Samuil Borisovich Bernstein (Russian: Самуил Борисович Бернштейн; surname also transcribed as Bernshteyn; December 21 [O.S.
degree, with a dissertation on the Turkish influence in the language of the Bulgarian translations of the Thesauros, the collection of sermons of Damaskinos Stouditis.
At the time, few students in the USSR majored in West Slavic or South Slavic languages; to cure this perceived deficiency, the MSU was tasked by the then Minister of Education, Sergey Kaftanov, with the urgent creation of a Slavicist training program; Bernstein became one of the scholars entrusted with this project.
He became instrumental in the creation of the Section (kafedra) of Slavic Languages at the university's Department of Philology, hiring suitable staff and designing instructional materials.
[1] (Ironically, by the mid-1950s, a decade after the Section was created, Bernstein realized that Kaftanov's predictions had been wrong, as employment opportunities for Slavic majors failed to materialize.