Legal anthropology in Russia: past and present state of an (almost) unknown discipline

The author describes the two-century-old evolution of legal anthropology in Russia as an applied science, an academic science and a university discipline. He distinguishes some periods in this evolution: the period of Russia from the XVIIIth century to the beginning of XIXth century, the Soviet period and the so-called post-Soviet period, each characterized by its own particularities. The customary law of autochtonous peoples has always occupied an important place in Russian anthropological research studies, which have always had a sociological orientation. The theme "law and power" became fashionable in the XXth century. As for the contemporary period, the predominance of ethnological tendencies is disappearing with the development of research concerning the protection, by law, of the natural, cultural and economic environment as well as of the population as a whole.