Pozdneev, Aleksei Matveevich

Born 1851 in Orel; died Sept. 30, 1920, in Rostov-on-Don. Russian specialist in Mongol studies.

Pozdneev graduated from the faculty of oriental languages at the University of St. Petersburg in 1876.

In 1881 he defended his master’s dissertation, Examples of the Popular Literature of the Mongolian Tribes, and in 1883 he received a doctoral degree for The Mongol Chronicle “Erdeni-yin Erikhe.”

Pozdneev became a professor at the University of St. Petersburg in 1884.

He helped found the Oriental Institute in Vladivostok and from 1889 to 1903 was a professor there and the institute’s director.

From 1903 to 1917, Pozdneev was a member of the Council of the Ministry of Public Education.

He traveled in Mongolia from 1876 to 1878 and in 1892 and 1893. Pozdneev’s Mongolia and the Mongols (vols. 1–2, 1896–98), a basic work in its field, remained unfinished.

WORKS

• Goroda Severnoi Mongolii. St. Petersburg, 1880.
• Ocherki byta buddiiskikh monastyrei i buddiiskogo dukhovenstva ν Mongolii ν sviazi s otnosheniiami segoposlednego k narodu. St. Petersburg, 1887.
• Urginskie khutukhty. St. Petersburg, 1879.