Iosif Goshkevich

Iosif Antonovich Goshkevich was a Russian diplomat and Orientalist of Belarusian descent. He graduated from the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy in 1839 and served in the Russian clerical legation in Beijing from 1839 to 1848. From 1853 to 1855, he worked as an interpreter for the Chinese language in Yefim Putyatin's embassy in Japan. Goshkevich then served in Asiatic department of Russian MFA from 1856 to 1858. Along with a Japanese co-author, Goshkevich compiled the first Japanese-Russian dictionary, which was published in Saint Petersburg in 1857. Goshkevich also became the first Russian diplomatic representative in Japan, serving from 1858 to 1865. He wrote several works about China, Japan and the peculiarities of Japanese and Chinese languages.