Vasily Vasilievich Radlov or Friedrich Wilhelm Radloff (; in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

– 12 May 1918 in Petrograd) was a German-

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n linguist, ethnographer, and archaeologist, often considered to be the founder of Turkology, the scientific study of

Turkic peoples Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West Asia, West, Central Asia, Central, East Asia, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.. "Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose members ...

. According to Turkologist

Johan Vandewalle Johan Vandewalle (born 15 February 1960) is a Belgians, Belgian Linguistics, linguist. He teaches at Ghent University and specializes in Turkic languages. Life Vandewalle first became interested in Turkish language, Turkish at the age of thirteen ...

, Radlov knew all of the

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 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 West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

and dialects as well as German, French, Russian,

Greek Greek may refer to: 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 of all kno ...

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic peoples, Tungusic East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized Ethnic minorities in China, ethnic minority in China and the people from wh ...

, Mongolian, Chinese,

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, Persian, and

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

Career

Working as a schoolteacher in

Barnaul Barnaul (, ) 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 (river), Ob rivers in the West Siberian Plain. As of the Russian Censu ...

, Radlov became interested in the native peoples of

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

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. Four volumes of his comparative dictionary of

followed in 1893 to 1911. Radlov helped establish the Russian Museum of Ethnography and was in charge of the Asiatic Museum in St. Petersburg from 1884 to 1894. One of the works he published was a Kyrgyz version of the epic '' Er Töshtük'' Radlov assisted Grigory Potanin on his glossary of Salar language, Western Yugur language, and Eastern Yugur language 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 (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

and state science apparatus accused the late (ethnically German) Radlov of Panturkism. 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 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)

References

External links

Online conference Radloff 2012Vasily Radlov's translation of "Kunasi Im Pusar" translated to Turkish
{{DEFAULTSORT:Radlov, Vasily 1837 births 1918 deaths Scholars from the Kingdom of Prussia Explorers of Central Asia Orientalists from the Russian Empire Linguists from the Russian Empire Anthropologists from the Russian Empire 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 Educators from the Kingdom of Prussia 19th-century German educators Russian Turkologists German Turkologists

Career

Publications

Further reading

References

External links