Yury Nikolaevich Tynyanov (Russian: Ю́рий Никола́евич Тыня́нов, IPA: [ˈjʉrʲɪj nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ tɨˈnʲænəf]; October 18, 1894 – December 20, 1943) was a Soviet writer, literary critic, translator, scholar and screenwriter.

Born in a Jewish community in the Russian Empire in modern-day Latvia, he moved to Saint Petersburg where he completed his education.

Yury Nikolaevich Tynyanov was born on 18 October 1894 in Rezhitsa, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire - modern day Latvia.

[2] His father, Nikolai Arkadyevich Tynyanov, was a doctor while his mother, Sofya Borisovna Tynyanova (née Epshtein), was a co-owner of a tannery.

With his brother, Tynyanov lived primarily in Pskov when he was attending the school, returning to Rezhitsa during the holidays via train to see his mother and sister, Lydia.

[3] In 1916, he married Leah Abelevna Zilber, the elder sister of his friend and well-known Russian author Veniamin Kaverin.

[3] During his time in university, Tynyanov frequented the Pushkin seminar held by a venerable literary academic, Semyon Vengerov.

[8] In 1928, together with the linguist Roman Jakobson, he published a famous work titled Theses on Language, a predecessor to structuralism (but see Ferdinand de Saussure), which could be summarised in the following manner (from ref.

His other works included popular biographies of Alexander Pushkin and Wilhelm Küchelbecker and notable translations of Heinrich Heine and other authors.