Sergey Oldenburg

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Sergey Fyodorovich Oldenburg (Russian: Серге́й Фёдорович Ольденбу́рг; 26 September 1863 near Nerchinsk - 28 February 1934, Leningrad) was a Russian orientalist who specialized in Buddhist studies. He is remembered as the founder of Russian Indology and the teacher of Fyodor Shcherbatskoy. He was elected into the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1900 and served as its permanent Secretary in 1904-29.

Oldenburg's father was of lesser noble background; his grandfather was Full General in the Imperial Russian Army. In 1909-10 and 1914-15, Oldenburg travelled in Central Asia, where he discovered a number of hitherto unpublished Sanskrit texts. He instigated several scientific expeditions to Tibet and Dzungaria, which brought to light a raft of unique Buddhist manuscripts. In order to publish the newly-found manuscripts, Oldenburg launched in 1897 an authoritative edition of Buddhist texts, Bibliotheca buddhica, which continues to this day. Among his other projects was the Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of the Population of the Borderlands of Russia.

Oldenburg was a member of the State Council of Imperial Russia (1912-17) and served in the Russian Provisional Government as Minister of Education but, unlike his colleagues from the Constitutional Democratic Party, chose to spent the rest of his life in Russia. This was based on his acquaintance with Vladimir Lenin, which went back in history. As a student, Oldenburg joined the Scientific-Literary Association of Students (a brotherhood sharing liberal and radical ideals), where he met Lenin's brother Aleksandr Ulyanov. Ulyanov dropped out of the inner circle when he started to plan an assassination attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander III. The attempt failed, and following the execution of Ulyanov in 1887, his brother Lenin visited Oldenburg in St Petersburg in 1891 after his return from a two year trip to London, Paris and Cambridge.

Although he was briefly apprehended by the Cheka in 1919, Oldenburg was allowed to run the Academy of Sciences until 1929, when, in connection with the ongoing Bolshevization of the Academy, he was ousted from his posts. Oldenburg devoted the remainder of his life to administrating the Soviet Institute of Oriental Studies, whose antecedent (the Asian Museum) had been inaugurated by him in 1919.

[edit] References

• Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union by Francine Hirsch, Cornell University Press, 2005