Sergey Fyodorovich Oldenburg (; – 28 February 1934) was a Russian orientalist who specialized in

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

studies. He was a disciple of Ivan Minayev, the founder of Russian

Indology Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies. The term ''Indology'' (in German, ''Indologie'') is ...

Biography

Sergey Feodorovitch Oldenburg was born in Russia on 26 September 1863, in Byankino, Transbaikal Oblast. His father was of the Livonian nobility; his grandfather was a full general in the

Imperial Russian Army The Imperial Russian Army () was the army of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of Regular army, regular troops and ...

. During the 1880s while at

St. Petersburg University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the be ...

Oldenburg participated in the Scientific-Literary Association of Students, a brotherhood which shared liberal and radical ideals. Here he met Aleksandr Ulyanov as they were both in the inner circle of this organisation. Ulyanov dropped out of the inner circle when he started to plan an assassination attempt on the life of emperor Alexander III. The attempt failed, and following the execution of Ulyanov in 1887, his brother,

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

visited Oldenburg in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

in 1891. Oldenburg had just returned from a two-year trip to

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, and

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

Oldenburg was elected to the

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...

in 1900, and he served as its permanent Secretary from 1904 to 1929. From 1905 he became active in the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. In 1909–10 and 1914–15, he travelled in central Asia, where he discovered

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

texts. He instigated scientific expeditions to

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

and

Dzungaria Dzungaria (; from the Mongolian words , meaning 'left hand'), also known as Northern Xinjiang or Beijiang, is a geographical subregion in Northwest China that corresponds to the northern half of Xinjiang. Bound by the Altai Mountains to the n ...

, which brought to light unique Buddhist manuscripts. To publish newly found manuscripts, in 1897 Oldenburg launched an authoritative edition of Buddhist texts, Bibliotheca Buddhica, which continues to this day. Oldenburg joined the liberal

Constitutional Democratic Party The Constitutional Democratic Party (, K-D), also called Constitutional Democrats and formally the Party of People's Freedom (), was a political party in the Russian Empire that promoted Western constitutional monarchy—among other policies� ...

(Kadets) in 1905; he served as a member of the

State Council of Imperial Russia The State Council ( rus, Госуда́рственный сове́т, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj sɐˈvʲet) was the supreme state advisory body to the tsar in the Russian Empire. From 1906, it was the upper house of the parliament under t ...

from 1912 to 1917. Following the

February Revolution The February Revolution (), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and sometimes as the March Revolution or February Coup was the first of Russian Revolution, two revolutions which took place in Russia ...

of 1917 he served in the

Russian Provisional Government The Russian Provisional Government was a provisional government of the Russian Empire and Russian Republic, announced two days before and established immediately after the abdication of Nicholas II on 2 March, O.S. New_Style.html" ;"title="5 ...

as Minister of Education. He set up the Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of the Population of the Borderlands of Russia at this time. Unlike his Kadet colleagues, he stayed in Russia after the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

brought the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

s to power. Based on his acquaintance with

, he was able to develop an alliance between the Bolsheviks and Russian ethnographers, the former being more interested in

nationalism Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Theory, I ...

amongst European peoples of the former Russian Empire, the ethnographers focusing more on the national question amongst its Asian peoples.Hirsch, ''Empire of Nations'', p. 31. Although he was briefly imprisoned by the

Cheka The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), ...

in 1919, Oldenburg served as permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences until 1929, when the Communist Party ousted hundreds of staff for resisting Bolshevization. Oldenburg devoted the remainder of his life to administrating the Soviet Institute of Oriental Studies, whose antecedent (the Asian Museum) he had directed since 1916. He died on 28 February 1934 in St Petersburg. His son Sergei Sergeyevich Oldenburg wrote a biography of Tsar Nicholas II. His granddaughter Zoé Oldenbourg became a well-known French novelist and historian.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oldenburg, Sergey Fyodorovich 1863 births 1934 deaths People from Nerchinsky District People from Transbaikal Oblast Nobility from the Russian Empire Russian Constitutional Democratic Party members Ministers of the Russian Provisional Government Members of the State Council (Russian Empire) Russian scholars of Buddhism Russian orientalists Russian ethnographers Russian Indologists Russian scientists Directors of Asiatic Museum Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie editors Saint Petersburg State University alumni Full members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Full Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925) Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Full Members of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences Academicians of the Byelorussian SSR Academy of Sciences Members of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities