Yefim Karskiy

Yefim Fyodorovich Karskiy (Belarusian: Яўхім Фёдаравіч Карскі, Russian: Ефим Фёдорович Карский; Russian: Евфимий Феодорович Карский, older name form); (1 January 1861 (20 December 1860) – 29 April 1931) was a Belarusian-Russian linguist-Slavist, ethnographer and paleographer, founder of Belarusian linguistics, literary studies and paleography, a member of numerous scientific institutions, and author of more than 100 works on linguistics, ethnography, paleography and others.

Karskiy was described by his contemporaries as extremely industrious, accurate, self-organized, and reserved in behavior. He was acclaimed as a scientist of the highest integrity. Karskiy's input into contemporary Slavistics, especially into the Belarusian branch, was immense. The first significant revisions of Karskiy's views on the development of the Church Slavonic and Russian languages were proposed much later, by Viktor Vinogradov. One of the best known works of Karskiy is Belarusians.

Yefim Karskiy was born in Lasha (in Grodno Governorate, now Hrodna Voblast), to the family of teacher F. Novitskiy and Orthodox deacon’s daughter M. Novitskaya. Initially, he bore the family name of his mother, Novitskiy. With his family, he spent his childhood years in Navahrudak and Minsk regions of Belarus. He studied in Folk School (Russian: народное училище) at Yatra, (Navahrudak uyezd) during the 1870s, and in 1874 enrolled in the Minsk Ecclesiastical School, where he joined the Seminary. Around 1881 he became interested in ethnography, and left his ecclesiastical studies to join the Nezhin historical-philological institute. His first philological research paper was published in 1883 in the Russian Philological Courier.

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