Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of the Population of the Borderlands of Russia
Encyclopedia
The Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of the Population of the Borderlands of Russia (KIPS) was set up in February 1917 by Sergey Oldenburg
Sergey Oldenburg
Sergey Fyodorovich Oldenburg was a Russian orientalist who specialized in Buddhist studies. He is remembered as the founder of Russian Indology and the teacher of Fyodor Shcherbatskoy....

 under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences consists of the national academy of Russia and a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation as well as auxiliary scientific and social units like libraries, publishers and hospitals....

. Its aim was to support the war effort as expert-produced ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

 knowledge was important during a war "conducted to a significant degree in connection with the nationality question".

The commission was composed of twelve leading Russian Ethnographers based in St Petersburg: Aleksey Shakhmatov
Aleksey Shakhmatov
Aleksey Aleksandrovich Shakhmatov was an outstanding Russian philologist credited with laying foundations for the science of textology.-Biography:...

, Mikhail Diakonov, Nikolai Marr, Vasily Bartold
Vasily Bartold
Vasily Vladimirovich Bartold was a Russian and Soviet historian and turcologist.-Biography:Bartold was born in Saint Petersburg.Bartold's lectures at the University of Saint Petersburg were annually interrupted by extended field trips to Muslim countries...

, Vladimir Peretts, Evfimii Karskii from the Academy of Sciences, Sergei Rudenko
Sergei Rudenko
Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko was a prominent Russian/Soviet anthropologist and archaeologist who discovered and excavated the most celebrated of Scythian burials, Pazyryk in Siberia....

 and Fedor Volkov from the Anthropological Society of St Petersburg University, Andrei Rudnev and Lev Shcherba
Lev Shcherba
Lev Shcherba was a Russian linguist and lexicographer specializing in phonetics and phonology....

 from the University's Philological Society and David Zolotarev
David Zolotarev
David Alekseevich Zolotarev was a Russian anthropologist and ethnographer who studied the tribal populations of the Yaroslavl region of northern Russia....

 and Nikolai Mogiliansky from the Russian Geographical Society's Ethnographic Division.

The commission was charged with the task of producing maps of those areas which "lie on of both sides" of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

's Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

tic borders and which are "contiguous with our enemies". This included Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, Galicia, Ruthenia
Ruthenia
Ruthenia is the Latin word used onwards from the 13th century, describing lands of the Ancient Rus in European manuscripts. Its geographic and culturo-ethnic name at that time was applied to the parts of Eastern Europe. Essentially, the word is a false Latin rendering of the ancient place name Rus...

 Bukovina
Bukovina
Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...

 and parts of Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....

 in Europe and parts of Turkestan
Turkestan
Turkestan, spelled also as Turkistan, literally means "Land of the Turks".The term Turkestan is of Persian origin and has never been in use to denote a single nation. It was first used by Persian geographers to describe the place of Turkish peoples...

 and the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

 bordering Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

.

Different ethnographers advocated different approaches: Karskii wanted to focus on native language, whereas Rudenko favoured more physical anthropology
Physical anthropology
Biological anthropology is that branch of anthropology that studies the physical development of the human species. It plays an important part in paleoanthropology and in forensic anthropology...

 - particularly to assess the suitability of local people for integration into the war effort. Following the example of the map commission of the Russian Geographical Society, they adopted a different process in Europe and Asia. They used previous material gathered by the map commission to make maps of former Russian Imperial territory then occupied by the German Army
German Army
The German Army is the land component of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. Following the disbanding of the Wehrmacht after World War II, it was re-established in 1955 as the Bundesheer, part of the newly formed West German Bundeswehr along with the Navy and the Air Force...

 - thereby preventing any fieldwork. However to the East they dispatched ethnographic field trips which would help get a better picture of how language groups were diffused across Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

.
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