Bondar Semen (1875–?) – government official and researcher of minority religious groups in Russia.
He graduated from the Poltava Theological Seminary, then, from the Moscow Theological Academy with the Ph.D. degree in Theology; later, he taught Russian and Church Slavonic languages at the Pereyaslavsk Theological School of the Poltava Province; from 1902 to 1917, he served in the Ministry of Domestic Affairs, at the Department of Spiritual Affairs of Foreign Confessions. The period of his biggest research activity falls on the years 1908-1916. In 1908-1911, B. worked under the leadership of A.N. Kharuzin, a prominent anthropologist who headed the Department of Spiritual Affairs of Foreign Confessions. It was then, that three of his major monographic studies were published: ‘Seventh Day Adventism’, ‘English Episcopal Church’, and ‘The Current State of Russian Baptism. A Note’. The first two of them were published in the series ‘Essays on Sectarian Studies, Published under the Editorship of A.N. Kharuzin, Director of the Department of Spiritual Affairs’ (Iss. I and Iss. II). Since 1915, B. was charged with the “scientific investigation of sectarian and religious movements in Russia”. His work was associated with numerous business trips, the geography of which included the provinces of Central and Southern Russia, and the Transcaucasia. The result of those trips was the publication of a new series of studies in 1916: ‘The Mennonite Sect in Russia (in Connection with the History of German Colonization in Southern Russia). A Sketch’ and ‘The Sect of Khlysty, the Chalopoutes, Spiritual Christians, the Old and New Israel, and the Sabbathians and Judaizers. A Brief Sketch’. Both books contained an abundance of factual and statistical material and could be characterized with the author's objective and impartial approach to the subject of his research, which is why they did not lose their relevance for a modern researcher of the diversity of religious life in Russia in the early twentieth century.