Viktor Vladimirovich Vinogradov (Russian: Ви́ктор Влади́мирович Виногра́дов; 12 January 1895 [O.S. 31 December 1894] – 4 October 1969) was a Soviet linguist and philologist who presided over Soviet linguistics after World War II.
Life and career
Vinogradov was born at Zaraysk in 1895. His teachers at the Petrograd Institute of History and Philology included Lev Shcherba and Aleksey Shakhmatov, but Charles Bally's ideas influenced him the most deeply during his formative years. He made his mark as a scholar of Russian literature with a series of works examining the style and language of Russian classical writers, including Alexander Pushkin (1935, 1941), Nikolai Gogol (1936), Mikhail Lermontov (1941), and Anna Akhmatova (a family friend, 1925). In 1926 he married Nadezhda Malysheva (Надежда Матвеевна Виноградова-Малышева, 1897–1990), a singing teacher.
From the standpoint of linguistics, Vinogradov set out as a good-natured critic of the Russian formalists: he was on friendly terms with many of them. After moving from Leningrad to Moscow in 1929 he became implicated in the "Slavists conspiracy" and the authorities exiled him to Vyatka in 1934. Two years later, he was allowed to settle somewhat closer to the capital, in Mozhaysk, only to be exiled to Siberia after Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941. His father, an Orthodox priest, was purged in 1930.
After Joseph Stalin became alarmed with the (mis)management of Soviet linguistics by Nikolai Marr and his followers, Vinogradov found himself appointed Director of the Linguistics Institute (1950). The authorities heaped honors on him in profusion: he was elected into the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union and was awarded the Stalin Prize (1951). This sudden reversal of fortune made him willing to gratify the authorities, as was demonstrated by his participation in the notorious Sinyavsky–Daniel trial (1965-1966). Vinogradov's rise to power cemented his followers (Sergey Ozhegov, Natalia Shvedova) into the dominant academic school of Soviet linguistics. The Russian Language Institute, which he administered from 1958, still bears his name.
He died in Moscow in 1969.
References
- V.V. Vinogradov, Letters to wife, Novy Mir, 1995, No. 1.
- 1895 births
- 1969 deaths
- People from Zaraysky District
- People from Zaraysky Uyezd
- Members of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, 1951–1955
- Members of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, 1955–1959
- Linguists from Russia
- Linguists from the Soviet Union
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky scholars
- Literary theorists
- Morphologists
- Semanticists
- Russian philologists
- Russian studies scholars
- Soviet philologists
- Nikolai Gogol scholars
- 20th-century linguists
- 20th-century philologists
- Academic staff of Saint Petersburg State University
- Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
- Corresponding members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
- Corresponding members of the Romanian Academy
- Foreign members of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
- Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
- Foreign members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
- Members of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
- Recipients of the Stalin Prize
- Recipients of the Order of Lenin
- Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
- Soviet rehabilitations
- Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery
- Russian scientists
- Deputies of Mossoviet