Burton, Roy Franklin

Born in the Spunt River County, Illinois , in a family doctor. He graduated from high school in Pittsfield, after which at the age of 15 he entered the Illinois Normal School, which he graduated in four years and where he was known as a good speaker . In 1906 he left for the Philippines , which were then an American colony, as a civil servant and teacher, and soon became very interested in the life of the Ifugao people, who professed, unlike most Philippine peoples, the traditional religion . In 1916 he returned to the United States, settling in San Francisco and becoming a teacher, but soon entered the University of Berkeley to study dentistry . While studying at the institute, he simultaneously wrote anthropological works on the law and economy of Ifugao based on the information he received in the Philippines, although he did not receive a degree in anthropology. After graduation, he worked as a dentist in several California cities and - for a short time - in the Philippine capital Manila , after which he returned to the United States, but did not leave his thoughts to return to studying Philippine ethnography . Having saved a certain amount of money, he agreed with Carnegie University to send it to the Philippines for a period of one year and at its own expense. In the late 1920s, he published his first book, The Half-Way Sun.

In 1930, shortly after the outbreak of the Great Depression , Barton decided to emigrate from the United States to the USSR, long been interested in socialism (although the real reason was probably the lawsuit against him due to non-payment of alimony ). He left the United States without a visa and entered the USSR through Europe . In the USSR, he wanted to immediately engage in anthropology , but was initially forced to work for six months in the hospital of the Dental Institute in Leningrad . Soon, however, he became an employee of the Institute of Ethnology of the USSR Academy of Sciences , sufficiently learned the Russian language , defended his dissertation in 1935 on pagan beliefs in New Guinea , actively participated in the work of the Anti-Religious Exhibition, married a Soviet woman, but with all this retained American citizenship.

In 1937, he was sent to field anthropological studies in the Philippines, after some time systematized them in the British Museum , and then returned to Leningrad. From 1938 to 1940 he worked in the department of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology of the Academy of Sciences of India and Indonesia , in 1938 he briefly left for London for scientific work and in the same years published a number of works on Filipino paganism. In May 1940, he suddenly came to the American embassy in Moscow , asking to restore his American passport and stating that he was afraid of arrest by the NKVD . Subsequently, the fact of secret connections between Barton and the NKVD was revealed, but it is not known for certain what kind of work he performed and therefore was afraid of arrest. In 1940, he was allowed to travel to the United States, from where he was immediately sent to the Philippines at the expense of the State Department and in 1941 was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship . In 1942, when the Japanese invaded the Philippines during World War II , Barton was captured and spent three years in the concentration camps of Baguio and Los Bayos, where he suffered greatly from hunger and vitamin deficiency . He was released in March 1945, returning to California . After completing the rehabilitation course, he became a research fellow at the University of Berkeley, in 1946 received a second Guggenheim scholarship to continue research, but refused it, not yet being ready to go to the Philippines again. Soon, however, he was invited to the University of Chicago , having received the Lightstern Scholarship, but almost immediately upon arrival he went to the hospital with exacerbation of varicose leg disease , which had been suffering for many years, and inflammation of the gallbladder , having died after several operations.

Major scientific papers: The Religion of the Ifugaos (published 1946), The Kalingas: Their Institutions and Custom Law , Ifugao Mythology .

• Stanyukovich M.V. An Unusual Biography (Roy Franklin Barton) (1883-1947) // Soviet Ethnography. 1979. No. 1. P.76 - 83 (there is a detailed bibliography)
• Biography
• Biography (English) with an emphasis on the activities of Barton in the USSR.