17 January 2024 is the 120th anniversary of the birth of the Vepsian scientist, linguist Nikolai Ivanovich Bogdanov (1904-1959).
N.I. Bogdanov's small homeland is Shimozero, where he spent his childhood and youth, and found a family. Although he was born in St. Petersburg. His father - Ivan Efimovich Bogdanov (1855-1920) - a worker of the main repair workshops of the Nikolayevskaya railway was from the village of Syuriga (Shimozero), Shimozerskaya vol. of Lodeynopolsky udel, Olonetskaya guberniya. After 50 years of working at the enterprise, he decided to return to his homeland with his family. With the money earned in the city he built a two-storey house with large windows painted in white on the mountain. This house was often remembered by former residents of Shimozero as the most beautiful in the village. The house is long gone, just like Shimozero itself, but the apple trees around the foundation still grow and remind us of the former owners.
Nikolai Ivanovich Bogdanov is among the first scientists - natives of the Vepsian people, who in the 30s of the XX century took an active part in the creation of Vepsian writing. He joined and later headed a group of Vepsian teachers created in a short period of time at the Institute of Language and Thought of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which started compiling school textbooks in Vepsian. His colleagues in this endeavour were: F.A. Andreev and I.F. Andreeva (history teachers from Pyazhozero village), G.F. Bolshakov (Voylahta village), M.G. Loginov (Pyazhozero settlement), A.M. Mikhkiev, V.I. Petukhov (Shimozero settlement), V.M. Romanov, I.A. Silin (Klenozero settlement) and others. As a member of the author's team he prepared a reading book (for 2nd grade), translated a textbook and two arithmetic textbooks, two geography textbooks and ‘Natural History’. He also compiled Vepsian textbooks for incomplete secondary school: History of the Peoples of the USSR and a textbook for grade 5.
The main duty assigned to N.I. Bogdanov during the years of Vepsian writing was the training of pedagogical staff for schools. He was the organiser and teacher of short-term courses of Vepsian teachers in 1933 in Domozhirovo village, Lodeynopolsky district, Leningrad region, Vepsian department for training of native language teachers at the Lodeynopolsky pedagogical technical school. The courses were held in the summer of 1933 in the village of Domojirovo, Lodeynopolsky district, Leningrad region. The course was attended by more than 30 people, mostly high school students of peasant youth schools, from various Veps-populated districts of the Leningrad region. Among them were fellow countrymen of N.I. Bogdanov - five senior pupils of the Shimozersk Peasant Youth School: S.Y. Gavrilov, E. Mashichev, A. Markov, A. Ivanov, F. Demichev.
Over twenty years of his creative life N.I. Bogdanov worked at the Institute of Language, Literature and History in Petrozavodsk and devoted to the study of the national languages of the Republic of Karelia - Vepsian, Karelian and Finnish. From 1939-1941 he was head of the linguistic section, from 1946-1947 - junior researcher, from 1947-1952 - scientific secretary, from 1952-1959 - head of the linguistics section.
When the war began, N.I. Bogdanov immediately joined the People's Militia, then the 2nd Petrozavodsk Fighter Battalion and in July 1941 joined the Red Army. He travelled the military roads from Karelia to Germany, starting as a senior adjutant of the battalion and ending the war as an assistant division commander. He participated in many battles: in the battles on the Karelian front near Oshta, during the forcing of the Svir River and in the subsequent offensive to Pitkyaranta and the Finnish border, on the 2nd Belorussian Front in Poland and Germany. Only 29 March 1946, 11 months after the end of the war, N.I. Bogdanov was demobilised from the army. He returned from the front with the Order of the Red Star and the medal ‘For Victory over Germany’.
N.I. Bogdanov entered the history of the Vepsian people as the first representative of the Vepsian nationality - research degree. He owns the first Ph.D. thesis about Vepsians in Russia ‘History of the Origin of the Vepsian Language Lexicon’ (1952), in which the Vepsian language is considered as a source of Vepsian history. In the 1950s he gave lecture courses ‘Introduction to Linguistics’ and ‘Vepsian Language’ to students of Petrozavodsk State University.
И. Yu. Vinokurova.
PhD in history,
Leading Researcher of the Ethnology Sector of the Institute of Language, Literature and History, Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences