Dmitry Likhachov

Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachov (Russian: Дми́трий Серге́евич Лихачёв, also Dmitri Likhachev or Likhachyov; November 28 [O.S. November 15] 1906 in St. Petersburg – September 30, 1999 in St. Petersburg) was an outstanding Soviet Russian scholar who was considered the world's foremost expert in Old Russian language and literature. He has been revered as "the last of old St Petersburgers", "a guardian of national culture", and "Russia's conscience".

Life and career

Dmitry Likhachyov’s personality is symbolic of Russian culture of the 20th century. He was an intellectual who survived a Soviet labor camp; one of Russia’s most outstanding scientists and a notable public figure, who managed to preserve his moral values and strength of mind throughout his life.

Dmitry Likhachyov was born in Saint Petersburg. From his early childhood, he was passionate about literature, even though his parents did not approve of this interest.

In 1923, at only 16 years old, Likhachyov entered the Leningrad State University in the Department of Linguistics and Literature. He attended Roman-Germanic and Slavic-Russian sections at the same time, undertaking two diplomas. At the university, young Likhachyov met many outstanding scientists and developed his own way of thinking. In 1928, at the end of his studies, Likhachyov was arrested and accused of being a member of the students’ club “Cosmic Academy of Science,” which was simply a playful name for a group of like-minded youths. Shortly before his arrest, Dmitry Likhachyov had presented a short report, in which, either jokingly or seriously, he claimed that the new spelling rules were “demonic” and worse than the old ones. This document was used as proof of his “counter-revolutionary” ideas. After nine months in jail, the young scientist was unlawfully exiled without trial and spent five years in the USSR’s largest labor camp, situated on the Solovetsky Islands.

At the camp, hard work, poor living conditions and illness dramatically damaged Likhachyov’s health, but at least he survived. On the Solovetsky Islands he met both exiled Russian intellectuals and real criminals, who happened to save his life. As Dmitry Likhachyov said many years later, “At the Solovki I understood that every person is a person.”

Whilst on the islands, for some period of time Dmitry Likhachyov worked as a member of the Criminological Cabinet, organizing a labor colony for teenagers and saving them from death caused by hunger, drugs and cold. From 1931, Likhachyov was a worker on the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal until his release.

Dmitry Likhachyov’s first scientific article, “Card Games of Criminals,” was written in the camp. He didn’t play cards himself, but was a keen observer. He also gathered much material about the languages of thieves and later published articles and a book about thieves’ slang and customs. Having returned to Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Likhachyov worked for five years as a proofreader in the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences. In 1936, thanks to petitions by the president of the Academy of Sciences, Aleksandr Karpinsky, Dmitry Likhachyov’s criminal record was cleared. In 1938 the talented scientist was noticed and invited to the Department of Old Russian Literature of the Institute of Russian Literature (known as Pushkin’s House). Dmitry Likhachyov worked here until the end of his life.

Old Russian literature, which at that time did not receive much academic attention, became the main scientific interest of Dmitry Likhachyov who, by the beginning of the 1940s, was one of the most renowned specialists in this sphere. In 1941 Likhachyov presented his thesis “Novgorod Annalistic Corpus of the 12th Century.”

World War II brought new trials. Likhachyov, together with his wife and twin daughters, survived the horrors of the Siege of Leningrad. He described his experience in a story, full of harsh details, exposing different types of people and their heroic or appalling behavior when faced with starvation and death. In 1942, completely exhausted by hunger and cold, Dmitry Likhachyov started to gather materials on medieval poetry and soon published the book Defense of the Old Russian Cities. In 1943 Likhachyov and his entire family were exiled to Kazan, supposedly because of the "connection with the Solovetsky Camp." But by the end of the war they were back in Leningrad.

In 1947 Dmitry Likhachyov received his Doctor of Philology, having presented his thesis "Essays on the History of Annalistic Literary Forms of the 11th-16th Centuries." Three years later he became a professor at the Leningrad State University. From 1953 he was a corresponding member and from 1970 - a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Dmitry Likhachyov’s conquering of the scientific world was definitely a triumphant one.

1950 marked the publication of Likhachyov’s two-volume edition containing unique, important literary works translated into the modern Russian language: “The Primary Chronicle,” a history of the Kiev Rus in the 9th and 11th centuries and “The Tale of Igor's Campaign,” based on a failed raid by the Prince of Novgorod-Severask against the Cumans in 1185.

Dmitry Likhachyov was not a scientist detached from real life. From the 1950s he began a campaign to save the wooden temples of the Russian North and preserve the historical look of

Russian cities. He helped found the museums of Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Pasternak. In the 1960s Likhachyov was one of the initiators of the movement for the protection of historical monuments, libraries and archives. Thanks to Likhachyov many monuments were saved, including Marina Tsvetaeva’s flat in Moscow, the Nevsky Prospect, which was supposed to be turned into a shopping street and Aleksandr’s Garden. In the 1980s he headed the Soviet (later renamed into Russian) Cultural Fund, supporting the process of the Orthodox Church’s reclaiming of its temples, formerly appropriated by the Soviet government. The scientist also participated in the preservation of national minorities in danger of dying out while aiding the return to Russia of emigrated public and cultural figures.

In 1975 Likhachyov was one of the members of the Academy of Sciences who refused to sign a letter requesting the expulsion the famous scientist Andrey Sakharov from the Academy because of Sakharov’s public disapproval of the introduction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan.

Despite his busy social life, Likhachyov still spent a lot of time on scientific work. Focusing on Old Russian literature, he developed the concept of artistic time and space. In 1969 the researcher was awarded with the USSR State Prize for his work “Poetics of the Old Russian Literature.”

Dmitry Likhachov gained world recognition as a theorist of culture and as a publicist. In the 1980s he developed a concept that considered the problems of humanization and the reorientation of educational goals and ideas. The scientist viewed culture as a historical memory, as a process of accumulation, rather than consecutive changes. This was also the theoretical basis for Likhachov’s attention to ancient monuments, especially in architecture. Inspired by the works of Vladimir Vernadsky, Dmitry Likhachyov suggested the idea of a “homosphere”- a human sphere of the Earth. His original contribution to general science was also the development of a new discipline called the ecology of culture, which was defined as an essential sphere of human life.

One of the ideas of Likhachyov’s concept was the correlation between culture and nature. In his book “Poetics of the Gardens” (1982), park and garden art was for the first time considered as a semiotic reflection of major cultural and artistic styles and their corresponding ideologies.

Likhachyov thought about his life journey as a vertical movement, towards the heavenly home. The reflections of his experience as a person are written in the book “Reminiscences” (1995).

The last works by Dmitry Likhachyov gathered together his general ideas about his native country. The book “Thoughts About Russia,” completed in 1999, a few days before the author’s death, is devoted to Russia’s place in world history, its myths and its most characteristic features. The edition “Russian Culture” was published in 2000, after the writer’s death.

As a great scientist, Likhachyov was a foreign member of the Academies of Sciences of Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia and a corresponding member of the Austrian, American, British, Italian and Göttingen Academies. In 1984 the minor planet 2877 was named after Likhachyov.

Dmitry Likhachyov died on 30 September 1999. He was married to Zinaida Makarova, who devoted her entire life to her husband. They had twin daughters, Vera and Lyudmila.

Likhachov graduated in 1928 from the Leningrad University. In the same year, he was arrested for his speech deploring the Bolshevikreform of Russian orthography. Deported to the Solovki Special Purpose Camp, he spent 5 years studying the "criminal folklore" as he termed it. Likhachov returned to Leningrad unbroken, and started his spectacular scholarly career in the Pushkin House (as the Russian Literature Institute is known), which spanned more than 60 years and saw the publication of more than 500 scholarly works. Likhachov didn't stop his work even during the Siege of Leningrad. He believed that Russia was an integral and indivisible part of European civilization, contrary to "Euroasiatic" views of Russia popular with Lev Gumilev, Boris Rybakov, and many other contemporaries.

In 1953, Likhachov was admitted into the Soviet Academy of Sciences as a Corresponding Member. He defended Andrei Sakharov,Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and other dissidents during their persecution by Soviet authorities. In 1986, he was elected the first President of the Russian Cultural Fund. In his 1980s and 1990s, he became more of a public figure, serving as an informal advisor to St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak and President Boris Yeltsin. In October 1993, he signed the Letter of Forty-Two. In the same year, he became the first person to be named an Honorary Citizen of St Petersburg. He also presided over the commission set up to prepare for Alexander Pushkin's bicentenary. A year before his death, Likhachov became the very first recipient of the reinstatedOrder of St. Andrew. The Likhachov Philanthropic Fund was set up by his daughter and George Soros in 2001.

Legacy

A minor planet 2877 Likhachev discovered in 1969 by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh is named after him.

Honours

• 1952 - Stalin Prize
• 1963 - Elected to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
• 1964 - Honorary doctorate of the Torun University
• 1964 - Honorary doctorate of the Oxford University
• 1966 - Order of the Red Banner of Labour
• 1968 - Elected to the Austrian Academy of Sciences
• 1970 - Elected to the Soviet Academy of Sciences
• 1964 - Honorary doctorate of the Edinburgh University
• 1969 - USSR State Prize
• 1972 - Elected to the Serbian Academy of Sciences
• 1973 - Elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• 1983 - Honorary doctorate of the University of Bordeaux
• 1983 - Honorary doctorate of the University of Zurich
• 1985 - Honorary doctorate of the Budapest University
• 1986 - Hero of Socialist Labour
• 1987 - Elected to the Lincean Academy
• 1988 - Honorary doctorate of the University of Göttingen
• 1991 - Honorary doctorate of the Charles University
• 1992 - Honorary doctorate of the University of Siena
• 1993 - Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1993 - Lomonosov Gold Medal
• 1993 - Honorary Citizen of his native city, Saint Petersburg
• 1995 - Elected to the American Philosophical Society
• 1998 - Order of St. Andrew
• 2000 - Russian State Prize

Medals

• Medal "For the Defence of Leningrad"
• Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945"
• Medal "For Labour Valour"
• Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary since the Birth of Vladimir Il'ich Lenin"
• Jubilee Medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945"
• Jubilee Medal "Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945"
• Jubilee Medal "Forty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945"
• Medal "Veteran of Labour"

Main Works

• 1942 - Defense of Old Russian Towns
• 1945 - National Self-Consciousness of Ancient Rus
• 1947 - Russian Chronicles and Their Cultural Significance
• 1950 - The Tale of Bygone Years (2 volumes)
• 1952 - Genesis of the Tale of Igor's Campaign
• 1955 - The Lay of Igor's Campaign
• 1958 - Human Dimension of the Old Russian Literature
• 1962 - Russian Culture at the Times of Andrei Rublev and Epiphanius the Wise
• 1962 - Textology
• 1967 - Poetics of Old Russian Literature
• 1971 - Artistic Heritage of Ancient Rus in Our Time
• 1973 - Development of Old Russian Literature: the Epochs and Styles
• 1975 - Great Heritage: Classic Works of Old Russian Literature
• 1976 - Laughing World of Ancient Rus
• 1978 - The Tale of Igor's Campaign and Culture of That Time
• 1981 - Russian Notes
• 1981 - Literature - Reality - Literature
• 1982 - The Poetry of Gardens
• 1985 - Letters about the Kind and Beautiful
• 1987 - Selected Works, in Three Volumes
• 1989 - From the Note-Books of Various Years
• 1992 - Russian Art from the Antiquity to Avantgarde
• 1995 - Reminiscences
• 1996 - Essays on the Philosophy of Artistic Creativity
• 1997 - Articles on Intelligentsia
• 1999 - Meditations about Russia
• 2000 - Essays on Russian Culture