Background
Zarubin was born in the Crimea in 1887.
Zarubin was born in the Crimea in 1887.
He wrote dozens of books on Iranian languages and was the leading authority in the Soviet Union of the Pamir languages spoken in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast in the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic. He was a professor at Leningrad University, a position he held until 1949, and was director of the Department of the Near East and Central Asia at the Kunstkamera in Leningrad. In summer 1914, Zarubin together with a French Iranist Robert Gauthiot traveled to the Pamir Mountains and conducted linguistic and ethnographic research. Over the coming decades Zarubin continued to conduct linguistic, folkloric and ethnographic studies in the Pamirs and elsewhere in Central Asia.
A large portion of the Pamir collection at the Kunstkamera"s Department of the Near East and Central Asia was acquired during Zarubin"s working in the Pamirs in 1914.
Zarubin died February 3, 1964.