Lev (Chaim-Leib) Yakovlevich Sternberg (russian: Лев (Хаим-Лейб) Я́ковлевич Ште́рнберг) (,

Zhitomir Zhytomyr ( uk, Жито́мир, translit=Zhytomyr ; russian: Жито́мир, Zhitomir ; pl, Żytomierz ; yi, זשיטאָמיר, Zhitomir; german: Schytomyr ) is a city in the north of the western half of Ukraine. It is the administrative ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...

– August 14, 1927, Dudergof, now Mozhaisky,

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

) was a Russian and Soviet ethnographer of Jewish origin who from 1889 to 1897 studied the Nivkhs (Gilyaks),

Oroks Oroks (''Ороки'' in Russian; self-designation: ''Ulta, Ulcha''), sometimes called Uilta, are a people in the Sakhalin Oblast (mainly the eastern part of the island) in Russia. The Orok language belongs to the Southern group of the Tungu ...

, and

Ainu Ainu or Aynu may refer to: *Ainu people, an East Asian ethnic group of Japan and the Russian Far East *Ainu languages, a family of languages **Ainu language of Hokkaido **Kuril Ainu language, extinct language of the Kuril Islands **Sakhalin Ainu la ...

Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, r=Sakhalín, p=səxɐˈlʲin; ja, 樺太 ''Karafuto''; zh, c=, p=Kùyèdǎo, s=库页岛, t=庫頁島; Manchu: ᠰᠠᡥᠠᠯᡳᠶᠠᠨ, ''Sahaliyan''; Orok: Бугата на̄, ''Bugata nā''; Nivkh: ...

and in

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part o ...

for the American Museum of Natural History, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

Biography

Sternberg majored in physics and mathematics at

Saint Petersburg State University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...

. He later majored in law at Novorossiisk University. He was an activist who joined ''

Narodnaya Volya Narodnaya Volya ( rus, Наро́дная во́ля, p=nɐˈrodnəjə ˈvolʲə, t=People's Will) was a late 19th-century revolutionary political organization in the Russian Empire which conducted assassinations of government officials in an att ...

'' (The People's Will) and edited the publication ''Vestnik Narodnoi Voli'' (The Narodnaya Volya Herald).Sternberg and Grant, p.xi He was not a Marxist. He was arrested by Russian authorities April 27, 1886 for participation in ''The People's Will'' which was labeled an anti-tsarist terrorist organization spending three years in an

Odessa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrat ...

jail.The Papers of Lev Shternberg, 1861-1927. American Museum of Natural History
Division of Anthropology Archives
(search: Lev Shternberg; or select name from drop-down list). Retrieved October 15, 2022. Sternberg was then exiled to the

penal colony A penal colony or exile colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general population by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory. Although the term can be used to refer t ...

for a ten-year prison sentence. He was deported from Odessa on the boat ''Peterburg'' on March 19, 1889, arriving in Port

Aleksandrovsk Alexandrovsk may refer to: Russia * Alexandrovsk, Murmansk Oblast, a closed administrative-territorial formation ** Polyarny, Murmansk Oblast, called Alexandrovsk until 1931 * Alexandrovsk, Perm Krai * Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky (town), in Sakha ...

, Sakhalin, on May 19, 1889.Sternberg and Grant, p.xxxi Sternberg agitated authorities due to his activism with regard to prisoners' and indigenous peoples' rights. Authorities sent him to the remote community of Viakhtu, 100 km north of Port Aleksandrovsk, where he first began his ethnographic fieldwork on the Nivkhs,

, and

. He would return home but be put under house arrest for the first few years. Lev Sternberg was an important Russian figure in the then new field of

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

. Sternberg, with the help of Vladimir Bogoraz organized the first Russian ethnography center at

after the 1917

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government ...

.Merriam-Webster, see index: Lev Sternberg

Footnotes

References

*Merriam-Webster (1995) ''Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary''; 1st edition. Merriam-Webster. 1184p *Shternberg, Lev Iakovlevich and Bruce Grant. (1999) ''The Social Organization of the Gilyak''. New York: American Museum of Natural History. Seattle:

University of Washington Press The University of Washington Press is an American academic publishing house. The organization is a division of the University of Washington, based in Seattle. Although the division functions autonomously, they have worked to assist the universi ...

280p. *Smolyak, A. V. (2001) ''Traditional Principles of Natural Resources Use among Indigenous Peoples of the Lower Amur River''. Journal of Legal Pluralism Num. 46

External links

* http://memory.pvost.org/pages/shteinberglya.html * https://archive.today/20070928141838/http://www.pgpb.ru/cd/primor/first/shter.htm {{DEFAULTSORT:Shternberg, Lev 1861 births 1927 deaths Writers from Zhytomyr Ukrainian ethnographers Corresponding Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925) Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Ukrainian Jews Members of the Grand Orient of Russia's Peoples Narodnaya Volya