He participated in the development of writing systems for the peoples of the Soviet Union and also designed a cyrillization system for Japanese language, which was officially accepted in the Soviet Union and is still the standard in modern Russia. He also translated the Kyrgyz national Epic of Manas into Russian. Polivanov is credited as the scholar who initiated the comparative study of Japanese pitch accent across dialects.[1]
In 1928–1929 he expressed disagreement with Nicholas Marr's Japhetic theory, which was promoted by the regime at the time. After this he was blackballed from all scholarly institutions in Moscow and Leningrad and until his arrest "was essentially in exile in Central Asia, where he accomplished fruitful work on the local languages."[2]
During the Great Purge, Polivanov was arrested on 16 August 1937 in Bishkek and was charged with spying for Japan. On 1 October, in the Butyrka prison, he requested in writing that the NKVD halt severe interrogation methods against him, arguing that they made him issue false statements that confused the investigation against him. On 25 January 1938, he was tried in a closed session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and pleaded not guilty. He was sentenced to death and executed by NKVD near Moscow. He was rehabilitated in 1963. In late October 2018, a memorial containing his name alongside over 6,000 others was erected at Kommunarka.[3]
^"Archived copy"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 5 December 2010. Retrieved 5 November 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) Uwano, Zendo. 2009. On the Reconstruction of
Japanese Accents. Talk given at the Research Centre for Japanese Language and Linguistics, University of Oxford
^Katerina Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1995: ISBN0-674-66336-5), p. 219.
