology of “literate communities.” In his study of the “structured village,” Goody highlighted the work of American anthropologist and ethnolinguist Robert Redfield and the work of his Chicago students, who analyzed village agriculturalists not just as peasants in self-contained communities but also as politically and economically urban-dependent farmers participating in a modern literate civilization (Goody, 1981: 14). Volters tried to incorporate a similar framework, if less systematically. As another source of insight, Volters collected ethnographic “data on the question of the Lithuanian Nation” appearing in the Russian Imperial press and “on the matter of the Lithuanian rebirth” from American newspapers. Reports written by Russian Imperial gendarmes in St Petersburg shed light on the persecution of Lithuanian activists (Volters, F17-10); according to Yuri Slezkine, many immigrants in Russia opposed imperial policies this way (Slezkine, 2000: 22). Volters explored the political life of ethnic groups without succumbing to the cultural evolutionism (Hirsch, 2005: 7) which had become prevalent in the Russian Empire in 1917.

The home of Aleksandra and Eduards Volters in St Petersburg was a special gathering place for Lithuanians and those interested in Lithuanian studies. Young people studying in St Petersburg would visit the home often: “The Volters home was a center of Lithuanian [culture] in St Petersburg. Professor Volters would receive all the Lithuanian publications, and renowned Lithuanians would visit him, Jaunius, Maironis, and others” (Voldemaras, 1925 citation from Gieda, 2019: 274).

The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia had political, cultural, and academic consequences for all of former Russian imperial society. After the start of Bolshevik reforms in public and social life and the outbreak of civil war, the turmoil in Russian intensified. The revolutionary changes resembled nothing like a “triumphant march of Soviet rule,” but soon transformed into a national catastrophe and the start of profound changes. In 1918, Volters was commissioned by the Russian Academy of Sciences to travel from St Petersburg to Germany and Austria-Hungary to collect Polish books. Supposedly due to the chaos following Germany's capitulation, he found himself stranded in Vilnius (Gieda, 2019: 280–281). He never returned. In truth, Volters’ relocation to that city had been carefully planned. He spent the rest of his career teaching in Kaunas, although a significant part of his ethnographic and other research manuscripts, books, and personal collection remained behind in Russia.

Conclusion

This paper has laid out the work of Eduards Volters, an important early ethnographer who in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries chose as his research focus the “Lithuanian genus” or, in other words, Lithuanian identity (tautybė), studying the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual populations along the borders of the old Russian Empire. He did so at a time when scholars and local intellectuals disagreed about what actually constituted Lithuanian identity and how it should be studied. It was a period of growing discontent with Russian imperial rule and the emergence of movements for nation self-determination on the part of many ethnic groups within the Empire. Volters’ work over the course of his academic career helped to define that identity, rooted he believed primarily in language, history and religious observance. His work, widely shared within the communities he studied, offered validation to Lithuanian patriots opposed to Tsarist domination by establishing through rigorous first-hand research the social reality of a separate Lithuanian identity.

Volters’ research was deeply influenced by the philosophers and early ethnographers of German, French, Polish, and English intellectual traditions having to do with the nature of society, concepts of the nation and ideas about self-determination. He also critiqued some of these earlier studies, eventually developing his own research methods. His approach was holistic, so that he collected systematic data through first-hand observation, over long periods of immersion in local culture and language. He drew on historical sources, linguistic studies, geography, mythology, and folklore and local archeology. His insistence on the importance of facts, not imaginings, collected through direct observation, led him to create statistical surveys of ethnic populations, their languages and religious affiliations, and their geographical locations after migration and land reform. He turned to case studies of local court cases to draw larger conclusions about social relations and customary dispute settlement. He warned of the dangers of ethnocentrism in ethnographic research.

The enduring political impact of Volters’ work rested on the long-term relationships he developed with Lithuanians, particularly with local scholars and intellectuals, and on his manifest respect for Lithuanian culture, despite his initial role as a Russian imperial official from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society and as a collector of ethnographic specimens for the Russia's national Kunstkamera museum. Volters turned to Lithuania's “literate community” for support of his research efforts, for information and for research collaboration. Volters’ devotion to what we would now call participant observation gradually won over Lithuanians although drawing protest from Russian colleagues. His numerous and detailed research reports, his influence on students and his promotion of Lithuanian culture in the heart of St Petersburg, had an important role in shaping Lithuanian national identity as it moved toward political self-determination and the creation of an independent Lithuanian state in 1918. After the Revolution Volters abandoned Russia to live and teach permanently in Lithuania.

Volters’ career also raises important questions about the role of the researcher as activist. Volters is not the first ethnographer or anthropologist to move gradually, through prolonged research engagement, toward deep sympathy for the political aspirations of the people he or she studies. Those sympathies, at odds with the professional mandate for research objectivity, are increasingly recognized in modern anthropology as our field grapples with the ongoing impacts of racism, colonialism and political repression on the people we both study and collaborate with. Questions of identity and self-determination remain as salient as they did during Volters’ career. The impact of what we write on those we write about is still a burning question. Today it is possible to look back and to welcome Eduards Volters as an early recruit into the company of activist anthropologists—one who grappled with all these moral and political dilemmas over a long scholarly lifetime.