Marxist archaeology was first pioneered in the Soviet Union, a state run by a Marxist government, during the 1920s. Upon taking power in the Russian Empire and reforming it as a socialist republic following the 1917 revolution, the Communist Party – as a part of their general support for scientific advancement – encouraged archaeological study, founding the Russian Academy for the History of Material Culture in 1919. Soon renamed the State Academy for the History of Material Culture (GAIMK) following the re-designation of the Empire as the Soviet Union, it was centred in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), and initially followed pre-existing archaeological theories, namely culture-historical archaeology.[6]