Pavel Shejn

Pavel Vasilievich Shejn (Russian: Павел Васильевич Шейн, Belarusian: Павел Васілевіч Шэйн; 1826, Mogilev – 1900, Riga) was a major Russian and Belarusian ethnographer and folklorist of Jewish origin. A prolific collector of folklore himself, Shejn was equally notable for organizing and encouraging a vast network of amateur folklorists.

Pavel Shejn

Pavel Shejn was born a son of a Jewish merchant in Mogilev. Due to poor health he was often unable to attend school and studied on his own. As a teenager, he studied in a Lutheran school in Moscow, and himself converted to Lutheranism. Later in life he was for a some time a teacher at the school organized by Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana. Despite the lack of formal training in philology, Shejn was an influential scholar, and his three-volume publication of Belarusian folklore remains one of the most important collections in the field.[1]