Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky

Nevsky with his wife and daughter, Japan 1929

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky (Russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Не́вский; the surname is also transcribed Nevskij; March 1 [O.S. February 18] 1892, Yaroslavl - 24 November 1937, Leningrad) was a Russian and Soviet linguist, an expert on a number of East Asian languages. He was one of the founders of the modern study of the Tangut language of the mediaeval Xi Xia Empire, the work for which he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science in Philology during his life, and Lenin Prize posthumously. He spent most of his research career in Japan before returning to the USSR. He was arrested and executed during the Great Purge; his surviving manuscripts were published much later, starting in 1960.

Biography

Nikolai Nevsky, graduated from Rybinsk Gymnasium in 1909 with a "silver medal" (the second class of distinction), and entered the St Petersburg Institute of Technology. However, after a year he transferred to the Department of Oriental Languages of the Saint Petersburg University, from which he graduated in 1914. Among his teachers were Vasiliy Mikhaylovich Alekseyev and Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov. In 1915 N.A. Nevsky was sent to Japan for two years, but due to the revolution and Russian Civil War he ended up staying remained in Japan for a much longer time.

While living in Japan, N.A. Nevsky traveled around the country, studying the language and customs of the Ainu, Miyako, and the Tsou people of Taiwan (then a part of the Japanese Empire). He published a number of research articles in Japanese journals.

He started learning the Miyako dialect from a student named Ueunten Kenpu, who entered Tokyo Higher Normal School in 1919. He visited the Miyako Islands in 1922, 1926 and 1928. He invented a Cyrillization of Miyako, recorded Miyako's epic songs called āgu, and left an unpublished Miyako lexicon.[1]

In 1925, Nevsky began work on the deciphering of Tangut language manuscripts, which had been discovered in 1909 in Khara-Khoto by Pyotr Kozlov.

In the autumn 1929, persuaded by Soviet scholars and officials, Nevsky moved from Japan to Leningrad. There he worked at the Leningrad State University, LIFLI (Leningrad Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History; Институт философии, литературы и истории), the Institute of Oriental Studies (then based in Leningrad), and the Hermitage Museum. In January 1935 he was awarded a Doctor of Science degree based on the sum of his work, without submitting a thesis.

On the night of 3 / 4 Oct, 1937 N.A. Nevsky was arrested by the NKVD on the charge of being a Japanese spy.[2] On November 24, 1937 he was executed, along with his wife, I. Mantani-Nevsky (Исо (Исоко) Мантани-Невская, 萬谷イソ, 萬谷磯子, 1901–1937). Their daughter Yelena was brought up by N. I. Konrad.

N.A. Nevsky was posthumously acquitted in 1957, and in 1962 he was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize for the book "Tangut Philology", which was published in 1960 based on some of his surviving materials on the Tangut language. His other surviving manuscripts continued to be published, but many of his materials appear to be irretrievably lost.

Works by N.A. Nevsky

Works about Nevsky

References

  1. ↑ Karimata Shigehisa 狩俣繁久 (1998). "Miyako kenkyū no senkusha 宮古研究の先駆者". In Nikolai A. Nevsky and L. L. Gromkovskaya. Miyako no fōkuroa 宮古のフォークロア (in Japanese).
  2. ↑ http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20120322023051/http://admin.russkiymir.ru/russkiymir/ru/magazines/archive/2008/04/article14.html?print=true
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