Ivan Meshchaninov

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Ivan Meshchaninov (24 November 1883 - 16 January 1957) was a Soviet linguist and ethnographer.

He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of St Petersburg in 1907 and then briefly studied at t Heidelberg University before taking up archaeology back at St Petersburg, graduating in 1910. He headed the archives of Institute of Archaeology until 1923 focussing on cataloguing the Elamite antiquities there. Between 1925 and 1933 he led a number or archaeological expeditions to the Northern Pontic region and Transcaucasia

He became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1932 and was director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography from 1934 to 1937

He was a follower of Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr and succeeded him as head of the Soviet Institute of Language and Thought from 1935 to 1950. He advocated that material culture goes through developmental stages and that migratory changes were secondary in this process. In 1945 he published A New Theory in Languages. Then in 1948 he initiated a move against the Anti-Marrists, depicting such people as Vinogradov and and Reformatsky as "bourgeois idealists". While he was succesful in Leningrad, he met resistance amongst linguists in Moscow, and also from the Caucausian linguists. Although quite old Rachia Acharyan resisted Meshchaninov, with Grikor Kapantsyan playing a major role.

In 1950 he was denounced by Josef Stalin: "The Arakcheyev regime was set up by the 'disciples' of N. Y. Marr". This term, derived from the tsarist military officer Aleksey Arakcheyev (1768-1834), means a regime having "... a policy of extreme reaction, police despotism and crude militarism"^[1]. He lost his position at the Institute of Language and Thought but continued carrying out research.

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Preceded by Nikolai Matorin

Director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography 1934–1937

Succeeded by Post filled by Director of the Institute of Ethnography until 1945