"In 1905, the eminent dean of American anthropology, Franz Boas, commissioned a monograph on the lives of Sakhalin Island peoples from the young Russian "exile ethnographer," Lev Shternberg. Shternberg's The Social Organization of the Gilyak was to be the last ethnography of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, exploring the origins of Amerindian peoples along both the Russian and American north Pacific rims.".

"The Social Organization of the Gilyak offers a rare portrait of a little documented part of the world and the belief systems of a people prior to the dramatic cultural re-education programs introduced under the Soviets. A striking illustration of the fortunes of political ideology, the book demonstrates how early Marxist kinship studies took a Pacific people and made them a hallmark of primitive communist life in the Russian imperial imagination.".

"In this first English edition, anthropologist Bruce Grant builds a fresh analysis of Shternberg's classic study, by adding a Foreword examining Shternberg's work and life, new glossaries, a Shternberg time line, maps, expository footnotes, archival notes, and an interview with one of Shternberg's former students."--BOOK JACKET.