Alexander Vostokov

Who was Alexander Vostokov?

Alexander Khristoforovich Vostokov was one of the first Russian philologists.

He was born in Arensburg, Governorate of Livonia, and studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts. As a natural son of Baron von Osten-Sacken, he received the name Osteneck, which he later chose to render into Russian as Vostokov. He liked to experiment with language and, in one of his poems, introduced the female name Svetlana, which would gain popularity through Zhukovsky's eponymous ballad.

During his lifetime, Vostokov was known as a poet and translator, but it is his innovative studies of versification and comparative Slavonic grammars which proved most influential. In 1815, he joined the staff of the Imperial Public Library, where he discovered the most ancient dated book written in Slavonic vernacular, the so-called Ostromir Gospel. In 1841, Vostokov was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Vostokov's works on the Church Slavonic language were considered a high-water mark of Slavic studies until the appearance of Izmail Sreznevsky's comprehensive lexicon in 1893–1903 and garnered him the doctorates honoris causa from the Charles University and University of Tübingen.