Vasiliy Mikhaylovich Alekseyev (russian: Василий Михайлович Алексеев, ,

Saint Petersburg 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 ...

– May 12, 1951,

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 ...

(''ibidem'')) was an eminent

Soviet 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 nation ...

sinologist and a member of the

Soviet 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 ...

. In 1902 he graduated from the

Saint Petersburg University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...

and became a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

. He also worked in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Museum für Völkerkunde, Musée Guimet etc.

Life

In 1907, he travelled along with

Édouard Chavannes Émmanuel-Édouard Chavannes (5 October 1865 – 29 January 1918) was a French sinologist and expert on Chinese history and religion, and is best known for his translations of major segments of Sima Qian's ''Records of the Grand Historian'' ...

through several Chinese provinces, describing ancient sculptural monuments previously unknown to international scholarship, in particular the

Song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetit ...

monuments of

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...

and Tang monuments of

Shaanxi Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichuan (SW), Gansu (W), N ...

. ln addition to his Professorship, Alexeev became the Curator and Senior Researcher at the

Asiatic Museum The Asiatic Museum (Азиатский музей) in Saint Petersburg was one of the first museums of Asian art in Europe. Its existence spanned 112 years from 1818 to 1930 when it was incorporated into the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the ...

. In that role, he contributed a paper on Chinese folklore to a 1918 Museum symposium, published by its parent group, the Russian Academy of Sciences. Alexeev's situation at this time, though perilous like everybody else's, had great potential, which he quickly proceeded to realize. His position at the Museum gave him a realia basis: he had custody of artifacts for the study of Chinese popular tradition, including a large trove of Dunhwang documents brought back from a Russian expedition of 1914-1915. In 1919, Alexeev became associate editor, and chief of the Eastern division, of the newly founded Publishing House for World Literature. This provided a publishing outlet. Under his direction, the Museum's Sinological library was expanded, catalogued, and systematically employed in research, by a team of young persons Alexeev gradually gathered around him, among them the brilliant Shchutsky.

Work

Alekseyev has produced an acclaimed translation of the ''

Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio ''Liaozhai zhiyi'', sometimes shortened to ''Liaozhai'', known in English as ''Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio'' or ''Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio'', is a collection of Classical Chinese stories by Qing dynasty writer Pu Songling, c ...

''. The first volume was published in 1922 under the title ''Fox's Wiles''. According to Tatyana Tolstaya, "academician Alekseyev has found a special way of selecting and connecting Russian words which creates a distinctive brand of the Russian language, the one with a unique crystal grid, so to speak. The substance has not changed but has obtained new properties. While reading his texts, you get an illusion of reading a text in Chinese". Alekseyev's translations from the

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

era were collected as ''The Chinese Classical Prose''
Китайская классическая проза
in 1958.

Notable works

*''Lisyi chary'' (''Fox's Wiles'', 1922) *''Monakhi volshebniki'' (''The Wizard Monks'', 1923) *''Kitayskaya ieroglificheskaya pis'mennost' i ee latinizatsiya'' (''The Chinese Character Script and Its Romanization'', 1932) *''Rasskazy o lyudyakh neobychainykh'' (''Stories About Extraordinary People'', 1937)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alekseyev, Vasiliy 1881 births 1951 deaths Soviet philologists 20th-century philologists Russian sinologists Writers from Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg State University alumni Corresponding Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925) Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Chinese–Russian translators Soviet literary historians Soviet male writers 20th-century Russian male writers 20th-century translators