Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich was a Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 politician, historian and writer, Old Bolshevik

Old Bolshevik

Old Bolshevik , also Old Bolshevik Guard or Old Party Guard, was an unofficial designation for those who were members of the Bolshevik party before the Russian Revolution of 1917, many of whom were either tried and executed by the NKVD during Stalin era purges or died under suspicious...

 (since 1895). He was a brother of Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich.

One of Bonch-Bruyevich's research interests were Russia's dissenting religious minorities ("sects"), which were usually persecuted to various extent by both the established Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...

 and the Tsarist government. In the late 1890s, he collaborated with Vladimir Chertkov

Vladimir Chertkov

Vladimir Grigoryevich Chertkov was a Russian writer and secretary of Leo Tolstoy, and one of the most prominent Tolstoyans.-Family and childhood:...

 and Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

, in particular in the arrangement of the Doukhobor

Doukhobor

The Doukhobors or Dukhobors , earlierDukhobortsy are a group of Russian origin.The Doukhobors were one of the sects - later defined as a religious philosophy, ethnic group, social movement, or simply a "way of life" - known generically as Spiritual Christianity. The origin of the Doukhobors is...

s' emigration to Canada in 1899. Bonch-Bruyevich sailed with the Doukhobors, and spent a year with them in Canada. During that time, he was able to record much of their orally transmitted tradition, in particular the Doukhobor "psalms" (hymn

Hymn

A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...

s). He published them later (1909) as
"The Doukhobor Book of Life" .

In the Soviet period, Bonch-Bruyevich's interest in religion earned him the position of the Director of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR

Russian Academy of Sciences

The Russian Academy of Sciences consists of the national academy of Russia and a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation as well as auxiliary scientific and social units like libraries, publishers and hospitals....

 in Leningrad

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 (1945-1955).

In the Soviet Union, Bonch-Bruyevich was best known as the author of a canonical Soviet book about Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

, whom Bonch-Bruyevich served as secretary in the years immediately following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.