Nevsky Aleksander

Nevsky Aleksander (1898–1980) – historian of religion.

In 1917, he entered the Philosophical Department of the Historical and Philological Faculty of the Moscow State University. In 1918-1924, he worked as a school teacher. In 1924, he entered the Briusov High Literary-Artistic Institute. Soon, he transferred to the East Slavic Cycle of the Ethnographical Department of the Geographical Faculty of the Leningrad State University. In 1929, not finishing the course, he went to work at the State Academy of the History of Material Culture as Researcher of the 2nd rank (in ethnography). In 1932, he started to work at the Museum of the History of Religion on the invitation of its first Direcor V. G. Bogoraz. He was Secretary of the Section of Studying Religious Beliefs of the Peoples of the U.S.S.R., under the leadership of N. M. Matorin. In parallel, he taught the history of religion of the peoples of the U.S.S.R. at the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History, and at the Krupskaya Leningrad Teachers-Training University.

On August 26, 1936, he was arrested in the frames of the affair of the ‘counter-revolutionary group of N. M. Matorin’. He was sentenced to the encampment. He got freedom under the conditions in 1944; rehabilitated on May 7th, 1955. In 1958, he returned from Inta (Komi A.S.S.R.) to Leningrad, and kept his research activity in the field of ethnography and history of religion. In his last years he worked as consultant at the Museum of the History of Religion. He described iconography of the icons of the Museum and made lectures on Christian iconography, and Old Calendar.

Compositions

Program for Studying the Common-Day Orthodoxy: Program-Instruction for Specialists in Local History. (together with N. М. Matorin). Leningrad, 1930. (in Rus.)
The Work of the Group for Studying Cults at the State Academy of the History of Material Culture // Soobshcheniya of the State Academy of the History of Material Culture. 1931, No 11/12. (in Rus.)
Section on Studying Religious Beliefs of the Peoples of the U.S.S.R. at the Museum of the History of Religion of the Ac. of Sc. of the U.S.S.R. // Sovetskaya etnografiya. 1934, No 3. (in Rus.)
Icon in the Old Common Life, in the Practice of Icon Painters, and in the Contemporary Perception // Art and Religion: Collection of Articles. Leningrad , State Academy of the History of Material Culture, 1979. (in Rus.)
Common Days and Festivals of the Old Russia: Old Calendar. Leningrad, State Academy of the History of Material Culture, 1990. (in Rus.)

About him

Shilov L. А. Nevsky Aleksander Arsenievich // Personnel of the Russian National Library – Actors of Science and Culture: Biographical Lexicon, in 3 vol. St. Petersburg, 1995. (in Rus.)
Malofeevskaya L. N. They Called Us Enemies… Syktyvkar, 2008, pp. 90-316. (in Rus.)
Shakhnovich М. М., Chumakova Т. V. N. М. Matorin and His Program of Studying Popular Religion // Religiovedenie. No 4, 2012, pp. 191-202. (in Rus.)
Shakhnovich М. М., Chumakova Т. V. Ideology and Research: Studying Religion in the Epoch of Cultural Revolution in the U.S.S.R. St. Petersburg, Nauka Publishing House, 2016. (in Rus.)

M. Sh.