Vasily Vasilievich Radlov or Friedrich Wilhelm Radloff (russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Ра́длов; in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
– 12 May 1918 in
Petrograd
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 ...
) was a
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
-born
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
n founder of
Turkology
Turkology (or Turcology or Turkic studies) is a complex of humanities sciences studying languages, history, literature, folklore, culture, and ethnology of people speaking Turkic languages and Turkic peoples in chronological and comparative conte ...
, a scientific study of
Turkic peoples
The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.. "Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose members speak languages belonging t ...
. According to Turkologist
Johan Vandewalle; he knew all the
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...
and dialects as well as
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
,
French,
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
,
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
,
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
,
Manchu
The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...
,
Mongolian,
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
,
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
,
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
and
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
.
Career
Working as a schoolteacher in
Barnaul
Barnaul ( rus, Барнау́л, p=bərnɐˈul) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative centre of Altai Krai, Russia, located at the confluence of the Barnaulka and Ob Rivers in the West Siberian Plain. As ...
, Radlov became interested in the native peoples of
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
and published his ethnographic findings in the influential monograph ''From Siberia'' (1884). From 1866 to 1907, he translated and released a number of monuments of Turkic folklore. Most importantly, he was the first to publish the
Orhon inscriptions
The Orkhon inscriptions (also known as the Orhon inscriptions, Orhun inscriptions, Khöshöö Tsaidam monuments (also spelled ''Khoshoo Tsaidam'', ''Koshu-Tsaidam'' or ''Höshöö Caidam''), or Kul Tigin steles ( zh, t=闕特勤碑, s=阙特勤 ...
. Four volumes of his comparative dictionary of
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...
followed in 1893 to 1911. Radlov helped establish the
Russian Museum of Ethnography
The Russian Museum of Ethnography (Российский этнографический музей) is a museum in St. Petersburg that houses a collection of about 500,000 items relating to the ethnography, or cultural anthropology, of peoples of ...
and was in charge of 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
St. 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 ...
from 1884 to 1894.
Radlov assisted
Grigory Potanin
Grigory Nikolayevich Potanin (alt. Grigorij Potanin) (russian: Григорий Николаевич Потанин; 4 October 1835 – 6 June 1920) was a Russian ethnographer and natural historian. He was an explorer of Inner Asia, and was the ...
on his glossary of
Salar language
Salar is a Turkic language spoken by the Salar people, who mainly live in the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu in China; some also live in Ili, Xinjiang. It is a primary branch and an eastern outlier of the Oghuz branch of Turkic, the other Oghuz ...
,
Western Yugur language
Western Yugur (Western Yugur: (Yugur speech) or (Yugur word)) also known as Neo-Uygur is the Turkic language spoken by the Yugur people. It is contrasted with Eastern Yugur, a Mongolic language spoken within the same community. Traditionally, ...
, and
Eastern Yugur language
Eastern Yugur is the Mongolic language spoken within the Yugur nationality. The other language spoken within the same community is Western Yughur, which is a Turkic language. The terms may also indicate the speakers of these languages, which ar ...
in Potanin's 1893 Russian language book ''The Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia''.
During the
Stalinist repressions of the late 1930s, the
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
and state science apparatus accused the late (ethnically German) Radlov of
Panturkism
Pan-Turkism is a political movement that emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals who lived in the Russian region of Kazan (Tatarstan), Caucasus Viceroyalty (1801–1917), Caucasus (modern-day Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire ( ...
. A perceived connection with the long-dead Radlov was treated as incriminating evidence against Orientalists and Turkologists, some of whom were executed, including
Alexander Samoylovich
Alexander Nikolaevich Samoylovich (russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Самойло́вич, 1880–1938) was a Russian Orientalist-Turkologist who served as a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1929), Rector of the Lening ...
in 1938.
Publications
* Radloff W. (1883). Aus Sibirien, Leipzig: T.O. Weige
Aus Siberien : vol.1Aus Siberien : vol.2
Atlas der Alterthümer der Mongolei : vol.1
(1892)
*W. Radloff. Versuch eines Wörterbuch der Türk-Dialekte.
Band I, 1. 1893
Band I, 2. 1893
Band II, 1. 1899
Band II, 2. 1899
* Radloff W.; trans. (1930). Suvarṇaprabhāsa: aus dem Uigurischen ins Deutsche übersetzt, Leningrad: Akad. Nauk SSSR.
* Radlov, Vasilij V (1913–1917). Suvarṇaprabhāsa: (sutra zolotogo bleska) ; tekst ujgurskoj redakcij, Sanktpeterburg. Imperatorskaja Akad. Nauk. XV. Reprint, Osnabrück. Biblio-Verlag 1970.
Aus Sibirien. Lose Blätter aus meinem Tagebuche (1893)
Tisastvustik; ein in türkischer Sprache bearbeitetes buddhistisches Sutra. I. Transcription und Übersetzung von W. Radloff. II. Bemerkungen zu den Brahmiglossen des Tisastvustik-Manuscripts (Mus. A. Kr. VII) von Baron A. von Stäel-Holstein (1910)
Further reading
* Laut, Jens Peter
in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 21 (2003), S. 96–97
* Temir, Ahmet (1955). Leben und Schaffen von Friedrich Wilhelm Radloff (1837–1918): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Türkologie, Oriens 8 (1), 51–93
References
External links
Online conference Radloff 2012Vasily Radlov's translation of "Kunasi Im Pusar" translated to Turkish
{{DEFAULTSORT:Radlov, Vasily
1837 births
1918 deaths
Explorers of Central Asia
Russian orientalists
Linguists from Russia
Russian anthropologists
Full members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
Full Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925)
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)
German emigrants to the Russian Empire
People from Berlin
Directors of Asiatic Museum
German schoolteachers
Russian Turkologists