Ivan Meshchaninov, the soviet linguist and ethnographer

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Vladimir State University named after Alexander and Nikolay Stoletovs

(Владимирский Государственный Университет им. А.Г. и Н.Г. Столетовых)

Ivan Meshchaninov, the soviet linguist and ethnographer

(Иван Иванович Мещанинов, советский лингвист и этнограф)

Batinkina A.A (Батинькина А.А.)

Vladimir, Russia (Владимир, Россия)

The Russian Soviet linguist, ethnographer, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Hero of Socialist labor I. Meshchaninov was born on November 24 in 1883 in Ufa.

He was descended from a noble family; he was a son of Ivan Meshchaninov, the judicial leader, the high official, who became a senator and died in 1918 in a Bolshevik prison.

In 1902, Ivan Meshchaninov graduated with the gold medal of the 6th St. Petersburg classical gymnasium and then finished the Law School and the law faculty of St. Petersburg University.

In 1905 within two semesters he interned at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. meshchaninov archaeological linguistic urartu

At the same time, I. Meshchaninov studied in Saint Petersburg Archeological Institute, from which he graduated in 1910, he served in the Senate, studied Russian history and archaeology. Being a lawyer, I. Meshchaninov started scientific work as an archaeologist (first as an amateur) and a specialist of the ancient civilizations of the Caucasus and the Black sea, where he conducted excavations.

In 1919, I. I. Meshchaninov started learning Georgian, Hittite and a number of Semitic languages. Archaeological work in the Caucasus has created an interest to the Urartian language, which he maintained until the end of life.

The study of the language and culture of Urartu have been extraordinary scientific feat of the scientist. Essentially, he revealed to his contemporaries the whole forgotten civilization.

In the 1920-ies I. Meshchaninov worked in the Academy of history of material culture, Leningrad Institute of living Oriental languages and in the Hermitage.

In the years 1925-1933 I. I. Meshchaninov participated (as a leader) in the archaeological expeditions to the Northern Black sea region (Olbia) and in Transcaucasia (Nagorno-Karabakh, Mil steppe, Nakhichevan, etc.).

In 1930, he was elected a Professor of the Institute of the living Oriental languages.

In March 1932, I. Meshchaninov was elected an academician of the Academy of Sciences at the social Sciences Department (Caucasian studies) for the historical work, without tenure to the rank of corresponding member. From 1933 to 1937 Meshchaninov was a director of the Institute of anthropology, archaeology and ethnography of the SSSR, in 1934 he became academician-secretary of the Department of Literature and Language Sciences of the USSR (until 1950).

In 1934 I. Meshchaninov became a Director of the Institute of Language and Thinking of the USSR named after Marr, also he headed the Department of Literature and Language Sciences of the USSR.

With the intercession and authority I. Meshchaniniv many contemporaries connected the fact that he headed the Institute of Language and Thinking of the USSR in comparison with other academic institutions did not suffer from the repressions of 1937-1938.

As the concentration of its activities on the linguistics, scientific integrity prevented I. Meshaninov to develop and promote a truly fantastic position, “the new doctrine”; he sought to reconcile the idea of the “stages” of language development, “japhetic languages” with a real comparative-historical and typological material.

Meshaninov is one of the founders of typology in Russia.

The most significant works of I. Meshchaniniv is “General linguistics” (1940), “A sentence and parts of speech” (1945), “The Verb” (1949) that are associated with a gradual overcoming of the influence of N. Marr. By the end of 1940-ies Meshaninov completely delimited the ideas of Marr and became one of the most prominent representatives of the traditional schools of linguistics.

Receiving from the Marr the idea of searching for stages of language development in syntax he transformed it into the idea of identifying the main types of syntactic structure of languages without any correlation with the stages. These works laid in the foundation of new linguistic discipline that is syntactic typology, which received considerable development also in international linguistics.

The idea of so-called “conceptual categories” emerged at Meshchaniniv one of the first attempts to identify the semantic patterns of a language other than its formal patterns. In the book “The verb” I. I. Meshchaninov compared the verbal categories in different languages.

During the great Patriotic war, continuing the scientific work Ivan Meshchaninov also organized training for military interpreters for needs of the Red Army. They were created by groups of authors for writing various specialised dictionaries and handbooks for interpreters in the languages of all countries of the enemies (German, Finnish, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak) and some of the allies (English, French, Polish). He personally wrote a number of benefits for translators of German and Hungarian languages involved in the translation of the most important captured documents.

In 1945 Ivan Meshaninov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and Gold medal "Hammer and Sickle". In accordance with the spirit of the time, he was awarded for “outstanding achievements in the field of Philology, the study of syntax and of morphology of the Russian language (although Russian is the language of the commoners never did), and also for the fruitful many-sided work in training philologists”. In 1946 he was elected the Chairman of the Presidium of the Dagestan branch of the USSR (until 1950).

During the new aggressive offensive marism 1948-1949 Meshaninov became one of the objects of criticism (excessive syntax). In an effort to stave off the accusations, he confirmed that “the bourgeois scientists, we take nothing” (against cosmopolitanism), recognized some of his “mistakes” and the words took closer to Orthodox marrism position. However, until the political charges at Soviet colleagues, he did not fall.

The defeat of marism by Stalin and his criticism the ideas of N. I. Marr in 1950 significantly changed the destiny of academician I. Meshchaniniv. Meshchaniniv as a long-time close associate of N. Marr was subjected to harsh ideological criticism, although by that time he almost completely overcame the influence of the ideas of Marr. Meshchaninov was removed from all leadership positions, lost his directorship at the Institute of Language and Thinking, and ceased to be a secretary of the

Department of Literature and Language in the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. However, he continued to work, he was not deprived of the title of academician or received Stalin prizes or awards. In “Marxism and problems of linguistics” Stalin said: “If I were not fully convinced of the honesty of comrade. Meshchaniniv and other figures of linguistics, I would say that such behavior is tantamount to sabotage”.

These words might have for Meshchaniniv and his colleagues “safe conduct”. Thanks to this phrase of Stalin, the scientist was not arrested and continued his scientific activities. Soon his works were again published and republished, I. Meshchaninov was again recognized as the greatest Russian linguist. In memoirs of participants of the dramatic events of the 1930-1950-ies the human and scientific decency of academician I. Meshchaniniv were invariably indicated on.

From 1952 until the end of life I. Meshchaninov was a professor of the

Leningrad state University, was a dean of the Faculty of Philology, headed the Department of General linguistics, Department of Paleo-Asiatic languages. In the 1950-1960-ies Meshchaninov published a two-volume description of the grammar of the Urartian language “Grammatical structure of the Urartian language” (1958-1962) and produced his dictionary, as well as continued research in the field of syntactic typology.

I. Meshaninov belonged to the theory of the correlation of parts of speech with the sentences, worked on incorporarse languages, the idea of so-called “conceptual categories” that underlie language.

He specifically studied ancient dead languages of the Caucasus and Asia Minor, in particular, along with I. Frederick, made a significant contribution to the decipherment of the Urartian language. The idea of I. Meshchaniniv was continued in the studies of S. Katznelson (1907-1985), G. A. Klimov (1928-1997) and others. In the field of General linguistics I.

Meshchaninov explored the main stages of language development, created the theory of the conceptual categories and the theory of syntax language typology, developed the theory of supply and a significant merit of the academician in the organization of the study of unwritten languages of the peoples of the North Caucasus and in the linguistic training of staff.

As the founder of the science he made a great contribution to the establishment and development the academic science in different republics of the former USSR, in particular Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Dagestan, and helped in the training of scientists in the national republics. An opening speech at the opening of the First session of the Dagestan scientific research base of the USSR in October 1947, the academician I.

Meshchaninov said that “Dagestan base of the USSR should become a true Daghestani scientific center”. Now the Dagestan scientific center RAS was the largest academic science center in the South of Russia.

He directed excavations of the ancient cities of the Northern Black sea, where it is especially famous for the excavations of Olbia (from 1925 to 1930). Also led the successful archaeological expedition in Azerbaijan (1929, 1931), Armenia (1925, 1931), Georgia (1925), Abkhazia (1934), Dagestan (1944).

I. Meshchaninov did not have linguistic education (as, indeed, and historical), and their major linguistic works were written as an academician. Thanks to his broad linguistic interests in the scientific use of our linguistics was included data from many languages, especially unwritten languages of Russia, languages of Siberia and the Far East. Meshchaninov appreciated the significance of this kind of language material and strongly supported work in this area. He published studies, in particular, PaleoAsiatic languages (Chukotka, Kamchatka, Yukagir).

For outstanding scientific achievements I. Meshchaninov was twice awarded the State (Stalin) prize of the USSR (1943, 1946), was awarded two Orders of Lenin (1943, 1945) and the Order of Labor red banner and medals. He was an honorary academician of the Kazakh and Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences. He got the international recognition: he was an honorary doctor of Tehran (1947) and Charles (Prague, 1947) universities.

In Saint-Petersburg in the house on the embankment of Lieutenant Schmidt, 1, there is a memorial plaque with the inscription: “In this house from 1941 to 1967, an outstanding Soviet linguist and archaeologist, academician Ivan Meshchaninov lived”.

Hero of Socialist Labor, academician I. Meshchaninov died 16 January 1967 in Leningrad. An outstanding scientist-linguist and an archeologist was buried at Serafimovskoe cemetery. The monument on his grave is a granite stele decorated with Urartu cuneiform.

References

1. Жирмунский В. М. Памяти академика И. И. Мещанинова // Вопросы языкознания. -- 1967. -- № 3.

2. Панфилов В. З. Иван Иванович Мещанинов // Известия АН СССР. Сер. литературы и языка. -- 1967. -- № 4.

3. Мещанинов Иван Иванович / под ред. гл. ред. А. М. Прохоров -- 3-е изд. -- М.: Советская энциклопедия, 1969.

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