Lev Sternberg

Lev ( Chaim Leiba ) Yakovlevich Sternberg (* April 21, 1861 in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, † August 14 1927 in Duderhof, today Moschaiski at Krasnoje Selo, Russia) was a Ukrainian ethnographer 1889-1897 the Niwchen ( Gilyaks ) Uilta ( " Oroken " ) and explored Ainu on Sakhalin and Siberia for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He was active in Jewish movements, an avid Marxist theorist and as a student of terrorism.

Born into a wealthy Jewish family, he joined the Narodnaya Volya early on. He was expelled from studying science in St. Petersburg, 1886 arrested during his final degrees at the Faculty of Law in Odessa as a populist ( populist ). Sternberg was jailed for three years in Odessa and sent for ten years in exile in the north of the island Sakhalin. He could bring his doctorate in 1898. On Sakhalin he last lived in Wjachtu, near a settlement of Niwchen, Sternberg learned the language and was allowed to do field research. 1897 pardoned two years later he got a job at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography and lectured at the University of Saint Petersburg. After the October Revolution, he opened on Sakhalin an ethnological museum.

Works (selection)

• The religion of Gilyaks. In: Archives for Religious Studies. Volume 8, No. 1, 1904, pp. 244-274 and Volume 8, No. 2, 1905, pp. 456-473. From the Russian manuscript translated by A. Peters.
• The Social Organization of the Gilyak. New York 1999. Foreword by Bruce Grant, S. XXIII- LVI.