A new post is available at The CESS blog by Elena Okladnikova of Herzen University (Translated by Richard Bland of University of Oregon), Vera Zaporozhskaya – Scholar of Siberia
Editor’s introduction:
This special blog post was translated and shared with us by Dr. Richard Bland, currently a Research Analyst the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History, who has translated a wide variety of volumes and materials related to Russian and Soviet archeology, including the biography of Aleksei P. Okladnikov, well-known archeologist of Soviet Siberia. The material presented here was written by Dr. Elena Okladnikova, the daughter of Okladnikov and herself a Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia in St. Petersburg.
This blog presents an excerpt of Okladnikova’s original biographical article “V.D. Zaporozhskaya: Scholar of Siberia: The Gendered Aspect of a Personal History” – the original Russian version was published in 2017 in Women in Russian Society 3 (84): 80-92, and was translated by R. Bland in 2019. That full text details the professional biography of Vera Dmitrievna Zaporozhskaya, the wife of Okladnikov, and mother of Okladnikova. Zaporozhskaya was herself a prolific archeological researcher, scientific artist, and photographer, who documented many Russian archeological expeditions in Siberia and Central Asia in the 1930s and 1940s, and who provided illustrations and design for the many volumes published on those projects (several of which are listed here below). It is important to recognize that while certain scholars were credited for those works, in fact these are the efforts of teams of talented individuals.
