Lev Oshanin (anthropologist)
soviet professor, medical doctor, and anthropologist (1884–1962)
Lev Vasilyevich Oshanin (Russian: Лев Васи́льевич Оша́нин; 9 March 1884 – 9 January 1962) was a Soviet professor, medical doctor, anthropologist, and founder of the department of anthropology at National University of Uzbekistan in Tashkent. Oshanin was most notable for his anthropological work in Central Asia.
Life
Lev Oshanin was the son of Vasily Oshanin, a noted scientist and explorer of Central Asia. Oshanin was trained as a medical doctor and participated in the First World War. He later worked in hospitals in the city of Tashkent in what is now Uzbekistan. Oshanin also practiced anthropology and was one of the few anthropologists in Central Asia. In 1930 he gained a position at Tashkent University and went on to found the university’s Department of Anthropology, which he chaired until his death in 1962.
Oshanin was notable in the world of anthropology because of his extensive work in Soviet Central Asia. He traveled widely in the region and conducted numerous anthropological studies of various ethnic groups in the most remote corners of Central Asia. In 1926 Oshanin was commissioned by the Soviet government to prepare a study of the "daily life and anthropological type of Uzbek women." Oshanin's research team interviewed and physically examined several hundred Uzbek women from Tashkent.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4340766. VIAF identifies the subject as 112155380. The Library of Congress control number is n85237944. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1884, 1962, 1930 and 1926.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lev Oshanin (anthropologist)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.