Evgeny Polivanov - The tragedy of a genius under totalitarianism. linguist, polyglot, teacher, public figure
Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov (February 28 (March 12), 1891, Smolensk - January 25, 1938, Moscow Region) - Russian and Soviet linguist, orientalist and literary critic. One of the founders of OPOYAZ, a participant in the Civil War, in late 1917 - early 1918 - head of the Eastern Department of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR and one of two deputies of L. D. Trotsky, an employee of the Comintern, a professor at a number of universities, an active critic of Marrism. One of the founders of Soviet sociolinguistics and historical phonology, the creator of the original theory of language evolution, the author of many works on the languages of the East (in particular, the creator of the Russian transcription used today for the Japanese language) and Central Asia, the developer of methods for teaching the Russian language to non-Russians, a participant in language construction.
For E. D. Polivanov, applied principles in linguistics were a necessary step towards linguistic theory. Therefore, the solution of important theoretical problems for him always had an outlet in practice - linguistic pedagogy, language teaching methods and comparative grammar. The novelty of the language material, familiarity with little-studied languages made it possible for the first time to formulate provisions that have not lost their relevance even today.
V. G. Lartsev, author of the book “E. D. Polivanov: Pages of life and activity,” writes about this scientist: “With the extraordinary behavior, actions that surprised many, this amazing person so begged for the pages of the novel with his innate talent. It is not surprising that he became one of the heroes of the novel by V. A. Kaverin "The Brawler, or Evenings on Vasilyevsky Island" and the story "The Great Game".
In 1901, Eugene entered the Riga Alexander Gymnasium. In 1908, he graduated with a silver medal and entered St. Petersburg University in the verbal department of the Faculty of History and Philology.
Polivanov listened to Zelinsky and Platonov, Shakhmatov and Shcherba - many remarkable scientists. But Yevgeny Dmitrievich singled out one of them from the very beginning and remained his student until the end of his days. It was Ivan Aleksandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay, who at that time entered the seventh decade of his life.
After graduating from the university (1912), E. D. Polivanov received two invitations at once from the literary critic I. A. Shlyapkin and from Baudouin. Polivanov chose the Baudouin Chair comparative linguistics.
Polivanov is a representative of a special direction in Russian, and then
Soviet Orientalism: he, like N.I. Konrad, combined a philologist and a theoretical linguist.
Polivanov has been intensively working on his master's thesis for two years. In 1914, Polivanov became assistant professor of the Oriental Faculty in Japanese, although he also taught courses in Chinese.
Polivanov made his first trip to Japan in May 1914; funds for it were allocated by the Russian-Japanese society. Upon arrival in Nagasaki, the scientist, as the Japanese linguist Shichiro Murayama later found out, went to the fishing village of Mie. Studying the local dialect, which was largely different from the literary language, Yevgeny Dmitrievich spent most of the summer in the village. After Nagasaki, Polivanov went to Kyoto, the former capital of Japan, where he studied the Kyoto dialect.
At the end of his journey, Evgeny Dmitrievich visited Tokyo. As before, he studied local speech; in addition, speakers of various dialects could be met in the capital. In the period from October 5 to October 13, 1914, the scientist worked in a phonetic laboratory located at the Tokyo Imperial University. Polivanov communicated with Japanese linguists, and also met in Tokyo with two domestic Japanese scholars: O. O. Rozenberg and N. I. Konrad.
However, the funds received from the Russian-Japanese Society began to run out, and in late October - early November, Evgeny Dmitrievich returned to St. Petersburg, which had become Petrograd during this time. Until the spring, he was engaged in processing the received materials, passed the master's exams and began to plan his next trip to Japan. This time the funds were allocated by the Russian Committee for the study of the Middle and East Asia, which was headed at that time by Academician V. V. Radlov.
Before returning to Russia, Evgeny Dmitrievich once again visited Tokyo, where he continued to study the dialect of the natives of Kyoto, Nagasaki Prefecture (the scientist compiled a phonetic dictionary of one of the Nagasaki dialects for about 10,000 words) and the Ryukyu Islands (Naha dialect). In September, Polivanov left the capital. During this trip, he communicated not only with Rosenberg and Konrad, but also with the young Japanese scholar N. A. Nevsky.
In Petrograd, Polivanov, who had established himself with publications on Japanese studies, was invited to the position of Privatdozent in the Department of the Japanese Language (this was contrary to tradition - people who did not graduate from the faculty were not taken to this position). Evgeny Dmitrievich was invited by the dean of the Oriental Faculty - N. Ya. Marr. Polivanov taught various courses, paying special attention to the issues of phonetics and dialectology. The publication of expeditionary results began, and in 1917 the book "Psychophonetic Observations on Japanese Dialects" was published.
Thus, during his trips, Polivanov got acquainted with almost all the main Japanese dialect groups: northeastern (Aomori, Akita), eastern (Tokyo), western (Kyoto, Morogi), southern (Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Oita) and a separate group of dialects Ryukyu (Naha).
Polivanov's scientific legacy is enormous. Even if we talk only about published works so far, he managed to publish 28 books (including brochures), and the total number of works published during his lifetime reaches 140. The main works in the field of Japanese studies are:
Comparative phonetic sketch of the Japanese and Ryukyu languages. 1914
Materials on Japanese dialectology. The dialect of Mie Village, Nagasaki Prefecture, Nishi-Sonoka County. Texts and translation. 1915
Accentuation of Japanese adjectives with a disyllabic stem. 1917
Japanese language. 1931 and many more works.
It is also worth noting that the well-known transcription system for writing Japanese words in Cyrillic was also developed by Polivanov in 1917.
Polivanov, Evgeny Dmitrievich(1891–1938), Russian linguist. Born February 28 (March 12), 1891 in Smolensk. In 1912 he graduated from St. Petersburg University and the Practical Oriental Academy. In 1913-1921 he taught at the Oriental Faculty, then at the Faculty of Social Sciences of St. Petersburg University, from 1919 - Professor. In 1914–1916 he was on scientific missions in Japan. From 1917 he actively participated in revolutionary activity, in late 1917 - early 1918 he headed the Eastern Department of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. Being an outstanding polyglot, he successfully completed the government task of translating and publishing secret treaties. tsarist government with other states. Member of the Civil War, from 1919 a member of the Communist Party (membership was suspended in 1926 due to Polivanov's drug addiction), in 1921 he worked in the Comintern. In 1921–1926 he was a professor at the Central Asian University in Tashkent, and in 1926–1929 he headed the linguistic department of the Russian Association of Scientific Institutes of Social Sciences in Moscow. In 1929, he made a public presentation at the Communist Academy against N.Ya. Marr's "new doctrine of language", after which he was persecuted and was forced to leave for Central Asia again. Conducted scientific and pedagogical work in Samarkand (1929-1931), Tashkent (1931-1934), Frunze (now Bishkek) (1934-1937). In August 1937 he was arrested, declared a "Japanese spy" and shot in Moscow on January 25, 1938.
Polivanov is a linguist of a wide profile, he studied many languages, primarily Russian, Japanese, Uzbek, Dungan, etc., and a wide variety of problems of linguistics. A student of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, Polivanov retained his understanding of phonology as "psychophonetics". He dealt a lot with the problems of stress, in particular, back in the 1910s, for the first time in world science, he determined the nature of the Japanese stress. A general outline of phonology and stress in the languages of the world is contained in Polivanov's book Introduction to Linguistics for Oriental Studies Universities(1928; second volume Introductions remained unpublished and was lost). He first described a number of Japanese dialects.
Actively learning modern languages, Polivanov also sought to identify the patterns of historical changes in the language, developing the ideas of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay and (indirectly) N.V. Krushevsky and putting forward, in particular, the principle of saving sound efforts, further developed by R. Jacobson and A. Martinet . Strived to create general theory language development, which he called linguistic historiology, and developed a fragment of it - the theory of phonological convergences and divergences. At the same time, he also posed the problem (which still remains largely unresolved) of linguistic forecasting, of predicting the future development of languages.
Openly opposed to Marr, Polivanov made his own attempts to build a Marxist doctrine of language ( For Marxist Linguistics, 1931) and in this regard, he was one of the first to deal with issues of sociolinguistics, the relationship between intralinguistic and social factors in the development of language, relations between literary language and dialects, studied the changes in the Russian language after the revolution. Participated in writing and writing literary norms for the languages of the peoples of the USSR, especially the languages of Central Asia; his last work was the development of the Dungan alphabet, adopted shortly before the arrest and death of the scientist.
Polivanov was also engaged in poetics and was close to the literary critics of the Russian formal school. Corresponded with R. Jacobson, published in the publications of the Prague Linguistic Circle. At the end of his life, he compiled the second dictionary in the USSR after the dictionary of N.N. Durnovo linguistic terms, published only in 1991. Many of Polivanov's works were not published and have not been preserved.
Shortly before October 30, the day of the political prisoner in the USSR, I returned from a business trip to Tashkent, where the All-Union scientific and practical conference dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Professor Evgeny Polivanov, a brilliant Russian linguist.
And on that memorable evening, when on the dim, infernal Dzerzhinsky Square, Father Gleb Yakunin * served a memorial service for millions of victims of the totalitarian regime, when a memorial sign was opened in the park on Lubyanka, and the walls of the gloomy (but obviously frightened!) KGB buildings beat with an angry echo the words of Sergei Kovalev and Lev Razgon, Ales Adamovich, Yuri Karyakin and Sergei Stankevich, I lit my funeral candle near the Solovetsky stone.
Yevgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov does not have an "official" grave, it is unknown, because he was also executed by executioners with " with clean hands, with a cold head and a warm heart ”- in 1938. But now, like the millions of our fellow citizens killed by the cynical regime, Yevgeny Dmitrievich has found at least such a "conditional" monument. And he, too, was proclaimed eternal memory ...
A cold wind ruffled the fragile flame of our candles, as if the mortal breath of the Lubyanka iceberg buildings wanted to destroy them, to freeze them. But the flame of memory of the victims of the regime is now, I want to hope, we are reliably protected. For in this protection is the guarantee of our own freedom. And even life...
The life of Professor Polivanov was fantastic. His contribution to Russian and world linguistics is simply enormous. His merits are also very significant in the matter of language construction, in the creation of new alphabets for a number of the peoples of our country.
However, if the Slavic educator Methodius (he, together with his brother Cyril, created Slavic writing), already in the rank of archbishop, was persecuted by the German clergy and was thrown into prison for some time, then the educator of the new, “revolutionary” time, Evgeny Polivanov, was subjected to political defamation by scientific opponents, expulsion from leading scientific centers, but in the end was simply destroyed by his own compatriots in the years Stalinist repressions. History in many ways loves repetition, only often not at all in the form of a farce, as is commonly believed, but in a more cruel version.
I met one of the famous poets with the idea that the main commonality of poets is in their difference from each other: poetry is a mono-art, where fate, individuality are sometimes brought to an extreme. Professor Polivanov was such an individuality, taken to the extreme.
Wise and tenacious in word, Viktor Shklovsky, who knew Polivanov in his youth through his work in the famous OPOYAZ (Society for the Study of Poetic Language) together with V.A. Kaverin, O.M. Brikom, V.B. Tomashevsky, B.M. Eikhenbaum, V.M. Zhirmunsky, already in our time, spoke about Polivanov with an overflowing external paradox, but an absolutely accurate phrase:
“Polivanov was an ordinary man of genius. The most ordinary man of genius."
Polivanov, as it is customary to write in such cases, was the son of his era, a man full of revolutionary romanticism and honestly serving the regime that was established after the October 1917 coup.
His faith and loyalty are worthy of respect.
“I met the revolution as a labor revolution. It was the free, beloved work that I welcomed, which for me began to be drawn as useful precisely in a revolutionary situation.
Under these words, E.D. Polivanov could have signed dozens of domestic scientists who believed the Bolsheviks and accepted the revolution not only with their hearts, but also with their minds.
Was Polivanov really a unique person? One of the main domestic biographers of the scientist, alas, the late Professor V.G. Lartsev from Samarkand (the author of a book about Yevgeny Dmitrievich, published in a tiny edition in 1988), quite rightly noted that E.D. Polivanov, being primarily a linguist, was also engaged in pedagogy, ethnography, folklore, textual criticism, literary criticism, logic, psychology, sociology, history, statistics and other sciences (moreover, knowledge in these areas of knowledge, as well as knowledge of dozens of languages and dialects, of course , directly reflected on the numerous discoveries of E.D. Polivanov in linguistics, some of which are of world significance).
The uniqueness of the scientist, in addition to everything, lay in the degree of his involvement in the social life of the country, which went in parallel with his scientific research: the fulfillment of the most important task of Lenin, work under the leadership of Trotsky, the first people's commissar, close cooperation with the Comintern, and much more, as many gifted linguists speak about At that time they could not even think.
And what is the duel between Polivanov and Marrism worth? Selflessness bordering on recklessness, exceptional scientific objectivity and natural gift an inquisitive researcher was forced to openly and almost alone oppose the "proletcult" teachings of Academician N.Ya. Marr about language and at the same time against the emerging cult of Marr's personality in science!
And when in 1950, under the guise of a “free discussion about language” in the Pravda newspaper, a Kremlin mountaineer who wanted to become the Coryphaeus of All Sciences, irritated the “Arakcheev regime in linguistics” (by himself, by the way, in many respects generated) and itself “ new doctrine of language” N.Ya. Marr and his faithful followers, then in his criticism of this pseudo-scientific theory, Stalin ... repeated much of what Polivanov proved to the Marrists back in the late 1920s!
The amazing originality of Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov consisted in many other things.
For example, in his own literary activity as a poet and translator (he wrote interesting poems, as evidenced by the collection "Metaglosses", the poem "Lenin", was one of the first and most erudite translators of the Kyrgyz folk epic "Manas" into Russian).
Or in the peculiarities of his life, extremely ascetic, and sometimes with elements, as if borrowed from adventure novels.
Or, for example, in the degree of mastery of other languages: when the scientist arrived in Nukus, it took him only a month to learn the Karakalpak language and absolutely flawlessly read a report in it to the Karakalpak audience!
However, no matter how scary it is to talk about it, the fate of such a gifted person was not unique for the totalitarian regime, for the era of Stalinism, for he shared the bitter fate of many others. eminent figures domestic science: historians and literary critics, mathematicians and physicists, biologists and economists, thousands and thousands of outstanding researchers.
Polivanov was born on February 28 (March 12), 1891. On January 25, 1938, he was shot. Posthumous rehabilitation came to the scientist only in 1963.
Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin wrote the following lines about Polivanov:
“And E.D. Polivanov, and what he did, and his fate are extraordinary and should go down in the history of Russian science.
These words sound like an epitaph. But there is no grave on which a monument to E.D. Polivanov, and on it these lines of Kaverin are inscribed ...
Looking ahead, I want to say that despite any obstacles and opposition of the neo-Stalinists, neo-Marrists (resistance is not a myth, I know about it on my own personal experience, which almost became bitter ...), the truth nevertheless triumphs. And the legendary Professor Polivanov now occupies one of the most honorable places in the history of our philology (although his enormous contribution to science has not yet been fully appreciated and is not even fully known, and many manuscripts have disappeared into the bottomless cellars of the NKVD or destroyed by their owners). And I simply, by duty of conscience, am obliged to remember with the kindest word and name those Soviet scientists who contributed to the triumph of justice in relation to Evgeny Dmitrievich: these are V.M. Alpatov, F.D. Ashnin, V.P. Grigoriev, V.K. Zhuravlev, S.I. Zinin, Vyach.Sun. Ivanov, L.R. Roizenzon, A.D. Khayutin and others.
Of course, a very special role in the study of Polivanov's scientific heritage belongs to our esteemed contemporary Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, Pasternak's friend, laureate Lenin Prize, People's Deputy of the USSR, Academician. He was not only a “signatory” of the 60s and 70s, not only was he expelled from Moscow State University in 1959 “as part of the anti-Pasternak campaign”; it was Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich, driven by the eternal idea of justice, who forced the former Prosecutor General of the USSR A.Ya. Sukharev right in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses when answering a question about Sukharev's participation in the persecution of Soviet dissidents ...
I want to emphasize that even before the official rehabilitation of Evgeny Dmitrievich, Vyach.Vs. Ivanov published in the journal “Problems of Linguistics” (No. 3, 1957) an article “Linguistic views of E.D. Polivanov” (I also note - with the first bibliography of the works of E.D. Polivanov).
A big event was the publication of the book by E.D. Polivanova "Articles on General Linguistics" (M.: The main edition of the Eastern literature of the Nauka publishing house, 1968), compiled by Professor A.A. Leontiev.
And at the beginning of the summer of 1968, readers received an excellent book by Professor V.G. Lartsev "Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov: Pages of life and work" (M.: "Nauka"), in which you can find a kind of creative portrait of the scientist, and a detailed account of many stages of his life, and interesting memories people who knew Yevgeny Dmitrievich, and a kind of brief anthology of his literary works.
It is not at all accidental that in other memoirs - "My path in science" - pen-owned former director of the Institute of the Russian Language of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR F.P. Filin (and they are trying to impose these memoirs, published in the journal Russkaya Spech No. 2, 1988, almost as the “most objective view” on the history of Soviet linguistics), the name of E.D. Polivanov, among the three dozen names of major Soviet philologists named by Filin, is not even mentioned at all.
This default figure has its reasons. Filin was one of the most energetic adherents of the "new teaching" about the language of N.Ya. Marr and one of the consistent followers of his teacher's line as a tough ideological "organizer" of philological science (already in the late 60s - early 70s, Filin became infamous for his persecution of dissident philologists, which he very successfully organized in the spirit of Marrist reprisals against opponents , and did it at the direction of the science department of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the "competent authorities").
Therefore, now, when, according to many primary sources and archival materials, according to the studies of the scientists I named and the memoirs of E.D. Polivanov, we finally had a chance to get close to the life and work of Evgeny Dmitrievich, it sometimes seems to me that some lines of Pasternak were dedicated to this particular scientist:
Who should be alive and praised,
Who should be dead and blasphemed
It is known to us sycophants
Only one influential.
Life and work of E.D. Polivanov were so unusual and intense that even the author of the only book about him, V.G. Lartsev, it seemed to me, was somewhat at a loss from this biographical element and clearly could not fit everything he wanted into the given volume of his publication. I will not be able to do this in a short essay. Nevertheless, I will try to show you at least briefly that it was no accident that fate chose Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov as the main scientific opponent of Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr (for Marr was also in many ways - and this is an objective fact! - an outstanding personality! ..), but then give to the slaughter of Her Majesty the System.
E.D. Polivanov graduated from St. Petersburg University, where he was a student of Academician I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay and L.V. Shcherba, in 1912. The gifted young scientist was left to work at the Department of Comparative Linguistics (and he studied at the university at the Slavic-Russian Department of the Faculty of History and Philology and the Faculty of Oriental Languages, where, by the way, Polivanov listened to Marr's Georgian language course).
And before the events of October 1917, and after them, E.D. Polivanov was engaged in pedagogical and research work in the most active way.
It is difficult to list all his places of work and positions. To name just a few: Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Oriental Languages of Petrograd University (in Japanese), Professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Petrograd University (since 1919), Professor of Japanese at the Institute of Living Oriental Languages in Petrograd, Deputy Chairman of the Scientific Council of the People's Commissariat for Education of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, professor at the Turkestan Oriental Institute in Tashkent and the Central Asian state university, Member of the Scientific Council of the All-Union Central Committee of the New Turkic Alphabet, Chairman of the Linguistic Section of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Russian Association of Research Institutes of Social Sciences (RANION), Professor of the Department of Language and Literature of the Uzbek State Pedagogical Academy, Uzbek State Research Institute of Cultural Construction in Tashkent , Professor of the Kyrgyz Institute of Cultural Construction and Pedagogical Institute in Frunze and so on. Is it really in these serious positions?!
E.D. Polivanov was the founder of many areas in which domestic and world linguistics are currently developing. This is how Vyach.Vs. Ivanov:
“The creation of E.D. Polivanov… the original linguistic concept and its substantiation by the facts of a very large number of independently studied languages of various families was possible due to the combination in his person of an exceptionally gifted polyglot, a talented Japaneseist, sinologist, Turkologist and theoretical linguist, who is well acquainted not only with Russian and Western European, but also Far Eastern and Arabic Linguistics.
By the way, about the knowledge of languages: I think that E.D. Polivanov did not exactly know the number of languages he spoke, although he believed that he knew French, German, English, Latin, Greek, Spanish, Serbian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Tatar, Uzbek, Turkmen, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik - that is, sixteen languages. Consider that he mastered the intricacies of many dialects of Oriental languages; in 1964, the old farmer Mahmud Khadzhimuradov, who knew Polivanov, answered the question of how Evgeny Dmitrievich spoke in his dialect of the Uzbek language, answered briefly and exhaustively: “Better than me ...”
Polivanov's biographers believe that in addition to those named, he also spoke (at least linguistically) Abkhaz, Azerbaijani, Albanian, Assyrian, Arabic, Georgian, Dungan, Kalmyk, Karakalpak, Korean, Mordovian (Erzya), Tagalog, Tibetan, Turkish, Uighur , Chechen, Chuvash, Estonian and some other languages ...
The contribution of Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov to the study of specific language systems is very significant: for many of them he created scientific grammars, descriptions of dialects, analyzed the sound system, created dictionaries, textbooks. It is no coincidence that Polivanov and a number of his contemporaries-linguists, who participated in the most difficult task of language construction in the USSR, are called the new Cyril and Methodius.
By the way, Yevgeny Dmitrievich has the most interesting works devoted to teaching Russian as a national language and a number of languages of the peoples of the USSR to the Russian population, including adults (which turned out to be extremely relevant in our difficult and controversial 80-90s of the XX century! ).
You can imagine my excitement when, for two years now, having been dealing with the fate of repressed philologists and, first of all, Polivanov, quite unexpectedly, in one of the forgotten bookcases of my grandfather’s library, I found a small book in a faded green cloth cover, on title page which was printed: “Professor of the East Faculty of SAGU, D. Member of Ross. Ass. Scientific Research. In-tov (on the eastern section) E.D. Polivanov. Brief Russian-Uzbek dictionary. Acc. O-vo "Turkpechat", 1926 "... I read with excitement the preface written by Evgeny Dmitrievich to this very interesting educational dictionary! He came out then, in the second half of the 20s, with a circulation of 10 thousand copies ...
Polivanov did especially much for the development of the theory of language, for theoretical linguistics. Again, I will give just a few examples.
... He was the first in science to extend the principle of consistency to the history of language. ... Polivanov developed the theory of phonological changes in all the variety of their interrelations and interdependence (it was this theory that Roman Yakobson would later develop, and it would receive worldwide recognition). ... Evgeny Dmitrievich did a lot to reveal the causes of language changes (his concept, though not quite in the spirit of E.D. Polivanov, was later used by the French linguist A. Martinet, for example, in the book “The Principle of Economy in Linguistics”). …E.D. Polivanov, in fact, was the founder of Soviet sociolinguistics. ... A lot of new things have been introduced by scientists into the theoretical understanding of language contacts, in particular, their mechanisms.
Can you really list all the areas of science in which the results of his research are tangible: after all, this is also the study of the typology of stress, the phonological role of the syllable, the description of "sound" gestures, and much more.
Of course, he was also worried about the ways of creating Marxist linguistics. Polivanov, not only in a number of articles, and then in a public discussion (called "Polivanovskaya") in 1929 opposed the ideas of Marr, but even in 1931, being already practically in scientific exile, he managed to publish a collection of scientific and scientific works in the Federation publishing house. popular articles under the title "For Marxist Linguistics": this book, against the general background of the triumph of Marr's "proletarian" theory, so necessary at that time for the asserting Stalinism, was a strong blow to the positions of the Marrists and, perhaps, the last counteroffensive of traditional linguistics ...
Polivanov's scientific legacy is enormous. According to L.R. Kontsevich, the bibliography of his works, published during Yevgeny Dmitrievich's lifetime and after his death, covers over 200 titles.
About 60 manuscripts are stored in different archives - they are known. But at the same time, they managed to collect about 220 (!) titles of those unpublished works that have not yet been discovered. And, perhaps, most of of them has already been irretrievably lost - such is the fate of the confiscated archives of almost all repressed scientists.
Although in recent times suddenly, from the secret chests of the state security, the manuscripts of some poets, writers, naturalists now and then “emerge”. Again and again we have to ask the current leaders of the KGB: when will we stop being Ivans-not-remembering-kinship and all the castles will finally fall from these secret vaults? Have any of the heritage of E.D. Polivanova?!
He accepted the revolutionary movement with all his heart. Biographers write that his first political speech was his protest against the imperialist war: Polivanov wrote an anti-war play in Spanish (!) For which he was arrested and spent a week in prison. Evgeny Dmitrievich himself wrote about himself that he had come from pacifism to internationalism. Until October 1917, E.D. Polivanov worked for several months in the Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government (he was then a Left Menshevik, a Martovite).
In 1919, the Petrograd professor joined the RCP(b).
But even before that, he became widely known both to the friends of the revolution and to its opponents and opponents. His knowledge of languages was especially useful to the Soviet government: the talent of a polyglot and the talent of a researcher received an unusual application - Polivanov was instructed to deal with all relations with the countries of the East in the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (by position, this was the level of one of the leaders of the People's Commissariat), and in parallel with this - the search and the publication of secret treaties of the tsarist government. This was Lenin's idea expressed in the Decree on Peace: secret diplomacy The government cancels (although, as we now know, it was canceled for a short time ... - M.G.), ”for its part, expressing its firm intention to conduct all negotiations completely openly in front of the whole people, proceeding immediately to the full publication of secret agreements, confirmed or concluded government of landlords and capitalists from February to November 7 (October 25), 1917.
It should be noted, without detracting from the "merits" of the famous revolutionary, the Baltic sailor Nikolai Markin, whose name is traditionally associated with the publication of treaties, that it is E.D. who plays a very large role in this matter. Polivanov. It is no coincidence that in November 1917 the "bourgeois" newspaper Nasha Rech wrote with concern:
“In the Ministry (Foreign Affairs. - M.G.), Mr. Polivanov, who was invited to the role of a specialist in deciphering secret treaties, and the secretary of the People's Commissar, the city of Zalkind, are in charge all the time.”
In 1918 E.D. Polivanov was entrusted with another unusual but important task. He conducts political work among the Petrograd Chinese (there were a lot of them in the city on the Neva since the beginning of the 20th century). The young orientalist became one of the organizers of the "Union of Chinese Workers", edited the first Chinese communist newspaper, was associated with the Chinese Council of Workers' Deputies and with those Chinese volunteers who fought on the fronts. civil war…
Since 1921, Polivanov worked in the Comintern: having moved to Moscow, he became an assistant to the head of the Far Eastern section of the Comintern (it was the Comintern who sent him to Tashkent in the same year) ...
And how much did the “red professor” and internationalist Polivanov do to solve national and language problems in the young Soviet state! And all this is just separate stages of that other side of life, which in our time is used to being defined by the official Soviet phrase “social work” ...
In addition, Polivanov was an invalid: back in adolescence he lost his left hand under rather mysterious circumstances!
It is worth agreeing that he was a man of extraordinary destiny, energy, talent and efficiency. Veniamin Kaverin made Yevgeny Dmitrievich one of his literary heroes - remember the novel "The Brawler, or Evenings on Vasilyevsky Island", the image of Professor Dragomanov, as well as the story "The Great Game".
And the same Veniamin Alexandrovich wrote in his memoirs:
"You need to be a man of great will and great honor and great faith in Soviet science in order to act the way Polivanov did."
A gifted, educated researcher, Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov, understood the danger to linguistics, philosophy and politics, to the environment of free creativity in science, represented by the vulgar materialistic and pseudo-Marxist theory of Academician N.Ya. Marr, as well as the atmosphere of ideological intolerance towards scientific opponents introduced by the academician's entourage. Openly speaking out against Marrism in 1928-1929, he continued an unequal fight with it literally until his arrest.
In a selection of reader responses to V. Dudintsev's novel "White Clothes" I came across the following thought:
“It is so difficult and so dangerous to walk in clean, white clothes - everyone strives to throw a clod of dirt at you. And in the gray hoodie of pretense - are you really just as clean ?! Not! So it turns out that only those who go through life in the white robes of truth, despising the gray robes of half-truth and lies, have true, albeit reckless courage ... "
In the white robes of truth, Professor Polivanov also walked towards the rapidly approaching end of his life.
In the "Polivanov" discussion, Evgeny Dmitrievich gave an objective scientific analysis Marr's theory, and pointed out a number of its interesting aspects. However, the Marrists, who were striving for the Olympus of power in science (like their followers already in the 60-70s ...), completely rejected the idea of a democratic exchange of opinions, a purely scientific dispute and, in the spirit of the era, brought down a bucket of political accusations on Polivanov: he was called " an ideological agent of the international bourgeoisie”, “an exposed Black Hundreds monarchist”, “a kulak wolf in the shoes of a Soviet professor”, etc.
It is noteworthy that the materials of this discussion were published on March 1, 1929 in the newspaper "Vechernyaya Moskva" under the heading with a frank title - "Class struggle in science" ...
When Stalinism was just unfolding the repressive machine, when the atmosphere of terror and beating of the best personnel (from diplomacy to the army, from science to youth organizations) had not yet become commonplace and evil, slander could not immediately lead a person to the dungeons, scientific opponents could not quickly eliminate Polivanov, and at the same time break or destroy other scientists.
But the bullets gradually cast off. True, at first they were not made of lead. But who said that in those days the WORD was always much weaker than the BULLET? Or was it still weaker?
By the end of 1929, E.D. Polivanov was removed from all positions, removed from scientific and pedagogical activity in Moscow (even his books were removed from the working plans of publishing houses, and those that already had sets in printing houses crumbled ...) and was forced to leave for Central Asia, first - to Samarkand. He was excommunicated from the life of the leading scientific centers of the country, they tried not to mention his name there (or only with abuse) ...
One more example. In October 1931, the seventh volume of the Japhetic Collection prepared by N.Ya. Marr and his followers. It published a review of the book by E.D. Polivanov "For Marxist Linguistics", remarkable in many respects. And not even the fact that the author hid his name behind the initials.
It is now known that it came from the pen of one of the closest henchmen (here, sorry, it’s hard to find another word) Academician N.Ya. Marr - a certain S.N. Bykovsky. This note is written in the classic expressions of a political denunciation (which Marrists and non-Marrists liked to use at all times, up to the 80s):
“The main purpose of the collection (Polivanov’s book was a collection of articles. - M.G.) so to speak, his social order is the rehabilitation of modern bourgeois linguistics. But since an excessively open statement in the Soviet Union in defense of bourgeois science, even in such a still little developed field as linguistics, is a risky business, hence the name of the collection "For Marxist Linguistics", while all the content collection sent against(highlighted by Bykovsky. - M.G.) of Marxism.
This review also ended "worthy":
“Only the complete ignorance of the leaders of our publishing houses in elementary questions of Marxist linguistics can explain the appearance of an anti-Marxist book in 1931 on the Soviet market.”
Of course, this was not the only "response" to the book by E.D. Polivanova. Sukhotin's review, published by the journal "Culture and Literature of the East", was sustained in the same spirit. This is how it ended (although A.M. Sukhotin was generally an anti-Marrist):
“The working class will continue to build not only a new society, but also its own science, regardless of the laughter of its enemies, or the pitiful attempts of its imaginary fellow travelers, who are trying under the guise of “Marxism” to smuggle the old rubbish close to final bankruptcy bourgeois methodology” (highlighted by Sukhotin. – M.G.).
By the way, Bykovsky's review is also indicative of the fact that the author has already "sanctified" it, choosing as an epigraph a quote from Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin:
"Slander and fraudulent maneuvers need to be stigmatized, not made into the subject of discussion."
Oh, how the hands of the Marrists were already itching! How quickly they realized what unlimited possibilities Stalinism gave them in the fight against scientific opponents!
Whenever new evidence of the genocide of the totalitarian regime in our country appears on my desktop, new evidence of how purposefully the authorities waged war with their own people, I involuntarily recall a vivid passage from the first message to Prince Kurbsky, written in 1564:
“... The Russian land is held by God's mercy, and the mercy of the Most Pure Mother of God, and the prayers of all the saints, and the blessing of our parents, and, finally, by us, our sovereigns ... We did not betray our governors to various deaths, but with God's help we have many governors and besides you traitors. And we are always free to favor our serfs, we were free to execute them ... But we did not stain the church thresholds with blood; we have no martyrs for the faith; when we find well-wishers who sincerely lay down their lives for us, and not falsely ... then we reward them with a great salary; the one who, as I said, opposes, deserves to be executed for his guilt. And as in other countries, you will see for yourself how villains are punished there - not in the local way! .. And in other countries they do not like traitors and execute them and thereby strengthen their power. And we did not invent torments, persecutions and various executions for anyone; if you are talking about traitors and sorcerers, then such dogs are executed everywhere ... "
During the years of mass repressions, "enemies of the people" were divided in special lists, as we now know, into three categories. The most “dangerous” were enrolled in the first: their destiny was mainly the death penalty.
Evgeniy Dmitrievich Polivanov, apparently arrested in August 1937, was also included in the lists of "enemies" in the first category. January 25, 1938 troika sentenced him to death. The sentence was carried out immediately - on the same day.
For a long time, the reason for the arrest remained a mystery to everyone. But there were plenty of versions and rumors. According to one, Polivanov was arrested as a "Trotskyite", because for some time he worked under Trotsky, even wrote poems dedicated to Lev Davidovich. According to another, the reason for the arrest was the acquaintance and connection with Bukharin through the Comintern. The third "rumor" linked the arrest of Yevgeny Dmitrievich with the case of the famous Central Asian party worker A.I. Ikramov (although Ikramov was arrested later, in September 1937).
thinking about tragic life Evgeny Dmitrievich, I think that the modern journalist is right, who in an essay about the victims of Stalinist repressions and their children who suffered (Polivanov, thank God, did not have them, and his wife Brigitta disappeared without a trace in the terrible depths of the Gulag archipelago) wrote very accurately and sharply , "catching" the feeling of many people who held in their hands the rehabilitation certificates of the repressed:
“Two certificates of posthumous rehabilitation. Short standard text. A style that is somewhat reminiscent of the "funerals" of the front-line years. No, these certificates are perhaps more terrible than the "funeral". In those it was written: "He died in the battles for his homeland." Here: "Posthumously rehabilitated for lack of corpus delicti." There are enemy bullets, but here? .. "
Just such a terrible and mournful funeral reminded me of an official letter from the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court addressed to Fedorov Dmitrievich Ashnin.
F.D. Ashnin - philologist, Turkologist, old man, for a long time and consistently (one of the few!) engaged in the restoration of "blank spots" in the history of Soviet linguistics and the fate of repressed philologists. In other words, Fyodor Dmitrievich is just the person who, without any instructions “from above”, without broadcast public “initiatives”, but simply at the behest of the soul, has already actually begun to compile the “Martyrology of Soviet Linguists”.
F.D. is doing a lot. Ashnin and the fate, creative heritage, circumstances of the life and death of Professor E.D. Polivanova. Here is what she replied to him Military Board for one of the requests:
Military College
Supreme Court
Union of the USSR
December 31, 1987
No. 4n-316/63comrade Ashnin F.D.
MoscowIn response to your statement received from the KGB of the USSR, I inform you that on January 25, 1938 Polivanov Yevgeny Dmitrievich was unreasonably convicted and sentenced to death.
Sentence against Polivanova E.D. was enforced on the same day, i.e. January 25, 1938.comrade Ashnin F.D.
Head of the Secretariat of the Military Collegium
Supreme Court of the USSR
A. Nikonov
Only in 1990, F.D. Ashnin managed to get some materials from the E.D. case for work. Polivanova. They will make it possible to clarify some facts, however, leaving much more behind the scenes...
Now it is absolutely clear that Polivanov's life ended violently - he was executed. But this happened not in Frunze, not in Tashkent, not in the northern camps. It happened in Moscow, where Polivanov was taken by the Chekists after his arrest from Central Asia; here, on the Lubyanka, an investigation was conducted, and in some hidden corner of Moscow, the land received the ashes of the executed Yevgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov.
F.D. Ashnin managed to get acquainted with two protocols of interrogations of Polivanov by the Lubyanka investigator from the galaxy of Stalin's inquisitors. They do not mention either Trotsky, or Bukharin, or Ikramov.
Accusations - on various sections of the terrible 58th article with the main emphasis on ... espionage! Polivanov was charged with the main guilt before the people that he was allegedly recruited by Japanese (!) intelligence and became its agent. The recruitment, according to the Chekists, took place in 1916 during Polivanov's trip to Japan...
So far, no traces of a denunciation have been found in the documents, which was known to several of Polivanov's contemporaries. According to some reports, the author of the slander was a philologist (which is not at all surprising!). However, until this is documented, we will call him by a conditional surname, for example, Ratmanov.
Only in April 1963 E.D. Polivanov was posthumously rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of the USSR on the basis of a petition from the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (Yevgeny Dmitrievich himself had no relatives left who could apply with such a petition). The Supreme Court dismissed all accusations against Polivanov of "treason against the motherland."
But memory! Polivanov's scientific works were collected in Soviet and foreign cities and villages: Stalinism and scientific circles obedient to it knew how to destroy the very memory of scientists who were subjected to repressions. And when in September 1964 a preliminary linguistic conference “Actual Issues of Soviet Linguistics and the Linguistic Heritage of E.D. Polivanov”, then the organizers of it could not even find a photograph of Evgeny Dmitrievich then ...
Like this: the works, letters, photographs of Polivanov disappeared, and the works of Marr stood on the most prominent shelves, his portraits became almost an icon for many linguistic institutions. Polivanov's name was completely deleted from science for a long time, and during his lifetime Marr's name was assigned to the Institute of Language and Thought of the USSR Academy of Sciences (I'm not talking about Marr's students, who briskly snapped up academic and professorial titles, prestigious and "well-fed" positions, places in publishing plans, continuing to prosper even to our time) ...
It is unfortunate, but true: the University of Vienna installed a memorial plaque on its building in honor of the Russian emigrant scientist, outstanding linguist N.S. Trubetskoy. We have not yet been able to treat memory with the same respect his outstanding scientist E.D. Polivanov, whose contribution to world linguistics is equivalent to Trubetskoy's, and in some ways even surpasses it.
"Grammar of Modern Chinese". 6th ed., 2010
The decisions of the Samarkand conference on the publication of selected works of Evgeny Dmitrievich (although what could be more important for science?!), on the further purposeful search for his manuscripts, on naming the streets in those cities of Central Asia where Evgeny Dmitrievich worked, who did so much, were not implemented for the development of both culture and education, and even the national identity of the peoples of this part of the world in our country, primarily the Uzbek and Kyrgyz peoples.
Although... Here, as you can see, in October 1990, a large scientific and practical conference was held in Tashkent, dedicated to the centenary of Professor Polivanov, which was attended by scientists from dozens of cities in different republics of the USSR. They even wanted to name the Uzbek Pedagogical Institute of the Russian Language and Literature, the main organizer of the conference, after E.D. Polivanov (such was the wish of its participants); this, by the way, is very important for now, in our difficult time, because Polivanov was a real internationalist - on deed and not in words. Three volumes of the proceedings of this conference have been published, and on the cover there is one of the now known portraits of the scientist. In the future, I hope, Polivanov's readings will become regular and, as suggested by linguists from different cities of the country, will be held alternately in Moscow, Leningrad, Frunze, Tashkent, Samarkand. It's good? Without a doubt!
And yet, thinking about the tragic fate of this genius, I again and again mentally return to Lubyanka Square, on the evening of October 30 ...
Father Gleb Yakunin* continued to serve a memorial service for the victims of totalitarianism, candles were wet with tears and the walls of the building of the former NKVD became more and more gloomy.
I looked at the stone brought from Solovki, and another memorial rose in my memory - in the Polish town of Majdanek near the city of Lublin. There, on the edge of the former concentration camp, there is a huge bowl with a dome. In the bowl are the ashes of tens of thousands of dead people from different countries, which the vandals of the 20th century did not have time to take to the fields as fertilizer. Do you know what inscription borders this truly bitter cup and is carved in stone?
"OUR FATE IS A WARNING TO YOU!"
October, 1990
Tashkent-Moscow
In an abbreviated form, the essay by M.V. Gorbanevsky was published in the journal "Frontiers" of the publishing house "Posev" in Frankfurt am Main: 1991, No. 160, p. 173-193, heading “Diaries. Memories. Documentation".
Note:
*Gleb Yakunin is a public and political figure.
On October 8, 1993, at an expanded meeting of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, where the case of the priest Gleb Yakunin was considered, it was decided to order the clergy to refrain from participating in the Russian parliamentary elections as candidates for deputies. According to the corresponding Synodal definition, it was established that the clergy who violated it are subject to defrocking.
In 1993, he was deprived of the priesthood by the Moscow Patriarchate for refusing to comply with the demand that Orthodox clerics not participate in parliamentary elections.
In 1997, Yakunin was excommunicated from the church for the unauthorized wearing of a priestly cross and priestly robes, as well as communication with the self-proclaimed Patriarch of Kyiv Filaret.
“The impossible is possible, and the possible must!”
– theorist of linguistics, orientalist, author of fundamental works on general linguistics, scientific grammars, dictionaries in Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Dungan, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and other languages; Professor of the Petrograd and Central Asian Universities, Kyrgyz Pedagogical Institute, researcher at the Kyrgyz Institute of Cultural Construction, consultant of the republican publishing house.
He moved to Kyrgyzstan from Samarkand at the personal invitation of K. Tynystanov in June 1934. For a short period of time, which E.D. Polivanov spent time in the republic, he managed to do a great job, primarily as a researcher, translator of the Manas epic. He wrote several articles on the principles of the Russian translation of the epic, and also organized and successfully conducted one of the largest expeditions to study the Dungan language and Dungan ethnography in Kyrgyzstan.
Today, followers and admirers of his work have discovered some of the works of Evgeny Dmitrievich. They are researched and published. It is necessary to study his creative and especially life path mainly according to the protocols of interrogations of the "chiefs" of the NKVD or brief biographies written by the hand of E.D. Polivanov on the forms of the same protocols. A brief biography, set out by Evgeny Dmitrievich in extreme conditions, is striking in its detail and accuracy.
Polivanov Evgeny Dmitrievich was born in 1891 in the city of Smolensk. The son of an employee - a nobleman, education: secondary - a gymnasium in Riga, higher - in Leningrad, in 1912 he graduated from the university and the Eastern Academy, in 1914 he passed the exams for a master's degree.
Languages: French, German, English, Spanish, Chinese, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Dungan, Tajik, Latin, Greek, Polish, Serbian, Tatar, Estonian, Russian.
He began his independent life in 1912.
Worked in 1912–1915. at the University in Leningrad, was preparing for a professorship, at the same time he taught at private gymnasium... and at courses in Leningrad. In 1915–1920 - Privatdozent at the university, at the same time from May 1917 - a member of the cabinet of the military unit under the Council of Peasant Deputies in Leningrad, from October 1918 to December 1919 - Head. Eastern Department of the Information Bureau under the Council of People's Commissars, at the same time until April 1921 - the organizer of the Chinese Communist Section under the Leningrad Party Committee and taught in schools under the Chinese and Korean Communist sections. From April to September 1921, he worked in Moscow as a head. eastern sector of KUTV and assistant head of the Far Eastern department of the ECCI, from September 1921 to 1924 - in Tashkent, professor of SAGU and deputy chairman of the academic council of the Turkestan Republic. Simultaneously with 1923 - pom. head glavlite. In 1924, he spent four months in Moscow as a teacher in the eastern department of the Eastern Academy. From the end of 1924 to the beginning of 1926 he worked in Tashkent in the same positions. At the beginning of 1926 he left for Vladivostok, where he worked as a university professor until September 1926. From September 1926 to October 1929 in Moscow - head. section KUTV, at the same time - the chairman of the Leningrad RANION. From autumn 1929 to autumn 1931 - in Samarkand, at the research institute of Uzbekistan as a professor. From autumn 1931 to July 1934 - in Tashkent, at the same institute (which was then called the Institute of Cultural Construction, and then the Institute of Language and Literature). Since June 1934 - in Frunze, at the research institute, at the same time - professor of the pedagogical institute (periodically) and consultant of the State Publishing House.
Been abroad - in Japan in 1915 and 1916. during vacation time on scientific business trips, in the same years he visited Manchuria (China) and Korea.
Historical portrait of the linguist E.D. Polivanova (1)
Already during his lifetime, he became a world-famous scientist, a recognized leader of a new direction in linguistics. His works were translated into foreign languages, especially appreciated and translated in Japan. At the same time, everything possible was done in his native country to silence his research. Published scientific papers were withdrawn from circulation, and unpublished manuscripts are now under "seven seals" in the secret funds of inaccessible archives. And although articles and books about the life and creative path of E.D. Polivanov, conferences dedicated to his memory are being organized, selected works have been published, his name has not yet taken its rightful place in historical science. In Kyrgyzstan, where the last three years of his life and scientific research of an outstanding linguist of our time took place, where he wrote works on Dungan and Kyrgyz linguistics, on Manas studies, no serious publications about E.D. Polivanov, his last researches have not been collected and published, the memory of his stay in the republic has not been memorialized.
The Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Kyrgyzstan from the Samarkand Regional State Archive received the “Departmental Questionnaire of the People's Commissariat of Education of Uzbekistan. SSR" Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov. Questionnaire of 46 items, filled in personally by E.D. Polivanov with detailed answers to most questions. It reflects the main milestones of life, and the emphasis is not on scientific and pedagogical, but on social and political activities. Evgeny Dmitrievich even slightly mystifies his biography. So, in the column "year, month, date of birth" he displays: "28 Feb. 1892". Although, judging by the archival reference, he was born in 1891 (this date was known to all scientists, researchers of Polivanov's life path and work). In another, from the Tashkent archive, he stubbornly repeats 1892. It is clear that this is not a mistake of a scientist, but a tendency to conscious irony. Examples of this kind occur repeatedly.
Preserving the peculiarities of Yevgeny Dmitrievich's style of presentation, we present a "Brief Biography" of the questionnaire, in which he says: "The son of a railway worker and mother-writer, participant in the liberation movement (about her - in the Historical Bulletin for 1910). After graduating from the gymnasium, he entered the university and at the same time the Eastern Academy (he graduated from them in 1911–1912). I received an offer to stay at the university to prepare for a professorship in the departments of: 1) Russian literature: 2) comparative linguistics; 3) Tibetan language. He chose comparative linguistics, in 1914 he completed the master's exam and in 1915 he became a Privatdozent (in Japanese, and then in comparative linguistics). In 1917, he took part in political work even before the October Revolution (in the Soviet of Peasants' Deputies, where he was one of the only two internationalists in the press bureau), published in Gorky's Novaya Zhizn, since the October Revolution (from its very first day) went to work Soviet power. Among the entire composition of the professors of St. Petersburg University, only two took the side of the Soviet government: prof. Reisner and I. Since then, I have been working in my specialty and in various positions in practical work.
In the column "Scientific works, what and the year of their publication" E.D. Polivanov wrote: "Over a hundred scientific papers (of which over 20 scientific publications) 1913-1931." In the column "What languages do you speak?" modestly answered: "French, Japanese, Chinese, Uzbek, English and some others." In fact, the scientist was a polyglot, since in another questionnaire he wrote that he spoke 16 languages (and linguistically another two dozen). All this, of course, is not a hoax.
Let's pay attention to one more item of the questionnaire: "Breaks in your work and the reasons for them", the scientist answered: "The end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918 due to the performance of the duties of the people's commissar (deputy people's commissar)". The answer to the question posed in the column played a fatal role in the fate of E.D. Polivanova. The fact is that, on the recommendation of M.S. Uritsky scientist in November 1917 was admitted to the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, where he soon became Deputy People's Commissar for the East. People's Commissar Foreign Affairs of the young Soviet republic at that time was L.D. Trotsky (the future main enemy of I. Stalin). In 1931, when the questionnaire was filled out, it was extremely dangerous to mention the connection with L. Trotsky, even official.
At this time, performing the direct task of V.I. Lenin on the publication of secret treaties of the tsarist government, in view of the knowledge of oriental languages \u200b\u200bE.D. Polivanov hosted Active participation and in other practical matters. Known, for example, is a telegram signed by Polivanov from Petrograd to Bukhara, dated February 21, 1918: “First of all, we demand public recognition of the authority of the Council of People's Commissars. Answer immediately” (2).
In 1918–1920 E.D. Polivanov actively works in the Comintern, at one time he even held the position of head of the eastern department. In 1919, he joined the Bolshevik Party (the questionnaire even contains the number of his party card - 360054). But, as he himself notes, “he left with the right to return admission due to his departure for Far East in 1926". In those days, obviously, there was a rule: for the duration of a business trip abroad, a member of the party temporarily leaves its ranks. V. Lartsev, however, gives a message (with reference to the archive of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR - f. 677, op. 6, d. 224, l. 311 rev.) that in 1935 Polivanov was accepted as a candidate member of the CPSU (b) . This was already the Frunze period of the scientist's life, however, neither in the party archives, nor in the funds of Kirobkom, nor in the funds of the Frunze City Party Committee of the party, documents related to Yevgeny Dmitrievich's party membership could be found. The presence of E.D. Polivanov at party meetings of the Institute of the Kyrgyz Language and Writing, where he worked at that time.
But let's turn to the scientific "baggage" with which Evgeny Dmitrievich arrived in Kyrgyzstan in the summer of 1934, and try to determine what his scientific contribution to linguistics is?
Professor E.D. Polivanov already in the 20s. - the author of a number of fundamental works, occupied a leading position among scientists dealing with the problems of comparative linguistics, was a recognized orientalist linguist ... until N.Ya. Marra. Speaking on February 4, 1929 at the Communist Academy with a report “The Problem of Marxist Linguistics and Japhetic Theory”, E.D. Polivanov found himself in opposition to the official Marrian linguistics, which was supported by A.V. Lunacharsky and many government officials.
The only one who supported E.D. Polivanov in the discussion on his report against Marrism at the Communist Academy, was G.A. Ilyinsky, whose main creative interests were in the field of comparative study of Slavic languages and the publication of monuments: Old Slavonic, Middle Bulgarian and Serbian. The “red professor” Polivanov and the “old-mode” Ilyinsky differed in age, specialization, scientific and political views and hardly knew each other. They were united only by concern for science, later they would get closer tragic fate. Without mentioning the positive part of Polivanov's speech with the program for building Marxist linguistics, G.A. Ilyinsky dwelled on Marr’s criticism: “The Japhetic theory not only does not represent any scientific conquest, not only does it not contain any new achievements, but it represents a relapse, a return to that infantile era of linguistics, when, according to the happy statement of Voltaire, consonants meant little , and the vowels are nothing at all" [see p. Polivanov E.D. Selected works. Proceedings on Eastern and General Linguistics. - M., 1991. - S. 581]. Fragments of G.A. Ilyinsky were published in the comments to the first edition of E.D. Polivanov at the Communist Academy. In the early 1920s, when the essence of Marrism was not yet completely clear, G.A. Ilyinsky collaborated (like E.D. Polivanov in the same years) with the Marrovsky Japhetic Institute [see. Meshchaninov I.I. Preface. - Language and thought. - Issue. XI. L., 1948. - S. 7]. But now the scientist could not be silent.
It should be noted that the list of speakers in the discussion on the report by E.D. Polivanova prepared in advance. The inclusion of G.A. Ilyinsky, against the background of 17 speeches in favor of Marr, was clearly intended to accuse the speaker of being in alliance with scientists old school against the "Marxists", as well as to discredit his defender E.D. Polivanova. After this speech, G.A. Ilyinsky worked hard. His writings were at best irrelevant, if not harmful. O future fate G.A. Ilyinsky can be read in the book by F.D. Ashnina, V.M. Alpatov "The case of the Slavists: the 30s". - M., 1994.
After a discussion that turned into a defamation, E.D. Polivanov was actually removed from active scientific work, he was no longer published in the center, and he was forced to leave for Central Asia - first to Samarkand, and then to Tashkent. Here he works hard and hard on the writing and grammar of the languages of the indigenous peoples of Central Asia, continues to deal with general theoretical problems of linguistics, the main ways of forming languages, their integration and interference, phonetic evolution and ... prints with great difficulty. Modern linguists believe that if the ideas of E.D. Polivanov were recognized in a timely manner, then modern comparative linguistics in its development would have gone far ahead. His ideas were immediately recognized abroad, developed and returned to their homeland much later through ... foreign science.
Already in the early 30s. around ed Polivanov, such a formidable atmosphere developed that state publishing houses (and there were simply no others) were afraid to publish the works of the “anti-Marxist” professor, and intrigues began to weave around him. The general unbearable atmosphere was aggravated by the aggravated illness. In order to somehow drown out physical and spiritual suffering, he increasingly resorts to morphine. Over the years, the disease became irreversible and at one time, perhaps, became one of the reasons for the massacre of the scientist.
The well-known Kyrgyz organizer of science, linguist and Turkologist, poet and scientist, Kasym Tynystanov, who arrived in Tashkent at that time, could not ignore the fate of the outstanding scientist and invites him to Kyrgyzstan. By order of the Institute of Cultural Construction dated July 21, 1934, Professor E.D. Polivanov is credited as "a researcher of the institute in the position of a full member for the Dungan sector ...".
For some time he continues to combine scientific and pedagogical activities in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. In the city of Frunze, Evgeny Dmitrievich and his wife Brigitta Alfredovna Nirk (Estonian by nationality) first settled in a hotel, and then in a one-room apartment at house No. 32 on the street. Dzerzhinsky, now Erkindik Avenue is the most elite in the center of the capital of the republic.
According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Yevgeny Dmitrievich was thin, without a left arm. According to some reports, he lost his arm in his youth during a careless landing on a tram; according to others, as a high school student, he put his hand under the train wheel on a bet - another example of a hoax, which E.D. sometimes liked to resort to. Polivanov.
And today some of our contemporaries can tell amazing stories, big and small o ed Polivanov. Specifically, Corresponding Member National Academy Sciences Aron Abramovich Brudny kindly provided the opportunity to publish his memoirs: “Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov was a truly legendary person: in other words, there were legends about him. It was said that, while giving a lecture in Frunze, he gave a Latin proverb, got carried away and then spoke Latin for a long time, sometimes commenting that now he speaks in medieval "barbarian" Latin, but now - in classical Latin, and understood it only one of those sitting in the hall was my Latin teacher Nikolai Nikolaevich Ivanovsky. Or such a story: in Samarkand, already in the second half of the twentieth century, a symposium was held and a discussion arose: how well E.D. Polivanov in conversational Uzbek (he knew grammar brilliantly, everyone recognized this). They turned to a venerable Uzbek who knew Yevgeny Dmitrievich: “How did Polivanov speak Uzbek?” The old man stood up and calmly replied, "Better than me."
Academician I. Batmanov told me the following story. He went to Yevgeny Dmitrievich: it was in the evening, and his eyes were shining, which meant that he had taken a well-known pharmacological drug. Scientists went out into the courtyard, discussing whether there is a "rational grain" in the teachings of Academician Marr (which Polivanov strongly denied). Batmanov was bitten by a mosquito. Polivanov held out his hand with complete calmness - the mosquito immediately sat on it, began to suck blood - and fell dead from his hand. Batmanov was amazed. "Blood" - Polivanov said in the form of an explanation and continued the conversation about semantics.
These are legends, but in our family the name of the scientist was mentioned with deep respect.
My father knew Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov and spoke highly of him. He said that Evgeny Dmitrievich was a living example of the fact that personal honesty and scientific adherence to principles are branches of the same trunk (“like a slingshot,” he explained to me). The outstanding scientist Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky, with whom I had the honor to be acquainted, E.D. Polivanov knew very closely and appreciated his talent. V.B. Shklovsky told me that Drahomanov, the hero of V. Kaverin's novel "Evenings on Vasilyevsky Island", is literally "copied" from Polivanov, and this image of a strange, exceptionally gifted person will take its place not only in the history of literature, but also in biographical works.
His main work was at the Institute of Cultural Construction, soon renamed the Institute of the Kyrgyz Language and Writing, the Kyrgyz and Dungan languages, compiling textbooks, dictionaries, studying and translating the Manas epic into Russian. But I had to concurrently teach at the Pedagogical Institute even ... political economy. The scientist spoke many languages, he could quickly master one that he did not yet own; had an extensive circle of acquaintances among the scientific and creative intelligentsia; interestingly lectured.
For Kyrgyzstan, which has just entered the cultural development, E.D. Polivanov, who attracted people with his great erudition, oratorical eloquence and some special inner, inexpressible charm, was a truly precious find.
To compile a textbook of the Dungan language, E.D. Polivanov needed expeditions from which he could draw material. By different reasons they were postponed, and then Yevgeny Dmitrievich, together with the poet Yasyr Shivaza, translated the Internationale into the Dungan language, submitted a series of scientific works to the research plan of the institute, and on December 28, 1935, delivered a large report at the Manas conference in Frunze.
Only on June 23, 1936, E.D. Polivanov, together with a young researcher Yan-Shan-Sin, went on a linguistic expedition, but ... according to a strictly scheduled and approved route: to the villages of Aleksandrovka, Yrdyk, the city of Przhevalsk and the village of Karakunuz (Kazakh SSR). As Yang-Shan-Sin recalled, Professor E.D. Polivanov, in order to brighten up the road on a tarantass, having a phenomenal memory, recited the Iliad and the Odyssey by heart on Greek several hours in a row. At this time, he was engaged in the translation of the Manas epic, and on the way he also recited a hundred stanzas.
The order for the institute testifies to the working conditions of the expedition:
“To the head of the Dungan expedition, Professor Polivanov.
1.It is strongly suggested to follow the route of the expedition and exclusively with Yangshanxing. Your independent trips (without Yangshansin) will disorganize the work of the expedition.
2. Changes in the route (Karakunuz - Karakol) will be considered as a violation of the work plan of the institute, and travel expenses and daily allowances during deviation from the general route will be charged to your account.
3. I propose to inform the institute from each telegraph office about the time of departure and entry, indicating the general state of work.
4. The work of the expedition must be completed before August 10th.
Deputy Director of the Institute I. Batmanov.
Despite severe restrictions, the expedition took place. Evgeny Dmitrievich noted in the report: “Only thanks to valuable qualities his employee comrade. Yanshansin, whom I sincerely consider an excellent workmate, the expedition was able to do what it did and, in general, meet the requirements that were set for it: as a result of the expedition, we 1) established the dialectological composition of the Dungan dialects in the villages ... 2) made phonetic and morphological descriptions of the Dungan dialects, including the Shanxi dialect, hitherto unknown to me.”
In the manuscript collections of the Institute of the Kyrgyz Language and Literature, two works and the “Report on the Dungan Linguistic Expedition” written by E.D. Polivanov on August 15, 1936. In the institute's funds there are four more handwritten notebooks (at one time there were at least eight) on Kyrgyz linguistics, written by Yevgeny Dmitrievich and "recognized" by E.N. Krinitskaya, who once reprinted his works.
In more detail about the still unstudied works of E.D. Polivanov and the fate of the once young typist Zhenya Krinitskaya, the wife of the “enemy of the people” exiled to Kyrgyzstan, can be learned in more detail from the studies of Academician of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor V.M. Flat.
In 1935, in the newspaper "Soviet Kyrgyzstan" and in 1936 in the journal "Literary Uzbekistan", interlinear translations of fragments of the epic "Manas" were published by E.D. Polivanov. According to I.A. Batmanov, they can be considered the first truly scientific translation with extensive (if not exhaustive) comments.
E.D. himself Polivanov wrote: "Manas" undoubtedly ranks first among the monuments of the oral and literary creativity of the Turkish peoples, both in artistic and scientific significance (as the most valuable object of literary research). And in terms of its volume, this colossal epic, several times greater than the Iliad, should also take the world championship as the longest (and at the same time representing a single plot structure) epic of all the folk epics of other nationalities known to us.
It must be said that the scientist was in no way satisfied with the disorganization that accompanied the collective translation of the Manas epic into Russian. He repeatedly addressed the leadership of the republic with proposals on the need to organize all work on scientific basis, using all the necessary and available opportunities in the republic at that time. But Manas was never published in Russian in 1936.
Not without interest even today, and not only for specialists dealing with this problem, the scientist's arguments about the problems of the history of the Kyrgyz language and the ethnogenesis of the Kyrgyz people. E.D. Polivanov supported the hypothesis of the Yenisei origin of the Kyrgyz, associating with it the absence of another source in Central Asia. Turkic language, close to Kyrgyz. At the same time, he speaks about the numerous ethnic components of the Kyrgyz people - both migratory and local Tien Shan. At the same time, the scientist emphasized: “the mixing of completely different nationalities - in some particulars, this process (and hence the history of the Kirghiz) is still far from elucidated and contains many controversial points for modern Oriental studies.”
This thesis of a great scientist retains its scientific significance for modern Kyrgyz studies, because the process of ethnogenesis of the Kyrgyz people has not yet been finally revealed, and in modern science several hypotheses are opposed.
E.D. Polivanov stood at the origins of the reform of the national languages of Central Asia, and together with his colleague and friend K. Tynystanov, at the origins of the reform of the Kyrgyz language. He fully supports the classification of the Kyrgyz language into four dialects, established, as E.D. Polivanov, "an outstanding local researcher K. Tynystanov", - the south of Kyrgyzstan, the Talas valley, the Chui valley, the eastern part of Northern Kyrgyzstan.
It should be noted that Evgeny Dmitrievich highly appreciated the linguistic abilities of his colleague. In one of the scientist’s handwritten notebooks we read: “Tynystanov’s research work deserves unconditional attention, since in it he quite independently approached the problem of morphonology (i.e., the discipline that studies the relationships and mutual causal dependencies of the phonological and morphological systems of a language), which only in last years... began to be developed by Western European linguists. Kasym Tynystanov, one of the first prominent Kyrgyz scientists, linguists, writers and poets, was awarded the title of professor in 1936. This year, only two scientists who deeply respect and support each other, E.D. Polivanov and K. Tynystanov were awarded this high title.
E.D. also gave a ticket to the professorship to the talented Kyrgyz scientist K. Tynystanov. Polivanov. Here is a part of his review of Tynystanov's scientific notes:
“... I consider it necessary to indicate that:
1. Item. Tynystanov, without a doubt, occupies the first place among linguists dealing with the issues of the nationals of Kyrgyzstan.
2. Starting with a task of a lexicological nature, comrade. Tynystanov independently invented an original method (and technical device) for an exhaustive examination vocabulary in individual linguistic thinking (this invention can be of great theoretical and applied importance).
3. Work on the dictionary led comrade. Tynystanov to the questions of the so-called "morphonology" ...
4. In the field of language building in Kyrgyzstan in the teaching of the Kyrgyz language, comrade. Tynystanov played and continues to play an important role.
In view of the foregoing, I believe that, despite the need to supplement my training with reading European linguistic literature, Comrade. Tynystanov deserves the title of professor in his specialty. Professor Polivanov. 10.04.35.”
A student of E.D. Polivanov was also K.K. Yudakhin, who created the most unique Russian-Kyrgyz and Kyrgyz-Russian dictionaries. Obviously, E.D. Polivanov helped K. Yudakhin in this difficult work. E.D. considered his teacher. Polivanov in those days, a young Kyrgyz scientist, and later the largest manasologist H. Karasaev. The Dungan scientist Yang-Shan-Sin remembered the expedition to the Dungan villages with his famous teacher E.D. Polivanov. He also had a great influence on the education of the first folklorists T. Baidzhiev and Z. Bektenov.
The situation at the institute, and throughout the country, was not easy. The most difficult thing was that both professors had to constantly "justify" their scientific research, which did not fit into the general ideological guidelines. K. Tynystanov was repeatedly required to "recognize" the ideological mistakes that he allegedly made in his creations. Continued to remain "under the hood" and E.D. Polivanov. They were constantly defamed, although in the thematic plan of the institute's research work for 1936-1937. their works on linguistics were listed as fundamental.
At the same time, E.D. Polivanov began compiling a card index of the Kyrgyz-Russian dictionary, a scientific description of the Dungan language, prepared an essay on the history of Dungan writing, studied the poetics and principles of the Russian translation of the Kyrgyz epic Manas, and outlined great scientific plans. The scientist is also active in public life: he raises the question of creating a Dungan theater, organizing a Pushkin anniversary, etc. He makes an attempt to travel to an international linguistic congress in Denmark. In late July (or early August), while on an expedition, he sends a letter to the secretary of the regional party committee Belotsky: “... I received a letter from Denmark from the secretary of the Committee for the Convocation of the IV International Linguistic Congress with an official proposal to participate in this congress (dated 27.VIII. until September 4 in Copenhagen, Denmark).
I ask you to resolve the question: is it appropriate for me to go to this congress? ..». Further, the scientist substantiates (to the secretary of the regional committee?!) the need for his participation in the congress, since his reports were sent earlier, printed in French, and “now there is an important theoretical issue in which it would be important to defend the Marxist line of historical and linguistic research…”. And despite the "Marxist line", the resolution is a formal reply: "This is not the business of the regional committee, but of the Central Government - who should go to foreign congresses." To Denmark for the congress E.D. Polivanov never went.
The year 1937 has come. None of the scientist's scientific papers were published that year. The unsurpassed linguistic works of K. Tynystanov did not see the light either. Friends and colleagues did not have to go on linguistic expeditions that summer. Both professors were arrested on August 1, 1937. And on August 3, an order appeared for the institute: Ҥ 1. K. Tynystanov as unjustified trust and for a number of years did not give scientific products to the institute to be removed from work on August 1 of this year.
§ 2. E.D. Polivanov as unjustified trust and disrupting the implementation of the production plan of this date, to be removed from work.
By the same order, collections of works of the institute were withdrawn from circulation - “Issues of spelling of the Kyrgyz language”, “Issues of spelling of the Dungan language” and the work of I. Batmanov “Parts of speech in Kyrgyz language”, published under the editorship of Polivanov. The work of E.D. was withdrawn from the set. Polivanova "Principles of the terminology of the Dungan language". It was decided to suspend the work of Yang-Shang-Sin "Gansu and Shan dialects", which is at the stage of typing, until it is revised.
E.D. Polivanov was arrested by order from Moscow, transmitted by telegram through Alma-Ata to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Kirghiz SSR Chetvertakov on July 30, 1937: “The basis of the telegram from Comrade Frinovsky is to arrest and send the third department of Orientalist Evgeny Polivanov, former 1917 deputy Trotsky, to Moscow with a special escort. People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs Turbine working scientific work Kyrgyzstan. Zadin.
E.D. was arrested. Polivanov on August 1, 1937, a preliminary search was carried out at the apartment, but the protocol was drawn up only the next day. The property and furnishings in the apartment were so meager that the inventory in the protocol consisted of literally several lines: “The following was confiscated for submission to the NKVD: various correspondence, books, letters in one backpack, passport No. АЖ 118431.”
The first interrogation of the scientist was carried out on August 4 in the city of Frunze, and for unknown reasons the protocol ended up in the file of Yevgeny Dmitrievich's wife, Brigitta Alfredovna. The protocol of interrogation is actually a short biography of the scientist.
Arrested E.D. Polivanov is transported to Moscow and interrogated with "addiction". A statement by Yevgeny Dmitrievich dated October 1, 1937 “to the authorities of the investigators who conducted interrogations” has been preserved: “I am accused of spying for Japan under Art. 58-1a. I ask for an end to heavy interrogation techniques ( physical violence), because these tricks make me lie. I will add that I am close to madness.
The same E.D. Polivanov repeated during the trial on January 25, 1938, adding that he had always worked honestly and had never been a spy. And yet, the indictment of October 31, 1937 in the case of E.D. Polivanova sounded like this: “I pleaded guilty ...
1. In 1916, the Japanese intelligence officer Yamanashi was recruited into Japanese intelligence.
2. On the instructions of the Japanese, he entered the royal intelligence service.
3. After the October Revolution, he served as Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (Trotsky was People's Commissar), informing the Japanese about all the activities of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.
4. Carried out certain espionage and terrorist work on behalf of Japanese intelligence.
5. While at work in Central Asia, he conveyed to the Japanese his detailed considerations on this issue, i.e. charged with crimes. 58'a of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.
As a result of the above, Polivanov E.D. subject to trial by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR with the application of the law of December 1, 1934.”
Evgeny Dmitrievich's wife Brigitta Alfredovna knew nothing about her husband's fate for a long time. After unsuccessful efforts in Frunze, he leaves for Tashkent, assuming that he was sent there, and writes letters to Moscow.
A draft of one of the letters addressed to the USSR Prosecutor Vyshinsky dated January 1938 in the investigation file B.A. Polivanova was found in the archives of the KGB of Kyrgyzstan by Academician V.M. Flat. He was allowed to photograph this letter. And the author of these lines had a chance, with hands shaking with excitement, to retype on a typewriter words that were difficult to read because of tears, separated by impulses of a draft. It is difficult to convey with what genuine pain a friend and colleague, worried for the fate of the great scientist, gives the entire content of the letter. The heart grows cold when you think about the despair and hopelessness of this heroic woman in those terrible years of repression, when complete chaos reigned.
The letter is very poorly preserved, some words are difficult to read, there are omissions. It is quite obvious that Brigitta Alfredovna was in a state of severe moral crisis all these tragic six months after the arrest of E.D. Polivanova. Here are some excerpts from this letter: “Dear comrade! For six months I patiently waited for some results - and only now, when I am convinced that I cannot do without your help, do I decide to take a particle of your time from you and ask for your kind attention to my case.
I am the wife of Professor Evgeny Dmitrievich, well known in linguistic science and his discoveries in the field of linguistics, and his endless capacity for work, and devotion to science ...
The arrest was an unexpected and strong blow (...) for the husband, because all the people around (...) knew that my husband was completely (...). In addition, he has been for 27 years in a row (…was?… [seriously ill?]…”.
Further on the back of the page:
“About the middle of August, when I arrived at the NKVD in Frunze, I learned from the commandant, who, returning to me some of the things taken during the search, said that my husband was not in Frunze, that he had been transferred. But by no means could I find out about his whereabouts. Investigator Margaitis, who was in charge of the case, stubbornly refused to accept me after my husband was transferred, and a statement to the head of the NKVD department with my request to tell me the location of my husband remained unanswered.
My husband, taken in summer trousers and a shirt, disappeared in this form, no one knows where. After waiting in vain (one and a half ...?) months, I left Frunze for Tashkent in the hope ... ".
The second sheet, apparently the continuation and end of the letter, is better preserved: “I again sent a request to Frunze, to the same investigator Margaitis, and, in addition, a request to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Kyrgyzstan Comrade. Lotsmanov to tell me where my husband is, where he could have disappeared without a trace?. Margaitis, nor from Comrade Lotsmanov. I'm just desperate, I don't know where else to turn.
And now, again, a spark of hope has ignited in me - I know that you, comrade. Vyshinsky, do not leave a desperate person without an answer. I ask you to advise me - how can I find out the fate of my husband? I ask you to instruct the relevant authorities to notify me of the fate of my husband. Maybe he is in Moscow? Has the investigation been completed, has there been a trial, and what is he accused of? I ask you to help me find out about all this ...
Sorry for the trouble, for taking your time.
with deep respect B. Polivanov.
My address: Tashkent, ch. post office, poste restante. B. Polivanova.
Home address: Tashkent, Sennaya Square, collective No. 8, building 83.
Of course, no answer came from Vyshinsky. Maybe he didn't reach her. But the NKVD employees used the home address to arrest Brigitta Alfredovna on April 10, 1938.
By a resolution of the NKVD troika dated November 13, 1938, she was accused of “being an agent of Polish intelligence, collecting espionage information and discrediting the punitive policy of the Soviets. authorities. Polivanova Brigitta Alfredovna was sentenced to a labor camp for ten years.
According to some fragmentary data, B.A. Polivanova about
The name of Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov, the largest Russian polyglot linguist, theorist of linguistics, the creator of primers and textbooks for the peoples of our country, is known all over the world. It is difficult to assess the true extent of this man's talent. Polivanov left a rich legacy in linguistics, pedagogy, literary criticism, history, and ethnography. “Even if we talk only about published works, some books (including brochures) he managed to publish 28, and the total number of works published during his lifetime reaches 140 ... - writes A. A. Leontiev. What is this legacy made up of? The main place in it is occupied by two topics: Japanese studies and Turkic studies. Polivanov's very first publication is devoted to the Japanese language; the latest to Chinese. It is known that from 1913 to 1931 Polivanov created over a hundred scientific works. But even a smaller part of them, which has survived to this day, allows us to consider Evgeny Dmitrievich an outstanding linguist of the 20th century. Polivanov knew linguistically at least 35 languages. L.V. Shcherba called him "my brilliant student." The extraordinary abilities of the scientist were legendary. It was said that Polivanov could write a scientific work in just a few hours! For him, the most important thing was the search for scientific truth and the pleasure of the process of research itself.
Among domestic and foreign linguists, it is difficult to find a person as bright as Polivanov was. A revolutionary, an organizer of a detachment of Red Chinese during the Civil War, a diplomat, the author of the original version of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, an educator, one of the founders of the first university in Central Asia - there was a lot in the life of this truly amazing person, whose fate was tragic. The creative path of Evgeny Dmitrievich was short-lived. A nobleman by birth, he wholeheartedly accepted October 1917, but at the beginning of the thirties he found himself in isolation.
The thoughts of Polivanov, who was not accepted and appreciated by all his contemporaries, are consonant with the words of Mayakovsky:
I want to be accepted by my country
I won't be understood - well.
I will pass by in my native country,
How the slanting rain passes.
The works of Yevgeny Dmitrievich were not published in Moscow and Leningrad: he lost his job and could only find it in Kyrgyzstan. In August 1937, Polivanov was arrested on false charges and shot in January 1938.
Dozens of scientific works of the scientist were not published, because much of his scientific heritage was lost during his arrest or even earlier.
“Polivanov was an ordinary man of genius. The most ordinary man of genius, ”said the literary critic V.B. Shklovsky about him. However, recognition to Polivanov, as is often the case with geniuses, came many years after his death.
Polivanov was ten years older than the 20th century. Evgeny Dmitrievich was born on February 28 (March 12 - according to the new style), 1891 in Smolensk. His father, Dmitry Mikhailovich, a titular adviser, was a railway employee; mother, Ekaterina Yakovlevna, is a journalist, translator and writer.
In 1901, as a ten-year-old teenager, Evgeny Polivanov entered the Alexander Gymnasium in Riga, from which he graduated with a silver medal in 1908. At the end of the gymnasium, Polivanov was enrolled in the Slavic-Russian department of the Faculty of History and Philology and the Faculty of Oriental Languages of St. Petersburg University. Probably, Evgeny's nominal admission to the university is connected with the relocation of the Polivanov family to St. Petersburg.
The future linguist was seriously fascinated by oriental languages, traditions and culture of the peoples of the East, so he simultaneously becomes a listener of the Practical eastern academy by Japanese class.
Evgeny Dmitrievich was a student of the famous linguist I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, professor at St. Petersburg University. From his mentor, Polivanov adopted the idea of equal rights for all languages, which remained true to the end.
In 1912, Evgeny Dmitrievich graduated from St. Petersburg University and immediately received two invitations to stay at the university to prepare a master's thesis: at the department of literary critic I.A. Shlyapkin and at the Department of Comparative Linguistics under I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay. Polivanov chose the Department of Comparative Linguistics. Polivanov worked on his master's thesis for two years. The time was not easy, but fruitful. Evgeny Dmitrievich taught at the gymnasium, lectured for the sake of earning. “Compared to the lectures of many famous scientists, Polivanov's lectures were very interesting. Students attentively listened to his lectures for several hours in a row, forgetting that evening was coming. When he spoke at the linguistic circle of the university or at meetings of the Eastern Branch of the Archaeological Society, there were always many listeners. He was not only an educated scientist, but also spoke very well, ”one of his contemporaries recalled Polivanov.
E.D. Polivanov defended his dissertation in 1914 and soon became assistant professor of the Oriental Faculty in Japanese.
For four years, from 1912 to 1915, Evgeny Dmitrievich taught Russian, French and latin languages in a private gymnasium and at the Women's Pedagogical Courses of New Languages in St. Petersburg.
An important event in scientific biography Polivanov became dialectological expeditions to Japan in the summer of 1914-1916, as well as to Korea and China. “The main result of the trip was familiarization with the Kyoto dialect,” wrote Evgeny Dmitrievich in a report (1914). – “I managed to compile a fairly complete (about 14,000 words) phonetic dictionary of the Kyoto dialect, as well as write down several texts<…>.Some of the recorded texts may be of folklore interest.”
This brief report shows how much and fruitfully Polivanov worked in Japan. He devoted the trip of 1915 to the study of the western and eastern dialects of the Japanese language, and did his best to supplement the materials on the southern Japanese dialects. Such a large-scale research work has never been carried out before. Polivanov was a pioneer in this area. The third trip to the Land of the Rising Sun in the summer of 1916 allowed the scientist to collect exceptionally rich dialectological material, which he carefully processed and prepared for publication. However, the fate of these studies turned out to be difficult. Partially they were published in 1915-1917, but the difficulties of the first years of Soviet power and the changed living conditions of Polivanov prevented the full publication of these works.
Returning from Japan to St. Petersburg, Polivanov began working at the Higher Pedagogical Courses and as a teacher of courses for teachers of the deaf and dumb. In those years (1915-1920) he was still assistant professor at the Faculty of Oriental Languages at Petrograd University.
After October 1917, the study of Japanese dialects fell by the wayside for Polivanovan. Now he gives all his strength community service. So, in November - December 1917, Polivanov was engaged in deciphering and translating secret treaties of the tsarist government. Evgeny Dmitrievich was an employee of the Cabinet of the Military Press under the All-Russian Council of Peasants' Deputies, worked as the head of the Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and from October-November 1918 he was the commissioner for foreign affairs and one of the organizers of the Union of Chinese Workers in Petrograd. In the same 1918, Polivanov became the editor of the first Chinese communist newspaper, The Chinese Worker, and headed the Eastern Department of the Information Bureau under the Comintern. From that time until 1921, Evgeny Dmitrievich worked in the Political Department of the Baltic Fleet. He gave all his strength, rich life experience, talent as a researcher and organizational skills to social work.
In 1921, Polivanov moved to Moscow and became an assistant to the head of the Far Eastern section of the Comintern and at the same time taught at the Communist University of the Working People of the East.
In the autumn of 1921 the Comintern sent him on a business trip to Tashkent. In Uzbekistan, he revived the work of local linguists - ethnographers, collected and researched dialects, helped national schools with educational literature. Together with L.I. Palmin in the twenties, Polivanov compiled a Russian primer for non-Russian children of Turkestan, “A Brief Grammar of the Uzbek Language”, “A Brief Uzbek-Russian Dictionary”. The mission lasted for five years. Perhaps this was due to the illness of his wife, Bregitta Alfredovna Polivanova - Nirkh, as well as the scientist himself: in 1922 - 1923. Polivanov suffered a serious illness, due to which he left work for several months, and in 1925, during one of his trips around Turkestan, he fell ill with pneumonia. The return to Moscow was constantly postponed.
Only in 1926, Evgeny Dmitrievich returned from Central Asia and was soon elected a professor at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. The Moscow period (1926 - 1929) was the most fruitful time for the scientist. All of his main general linguistic publications belong to these years: “Introduction to Linguistics for Oriental Studies Universities”, articles “On the Literary (Standard) Language of Modernity”, “Russian Language of Today” and others. In the late twenties and early thirties, Polivanov compiled new alphabets for the peoples of the USSR, in particular, he developed the Turkic alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet.
In 1929, the People's Commissariat of Education of Uzbekistan invited Yevgeny Dmitrievich to work at the Uzbek State Scientific Research Institute. Polivanov accepted this invitation. In 1934, due to disagreements with the leadership of the institute on fundamental issues, the scientist moved to Frunze (now Bishkek) and became an employee of the Kyrgyz Institute of Cultural Construction.
What helped Polivanov become a polyglot? Probably, this is what: Evgeny Dmitrievich traveled a lot, talked with different people and strove to learn every new language among its speakers. He began to speak his native language when he knew only a hundred words, gradually expanding his vocabulary.
How much Yevgeny Dmitrievich did in the field of the theory of language and its evolution, comparative grammar and phonetics of Indo-European languages, etymology, Russian lexicology and phonetics of Japanese, Chinese and other Oriental languages! Scientific contribution Polivanov could have been disproportionately large, but on January 25, 1938, the scientist's life was tragically cut short.
In the history of Russian linguistics, E.D. Polivanov occupies a special place of honor not only as an unusually versatile and deep researcher of the language, but also as a courageous person who was uncompromisingly devoted to scientific truth and consistently defended it.
Questions and tasks
1. Tell me, what is E.D. Polivanov famous for?
2. What are the most striking episodes from the life of the description of the scientist?
3. Do you agree that E.D. Polivanov was a truly brilliant person?
4. What scientific works did E.D. Polivanov create?
5. Remember where the future philologist studied?
6. What languages did E.D. Polivanov in 1912-1915?
7. Tell us about the dialectological expeditions of E.D. Polivanov. What are their results?
8. What public work did E.D. Polivanov do in the first years after the October Revolution?
9. What did E.D. Polivanov work on during his trip to Uzbekistan?
10. What is significant about the Moscow period in the life of E.D. Polivanov?
11. What did E.D. Polivanov create for the unliterate peoples of our country?
Literature
1. Zhuravlev V.K. Ordinary genius (To the 100th anniversary of the birth of E.D. Polivanov) / / Russian language at school. 1991. No. 5. P. 78-82.
2. Krysin L.P. Polivanov-sociologist of the language (To the 90th anniversary of his birth) // Russian language at school. 1981. No. 2. P. 98-103.
3. Lartsev V.G. Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov. Pages of life and activity. M., 1988.
4. Lartsev V.G. The most ordinary man of genius // Russian language at school. 1989. No. 3. P. 98-102.
5.Leontiev A.A. Evgeny Dmitrievich Polivanov and his contribution to general linguistics. M., 1983.
6. Encyclopedic dictionary of a young philologist (linguistics) / Comp. M.V. Panov. M., 1984. S. 295.
7. Encyclopedia for children. T.10: Linguistics. Russian language / Chapter. Ed.M.D.Aksenova.M., 1998.S.642-643.
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