Pypin, Aleksandr Nikolaevich

Born Mar. 25 (Apr. 6), 1833, in Saratov; died Nov. 26 (Dec. 9), 1904, in St. Petersburg. Russian scholar, literary historian, and ethnologist. Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1898).

The son of a member of the gentry, Pypin graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1853. In 1863 he became a staff member of the journal Sovremennik (The Contemporary), and beginning in 1867 of the journal Vestnik Evropy (Messenger of Europe). Early in life, Pypin was influenced by the ideas of N. G. Chernyshevskii, his cousin; he later advocated moderately liberal, Enlightenment views. As a representative of the school of cultural history, he was interested in literature only as it related to the history of social thought. He wrote the fundamental works A History of Russian Literature (4th ed., vols. 1–4, 1911–13), A History of Russian Ethnology (vols. 1–4, 1890–92), and A History of Slavic Literatures (2nd ed., vols. 1–2, 1879–81, with V. D. Spasovich). These works contain a wealth of factual material, often completely original.

Pypin made a significant scholarly contribution to the study of the Old Russian tale, Freemasonry, and the literary and social movement in Russia during the first half of the 19th century.