Vladimir Biryukov


Vladimir Pavlovich Biryukov was a Soviet ethnographer, lexicographer, museum worker, archaeologist, historian, folklorist, and the author of over 30 books. He specifically studied the folklore of the Ural region of Siberia.

Career

Vladimir Biryukov was born in the Pershinskoye village, Perm Governorate in the family of the secretary-accountant. He studied at the Perm Theological Seminary, but eventually decided against becoming a priest. He graduated from the Kazan Veterinary Institute in 1912 and then from the Moscow Archaeological Institute in 1915. He became an archaeologist. For two years he studied at the Russian State Agricultural University, attended classes at the Tomsk State University since the end of 1919.
In 1910 Vladimir Biryukov organized a museum in Pershinskoye, the first village museum in the area. The museum was transferred to Shadrinsk and now called the Shadrinsk Local History Museum named after V. P. Biryukov. Since 1920 he headed the Museum of Antiquities under the Perm State University. Since 1923 he was an active member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, participating in conferences and plenary meetings. From the 1920s to 1933 he edited the Academy of Sciences's Russian Language Dictionary. When in the mid-1930s Sverdlovsk Publishing House decided to publish the collection Prerevolutionary Folklore of the Urals, he was offered to make such a collection.
From 1930 to 1938 he worked in Sverdlovsk, in the regional bureau that studied local culture, then lived in Shadrinsk and then in Sverdlovsk again. He became the member of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1955. He died and was buried in Sverdlovsk.

Selected publications