Dobrovolskii, Vladimir Nikolaevich

Dobrovol’skii, Vladimir Nikolaevich 

Born July 30, 1856, in the village of Krasnosvetskoe, now in the Pochinkovsk Raion, Smolensk Oblast; died May 7, 1920. Russian student of local lore, ethnologist, and folklorist.

In 1880, Dobrovol’skii graduated from Moscow University. He published the Smolensk Ethnologic Collection (issues 1-4, 1891-1903) about which V. I. Lenin made the well-known remark: “on the basis of this material one could write a superb study of the hopes and expectations of the people” (quoted from an article by VI. Bonch-Bruevich, “Lenin on Poetry,” in Na literaturnom postu, 1931, no. 4, p. 4). Dobrovol’skii compiled The Smolensk Oblast Dictionary (1914). His scholarly recording of gypsy folklore in Kiselev Gypsies (1908) is of great value.

REFERENCES

Dmitriev, V. V. N. Dobrovol’skii: Kratkii biograficheskii ocherk. Smolensk, 1930.
Sidel’nikov, V. “V. N. Dobrovol’skii-ethnograf i kraeved.” In Narodnoe poeticheskoe tvorchestvo Smolenskoi oblasti. Smolensk, 1954. Pages 5-16.