Indianism

Welcome to Anthropology of Anarchism, Nazism, and Primitivism!

The juxtaposition of these political movements of the 19th-20th century Euro-American history may seem puzzling. I believe that, despite their overt differences and different historical destinies (Russian anarchism was crushed by the Bolsheviks, Nazism came to power in Germany and initiated the bloodiest war in human history, while primitivism has been determining American Indian policy since John Collier’s Indian New Deal), these movements share the same underlying system of values and ideas about humanity, childhood, nature, myth, society, violence, etc. This does not mean, however, that primitivists are Nazis or Nazis are anarchists. In different contexts, the same structure received dissimilar manifestations laying bare the inherent ambiguity of such a phenomenon as Indianism.

A couple of curious facts seem to illustrate the intricate connection between the three movements. Ernest Thomson Seton, the founder of the Woodcraft League in the U.S.,

and one of the fathers of Boy Scouts, was an avid reader of Peter Kropotkin, the foremost Russian anarchist. A swastika, the grim symbol of Nazism, often appears on the cover of Boy Scout books and “Indian” dresses as the photos above illustrate.

There is a growing literature on the image of the Indian in Nazi mentality, on Nazis’ ecological awareness, and their contributions to and abuses of science. Nazis were the first to establish a link between smoking and cancer. All top Nazi officials were vegetarians, the first speech by Hitler condemned experiments on animals, and Germany under the Third Reich introduced the first laws in continental Europe protecting nature. It is notable that Nazi emissaries worked among Indian tribes in the 1930s trying to secure their allegiance in the planned war against the U.S. The memoires of Sun Chief, a Hopi Indian, contain a native perspective on this encounter.

Alternatively, my fieldwork among Indianists revealed various ways in which Russians have attempted to withdraw themselves from “civilization” and practice communal life-style. I am looking at their agricultural communes, lonely sojourns in the mountains, and roamings with Siberian reindeer herders. As comparative evidence on the appeal of communal lifestyles among the denizens of the industrial world, I use hippie communes, Rainbow and Burning Man gatherings, and ecological homesteads. With these cultural expressions at the background, I revisit Marxism, as it is interpreted by both Indianists and Native Americans, and the general culture of the Soviet Union.

Here are the links to Indianists’ personal testomonies regarding communal life published in First Americans.

Eagle Feather and the founding of the Altai commune: link (pt. 1); link (pt. 2).

Left Hand, on the Petrashevskii Canyon: link.

Crazy Wolf, on the Altai commune: link.

Black Raven’s 20 years in Siberia: link.

Crazy Lynx’s thoughts on communalism: link.