Pavel Nikolaevich Medvedev was a Russian literary scholar. He was a professor, social activist, and friend of Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language...

, as well as of Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...

 and Fyodor Sologub

Fyodor Sologub

Fyodor Sologub was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose.-Early life:...

. Medvedev held several government posts in education and publishing after the 1917 revolution

October Revolution

The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

, publishing a great deal of his own writing on literary, sociological, and linguistic issues. Medvedev was arrested during the 1930s period of purges under the rule of Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

, and "disappeared" shortly after his arrest.

One of his works, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, was believed to be written by his "co-thinker" Bakhtin, using his name to escape censorship. This belief was raised during the 1970s in Russia but developed fully in Clark and Holoquist's English biography of Bakhtin of 1984. Now, it is mostly believed that the work was written by Medvedev although influenced by Bakhtin's ideas.