THE
INSTITUTE OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND HISTORY
KOMI SCIENCE CENTRE, URAL DIVISION, RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Main directions of research
The Institute of Language, Literature and History, Komi Science Centre, Ural Division, Russian Academy of Sciences, is one of the largest centers of Finno-Ugristics and the leading research institution in the European North-East of Russia in the field of historical and philological sciences. The Institute conducts fundamental research in archaeology, ethnography, folklore, domestic history, linguistics and literary criticism. The scientists of the Institute do research in the following fields:
The study of archaeological cultures of the Stone Age, Metal Age and mediaeval ages of the European North-East of Russia;
Research on the main problems of political and socio-economic history and the history of culture, historical demography of the European North of Russia;
The study of general regularities and specific peculiarities of the development of traditional spiritual and material culture and way of life of the Komi and Russian population of the Republic of Komi and the Komi-Permians;
The study of regularities of the development of the Komi language and its history as well as the compilation of various dictionaries;
The study of peculiarities of Komi literature, folklore and musical art and the problems of their interaction with the cultures of other peoples.
The Institute of Language, Literature and History, Komi Science Centre, Ural Division, Russian Academy of Sciences, has made a great contribution to scholarship in priority directions of modern historical and philological science development which have general theoretical importance. Hence the developed problems are closely related to the needs of the Republic of Komi, to meeting the growing requirements in the study and teaching of Komi history and culture, the Komi language and its functional possibilities in realizing a new national-language policy of Russia. It is important to stress the continuity in the themes of research. New themes are based on previous research of the Institute of Language, Literature and History and are aimed at studying the key problems of the ancient and modern history, traditional culture and way of life, language, at widening and deepening the understanding of the set problems, and – in some cases – at reconsidering the former assessments by way of attracting new factual material.
In the 90-s the Institute fulfilled a number of large generalizing works that have great theoretical and practical importance. Among them is the scientific report “The History of the Komi Republic” (3960 pages; scientific advisers – A.N.Turubanov, Dr.Sci.(History), V.I.Chuprov, Dr.Sci.(History)), where a number of important problems of the political and socio-economic history of the Komi Republic are interpreted in a new way by using a great number of different sources (some of them introduced into science for the first time). This report shows the general regularities and regional peculiarities of the demographic processes, economic development, administrative-territorial division and nation-state building, social and spiritual development of the region from ancient times to nowadays; and an assessment of historical experience in the solution of important socio-economic, political and cultural problems of the region.
The unique “Historico-cultural atlas of the Republic of Komi” (scientific adviser – E.A.Savelyeva, Dr.Sci.(History), executive officers – L.N.Zherebtsov, Cand.Sci.(History), N.D.Konakov, Cand.Sci.(History), K.S.Korolev, Cand.Sci.(History) et al.) is the first compex atlas in the Russian Federation, showing the historico-cultural heritage of the peoples of the Komi Republic from the times of initial development of this territory till the present day. A block of maps is devoted to the history of religion in Komi (the activity of Stefan of Perm and other bishops of Perm, construction of monasteries, ecclesiastic-territorial structure etc.).
The collective monograph “Archaeology of the Republic of Komi” (Moscow, 1997) is the first fundamental work in archaeology of Komi that gives all main results of the development of material and spiritual culture of the ancient population of the north-east of European Russia in the epoch of primitive-communal system from the Ancient Stone Age (Palaeolithic) to the Late Mediaeval Ages (X-XIV centuries A.D.).
The work on a fundamental monographic description of the Komi-Zyryan dialects (it started in the 1930-s) has been finished. A monograph “The Vym dialect of the Komi language” by T.I.Zhilina, Cand.Sci.(Philology), was published, with rich material on the Vym dialect collected by the author since the 1950-s; it is a genuinely new scientific contribution. A brief sketch of the history of settlement in the Vym basin is included, the phonetic and morphological system of the dialect is described in detail, it also contains examples of the Vym speech and a dictionary with the vocabulary in Upper-Vym pronunciation, taking into account the peculiarity of dialectal semantics. This series of monographs is the first in Russian Finno-Ugristics.
The themes of scientific research have been widened, and they have attained new perspectives and directions that are of priority importance for contemporary science. . In particular, historical demography is a new independent direction in the scientific research in the republic. A large series of monographs, booklets and other publications of I.L.Zherebtsov, Dr.Sci.(History), are devoted, for the first time in science, to the demographic development of a vast region – the Komi region – during a considerably long period – the thousand years of existence of the Komi people. His work also establishes a relation between the climatic changes and the demographic development. Zherebtsov’s work is highly estimated by both russian and foreign scientists, and for one of his publications, he was awarded a prize of the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research.
The number of published works has increased. Practically all scientific results of the scientists of the Institute of Language, Literature and History are immediately introduced to the scientific community by way of publications, they become accessible to the public at large, all this being evidence of good organization and planning of scientificresearch and publishing, the ability to properly assess the requirements of scientific circles, as well as those in the fields of education, culture, and the public sphere, and to address them through different publications.
The publication of popularscientific literature and text-books is of major importance and aims at providing popularization of scientific knowledge and putting into practice the scientific achievements and their use in the teaching process in secondary and higher education. For example, such books are “The History of the Komi Republic: popular-scientific sketches”, “Entertaining facts of the History and Culture of the Komi Republic”, text-books and autodidactic text-books on Komi language etc.
The experience that has accumulated by publishing scientific works has enabled the Institute to go one step further – to prepare encyclopaedic publications (“The Komi language”, “Komi Mythology”, “The Republic of Komi”).