Nikolai Matorin

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Nikolai Mikhailovich Matorin (1898 – 1936) was a Russian ethnographer and folklorist. He lectured at the Geographic Institute from 1924, becoming an Associate Professor in the Ethnographic Department there in 1928 and professor in 1930. He specialised in religious studies and by 1930 he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Committee for the Study of Ethnic Composition of USSR. After three years as Director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (MAE) he became Director of the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography in 1933]. While director of the MAE, he was among the founders of the Museum of the History of Religion.

He resisted the politicisation of Soviet sciences by Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr. He was finally arrested in 1935 and shot in 1936.

Preceded by Evfimii Karskii

Director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography 1930–1933

Succeeded by Ivan Meshchaninov