The fiesta is being celebrated in birthday of the great Russian ethnographer, anthropologist and explorer, the member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society Nikolai Nikolayevich Miklukho-Maklay. He was born the 17th of July, 1846, 171 years ago.
Nikolai Nikolayevich Miklukho-Maklay – is a protector of colonial peoples, an ardent opponent of racism and colonialism. The scientist opened the customs of the Papuans of New Guinea to the Old World, created about 160 scientific works. He laid the foundations of national anthropology and ethnography.
The followers of Miklukho-Maklay, Russian and Soviet ethnographers Lev Yakovlevich Shternberg and Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz formulated the Ten Commandments of the Ethnographer in the 20-ies of the XX century.
Since then the explorers have been following these principals:
1. Ethnography is the crown of all the humanities, for it studies all peoples comprehensively, all mankind in its past and in its present.
2. Do not make yourself an idol of your people, your religion, your culture. You should know that all the people are potentially equal: there is neither Greek, nor Jew, nor white, nor colored. That person who knows the only one nation - does not know any nation, that person who knows only one religion - does not know any.
3. Do not profane the science, do not desecrate ethnography with careerism: as the real ethnographer is only that person who has enthusiasm for science, love for humanity and for human.
4. Work for six days, and summarize on the seventh day. Remember your duty to the public and science.
5. Respect your great predecessors, teachers in scientific and social life, so that you would be honored according to your merit.
6. Do not kill science with falsification of facts, superficial, inaccurate observations, hasty conclusions.
7. Do not change once a selected specialty – ethnography. Those who have once embarked on the path of ethnography should not get away from it.
8. Do not create plagiarism.
9. Do not give false testimony to your neighbor, to other nations, to their character, rites, customs, traditions, etc. Love your neighbor more than yourself
10. Do not impose forcibly your culture to the studied nation: approach him tenderly and carefully, with love and attention, without dependence on the stage of development of the culture it is being at, and the nation will be trying itself to reach the level of upper cultures.