Nikolai Nikolayevich Durnovo (; – 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 (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

Biography

Durnovo was born into the Durnovo family. His father was also named Nikolai Nikolayevich Durnovo, and his paternal grandmother 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. It united the country's leading scientists and was subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (u ...

(1924) and the

Belarusian Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NASB; ; , , ) is the national academy of Belarus. History Inbelkult - predecessor to the Academy The Academy has its origins in the Institute of Belarusian Culture (Inbelkult), a Belarusian acade ...

and specialised in Russian language

dialectology Dialectology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , ''-logy, -logia'') is the scientific study of dialects: subsets of languages. Though in the 19th century a branch of historical linguistics, dialectology is often now c ...

, the history of Russian and

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

, 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, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

, 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 (; ) is a forest massif from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where an unknown number, estimated in the thousands, of victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. More than 58 nationalities were shot and buried there by ...

in Karelia (northwest Russia).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Durnovo, Nikolay Nikolayevich 1876 births 1937 deaths Linguists from the Russian Empire Great Purge victims from Russia Writers from Moscow Nikolay Nikolayevich Linguists from the Soviet Union Imperial Moscow University alumni Linguists of Ukrainian