Background
His father was apparently on a list to be executed but escaped this fate and moved with his family to Moscow.
anthropologist archaeologist historian
His father was apparently on a list to be executed but escaped this fate and moved with his family to Moscow.
Yanin finished his secondary education in 1946, graduating with a Gold Meda He matriculated at Moscow State University in 1951.
He has also edited a number of important journals and primary sources, including works on medieval Russian law, sphragistics and epigraphy, archaeology and history. His expertise is medieval Rus" especially Novgorod the Great, where he has headed archaeological digs beginning in 1962. This was published as The Monetary and Weight System of Medieval Russia ("Денежно-весовые системы русского средневековья") and has become a classic.
His doctoral thesis on the posadniks of Novgorod followed in 1962 and significantly changed our understanding of the constitution of the Novgorod Republic.
lieutenant shattered the earlier image of Novgorod as a more democratic republic and showed it to be ruled by a boyar aristocracy (not unlike other medieval republics). Yanin"s monograph about the seals of Ancient Rus (2 volumes, 1970) summed up half a century of Soviet sphragistics research.
After that, Yanin turned his attention to the birch bark documents of Novgorod, on which he is considered the greatest living authority (alongside Andrey Zaliznyak). In 1964, Yanin became professor in the department of archaeology in the Faculty of History at Moscow State University.
Since 1978, Yanin has held the chair in archaeology at the Moscow University.
In 1999, he became the first historian to be awarded the Lomonosov Gold Meda His other awards include:
Order of Merit for the Fatherland 4th class
Order of Lenin
Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Order of Friendship of Peoples
Medal "Veteran of Labour"
Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics State Prize (1970)
Lenin Prize (1984)
Demidov Prize (1993)
State Prize of the Russian Federation (1996)
Triumph Prize (2002)
Solzhenitsyn Prize (2010).
In 1954, he defended his Kandidat thesis on the monetary systems of pre-Mongol Rus.
Russian Academy of Sciences. Academy of Sciences of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics]
He is a member of the President"s Committee for the Defence of the Material Culture of the Russian Federation and a member of the Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. In 1962, he was elected a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
He became a full academician in 1990.
He is an honorary citizen of Novgorod the Great and an honorary member of the Novgorodian Society of Lovers of Antiquities.