Academician Dmitry Likhachev

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:41

An entire generation has already grown up that does not remember Dmitry Likhachev. But some people deserve to be remembered. In the life of this outstanding scientist and spiritual companion there were many instructive things. And for any thinking person it will not be superfluous to find out for himself who Likhachev Dmitry Sergeevich was, his brief biography is of interest.

Outstanding Russian thinker and scientist

There are not so many people in the socio-political life of the Russian society, whose importance clearly rises above momentary opportunistic passions. Personalities who would be recognized as a moral authority, if not by all, then by a clear majority.

However, such people sometimes occur. One of them is Likhachev Dmitry Sergeevich, whose biography contains so much that it would be enough for a series of fascinating historical novels about Russia in the twentieth century. With all its catastrophes, wars and contradictions. The beginning of his life fell on the silver age of Russian culture. And he died a year before the third millennium. At the end of the dashing nineties. And yet he believed in the future of Russia.

Some facts from the life of an academician

Dmitry Likhachev was born in 1906 in St. Petersburg, in an intelligent family of modest means. He received a classical secondary education and continued his path to knowledge at the philological department of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Leningrad University. To his misfortune, a semi-underground circle functioned among the students, studying ancient Slavic philology. Dmitry Likhachev was also a member of it. His biography at this point sharply changes its direction. In 1928, he was arrested on the standard charge of anti-Soviet activities and soon ended up on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea.

A little later, Dmitry Likhachev was transferred to the construction of the White Sea Canal. He was released early in 1932.

After the Gulag

He went through the hell of Stalin's camps, but the years of imprisonment did not break the young man. After returning to Leningrad, Dmitry Likhachev was able to complete his education and even get his convictions removed. He devotes all his time and energy to scientific work. His research in the philological fields is often based on the experience gained in the camps. During the war, Dmitry Likhachev remained in besieged Leningrad. He does not stop researching ancient Russian chronicles during the blockade winter. One of his works is devoted to the history of the defense of Russian cities in the era of the Mongol-Tatar invasion. Evacuated from the city along the Road of Life only in the summer of 1942. Continues to work in Kazan.

His works in the field of history and philology gradually begin to gain more and more importance and authority in the Russian intellectual space.

Continent of Russian culture

Dmitry Likhachev gained worldwide recognition as a result of extensive fundamental research in various areas of Russian culture and philology from early Slavic writing to the present day. Perhaps, no one before him described and explored the thousand-year-old content of Russian and Slavic culture and spirituality in such a comprehensive way. Its inextricable connection with the world's cultural and intellectual peaks. The indisputable merit of Academician Likhachev also lies in the fact that for a long time he concentrated and coordinated scientific forces in the most important research areas.

And the once again St. Petersburg, former Leningrad University, among other things, will also be known for the fact that Academician Likhachev Dmitry Sergeevich once studied here and then conducted research and teaching activities for many years. His biography is inextricably intertwined with the fate of the famous university.

Community Service

No less significant than scientific, Dmitry Likhachev considered educational activities. For many decades, he gave all his strength and time to bring his thoughts and views to the broad masses of the people. In the second half of the eighties, a whole generation of those who today grew up on his programs on Central Televisionconstitutes the intellectual elite of Russian society. These programs were built in the format of free communication between an academician and a wide audience.

Until the last day, Dmitry Likhachev was engaged in publishing and editorial activities, personally reading and correcting the manuscripts of young scientists. He considered it obligatory for himself to answer all the numerous correspondence that sometimes came to him from the most remote corners of the country, from people who were not indifferent to the fate of Russia and Russian culture. It is significant that Dmitry Sergeevich was a categorical opponent of nationalism in any form. He denied conspiracy doctrines in understanding historical processes and did not recognize Russia's messianic role in the global history of human civilization.