Georgy Konstantinovich Danilov (Russian: Георгий Костантинович Данилов; 10 January 1897 – 29 July 1937) was a Soviet linguist, Africanist and polyglot.
Georgy Konstantinovich Danilov was born on 10 January 1897 in Chyhyryn, a city located in the Chigirinsky Uyezd of the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Cherkasy Oblast of central Ukraine).
[2] Danilov enrolled at Moscow University(ИФФ МУ,Faculty of engineering and physics) in 1916 but was immediately drafted into the Imperial Army and sent to the front during World War I for a period of two years.
[3] In 1922 he returned to Moscow, where he was assigned to the department of languages at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (or Коммунистический университет трудящихся Востока КУТВ).
In February 1931, Danilov became the assistant director of the linguistic Institute linked to the Наркомпрос (Народный комиссариат просвещения, the People's Commissariat for Enlightenment).
The social purpose of his work emerged from a linguistic study, done in Ukraine, entitled: Язык общественного класса (по данным говора мест.
[5] The main method to search for material and information consisted of a systematic investigation of many people of different ages, gender and social status.
The different uses of language in these classes introduce a new hierarchy in which poor peasants occupy the bottom of the ladder, as they use the archaic lexicon reduced to the terminology of agriculture.
In this classification, skilled workers and local cadres occupy a high place - they are bilingual, they use the Russian language of the October Revolution but they also speak Ukrainian.
The situation became more complicated, however, on 15 September 1930, when Danilov formally founded Jazikofront, a group of linguists belonging to the Communist Academy who rejected the Japhetic theory.
They felt that linguistics had to deal with present-day reality and it should concentrate on the relation between language, class and the proletariat consciousness to create a socialist society.
His bitter enemy was Yevgeny Polivanov, whom Danilov accused of adopting an anti-proletarian position because he defended Indo-European studies and labeled as a Trotskyist.