Krupnik, Igor Ilyich

In 1973 he graduated from Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov .

In 1976 - 1991 - employee of the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR named after N.N. Miklouho-Maclay . He conducted field ethnographic studies of the peoples of Siberia, the Arctic, Transcaucasia, and the Far East.

In 1977 he defended his thesis for the degree of candidate of historical sciences on the topic "Factors of Sustainability and Development of the Traditional Economy of the Peoples of the North: Toward a Methodology for Studying Ethno-Ecological Systems".

Scientific Secretary of the Ethnography Commission of the Moscow branch of the All-Union Geographical Society .

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he studied the ancient settlements of the Eskimos .

In 1990 he defended his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Biological Sciences on the topic "Models of the traditional nature management of marine hunters and reindeer herders of Northern Eurasia: (reconstruction, analysis, historical dynamics)."

Since 1991, Leading Anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Arctic Studies . At the same time - a leading researcher at the Center for the Traditional Culture of Nature Management of the Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage named after D. S. Likhachev (Institute of Heritage).

He teaches at US universities.

Family

• Father - Ilya Naumovich Krupnik (b. 1925 ), Soviet and Russian writer .

Specialist in national minorities, especially northern ones.

He proposed to single out three stages in the history of reindeer husbandry: mobile hunter-fishers with transport auxiliary reindeer husbandry; nomadic hunters with large-herd transport reindeer herding; highly specialized nomadic reindeer herders ^[1] .

One of Igor Krupnik’s projects at the Center for Arctic Research, “Siku” (Eskimo- Ice ), refers to ethnolinguistics and is associated with different names of ice states in the Eskimo-Aleut languages , which are more than a hundred in different dialects ^[2] .

The activities of Igor Krupnik at the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Soviet times went beyond the scientific - into the public and, further, into the dissident . Iskander Izmailov wrote about this side of Krupnik’s life:

The real dissident was Igor Krupnik, who eventually left the country, but in those years he woke up the public with various events that were not directly prohibited, but fell under the tacit ban. So, he organized several seminars at the Moscow branch of the All-Union Geographical Society (under the Academy of Sciences of the USSR), including on Krymchaks and Crimean Tatars , where he invited D. Iskhakov , who made a presentation at the seminar on the Tatars of Kazan . ^[3]

At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s , along with Mikhail Chlenovoy , Natalia Yukhneva and some other Soviet ethnographic scholars, he became one of the most active supporters of the revival of Soviet Judaica and a de facto Jewish public figure in the face of unexpressed state anti-Semitism . ^[four]

One of the founders in 1981 of the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Commission (EIEC). In 1981 - 1987 he was the scientific secretary of EIEC.

Natalia Yukhneva recalled a meeting with Igor Krupnik in 1984 :

... In Moscow, I met with Igor Ilyich Krupnik. At our institute, he was engaged in ethnography of the peoples of the North. In addition, he headed the ethnographic commission at the Moscow branch of the Geographical Society , organized interesting reporting cycles there, among them there were reports on Judaica: the Geographical Society provided certain opportunities for this, it retained a more or less free spirit and style. Igor was sitting at a typewriter in the empty room of his department and was publishing an article about lahlukh (Kurdistan Jews), written by him together with M. Kupovetsky , who was then a graduate student of our institute. I asked to see.

- You are interested? <...> Look, ”said Igor,“ no matter what the phrase, the word Jews. ” Here the editor is scared!

The article appeared on the pages of the journal "Soviet Ethnography" only four years later - in the second issue of 1988 ^[4]

The author of a series of articles on the history of ethnographic study of Russian Jews, on Jewish museum and archival funds. He identified the Jewish collections of the State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR as part of the collection of the ethnographic expedition of Semyon An-skye, which was considered lost.

He contributed to the publication of articles on the history, ethnography, and culture of Russian Jewry. The organizer and chairman of the first after a long break Jewish conference in Moscow in 1989, "The historical fate of Jews in Russia and the USSR: the beginning of a dialogue."

Publications by Igor Krupnik

Monographs

• Arutyunov S.A. , Krupnik I.I. , Chlenov M.A. Whale alley. Antiquities of the islands of the Senyavin Strait. - M., 1982.
• Krupnik I. I. The main directions of ethnoecology of the American Arctic. Ecology of American Indians and Eskimos. The problems of Indianism. - 1988.
• Krupnik I. I. Arctic ethnoecology: Models of traditional nature management of marine hunters and reindeer herders of Northern Eurasia / Otv. Ed S.A. Arutyunov . - M .: Nauka , 1989 .-- 270 p.

Articles

• Krupnik I.I. Nutrition and ecology of the Nenets economy of the Bolshezemelskaya tundra in the 1920s. // Some problems of ethnogenesis and ethnic history of the peoples of the world. M., 1976.
• Krupnik I.I. Problems of ethnographic study of Jews in the USSR // Sovetish geymland . - 1982. - No. 8.
• Krupnik I.I. , Kupovetsky M.S. Lakhlukhi - Kurdistan Jews in Transcaucasia // Soviet Ethnography . - 1988. - No. 2.
• Krupnik I. I. Ancient Eskimo whalers in the Arctic: “slaughter of cubs” or intuitive ecology? // Ecological aspects of paleoanthropological and archaeological reconstructions, edited by the director of the IA RAS, corr. RAS V.P. Alekseev. M., 1992.
• Krupnik I.I. Greenland // Peoples and religions of the world / Chapters. ed. V.A. Tishkov . - M.: Big Russian Encyclopedia , 1999 .-- S. 142.
• Krupnik Igor , Mikhailova Elena . Landscapes, faces and stories: Eskimo photographs of Alexander Forstein (1927–1929) // Anthropological forum . - 2006. - No. 4. - C. 188-219.

About Igor Krupnik

• Krupnik Igor Ilyich // Russian Jewish Encyclopedia / Ch. ed. G. G. Branover. - T. 2. - M .: Epos, 1995.- S. 98.
• Ogryzko V.V. Krupnik Igor Ilyich // Ogryzko V.V. Severovedov Russia: Materials for the biographical dictionary / Afterword. Alexander Trapeznikov. - M.: Literary Russia , 2007. - P. 225—226.

• Igor Krupnik on the website of the Institute of Heritage (inaccessible link)