Sergey Oldenburg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sergey Fyodorovich Oldenburg (Russian: Серге́й Фёдорович Ольденбу́рг; 1863-1934) was Russian orientalist and specialist in Buddhist studies.

Oldenburg was a student activist Student Scientific-Literary Association where he met Aleksandr Ulyanov. This was a brotherhood sharing liberal and radical ideals. Ulyanov dropped out of the inner circle when he started to plan an assination attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander III. The attempt failed, and following the execution of Ulyanov in 1887, Aleksandr's younger brother Vladimir, visited Oldenburg in St Petersburg in 1891, after his return from a two year trip to London, Paris and Cambridge.

Vladmir enquired about the fate of his brother, and the two men were not to meet for another twenty six years when Oldenburg - then permanent Sceretary of the Russian Academy of Sciences offered his help to Ulyanov - then known as Lenin - in the rebuilding of Russia as a modern country with an active scentific community.

[edit] Bibliography

• Empire of Nations:Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union by Francine Hirsch, Cornell University Press, 2005