Bodianskii, Osip

Born Nov. 3 (15), 1808, in the town of Varva, in Lokhvitskii District, Poltava Province; died Sept. 6 (18), 1877, in Moscow. Russian philologist and historian. One of the first Slavists in Russia.

Bodianskii was the son of a church official. In 1834 he graduated from Moscow University. He associated with the circle of N. V. Stankevich, and he studied under N. I. Nadezhdin and M. T. Kachenovskii. In 1837 he defended his master’s thesis, On the Folk Poetry of Slavic Tribes. From 1837 to 1842, Bodianskii worked under the guidance of the Czech Slavist P. Safarik, and from 1842 to 1868 he was a professor at Moscow University. Bodianskii’s doctoral dissertation, Concerning the Time of Origin of Slavic Writing Systems (1855), is still important as a reference work. Together with the first Russian Slavists, 1.1. Sreznevskii, P. I. Preis, and V. I. Grigorovich, Bodianskii laid the foundation for the study of the history, language, and culture of the Slavic peoples. He led the way in the comparative study of Slavic dialects and comparative Slavic grammar. He was close to the Slavophiles and had friendly relations with T. G. Shevchenko.