Sergey Oldenburg

During the 1880s while at St. Petersburg University Oldenburg participated in the Scientific-Literary Association of Students, a brotherhood which shared liberal and radical ideals.

To publish newly found manuscripts, in 1897 Oldenburg launched an authoritative edition of Buddhist texts, Bibliotheca Buddhica, which continues to this day.

Oldenburg joined the liberal Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) in 1905; he served as a member of the State Council of Imperial Russia from 1912 to 1917.

[3] Although he was briefly imprisoned by the Cheka in 1919, Oldenburg served as permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences until 1929, when the Communist Party ousted hundreds of staff for resisting Bolshevization.

Oldenburg devoted the remainder of his life to administrating the Soviet Institute of Oriental Studies, whose antecedent (the Asian Museum) he had directed since 1916.