Chistov Cyril

Chistov Cyril (1919‒2007) – ethnographer, folklorist.

1937‒1941 ‒ student of the Philological Faculty of the Leningrad State University (Chair of Folklore).

In 1941, he was volunteer at the guerilla battalion. September 1941 – May 1944 – in Nazi captivity. May ‒ December 1944 – in the regular Army.

1946‒1947 ‒ at the post-graduate courses of the Chair of Folklore, Philological Faculty of the Leningrad State University. His supervisor was M. K. Azadovsky.

1947–1951 ‒ Junior Researcher; 1951–1956 ‒ Senior Researcher of the Sector of Literature and Folk Creativity at the Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Karelian-Finnish Base of the Ac. of Sc. of the U.S.S.R. (Petrozavodsk). 1948–1955 ‒ Senior Teacher of the Chair of Russian Literature at the Historical and Philological Faculty of the Karelian Teachers-Training Institute (Petrozavodsk). 1956‒1960 ‒ Head of the Sector of Literature and Folk Creativity at the Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Karelian-Finnish Base of the Ac. of Sc. of the U.S.S.R.

1961‒1990 ‒ Head of the Department of Ethnography of Eastern Slavs at the Moscow and Leningrad branches of the Institute of Ethnography named after N. N. Miklukho-Maklay of the Ac. of Sc. of the U.S.S.R. Since 1991, he has been Main Researcher of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Ac. of Sc. In 1965‒1993, he was lecturer, Professor of the Chair of Ethnography and Anthropology of the Historical Faculty of the Leningrad/St. Petersburg State University.

Candidate Thesis: ‘Folk Poetess I. A. Fedosova’ (1951, Leningrad State Teachers-Training Institute). Doctor Thesis: ‘Russian Popular Social Utopian Legends of the Seventeenth – Ninenteenth Centuries’ (1967, Institute of Ethnography named after N. N. Miklukho-Maklay of the Ac. of Sc. of the U.S.S.R.).

Correspondent Member of the Department of History of the Ac. of Sc. of the U.S.S.R. in Ethnography (1981). Member of the Union of Writers of the U.S.S.R. (1954). In 1980‒1991, he was Chief Editor of the ‘Sovetskaya etnografiya’ Magazine (Soviet Ethnography).

Vice-President of the International Society of Researchers of Narrative Folklore (1974‒1986); Honourary Member of the Finnish-Ugoric Research Society (Finland, 1982); Honourary Member of the Austrian Ethnographic Society; Honourary Member of the Folklore Society of the Finnish Ac. of Sc. (1989)

Compositions

Kalevala ‒ a Great Epics of Karelian-Finnish People. Petrozavodsk, 1949. (in Rus.)
On the Collection of Folk Creativity: Memo. Petrozavodsk, 1949. 15 pp. (in Rus.)
On Some Problems of Folkloristics // Sovetskaya etnografiya, 1954, No 2, pp. 105-111. (in Rus.)
Folk Poetess I. A. Fedosova: Essay of Life and Creativity. Petrozavodsk, 1955. 376 pp. (in Rus.)
Lamentations // Russian Folk Poetic Creativity. Moscow-Leningrad, 1956, book 2, pp. 152-192. (in Rus.)
Legend of Belovodie // Trudy of the Karelian Branch of the Ac. of Sc. of the U.S.S.R. 1962, iss. 35, pp. 116-181 (in Rus.)
On the Issue of Principles of Classification of Gendres of Oral Folk Prose. Moscow, 1964. 10 pp. (in Rus.)
Russian Popular Social Utopian Legends of the Seventeenth – Nineteenth Centuries. Moscow, 1967. 341 с. (in Rus.)
Folklore and Ethnography // Sovetskaya etnografiya, 1968, No 5, pp. 3-12. (in Rus.)
National Sources of Social Utopian Ideas // Ideas of Socialism in Russian Classic Literature. Leningrad, 1969, pp. 23-55. (in Rus.)
Ethnic Unity, Ethnic Conscience and Some Problems of Spiritual Culture // Sovetskaya etnografiya, 1972, No 3, pp. 73-85. (in Rus.)
Specifics of Folklore in the Sphere of the Information Theory // Voprosy filosofii, 1972, No 6, pp. 108-118. (in Rus.)
Problems of Mapping of Rites and Ritual Folklore. Wedding Rite // Problems of Mapping in Language Studies and Ethnography. Leningrad, 1974, pp. 69-84. (in Rus.)
Alignment of the Level of Cultural Development of the Peoples of the U.S.S.R. // Contemporary Ethnic Processes in the U.S.S.R. Moscow, 1975, pp. 331-347. (in Rus.)
Spiritual Culture and the process of Ethnic Consolidation of the Peoples of the U.S.S.R. // Ibid., pp. 347-362. (in Rus.)
Folklore and Culture of Ethnos // Sovetskaya etnografiya, 1979, No 4, pp. 3-11. (in Rus.)
Russian Narrators of Karelia. Essays and Memories. Petrozavodsk, 1980. (in Rus.)
Popular Traditions and Folklore. Theoretical Essays. Leningrad, 1986. (in Rus.)
Irina Andreevna Fedosova: An Historical and Cultural Essay. Petrozavodsk, 1988. 335 pp. (in Rus.)
‘Eastern Slavic Ethnography’ by D. C. Zelenin // Zelenin D. C. Eastern Slavic Ethnography: Transl. from German. Moscow, 1991, pp. 427-451. (in Rus.)
From Memories on M. C. Azadovsky // Memories on M. C. Azadovsky. Irkutsk, 1996, pp. 59-78. (in Rus.)
Overcoming Slavery. Folklore and the Language of ‘Ostarbeiteren’in 1942‒1944. Moscow, 1998. (in Rus.)
Fliege, mein Briefchen, von Westen nach Osten. Auszüge aus Briefen russischer, ukrainischer und weissrussischer Zwangsarbeiterinnen und Zwangsarbeiter 1942‒1944., Bern-Frankfurt a. Main, 1998.
Der gute Zar und das ferne Land. Russische sozial-utopische Volkslegenden des 17.-19 Jahrhunderts. München, 1998 (German translation of Russian Popular Social Utopian Legends of the Seventeenth – Nineteenth Centuries, edit. Prof. D. Burkhardt).
Russian Popular Utopia (Genesis and Functions of Social and Utopian Legends). St. Petersburg, 2003. (in Rus.)
Folklore. Text. Tradition. Moscow, 2005. (in Rus.)

Bibliography

Cyril Vasilievich Chistov: Bibliographical Index / Introduction Т. G. Ivanova. Comp. by Yu. C. Chisrov. St. Petersburg, 2001. (in Rus.)

About him

Reshetov А.М., Okladnikova Е. А. By the 75th Anniversary of C. V. Chistov // KPK, 1995, iss. 2-3, pp. 268-273. (in Rus.)
Cyril Vasilievich Chistov: Materials for BioBibliography of Researchers. Seria of History. Iss. 20 / Comp. by L. А. Kalashnikova, М. Ya. Mel’tz. Introduction Т. А. Bernstam, Е. М. Meletinsky. Moscow, 1995. (in Rus.)
Bernstam Т. А. Master and Tradition (by C. V. Chistov Jubilee) // KPK, 2004, iss. 10-11, pp. 166-181. (in Rus.)

V. Kh.