ИСТИНА

Saint Petersburg (Leningrad) is rightly regarded as the centre of Russian oriental studies – a place that has traditionally offered a good environment for studying the history of the Orient, the languages and literature of that region. The paper discusses research work of the Soviet oriental scholars, successors to the St Petersburg school of oriental studies, during one of the most difficult and tragic periods of the Great Fatherland War – the siege of Leningrad. Immobilised by the 872-day siege (8th September 1941 -27th January 1944), by a monstrous ordeal that cost numerous lives, Leningrad continued to resist, live and work. And the work went on not only for the front – it continued uninterrupted in science and the arts. The outstanding Soviet orientalists I.A.Orbeli, B.B.Piotriovsky, M.M.Dyakonov, A.N.Boldyrev and many other researchers devoted that period to serious research work. Thus, in the field of oriental studies, there were two academic events that deserve special attention – meetings of enormous symbolic importance for study of the heritage of the medieval Orient in world science: • A celebration of the 800th anniversary of the birth of the great poet Nizami Gyanzhevi, held on Sunday 19th October 1941 - the 120th day of the war and the 42nd day of the total blockade of Leningrad. The meeting opened with a speech by Academician I.A.Orbeli, the Director of the Hermitage. It was accompanied by an exhibition entitled ‘The Era of Nizami’, featuring the few exhibits that had remained in the Heritage after the evacuation of the main archive. • The second event was the Navoi Readings, held to mark the 500th anniversary of the outstanding poet, humanist and statesman of Timurid Khorasan, Alisher Navoi. This took place on 10th and 12th December in the Hermitage’s School Cabinet. It was also the subject of an academic session in the Leningrad Institute of Oriental Studies on 29th December. It is important to point out that celebrations of these important dates were held in the poets’ native lands, though somewhat later. In 1941, neither in Moscow nor in any city of the Soviet Union other than Leningrad were formal ceremonies held to celebrate those landmark events.