Afanasy Selishchev

Afanasiy Matveyevich Selishchev (; 23 January 1886 – 6 December 1942) was a prominent Russian linguist, specialist in the field of Slavic languages and Slavic (including Bulgarian) dialectology. He was a corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Biography Afanasiy Selishchev was born on 11/23 January 1886 in the village of Volovo, Oryol Governorate. He graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology at Kazan University in 1911. In the selected works of Selishchev published in 1968, the Macedonian dialects are presented as part of the Bulgarian linguistic territory. He was a member of the Macedonian Scientific Institute in Sofia.

Selishchev authored the major work "Dialectological Sketch of Siberia" (Issue 1, 1921), and sociolinguistic works on changes in the Russian language after the October Revolution: "The Language of the Revolutionary Era" (1928; the work was quickly suppressed due to quotes from Trotsky, Kamenev, and others; reprinted in 2003), and "On the Language of the Modern Village" (1939). His book "Old Church Slavonic Language" was published posthumously in two parts (1951–1952). It remains one of the best descriptions of the language of the oldest written monuments and serves as a fundamental textbook, reprinted in 2001 and 2006.

Major works

Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of Slavic Languages. Kazan, 1914, Issue 1, 123 pp. Sketches on Macedonian Dialectology. Kazan, 1918, Vol. 1, 284 pp. Dialectological Sketch of Siberia. Irkutsk, 1920, Issue 1, 297 pp. The Language of the Revolutionary Era: Observations on the Russian Language of Recent Years (1917–1926). Moscow, 1928, 248 pp. Polog and its Bulgarian Population: Historical, Ethnographic and Dialectological Sketches of Northwestern Macedonia. Sofia, 1929, 439 pp. Slavic Population in Albania. Sofia, 1931, 352 pp. Macedonian Dialectology and Serbian Linguists. Sofia, 1935, 101 pp. Slavic Linguistics. Vol. 1. West Slavic Languages: Textbook. Moscow, 1941, 468 pp. Old Church Slavonic Language. In 2 parts: Textbook. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1951, 1952 Part 1: Introduction. Phonetics. 1951, 336 pp. Part 2: Texts. Dictionary. Sketches of Morphology. 1951, 206 pp. Selected Works. Moscow, 1968.