Background
POLIVANOV, Yevgeniy was born on March 12, 1891.
Russian philologist and Orientalist
POLIVANOV, Yevgeniy was born on March 12, 1891.
1912 graduate St. Petersburg University an Oriental Practical Academy for Japanese Studies.
From 1912 at Chair of Comparative Philology, St. Petersburg University. 1917-1918 head, Department of Oriental Countries, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. 1918-1919 founded League of Chinese Workers and edited Chinese Communist newspaper in Petrograd.
1919-1921 professor, St. Petersburg University. 1921-1926 worked for Communist International in Moscow, then in Tashkent. 1927-1929 head, Linguistics Section, Russian Association of Social Sciences Research Institutes, Moscow.
1929-1937 worked in Samarkand, Tashkent and Frunze. Worked on linguistic poetics and poetics of Oriental lit, especially Turkic, Chinese and Japanese. Traced migration of subjects and themes from one lit to another and studied folklore, including Kir epic “Manas”.
Contributed to linguistic theory. Planned a major work entitled “Svod poctiki” (Corpus poetri- carum) in which he intended to compare the structural features of the world’s languages with the poetic traits in their corresponding lit. Late 1920’s involved in a conflict with N.Ya.
Marr and his school and criticized many aspects of his “Japhetic theory”. As a result of this he was forced to quit Moscow and move to Centr Asia. Arrested by State Security organs.
Communist Party member from 1919.