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
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 ...
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)
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
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