Samoilovich, Aleksandr

Samoilovich, Aleksandr Nikolaevich

 

Born Dec. 17 (29), 1880, in Nizhny Novgorod, now Gorky; died Feb. 13, 1938. Soviet Orientalist and Turcologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1929; corresponding member, 1924).

Samoilovich graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1903; he was a professor there from 1917 to 1930. He was a professor from 1920 to 1937 and rector from 1922 to 1925 of the Leningrad Oriental Institute, academician-secretary of the humanities division of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1929 to 1933, and director of the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1934 to 1937.

Samoilovich conducted field research on the language, folklore, and way of life of the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Crimea, the Volga Region, the Northern Caucasus, Transcaucasia, Middle Asia, Kazakhstan, and the Altai. He helped to devise writing systems for the languages of the peoples of the USSR. His main works dealt with the language, literature, folklore, and ethnology of the Turkic peoples and with general problems and the history of Turcology.

WORKS

“Variant skazaniia o Edigee i Tokhtamyshe, zapisannyi N. Khakimovym.” In Tiurkologicheskii sbornik, 1972. Moscow, 1973.
“Obshchii vzgliad na vozniknovenie i razvitie musul’mansko-turetskikh literaturnykh iazykov v sviazi s razgovornymi narechiiami.” Sovetskaia tiurkologiia, 1973, no. 5.

REFERENCES

Ashnin, F. D. “Aleksandr Nikolaevich Samoilovich (1880–1938).” Narody Azii i Afriki, 1963, no. 2. (Contains a Bibliography of Samoilovich’s works.)
Dmitrieva, L. V. “Materialy k opisaniiu rukopisnogo naslediia A. N. Samoilovicha.” Narody Azii i Afriki, 1966, no. 3.

F. D. ASHNIN