Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz

Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz (born April 27 [April 15, Old Style], 1865, Ovruch, Russia—died May 10, 1936, on the way to Rostov-na-Donu) was a Russian anthropologist whose study of the Chukchi people of northeastern Siberia ranks among the classic works of ethnography.

Arrested in 1886 for activities with the revolutionary Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”) political party, Bogoraz was exiled to the Yakutia region of northeastern Siberia, where he studied the ethnography and linguistics of the area with an exiled colleague, Vladimir Jochelson. He continued research in northeastern Siberia for the Russian Geographical Society (1895–97). For the Jesup North Pacific Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City (1900–01), Bogoraz took charge of the Anadyr region of extreme northeastern Siberia, gathering materials for his Chukchi ethnography. Fleeing Russia for political reasons, he settled in New York City (1901–04), became a curator of the American Museum, and produced his great works The Chukchee (1904–09) and Chukchee Mythology (1910).

Returning to Russia (1904), Bogoraz helped to organize the first peasant congress and the Labour Group in the Duma (parliament). He continued scientific work and writing until his appointment as professor at the university at Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and curator of the Anthropological and Ethnographical Museum (1918). During the 1920s and ’30s he directed Asian research for the Institute of the Peoples of the North, Leningrad (St. Petersburg). He published grammars, a dictionary, textbooks for Chukchi children, folklore collections, ethnographic and historical studies, and a novel about the Chukchis.