Nikolay Mikhaylovich Matorin (1898–1936) was a Russian

ethnographer Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

and folklorist. He lectured at the Geographic Institute in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

from 1924, becoming an associate professor in the Ethnographic Department there in 1928 and professor in 1930. He specialised in religious studies and by 1930 he was appointed deputy chairman of the Committee for the Study of Ethnic Composition of USSR. After three years as director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (MAE) he became director of the

Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography The Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography or N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (russian: Институт этнологии и антропологии им. Н.Н. Миклухо-Маклая; abbreviated as ИЭА ...

when MAE was merged with the Institute for the Study of the ''Narodnosti'' of the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

in 1933. While director of the MAE, he was among the founders of the Museum of the History of Religion. He resisted the politicisation of Soviet sciences by

Nikolai Marr Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr (, ''Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr''; , ''Nikoloz Iak'obis dze Mari''; — 20 December 1934) was a Georgian-born historian and linguist who gained a reputation as a scholar of the Caucasus during the 1910s before embarking o ...

. He was finally arrested during the

Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...

in 1935 and executed by shooting in 1936.

References

1898 births 1936 deaths Russian folklorists Russian ethnographers Great Purge victims Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie editors {{Russia-academic-bio-stub