Volume I of Aleksei P. Okladnikov: the great explorer of the past related the first half of Okladnikov's life and career (see Leach Reference Leach2020). During the Soviet era, Aleksei P. Okladnikov (1908–1981) was a dominant figure in Siberian archaeology. To a large extent self-taught and with an almost uncanny ability to discover prehistoric sites, he enjoyed a prestigious position at the Institute of the History of Material Culture (IIMK) by 1949. His downfall occurred after his paper in praise of the archaeological theorist Nicholai Y. Marr was published in 1950 at just the time when Marr's theories fell dramatically out of favour (Okladnikov Reference Okladnikov1950).
Volume II opens in the early 1960s when his career was resurrected. He was invited to become head of the Division of Humanitarian Studies at the Siberian branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Novosibirsk remained his base for the rest of his life. He was, by and large, able to confine his administrative duties to the winter, and from spring to autumn he mounted annual expeditions ranging over enormous distances, across Siberia, Mongolia and Central Asia.
He was supported by successive cohorts of loyal students, including the author of this biography, A.K. Konopatskii. Konopatskii is keenly appreciative of his teacher's achievements, but also acknowledges his flaws. While Okladnikov was open and approachable, he could also be vain and jealous of others’ discoveries. He possessed a childlike curiosity, but could also be naïve and gullible. He was a conformist in politics. Thus, for example, “in the 1950s he derived all prehistoric cultural elements in Primor'e (the Maritime Province) from neighbouring China. In the 1970s, after the break of the Soviet authorities with Mao Zedong, Okladnikov denied any Chinese influence” (p. xxvi).
As to how Okladnikov saw himself, he liked to compare his work with that of a hunter tracking game. At the same time, the Russian archaeologist Leo S. Klejn was comparing archaeologists to detectives. The comparisons are not altogether incompatible.
In the second half of his career there is one particular excavation that is of interest not only for its intrinsic archaeological value, but also for its place in the history of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the USA. This was the joint USSR–USA excavation that occurred on the remote island of Anangula in the Aleutians in 1974. It was directed by Okladnikov and by William S. Laughlin of Connecticut University.
Okladnikov and Laughlin first met in 1956 at a conference in Copenhagen. Laughlin was a student of the Czech anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička (who had travelled to the Soviet Union to examine the Neanderthal remains found by Okladnikov in 1938). When Okladnikov and Laughlin next met, at a conference in Khabarovsk in 1973, “Laughlin expressed the idea of organising a joint expedition of American and Soviet scholars” (p. 133). It was an audacious proposal, but the expedition was organised on both sides with relative ease. Konopatskii does not make this point, but the timing of Laughlin's suggestion was fortuitous: this was the period of détente between the superpowers.
In July 1974 Okladnikov arrived in New York with five students, including Konopatskii. He had resisted a last-minute attempt to foist an interpreter on the group: “In general, I succeeded in maintaining the composition of our delegation […] We do not need spies among us. Who knows what they will say about us later?” (p. 240). They met the broadcaster Hugh Downs, who had previously visited Novosibirsk in 1969 as producer of the documentary The first Americans. Then, after various interviews, they travelled on to the Aleutians and the rain-swept island of Anangula.
The excavations contributed to our knowledge of Aleut prehistory, but the participants were also aware of their political significance, all the more so since that summer the American press were reporting on preparations for the joint Soyuz-Apollo (or Apollo-Soyuz) space mission. To Laughlin's delight, in interviews, Okladnikov drew parallels between the joint archaeological excavations and the joint space mission.
It was hoped that a follow-up joint expedition to the Aleutians might be undertaken the next year, but disappointingly, and for unknown reasons, that was not possible. Instead, in 1975, there was a joint excavation of a Bronze Age site on Ol'kon Island on Lake Baikal. That was the second and last joint USA–USSR excavation.
The excavations on the islands of Anangula and Ol'kon resulted in several co-authored papers (Laughlin & Okladnikov Reference Laughlin, Okladnikov and Derevyanko1975, Reference Laughlin and Okladnikov1976; Laughlin et al. Reference Laughlin, Okladnikov, Derevyanko, Harper and Atseev1976), and the 1974 expedition to Anangula is also described in Laughlin's Russian-American Bering Sea relations: research and reciprocity (Reference Laughlin1985), dedicated to the memory of Okladnikov. Laughlin happily recalled “the continuity of the Aleut cultural heritage from its earliest distinctive appearance to the living Aleuts was demonstrated and verified. Okladnikov was delighted, for this is the kind of work he had come for, and I was delighted because of the spectacular results and the personal pleasure of seeing a Russian-American team articulate itself into a productive body of scholars and workers” (Reference Laughlin1985: 785).
Konopatskii's eyewitness account of the excavation is the highlight of this biography. His day-to-day account of the excavation, including brief outlines of the stories told each evening, is presumably based on his diary—the referencing is unclear. In their daily lives during the excavation the archaeologists were almost entirely separated from the rest of the world and yet also a significant part of it in political terms. The biography both confirms the archaeological importance of the excavation and points towards its larger political significance.
