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Acknowledgments
Over the past 10 years, many people have provided invaluable help, advice, and encouragement. Vladimir Popov, professor at the Department of Ethnography and Anthropology, St. Petersburg State University, and the editor-in-chief of the almanac Kinship Algebra (Algebra rodstva), introduced me to kinship studies, served as my academic advisor and then editor. His multifaceted engagement with my work has been amazing. I also appreciate his friendship. Pavel Belkov and the late Nikolai Girenko stood on opposite ends of a continuum with the former wholeheartedly supporting my work, and the latter protesting against it. Interaction with both was intense and productive. These scholars set the tone for my kinship research once and for all. Special thanks go to the contributors to Kinship Algebra, who discussed various ideas presented herein on the pages of the almanac. Nick J. Allen and Lyle Campbell should also be singled out, for they provided a very thorough rundown of some of the mistakes, omissions, misleading formulations, and overstatements that I originally admitted. In addition, I received valuable comments and opinions on different versions of the current text and its Russian antecedents, as well as on the ideas expressed in all of them, from Konstantin