Nikolay Matorin

Who was Nikolay Matorin?

Nikolay Mikhaylovich Matorin was a Russian ethnographer and folklorist. He lectured at the Geographic Institute in Leningrad from 1924, becoming an Associate Professor in the Ethnographic Department there in 1928 and professor in 1930. He specialised in religious studies and by 1930 he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Committee for the Study of Ethnic Composition of USSR. After three years as Director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography he became Director of the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography when MAE was merged with the Institute for the Study of the Narodnosti of the USSR in 1933. While director of the MAE, he was among the founders of the Museum of the History of Religion.

He resisted the politicisation of Soviet sciences by Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr. He was finally arrested in 1935 and executed by fire squad in 1936.