Новые архивные материалы к биографии С. И. Климчицкого: Об одной забытой странице истории памироведения

Нияз Киреев; Владимир Плунгян

doi:10.30842/30346800.2026.2.2.6

Authors

Niyaz I. Kireyev École normale supérieure — PSL Author https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9722-9669
Vladimir A. Plungian Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences Author https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2393-1399

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30842/30346800.2026.2.2.6

Keywords:

history of linguistics, literacy education, field linguistics, Badakhshan, Pamir, Shughni, Tajik, Wakhi, Yaghnobi, Iranian

Abstract

This article reconstructs the biography and career of Sergey I ovich Klimchitsky (1900 — after 1947), one of the earliest professional linguists to conduct systematic fieldwork in the Pamirs. Although his publications on Wakhi and Yaghnobi, as well as on Tajik dialectology have long been known to specialists, no dedicated biographical study of the scholar has previously been undertaken, while the limited information available in reference works and memoir literature has remained fragmentary and often inaccurate. Drawing on a broad range of previously unpublished archival materials from Russian, German, Austrian, and Lithuanian repositories, including personal files, institutional records, correspondence, and documents from family archives, the article reconstructs the principal stages of Klimchitsky’s life and intellectual activity.

Particular attention is devoted to his formative years in Petrograd, his education at the Institute of Living Oriental Languages, and his work in Tajikistan during the 1920s and 1930s. The study demonstrates that Klimchitsky played a significant role not only in the early documentation of the Pamir languages, but also in broader Soviet language-planning and literacy campaigns. His publications are shown to be of a remarkably high theoretical level for their time.

In addition, the paper clarifies a number of long-standing misconceptions concerning Klimchitsky’s social background, arrest, wartime fate, and disappearance. Newly identified archival evidence makes it possible to trace his trajectory from besieged Leningrad to the North Caucasus and subsequently to Germany and Austria during and after the Second World War. More broadly, the article seeks to restore Klimchitsky to his rightful place in the history of Pamir linguistics and Soviet Iranian studies, highlighting his contribution as an innovative and insufficiently recognized field linguist of the interwar period. Appendix contains a full list of his identified publications.

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