Nikolai Matorin
Encyclopedia
Nikolai Mikhailovich Matorin (1898 – 1936) was a Russia
n ethnographer
and folklorist
. He lectured at the Geographic Institute from 1924, becoming an Associate Professor in the Ethnographic Department there in 1928 and professor in 1930. He specialised in religious studies and by 1930 he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Committee for the Study of Ethnic Composition of USSR. After three years as Director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (MAE) he became Director of the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography
when MAE was merged with the Institute for the Study of the Narodnosti of the USSR in 1933. While director of the MAE, he was among the founders of the Museum of the History of Religion.
He resisted the politicisation of Soviet sciences by Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr
. He was finally arrested in 1935 and shot in 1936.
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n ethnographer
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
and folklorist
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
. He lectured at the Geographic Institute from 1924, becoming an Associate Professor in the Ethnographic Department there in 1928 and professor in 1930. He specialised in religious studies and by 1930 he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Committee for the Study of Ethnic Composition of USSR. After three years as Director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (MAE) he became Director of the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography
Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography
The Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography or N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology is a Russian institute of research, specializing in ethnographic studies of cultural and physical anthropology...
when MAE was merged with the Institute for the Study of the Narodnosti of the USSR in 1933. While director of the MAE, he was among the founders of the Museum of the History of Religion.
He resisted the politicisation of Soviet sciences by Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr
Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr
Nicholas Jakovlevich Marr was a Georgia-born historian and linguist who gained a reputation as a scholar of the Caucasus during the 1910s before developing his linguistic "Japhetic theory" on the origin of language and related speculative linguistic hypotheses.Marr's hypotheses were used as a...
. He was finally arrested in 1935 and shot in 1936.