Vladimir Spirin

Vladimir Semionovich Spirin (Russian: Владимир Семёнович Спирин; 5 May 1929 – 17 May 2002) was a Russian philologist, sinologist, historian, primarily interested resided in classical Chinese philology and Chinese philosophy. Throughout his career he was a lecturer of Saint Petersburg State University, researcher at Saint Petersburg's branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg Russia, Candidate of Sciences (equiv. Ph.D.).

Biography Dr. Spirin graduated in 1952 from the East Asian Studies Department at the Saint Petersburg State University and started to work as a researcher at Saint Petersburg's (then Leningrad) branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he worked until his death. Since 1957, he had been a member of the research group that worked on description of Dunhuang manuscripts, preserved in Russia (other members were Dr. Lev Menshikov, S.A. Schcolyar, etc.) In the 1960s, during the time of the Cultural Revolution, he conducted studies in China for nine months. He defended his doctoral thesis (Candidate of Sciences, Philosophy) in 1970, under the title of "On Methodological Problems of Studying the Classic Chinese Philosophy: In Relation to the Analysis of Text Structures". Since 1977 and until 1990s, he taught the Classic Chinese Philosophy to philosophy students at the Saint Petersburg State University, as an invited lecturer.

His main area of research had been methodological problems of studying classic Chinese texts. He developed an original structural approach to the texts, and discovered various types of textological structures in the classic Chinese culture. His method of graphic description of textual structures, providing simplicity and easy visualization, according to some researchers, reminds graphic methods of logical description such as Lambert's lines or Eiler's circles, as well as the implementation of graphic description in thermodynamics by Clapeyron. Spirin's work strongly influenced the study of Chinese culture in Russia, especially the younger generation of sinologists, working in Moscow (based in Leningrad he was not in permanent direct contact with these researchers). For example, according to A. Kobzev, Spirin's structural semiotic approach was intensively used by A.Karapetiantz. Spirin also influenced such Russian researchers as A.Kobzev, A.Krushinsky, M.Isayeva, V.Dorofeeva-Lichtman, etc.