Lavrov Leonid (1909–1982) – ethnographer, specialist in Caucasian studies.
In 1928, after the Kuban’ Teachers-Training Institute, he entered the Geographical Faculty of the Leningrad State University (among his supervisors were A. N. Genko, I. I. Meshchaninov, N. I. Kareev); but in 1931, he was excluded ‘for hidden social origin’. In 1935, he graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History by correspondence. In 1936-1941, he worked at the Institute of Ethnography. In 1941-1942, he was in the Army; he was wounded in 1942; later, in 1942-1946, he taught at military schools of the Arkhangelsk, and Petrozavodsk Military Districts.
In 1946-1982, he worked at the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Ethnography of the Ac. of Sc. of the U.S.S.R.; in 1973-1982 – Head of the Sector of Ethnography of the Peoples of the Caucasus, Middle Asia and Kazakhstan. In 1957-1961, he was Head of the Sector of Ethnography of the Peoples of the Caucasus at the Institute of Ethnography in Moscow. Doctor in History (1957).
He was one of the founders of the national school of the Caucasian Studies. He wrote works on the issues of ethnogenesis, ethnical history of the peoples of the North Caucasus, dynamics of their resettlement, interrelations of the local cultures, contacts of peoples of the Caucasus and Middle Asia. He made numerous field research. He edited the volume ‘Peoples of the Caucasus’ in the series ‘Peoples of the World’ (vol. 1, 1960); he founded annual Caucasian-Middle-Asian Readings at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of Peter the Great (Kuntskkamera) of the Russian Ac. of Sc. (1976); since 1983 they are named after him.