SUMMARY:

The article tells the story of prehistorical archaeology in the Russian Empire and its making of “race,” focusing on Russian scholars’ selective adaptation of universal knowledge from the “West” to local circumstances. This knowledge and these approaches were permeated with civilizational hierarchies coded by white–black opposition. The article explores applications of this knowledge to Russia’s “colorless” imperial society and the political implications of this move. It asserts that prehistoric archaeology was opening a critical space for value-infused differentials on several ideological fronts, among which Arianism, Pan-Slavism, liberal Westernism, and anti-imperial nationalisms all offered domesticated versions of Whiteness and Blackness that coded competing claims for power, civilizational prestige, and modernity.