Nikolai Konrad

Nikolai Iosifovich Konrad (Russian: Николай Иосифович Конрад; 13 March 1891 – 30 September 1970) was a Soviet philologist and historian, described in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia as "the founder of the Soviet school of Japanese scholars".[1]

Life

Konrad was born in Riga to a German father who was a railway engineer while his mother was the daughter of a priest from the Oryol Governorate. He studied at the Oriental Faculty of Saint Petersburg University, attending lectures by Lev Sternberg at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. After graduation he traveled to Japan and Korea, studying the languages and undertaking ethnographic study. World War I prevented his return to Russia until 1917.[2]

Konrad then taught at Leningrad University, and became professor of Japanese language and literature there from 1922 to 1939. He knew Mikhail Bakhtin in the 1920s,[3] and Bakhtin later cited Konrad, Dmitry Likhachov and Juri Lotman as the three most important Russian literary theorists.[4]

After his fellow scholar Nikolai Nevsky and his wife were arrested on charges of spying, Konrad found their two-year-old daughter left in their apartment; he brought the girl up as his own after her parents' execution. In 1941 he became professor at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies.[5]

Awards and honors

Works
  • Zapad i Vostok (West and East), Moscow, 1966. Translated by H. Kasanina and others as West-East, inseparable twain; selected articles. Moscow, 1967

References
  1. Robert M. Croskey, N. I. Konrad and the Soviet Study of Japan, Acta Slavica Iaponica, Vol. 9, pp.116-133
  2. Sergei Kan (2009). Lev Shternberg: Anthropologist, Russian Socialist, Jewish Activist. University of Nebraska Press. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-8032-2470-4. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  3. Mikhail Bakhtin (1986). Michael Holquist; Caryl Emerson (eds.). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. University of Texas Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-292-78287-7. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  4. Michael Macovski (1997). Dialogue and Critical Discourse: Language, Culture, Critical Theory. Oxford University Press. p. 215. ISBN 978-0-19-536132-2. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  5. Julian Shchutsky (1980). Researches on the I Ching. Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. ix. GGKEY:LG06NN83XC9. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
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