Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (Russian: Институт этнологии и антропологии им.
On 23 December 1933 he was dismissed by the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and replaced by Ivan Meshchaninov on 1 January 1934.
The IAE brought together ethnographers and physical anthropologists from throughout the Soviet Union to research the physical-constitutional and socio-historic development of the population.
Political leaders had set the anthropologists the task of showing that "race" from the Marxist-Leninist point of view was not a significant factor in the "historical process".
This was a response to the Nazi development of a "race science" (Rassenkunde) which was presented as the scientific basis for political theory and practice.