"Imaginary" Finno-Ugric peoples of the USSR in the projects of the American Center for Uralic–Altaic Studies (1940–1950s)

Abstract

The paper deals with the history of the creation and functioning of the Center for Uralic–Altaic Studies at Indiana University, which in the 1940s and 1950s became the leading institution in the United States engaged in applied and fundamental research in the field of political history, languages and traditional culture of the Finno-Ugric peoples of the USSR. In the context of the growing confrontation between the North Atlantic bloc and the socialist-oriented countries led by the Soviet Union, ethnological knowledge, including that produced by the Center for Uralic–Altaic Studies, is gaining a special role in the ideological struggle. The emigrant scientists who arrived in the USA under different circumstances, which often predetermined the essential content and purpose of texts, occupy the leading positions in the profile university division.