The Russian Biographical Dictionary (RBD, Russian: Русский биографический словарь) is a Russian-language biographical dictionary published by the Russian Historian Society edited by a collective with Alexander Polovtsov as the editor-in-chief. The dictionary was published in 25 volumes from 1896 to 1918 and considered as one of the most comprehensive Russian biographical sources for the 19th and early 20th century period.
Famous quotes containing the words russian, biographical and/or dictionary:
“In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness.... The expanses are so great that the little man hasn’t the resources to orient himself.... This is what I think about Russian suicides.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Biography, in its purer form, confined to the ended lives of the true and brave, may be held the fairest meed of human virtue—one given and received in entire disinterestedness—since neither can the biographer hope for acknowledgment from the subject, not the subject at all avail himself of the biographical distinction conferred.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The reputation of a man is like his shadow; it sometimes follows and sometimes precedes him, sometimes longer and sometimes shorter than his natural size.”
—French Proverb. Quoted in Dictionary of Similes, ed. Frank J. Wilstach (1916)