Nikolai Baskakov (linguist)
He created a systematization model of the Turkic language family (Baskakov's classification), and studied Turkic-Russian contacts in the 10-11th centuries CE.
The main area of Baskakov's scientific interests was linguistics, but he also studied folklore and ethnography of the Turkic peoples, and also was a musician and composer.
Baskakov was born in 1905 in Solvychegodsk in Vologda Governorate (now Arkhangelsk Oblast) in a large family of a district government official.
His father came from a family banished in the beginning of the 19th century from Saint Petersburg to the Vologda province, and mother was a daughter of an official and a teacher.
The Turkic origin of this surname is confirmed by the very root of the surname basqaq "the one who puts seal, a viceroy of the Khan of the Golden Horde", and by the heraldic data: a curved sword in the center and an image of a Tatar over the crest who is holding a red curved saber" (p. 245).
As a young student, in 1916, Baskakov met an old friend of his father's, Bessonov, a Russian dragoman or envoy to Jedda (then part of the Ottoman Empire).
While studying in a unified labor school reorganized from his gymnasium, Baskakov worked as an ordinary clerk, and as a draftsman in the public health department.
He naively entered in a questionnaire that he sympathized with "anarchists-collectivists" group that had just joined Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), and on the first interview was refused admittance.
In 1929 Baskakov graduated from the University with a degree in history, archeology, ethnography, languages, folklore and literature of Turkic peoples.
Baskakov was retained by the faculty of Turkic philology, with additional duties at the Central Ethnographical Museum, and continued expeditions to the Karakalpak ASSR, and Khorezm.
In 1934 Baskakov was appointed to the Russian SFSR Central Committee of New Alphabet (CCNA) and sent to Kazakhstan, Kirgizia and Oirot (present Mountain Altai) to study problems of "language construction" in the native schools.
In 1939-1940, Baskakov worked on country-wide transitioning of the Turkic peoples from the Arabic to a slew of quasi-Cyrillic alphabets, visiting Kazan, Ufa, Tashkent and Alma-Ata.
Living in Altai enabled Baskakov to collect rich material on dialects and folklore of Altaians across their land.
Baskakov actively joined in creation of lexicographical and grammatical works for poorly studied and totally unknown major Turkic languages.
First published in 1952, the Baskakov taxonomical classification, unlike the previous classifications built on limited number of linguistic attributes, accounted for grammatical system and lexical structure of the Turkic languages as a whole, coordinating formation of separate language groups with the history of their peoples.
Baskakov wrote a series of historical etymological works about the names of the Turkic peoples and tribes (Kypchaks, Kirghizes, Bashkirs, Kumans, Badjanks, Tuvinians, Khakases), edited epic publications of Turkic peoples (Altai heroic epos "Madai-kara", Khakass heroic epos "Altyn-Aryg").
Baskakov's position was that the Turkic world is not divided, but consists of living languages that develop into independent vernaculars.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the majority of Turkic peoples had their individuality, in addition to the territory each ethnos had its history, consciousness and self-name, culture, folklore, and language, some peoples had their own literary form, with rich old tradition of literature, and a system of their subordinated dialects, and the affinity among them is not dialectal, but linguistical.
