Lev Iakubinskii

Born 1892 in Kiev; died Aug. 23, 1945, in Leningrad. Soviet linguist and literary scholar.

In 1913, Iakubinskii graduated from the University of St. Petersburg, where he had studied under I. A. Baudouin de Courte-nay and L. V. Shcherba. A theorist of the language of poetry, he joined the Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOIAZ) and published such works as “On the Sounds of Poetic Language” (1916). In the early 1930’s he abandoned literary theory and criticism. Iakubinskii’s works in linguistics dealt with comparative-historical linguistics, the history of the Russian literary language, and various theoretical aspects of linguistics. They include “On Dialogue Speech” (1923) and A History of Old Russian (published 1953).