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[SOVIET ANTI-RACIST] Chelovecheskie rasy [i.e. Human Races]

Nesturkh, M.

Item #2110

Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1958. 101, [3] pp.: ill., 8 ills., 2 folding maps. 22,5х15 cm. In original cloth with colored lettering; illustrated endpapers. Good, fragment of p. 85-86 lost.
Complete copy. Signed by the author on half-title: “To dear “omului” – the true Homo Sapiens – from a small author of a small book, an anthropologist-primatologist with the best wishes and for a good memory. M.F. Nesturkh. April 15, 1959. Moscow”. Second revised edition. Illustrated throughout with ethnographic and anthropological pictures.

The book was supposed to be studied by biology teachers at Soviet high schools. In this paper, anthropology is applied as another battlefield of the Cold War.
The book is written by Soviet anthropologist Mikhail Nesturkh (1895-1979) whose main works are devoted to the ecology, taxonomy and paleontology of primates, problems of human origin and racial studies. He graduated from the natural science department of the Faculty
of Physics and Mathematics of Novorossiysk University in Odesa in 1916, then moved to Moscow and studied in graduate school at the Institute of Anthropology of Moscow State University. In the 1920s, Nesturkh worked at the Timiryazev Research Institute and the Research Institute of Anthropology of Moscow State University, later headed its Laboratory of Anthropogenesis and Primatology. Nesturkh became one of the founders of the Museum of Anthropology of Moscow State University (1931).
In three chapters the author elaborates on human races, according to terms of Soviet anthropology, their emergence and interaction, and proves their biological equality. The fourth chapter is entirely dedicated to criticism of “pseudoscientific racist theories of imperialists” that existed while the Soviet state was friendly to all races and nations.
Nesturkh writes: “Racism seeks to explain social inequality in capitalist society by the laws of nature and serves as an ideological weapon of the bourgeoisie in its struggle for class dominance”. He contradicts hypotheses that connect races and languages, races and psyche. The author refers to anti-racist research by Miklouho-Maclay, Chernyshevsky, Sechenov.
The last chapter is composed on favorable national policy in the USSR. The book keeps silent about Stalinist repressions toward entire ethnic groups but mentions early Soviet achievements in a mass literacy campaign, wide industrialization and cultural renaissance of indigenous people. The edition includes colored inserts with portraits of various ethnic groups or races and endpapers show them as well. They are added with two folding geographical schemes: 1) Scheme of the geographical distribution of the main groups of anthropological types in late 15th century”; 2) Groups of anthropological types among the peoples of the USSR. The latter indicates 13 anthropological types, according to Soviet
scientist N. Cheboksarov.

Worldcat shows copies of this edition located in LoC, Illinois, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, George Mason, Cornell, Stony Brook Universities, Smith College, National Library of Medicine.

Price: $750.00

Status: On Hold