Zelenin Dmitry Konstantinovich
2 November [ 21 October] 1878, Lyuk village, Sarapul Uezd, Vyatka Governorate — 31 August 1954, Leningrad
Biography, education, career:
Dmitry Zelenin descends from a clerical family. In 1904 he graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of Yuryev University (now Tartu University). From 1906 he participated in editing the Academic Dictionary of Russian. He compiled two fundamental reference indices: A Bibliographical Index of Russian Ethnographic Literature: 1700‑1910 and The Description of the Academic Archive of the Russian Geographical Society. He gathered folklore and dialectological materials in the Transurals Region. In 1915‑1916 he delivered a course of lectures on the ethnography of Russians and their neighbours at Petrograd University. In 1916‑1925 he occupied the position of Full Professor at Kharkiv University; from 1925 – Full Professor at the Department of Ethnography of the Faculty of Geography, Leningrad State University. He was in charge of the Zhivaya Starina (Living Old Heritage) Section at the SRI for the Study of Comparative History of Literatures and Languages of the Peoples of the West and the East, Leningrad State University (until 1928). In 1926‑1933 he worked as a researcher at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, and in 1933‑1949 – at the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR AS. From 1926 he was a researcher at the State Academy of the History of Material Culture.
Areas of expertise: History and ethnography of the Russians; Folklore studies