In the 1927-1928 academic year, at the Ethnographic Department of the Geography Faculty of the Leningrad State University, after the death of L. Ya.Sternberg, B. (1865-1936) started his lecture course ‘Evolution of Religious Beliefs’. In that course he relied on his field observations, used material published in his book about the religion of Chukchi (not published yet in Russian) and in the works ‘Einstein and Religion’, ‘Christianity in the Light of Ethnography’, ‘The Dissemination of Culture on the Earth. Basics of Ethnography’, ‘On the Issue of the Graphic Method of Analyzing Elements in Ethnography and Ethnogeography’, etc. The lectures have preserved the B.’s manner of speech; they are acute polemical: he argues with Russian and foreign researchers, including L.Ya. Sternberg. B. was an expert in fiction, he was a writer and poet himself; therefore, at his lectures he quoted poetry, gave examples from the works of Russian and foreign authors.