Nikolai Sevastianovich Derzhavin

Born Dec. 3 (15), 1877, in the village of Preslav, present-day Zaporozhl’e Oblast; died Feb. 26, 1953, in Leningrad. Soviet philologist; member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1931). Became a member of the CPSU in 1945. Rector of Leningrad University from 1922 to 1925; chairman of the subdepartment of Slavic philology from 1925 to 1953. From 1931 to 1934 he was the director of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (Leningrad), and from 1947 to 1953 headed the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Slavic Studies.

Derzhavin was the author of works on the ethnogeny of the Slavs and on the history of Russian literature, schools, and teaching. His principal works were on the culture of the Bulgarian people: The Bulgarian Colonies in Russia (vols. 1-2, 1914-15), History of Bulgaria (vols. 1-4, 1945-48), Khristo Botev, Poet and Revolutionary (1948), and Ivan Vazov: Life and Work (1948). Derzhavin was awarded two Orders of Lenin. He was an honorary member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1946) and received the State Prize of the USSR (1948).