Speransky, Mikhail [Сперанский, Михаил; Speranskij, Mixail], b 1 May 1863 in Moscow, d 12 April 1938 in Moscow. Russian Slavist, Byzantinist, and archeographer; corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (from 1902) and full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (from 1921). He graduated from Moscow University (PH D, 1899) and taught at the Nizhyn Historical-Philological Institute (1896–1906) and Moscow University (1907–23). He wrote numerous articles and reviews in the field of medieval East Slavic literature; book-length articles on Slavic apocryphal Gospels (his MA thesis, 1895), manuscripts at the Bezborodko Lyceum (1901), the South Russian (Ukrainian) song (1904), and cryptography in South Slavic and Rus’ literary monuments (1929); books on East Slavic translated collections of apothegms (1904) and Slavic relations in Russian literature (2 vols, 1903, 1905); numerous lithographed textbooks on the history of Russian literature (1896–1917); a history of Old Rus’ literature (1914; 3rd edn 1921); and a university textbook of Rus’ oral literature (1917; repr 1969). He also wrote several articles about Nikolai Gogol, one on Ivan Kotliarevsky’s Eneïda (Aeneid, 1902), and one on Ivan Kulzhynsky (1907).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]