Delivery of Museum Collections to the USSR in the Period of Sanctions: Experience of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in the 1920s

Abstract

The article examines the circumstances and history of delivery to Russia of ethnographic collections by the First Russian Expedition to Ceylon and India (1914-18). These items were stored at Russian Tea Firm Gubkin Co warehouses in Colombo, Government Museum (Madras) and Indian Museum (Calcutta), at the State Far Eastern University (Vladivostok) until 1925. The authors consider political conditions and ways of protection of the Academy of Sciences property in the 1920s. The Indian collections in 1921-24 became the pretext for the working out a model of interaction between the young Soviet state and Great Britain. The arguments proposed by Academician F.I. Stcherbatsky made it possible to resolve diplomatic conflicts related to the confiscation of the property of British subjects in the Soviet Russia. In 1923-24 international cooperation of scientists facilitated the transportation of Indian exhibits to the academic Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (MAE). By 1925, most of the collections had been delivered to Petrograd, the Meerwarths returned to the MAE.