Nikolai Nikolayevich Durnovo (russian: Никола́й Никола́евич Дурново́; – 27 October 1937) was a Russian linguist. He was sentenced to death and shot 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 ...

Biography

Durnovo was born into the Durnovo family. His father was also named Nikolai Nikolayevich Durnovo, and his mother was a member of the noble House of Saltykov. Durnovo was a member of the

USSR Academy of Sciences The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991, uniting the country's leading scientists, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (until 1946 ...

(1924) and the

Belarusian Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NASB) ( be, Нацыянальная акадэмія навук Беларусі, russian: Национальная академия наук Беларуси, НАН Беларуси, НАНБ) is ...

and specialised in Russian language

dialectology Dialectology (from Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , '' -logia'') is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their ass ...

, the history of Russian and

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...

, Russian language

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...

theory of

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

, as well as ancient literature. He created a classification of Russian dialects that served as a base for modern scientific linguistic nomenclature. During the

, Durnovo was shot and buried in a mass grave at

Sandarmokh Sandarmokh (russian: Сандармох; krl, Sandarmoh) is a forest massif from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where possibly thousands of victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. More than 58 nationalities were shot and bur ...

in Karelia (northwest Russia).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Durnovo, Nikolay Nikolayevich 1876 births 1937 deaths Linguists from Russia Great Purge victims from Russia Writers from Moscow Nikolay Nikolayevich Linguists from the Soviet Union 20th-century linguists Russian people executed by the Soviet Union Imperial Moscow University alumni