Kuznetsov, Peter Savvich

The circumstances of Kuznetsov’s birth are not completely clear, and his colleague A. A. Reformatsky in his biographical sketch even calls them “very mysterious” ^[1] . According to the memoirs of Kuznetsov himself, he was born “in the mine at Bogodukhovskaya gully of the Ust-Khopersk District of the region of the Don Army” ^[2] . However, Bogodukhovskaya gully is an uninhabited area (green zone) between Makeyevka and Donetsk . Previously, there really were mines, but it belonged to the Taganrog District, and not to Khopyorsk .

Kuznetsov did not know his real parents. From the stories of the foster mother, he concluded that he was an illegitimate child of a hospital nurse from a doctor, while her husband served in the army ^[2] . This doctor gave Peter, at the age of 9 months, to be raised in Kharkov to a childless family of his friend, lawyer Vladimir Semenovich Dubensky. When Kuznetsov was 4 years old, Dubensky died, and the boy was raised by a foster mother, teacher Matilda Isidorovna Dubenskaya. In 1906 they moved to Moscow, where they lived in the same apartment with her friend Matilda Isidorovna, Vera Yakovlevna Kolmogorova, and her adopted nephew Andrei , the future academic mathematician A. N. Kolmogorov. Kuznetsov and Kolmogorov remained lifelong friends.

In 1918 he graduated from the gymnasium E. A. Repman . He entered the historical department of Moscow University , a year later he was drafted into the Red Army , from which he returned in 1923. Entered the VLHI , but soon left, studied at the Institute of words and listened to lectures at the 1st Moscow State University , but the Institute closed the words, and in 1928 Kuznetsov external passed the examinations at the 1st Moscow State University. Under the leadership of D. N. Ushakova wrote a diploma in historical phonetics of Rostov-Suzdal dialects . He entered the post graduate school of the RANION together with I. A. Vinogradov , but at the beginning of 1930, the RANION was disbanded and the graduate students were released six months ahead of time. He worked for one year in Smolensk , from 1931 - at the Research Institute of Linguistics under the People's Commissariat of Education (NIYAZ); in the spring of 1933, the NIYAZ was closed, as it was the base of the “ Yazykofront ” group, which was against left-wing marrism from the left. He worked as a laboratory assistant in the 1st Moscow State Institute of Nuclear Physics , since 1935 - Associate Professor at the Russian Language Department of the Moscow City Pedagogical Institute .

Since 1943 he taught at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University , since 1960 - at the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics . Concurrently in 1943-1960 he worked at the Institute of Russian Language . In 1947 he defended his doctoral dissertation, since 1948 - Professor .

He left memories of childhood, adolescence and dramatic confrontation between “official” and “unofficial” linguistics in the USSR .

Son Vladimir (born 1936) - researcher and journalist, dissident , author of the memoir book "The Story of a Company" (1995).

One of the founders of the Moscow phonological school and the initiators of the development of African studies in the USSR; with his support, the African Languages ​​Sector of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was established . He also supported research in the field of structural and mathematical linguistics; one of the participants of the seminar “Some Applications of Mathematical Methods in Linguistics”, created at Moscow State University at the suggestion of A. N. Kolmogorov.

The main area of ​​research is the historical morphology of the Russian language and Russian dialectology; the author of a popular textbook on the history of the Russian language (together with Academician V.I. Borkovsky ). But also outside his domain, his research interests were very diverse, ranging from machine translation and theoretical phonology to Finno-Ugric and African languages. Beginning in the 1930s, he published several works on the description of the coordination system of Swahili , introducing (for the first time in the Russian grammatical tradition) the term “coordination class”; Subsequently, this term was transferred by A. A. Zaliznyak to the description of the coordination system of the modern Russian language.

• Kuznetsov P.S. Japhetic theory. - M., 1932.
• Kuznetsov P. S. At the origins of Russian grammatical thought. - M., 1958.
• Kuznetsov P.S. Sketches of the historical morphology of the Russian language. - M., 1959.
• Kuznetsov P.S. Russian dialectology. - M., 1960.
• Kuznetsov P.S. On the principles of studying grammar. - M., 1961.
• Borkovsky, V.I., Kuznetsov, P.S. Historical Grammar of the Russian Language: Morphology. - M., 1965.

• Gorshkova K.V. , Ivanov V.V. In memory of P. S. Kuznetsov // Moscow University Bulletin . Ser. 10. Philology. 1968. № 5;
• Ouspensky B. A. Peter Savvich Kuznetsov (1899-1968) // Questions of linguistics . 1968. № 3;
• Language and person: a collection of articles in the memory of Professor Peter Savvich Kuznetsov. M., 1970;
• Bulakhov M. G. East Slavic linguists: biobibliographic dictionary. T. 2. Minsk, 1977;
• Alpatov V.M.P.S. Kuznetsov (on the centenary of his birth) // News of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A series of literature and language . 1999. № 1;
• Alpatov V. М. Moscow linguistic / Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the Study and Protection of Cultural and Natural Heritage. - M .: Publishing house of the Institute of Foreign Languages, 2001. - p. 64-68. - 104 s. - ( Natural and cultural heritage of Moscow ). - 500 copies - ISBN 5-88966-028-4 .
• Berezin F. М. P. S. Kuznetsov // Domestic linguists of the 20th century Part 1. M., 2002.

• BDT article