Dyakonov, Igor Mikhailovich

Childhood

Igor Mikhailovich Dyakonov was born in Petrograd on January 12, 1915 (December 30, 1914 according to the old style). Father, Mikhail Alekseevich Dyakonov , later a writer and translator, worked at that time as a bank employee; mother, Maria Pavlovna, was a doctor. The childhood of Igor Mikhailovich fell on the hungry and difficult years of the revolution and the civil war , his family lived poorly. Igor Mikhailovich had two brothers: the eldest, Mikhail , with whom Igor Mikhailovich subsequently sometimes worked together, and the youngest, Alexei.

From 1922 to 1929, the Dyakonov family lived with short breaks in the vicinity of Christiania (now Oslo ), in Norway . Igor's father worked in the Soviet trade mission as head of the finance department and deputy trade representative . Little Igor quickly learned the Norwegian language , and later German , which his mother knew well, and English . For the first time I went to the school of Deacons in Norway, and only at the age of 13. In Norway, Igor Mikhailovich was fond of the history of the Ancient East and astronomy , already at the age of 10 he was trying to understand Egyptian hieroglyphs and by the age of 14 he would finally decide to connect his future profession with the East.

In 1931, Igor Mikhailovich graduated from a Soviet school in Leningrad. At that time, an experiment of the “ brigade-laboratory method ” of teaching was carried out in the educational system - there were no ordinary classes, teachers, on pain of dismissal, were afraid to teach classical lessons. Pupils mainly engaged in the creation of wall newspapers, community service and amateur art. Serious knowledge at school was impossible to obtain, and it remained to count on self-education.

Youth and Youth

After leaving school, Igor worked for a year and also made paid translations. This was compelled by the difficult financial situation of the family and Dyakonov’s desire to go to university, which was easier to do from the workplace. In 1932, he hardly managed to enter the Historical and Philological Institute (later becoming part of Leningrad State University ). In the early thirties, the university was accepted not according to the results of exams, but according to personal data. Dyakonov managed to get on the waiting list and he became a full-fledged student only after the students expelled from the rabfak vacated enough places. At that time, such famous scholars as the linguist Nikolai Marr , orientalists Nikolai Yushmanov , Alexander Riftin , Ignatius Krachkovsky , Vasily Struve , orientalist and Africanist Dmitry Olderogge and others taught at the university. Alexander Pavlovich Riftin was for a long time the scientific supervisor of Dyakonov, and with academician Vasily Vasilievich Struve Dyakonov had a very difficult relationship with his youth.

The youth of Igor Mikhailovich Dyakonov fell on the years of Stalin's repressions . Some fellow students of Dyakonov were arrested, some, fearing arrest, they themselves became sexots of the NKVD and systematically wrote denunciations to their comrades. Of the two assyriologists who studied with Igor Mikhailovich, only Lev Aleksandrovich Lipin survived. Another, Nikolai Erekhovich, was arrested and died in custody at the end of 1945. ^[6] Subsequently, Lev Aleksandrovich and Igor Mikhailovich publicly reproached each other for the death of Nikolai Erekhovich.

In 1936, Dyakonov married classmate Nina Yakovlevna Magaziner .

Since 1937, in parallel with his studies, he worked in the Hermitage - it was necessary to feed the family.

In 1938, Dyakonov’s father was arrested with an official sentence of “ 10 years without the right to correspondence .” In fact, Mikhail Alekseevich was shot a few months after his arrest, in the same 1938, but the family found out about this only a few years later, for many years keeping the hope that Mikhail Alekseevich was still alive. In 1956, Dyakonov’s father was rehabilitated for lack of corpus delicti. Igor Mikhailovich himself was repeatedly invited to the NKVD for interrogations about fellow students. For example, one of Dyakonov's fellow students, about whom Igor Mikhailovich, like other students called to the Big House , testified in 1938, was a well-known historian, Lev Gumilyov , who spent 15 years in the camps. Father-in-law Dyakonov, Yakov Mironovich Storer, was also arrested in 1937, but survived. Despite all the difficulties, despite the fact that Dyakonov became the "son of an enemy of the people ", he was able to finish the last course. He studied Yiddish , Arabic , Hebrew , Akkadian , Ancient Greek and other languages.

War

In 1941, Dyakonov, as an employee of the Hermitage, was mobilized to evacuate valuable collections. Dyakonov worked under the guidance of the renowned art historian and Egyptologist Militsa Mathieu and packed one of the eastern collections. At the insistence of the head of the Hermitage party organization, Dyakonov, despite a white ticket for his eyesight, signed up for the militia . The director of the Hermitage, I. A. Orbeli , who appreciated a young capable employee, pulled him out of the militia. Prior to this, Orbeli sharply opposed the distribution of Igor Mikhailovich in the province after graduating from Leningrad State University, retaining him at work in the Hermitage.

Thanks to his knowledge of the German language, Dyakonov was enrolled in the intelligence department, but did not last there because of a poor profile. He was a translator in the propaganda department of the Karelian Front , where he wrote and printed leaflets, participated in interrogations of prisoners. In 1944, Dyakonov participated in the offensive of the Soviet troops in Norway and was appointed deputy commandant of the city of Kirkenes . Residents of the city spoke with gratitude of Dyakonov’s activities, Dyakonov in the 1990s became an honorary resident of the city of Kirkenes. During the war, his younger brother, Alexei Dyakonov, died.

Wife Nina Yakovlevna Dyakonova (Shopper) - professor of St. Petersburg State University , a well-known specialist in English literature.

Sons - famous physicists:

• Mikhail Igorevich Dyakonov (b. 1940) - Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, chief researcher at the Physicotechnical Institute named after A.F. Ioffe , professor at the University of Montpellier , laureate of the USSR State Prize .
• Dmitry Igorevich Dyakonov (1949-2012) - Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Head of the High-Energy Theoretical Physics Sector, PNPI B.P. Konstantinova .

Dyakonov was demobilized in 1946 and returned to his university. Its supervisor, Alexander Pavlovich Riftin , died in 1945, and Dyakonov became an assistant at the Department of Semitology, which was headed by I.N. Vinnikov. Igor Mikhailovich quickly defended his dissertation on land relations in Assyria and began to teach.

In 1950, one of the graduates of the department wrote a denunciation in which she indicated that the Talmud was studied at the department. The department was closed, dismissing almost all the teachers, including Igor Mikhailovich.

Dyakonov returned to work at the Hermitage. After the reorganization of the Institute of Oriental Studies, he began to work in his Leningrad branch . The range of his work extended to completely different areas of ancient history. In collaboration with M. M. Dyakonov and V. A. Livshits, he deciphered Parthian documents from Nisa . In 1952, Dyakonov, in collaboration with I. M. Dunaevskaya and Ya. M. Magaziner, published a unique comparative study of the Babylonian, Assyrian and Hittite laws ^[7] . In 1956 he published a book on the history of Media . In 1963 he published all the Urartian texts known by then on clay tablets ^[8] . In 1973, new translations of biblical books made by Dyakonov, “ Songs of Songs ” and “ Books of Ecclesiastes, ” ^{[9] were} published, and in 1998, a translation of “ Lamentation of Jeremiah ” ^[10] .

A high degree of scientificness, however, did not accompany all of Dyakonov’s translations: in particular, in his translation of the 2nd verse of the 3rd chapter of the Book of the Prophet Naum ^[11], Dyakonov arbitrarily omitted the words that predicted the concealment of Nineveh by the sands ^[12] .

Sumerology and Assyriology

Sumerology was one of the main lines of scientific activity of I. M. Dyakonov and the topic of his doctoral dissertation. However, his contribution to Sumerology has a number of controversial and controversial issues.

In 1959, the monograph “The Social and State System of the Ancient Mesopotamia. Schumer ”, a year later defended as a dissertation for a doctorate in historical sciences. In this work, Dyakonov gives his own concept of the structure of the Sumerian society and the socio-political history of Mesopotamia during the Sumerian period, and also criticizes all the previous concepts of Sumerian historians: adopted by Soviet science in the mid-1930s. the concept of V.V. Struve and the concept of A. Dimel, which was established in Western science.

In the classical textbook Struve, the ideas of which Dyakonov succinctly expounds, “the existence of communal (rather than individual) slavery and royal despotism in the ancient East was deduced; since the irrigation system was a communal affair, so far the private ownership of land arose only on ... high fields that could not be irrigated ” ^[13] . A. Daimel believed that all the economies of Sumerian city-states without exception should be considered as belonging to the temple-royal economy, and his point of view was supported by the most authoritative Sumerologist A. Falkenshtein ^[14] .

In the monograph by I. M. Dyakonov, both of these concepts were rejected. After calculating the total irrigated land of the Lagash state and comparing this amount with the land of the Bau temple, the researcher concluded that "a significant part of the land in Lagash was outside the temple estates", and the temple farm "nevertheless covered, probably, only a part of the free and Lagash’s slave population did not occupy the entire cultivated area of ​​the state ” ^[15] . Struve's concept of private land ownership in the “high fields” was disputed by Dyakonov on the basis of the following argument: bread cannot grow on dry land in dry tropics. ^[16]

As a result of his research, Dyakonov comes to the conclusion that there are two large sectors of the Sumerian economy: the land of large-family communities and temple land. The population of Sumer was inscribed in this economic structure and was divided into four strata: the big nobility, which had large tracts of land and had the opportunity to acquire land ownership; ordinary community members who owned land in the order of family-communal ownership; clients (former community members who have lost community ties); slaves (temple and private individuals). The main productive force of the Sumerian society, Dyakonov, in contrast to Struve, considers not slaves, but ordinary community members and partly clients. He considers the political system of Sumer as a permanent struggle for power between communal and tsarist-temple political groups, and the political history of the Sumerian states is divided into three phases: the struggle of the king and the aristocratic oligarchy; the emergence of despotism in the Akkadian period and the struggle for its consolidation; victory of the despotic system during the III dynasty of Ur ^[17] .

The work of T. Jacobsen on the early political history of Mesopotamia had a significant influence on Dyakonov's concept ^[18] . Therefore, it was well received by American Sumerologists, in particular, S. N. Kramer , who based on “a thorough and creative study of Dyakonov” his own sketch of the Sumerian city ^[19] .

Dyakonov also made some contribution to the study of the Sumerian language. He wrote a number of articles on the ergative construction of the sentence, on the numerals ^[20] .

Since the 1990s, searches have been revived in Sumerology typologically, and in the future, possibly genetically related to Sumerian languages. In 1991, R. Iosivara in his monograph compared Sumerian with Japanese ^[21] , and in 1996 P.K. Manansala published his arguments involving both phonetic and morphological and lexical data in favor of the relationship of Sumerian with the languages ​​of the Austronesian group , where he included, in addition to the munda , also Japanese ^[22] . A year after the publication of Manansaly, Dyakonov continued the substantiation of the hypothesis of kinship between the Sumerian language and the languages ​​of the mund group: in addition to several dozen names, some terms of kinship and case indicators turned out to be similar ^[23] . Of interest is the fact that it is precisely by comparing the Sumerian language with the languages ​​of the mund that the positions of Dyakonov and his implacable opponent Kifishin converge . In 2001, Jan Brown ^[24] advanced the arguments for kinship with the Sino-Tibetan language group ^[24]. I. Dyakonov mentions comparative studies of Brown in 1967 in the “Languages ​​of Ancient Near East Asia”.

Comparative Linguistics

The variety of scientific activities of Igor Mikhailovich Dyakonov allowed him to make a great contribution to comparative linguistics . Several of his works claim to be fundamental in this area. Among them:

• Semitic-Hamitic languages. Classification experience., M.: Science. 1965.119 p. 1600 e.
• Languages ​​of Ancient Near East., M.: Science. 1967.492 s. 2100 e.
• (jointly with A. G. Belova and A. Yu. Militarev ) Comparative-historical dictionary of Afrasian languages, M., 1981-1982 (not completed, several issues published)
• Afrasian Languages, Nauka, Moscow, 1988
• (together with S. A. Starostin ) Hurrit-Urartian and East Caucasian languages ​​// Ancient East: Ethnocultural relations, M., 1988
• Languages ​​of Asia and Africa. T. 4. Afrasian languages. Prince 1-2. M .: Science. 1991-1993. (Dyakonov wrote an extensive introduction to this volume, which gives a general description of the comparative grammar of Afrasian languages)

Igor Mikhailovich was also interested in deciphering ancient scripts and contributed to the publication in Russian of a whole series of fragments and excerpts from advanced works on the history of writing, which came out with his detailed comments on the current state of the issue.

In addition, Dyakonov is the author of the following linguistic hypotheses:

• (together with S. A. Starostin and V. E. Orel ) on the relationship of the Etruscan language with the Hurrian language ^[25] .
• about the kinship of the Sumerian language with the languages ​​of the munda .

Philosophy of History

Igor Mikhailovich Dyakonov published several generalizing works on history. He owns important chapters in the first volume of World History (M., 1956), the three-volume textbook History of the Ancient World (M., 1982) and the first volume of History of the East (M., 1997), also in collaboration with other authors he wrote:

• History of the Ancient East. Part 1. Book 1-2. "Science", Moscow. 1983-1988 ^[26]

After some hesitation (expressed, in particular, in the fact that instead of a slave-owning mode of production, in a number of works he began to speak simply of the ancient mode of production) I.M.Dyakonov most strongly defended the thesis that ancient Eastern societies belonged to the slave-owning formation. The first volume of the History of the Ancient East, published under his editorship in 1983, was defiantly, in defiance of all opponents of the official point of view, entitled The Origin of the Most Ancient Class Societies and the First Centers of Slave-Owning Civilization.

Among the monographic works of Dyakonov:

• Archaic myths of the East and West . - Moscow, 1990 .-- 246 p. Among the oppositional directions of the Assyriologists (Kifishin, Vassoevich, Svyatopolk-Chetvertynsky), the book caused deep rejection, primarily due to the overly overestimated materialistic-positivist approach to spiritual issues.
• Ways of history: from the oldest person to the present day . - M .: Oriental literature, 1994 .-- 382 p.

However, Igor Mikhailovich himself calls the last book “an adventure” ^[13] , and, indeed, it aroused serious criticism of some historians ^[27] . The most consistent concept of Dyakonov, put forward in the "Paths of History", was analyzed by Yuri Semenov in his monograph Philosophy of History. In contrast to the formerly official five-member scheme for changing formations, I. M. Dyakonov put forward his scheme of eight phases of historical development. These phases are primitive, primitive communal, early antiquity, imperial antiquity, the Middle Ages, the stable-absolutist post-Middle Ages, capitalist, post-capitalist. Formations in the Marxist scheme are singled out on the basis of a single attribute, and IM Dyakonov's situation is completely different. The first phase is separated from the second by the form of economy, the second from the third by the absence and availability of exploitation, the third from the fourth by the absence or presence of empires, and finally, “the first diagnostic sign of the fifth, medieval phase of the historical process is the transformation of ethical standards into dogmatic and proselytic ... " ^[28] . In other words, the entire periodization of I. M. Dyakonov was constructed (in the understanding of Yu. Semenov) in violation of the elementary rules of logic. It continuously changes the criterion of phase separation. As a result, the division into phases takes on a purely arbitrary character. According to Semenov, using this kind of unscientific method, we can distinguish how many phases are suitable ^[29] . The inconsistency permeates the entire book of I. M. Dyakonov. On the one hand, for example, the author sees the most important, fundamental flaw of all existing concepts of historical development in that they are built on the idea of ​​progress, and on the other, he himself identifies eight stages of the forward, upward movement of history, that is, he builds his scheme on the idea progress ^[30] . The most surprising thing is that, discarding the positive that is even in the official Marxist scheme, not to mention the creation by K. Marx himself, I.M.Dyakonov not only accepts, but brings to its absurdity its linear-stage interpretation. All countries, all zones, all regions develop in the same way and go through the same stages of development. “The unity of the laws of the historical process,” the scientist writes, “appears from the fact that they are equally traced both in Europe and on the opposite end of Eurasia - in almost isolated island Japan ... and even South America” ^[31] .

Previously, IM Dyakonov argued that the ancient Eastern society is slaveholding. Now he categorically insists that the slave-owning formation never existed anywhere at all. In his opinion, this concept should be abandoned once and for all, even in relation to ancient society, although, as he himself admits, in antiquity there were also such periods when slaves played a leading role in production ^[32] .

Criticism of I. M. Dyakonov as an Armenologist

In a 1983 article, the linguist Vyacheslav Ivanov notes the complete fallacy of all the constructions of I. M. Dyakonov regarding the origin of the ethnonym hay and other issues of ethnogenesis of Armenians and supports the correct conclusions of G. A. Kapantsyan . ^[33]

In addition, modern studies have shown that the statements of IM Dyakonov about the proximity of Greek and Phrygian to Thracian and Armenian , put forward by him in the 60s of the XX century, do not find confirmation in the language material ^{[34] [35] [36]} .

I. M. Dyakonov as an Iranian

Although the history of the ancient Iranian peoples and texts in Iranian languages ​​were not the central field of research of I. M. Dyakonov, he made a significant contribution to Iranian studies.

From 1948 to the early 1950s. during excavations led by M.E. Masson on the sites of Novaya and Staraya Nisa , located not far from Ashgabat and which are the ruins of Mihrdadkert, one of the capitals of the Parthian kingdom (III century BC - III century A.D.), more than two thousand documents were found on the shards (" ostrac "), written in a letter of Aramaic origin . The archaeological context and the same type of wording of the documents said that the texts found were economic records related to the winery. A number of Aramaic words in the documents were immediately understood by a specialist. However, another question arose: in what language are the ostrac written? Most Central Iranian scripts ( Middle Persian , Parthian , Sogdian , Khorezmian ) were characterized by the presence of Aramaic ideograms , that is, the Aramaic word (often distorted) was written for a number of tokens, but the Iranian equivalent was read (compare kanji in modern Japanese, Sumerograms in Akkadian). Semitologist I. N. Vinnikov made an attempt to read the documents in Aramaic ^[37] , while I. M. Dyakonov, his older brother, Iranian historian M. M. Dyakonov and Iranian-linguist V. A. Livshits ^{[38] ]} understood the documents as Parthian, but written with an extremely large number of Aramaic ideograms - this was indicated by the irregularity of writing Aramaic words, the non-Semitic syntax of inscriptions, interruptions in the ideographic and “open” writing of a number of tokens. The point of view of the Dyakonovs and Livshits was supported by the largest Iranianist of that time VB Henning ^[39] and is now generally accepted. In 1960, I. M. Dyakonov and V. A. Livshits published a substantial selection of documents ^[40] , and starting in 1976, the full English edition is gradually published in the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum series (all photographs, transliterations, and translations have been published to date) inscriptions, glossary).

In 1956, by order of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR, I. M. Dyakonov published "The History of Media " ^[41] . The four hundred-page monograph covers in detail issues of history, historical geography, ethnic history, archeology of the northeastern outskirts of Mesopotamia and northwestern Iran from ancient times, the date, direction, the nature of the infiltration of Indo-European Iranian tribes in these areas (Dyakonov advocated in the History of the Mead relatively late, from the VIII century BC, the penetration of the Iranians on the Plateau from Central Asia, although later recognized the possibility of an earlier date), the political history of the Median power of the VII-VI centuries, subjugation Persian mussels and the history of mussels as part of the Achaemenid state until the conquests of Alexander the Great . This work required analysis not only of Dyakonov's well-known ancient Eastern sources, but also of Greco-Roman writings and ancient Iranian monuments; both of them are masterfully studied in the book. "The History of the Medes" was translated into Persian and has survived several reprints in Iran ^[42] . Peru Dyakonova also owns a section on the history of Media in the "Cambridge History of Iran" ^[43]

A very important article is Dyakonov’s short article “East Iran to Cyrus (on the possibility of new formulations of the question)” ^[44] , where the author offered his vision of the chronological and geographical localization of Zarathushtra’s activities. Based on a concise analysis of the whole complex of linguistic, written and archaeological sources, the author concludes that Zarathushtra lived no later than the 7th century. BC e. in Bactria , gives additional arguments in favor of the penetration of Iranian tribes into the Iranian plateau from the steppe belt through Central Asia.

Literary Studies

I. M. Dyakonov was the author of a number of scientific articles on the history of the concept and text of Pushkin ’s novel “ Eugene Onegin ” (“On the eighth, ninth and tenth chapters of“ Eugene Onegin ”” (1963) ^[45] , “On the history of the plan“ Eugene Onegin “ "(1982) ^[46] ). He attributed Pushkin studies to his hobbies along with astronomy and the history of sailing ships ^[47] .

Philosophy, Mythology, Cultural Studies

The historical and philosophical ideas of Dyakonov are most consistently presented in such works as “Kirkenes Ethics ” (1944), “Archaic Myths of East and West” (1990), “The Ways of History: from the Most Ancient Man to the Present Day” (1994), “Book of Memoirs” "(1995). The historiosophy of Dyakonov is at the junction of the Marxist theory of socio-economic formations and French positivism ( O. Comte ), dating back to Bacon , Descartes and Spinoza . He distinguishes between eight phases of social structure (primitive, primitive communal, early antiquity, imperial antiquity, the Middle Ages, the stably absolutist post-Middle Ages, capitalist and post-capitalist), and considers the presence of three factors as the improvement of weapons production technologies, the emergence of alternative ideologically -psychological trends and the desire to remove socio-psychological discomfort. However, such a transition does not occur abruptly, but gradually. Thus, for a better understanding of each phase of history, one should equally study its material base and the value system that arises in the process of development of social relations at various levels.

Dyakonov estimates the future of mankind very pessimistic; he pays special attention to the problems of the exhaustion of natural energy resources, overpopulation and disturbance of biological equilibrium on Earth. He considers science to be a powerful means of sustaining life on the planet, with particular hopes being placed on controlled nuclear fusion and the use of solar radiation. In social terms, in order to better survive, all societies on the globe will gradually have to go into the post-capitalist phase of development, and developed civilizations will render all possible assistance to them in this. Objecting to the positivists, Dyakonov was skeptical of the idea of ​​progress: “if it arrived in one place, then in the other,” therefore there is no development without loss, and therefore, absolute progress is impossible.

Dyakonov’s ethical views arose under the influence of Darwin’s evolutionary teachings, they are in contact with the ethics of Protestantism and atheistic religious and philosophical teachings that do not recognize God as a person. In place of God, here is a conscience that Dyakonov considers to be innate to every person and determines the biological survival of the species (a species where most members of the altruists survive, because the life of the species is objectively more important than the life of one individual; on the contrary, the species consisting of egoists quickly dies out, because in it no one cares about the interests of the whole). The categorical imperative according to Dyakonov: do not multiply the world's evil, if a man by nature cannot escape it.

The theory of Dyakonov’s myth is based on the achievements of objective psychology (in particular, on the discoveries of the psychophysiologists of the Sherrington School). The myth is understood here as a coherent interpretation of the phenomena of the world, organizing the perception of them by man in the absence of abstract concepts. The myth owes its origin to the processes taking place in the cerebral cortex and central nervous system (the so-called “Sherrington funnel”), when an inadequate reaction of these organs is observed during information processing: some of the impressions of the outside world that are not reflected in social experience are transformed by consciousness of a person on the trails - subject-figurative comparisons of phenomena felt as identifications and associations; the rest of the information, consistent with experience, is converted into a causal relationship.

Dyakonov did not leave works in the field of religious studies, but his views are set forth in a number of later historiosophical works. Dyakonov considers the source of religious ideas to be the motivations of human activity, which, under the conditions of the dominance of mythological consciousness, are perceived as causal relationships determined by the will of the deity. Deities predetermine the nature of causal connections for an archaic person and thereby the possibility or impossibility of satisfying social impulses. The deity, as an explanation of the causal connection through the tropes, is included in the semantic series. Dyakonov defines local pantheons as “causal principles of motives that differ in the development of myths - semantic series in the narratives about them”.

The further development of religion according to Dyakonov is associated with the development of social relations as a result of migration and improvement in the field of arms production. Not believing in the existence of God as a person and expressing doubt about the existence of the omniscient Higher Mind, Dyakonov spoke of the secular nature of the future human society based on the ethical principles outlined above.

Creating your own Assyriological School

In March 1988, Dyakonov received an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago, where he was named the leading researcher of the ancient Near East, who "alone revived the assyiological science in the Soviet Union." Indeed, I. M. Dyakonov raised many students (see the List of Russian-speaking Assyriologists ).

Many of them continue to work in the Department of the Ancient East of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences . There is also the Dyakonov memorial library donated to the Institute.

Confrontation with Academician Struve

Dyakonov's scientific work related to the Sumerian language took place in a confrontation with academician Vasily Vasilievich Struve , the then most famous orientalist who specialized in Sumerology in the USSR , and since 1941 headed the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Vasily Vasilievich managed in the difficult time of Stalin's repressions to maintain good relations with the regime, to be considered one of the main official Marxist historians. Perhaps this fact itself became the main reason for the hatred with which Igor Mikhailovich Dyakonov, the son of the “ enemy of the people ” executed in 1938, belonged to Academician Struve. In his “Book of Memoirs,” Dyakonov mentions Struve dozens of times, each time in a negative sense, blaming him even the timbre of voice and body shape ^[48] . The confrontation with Struve for Dyakonov was aggravated by the fact that Igor Mikhailovich was a scientist with very diverse interests, wrote works in different languages ​​and cultures, and Struve, doing most of his life (at least since 1911, when he graduated from university) with Egyptology, since 1933 concentrated precisely on Sumerology, compiling special file cabinets. However, Dyakonov was very interested in Sumerian history and the Sumerian language , he was engaged in research in these areas and repeatedly tried to detect flaws in Struve's theories or to develop these theories in some way.

In the early fifties, Dyakonov made a number of articles ^{[49] [50] [51] [52]} , mainly aimed at revising the economic system of Sumer, long proposed by Struve. In his reply ^[53], Struve argued that Dyakonov based his assumptions on the erroneous interpretation of certain Sumerian words. It should be noted that in the modern interpretation of these words the Struve tradition is preserved ^[54] .

In the late fifties, controversy began to be more personal. At the same time, it is necessary to note the evident facts of violation of scientific etiquette by Igor Mikhailovich: from the point of view of the academic table of ranks, he was only a candidate of historical sciences, who entered into personal confrontation with the academician, since 1941 headed the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and since 1959 Head of the Ancient Eastern Department of this Institute. Struve reproached Dyakonov for using translations of the orientalist Shileiko in his articles without indicating his authorship ^[53] . Dyakonov, in turn, publicly attacked the early translations of Struve, which Vasily Vasilievich made from the German interlocutor and which he had long abandoned ^[55] , which Struve called a “disloyal act” ^[56] .

Nevertheless, in 1959, Dyakonov tried to defend his doctoral dissertation in his book “The Social and State System of the Ancient Mesopotamia: Sumer” (an author's abstract was published back in 1957), choosing Struve as his opponent, but Struve made a large number of amendments which Dyakonov did not accept and refused to listen to ^[13] . Good relations with Bobodzhan Gafurovich Gafurov , a prominent party leader, former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Tajik SSR , and at that time the director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, who personally asked Struve to remove objections, helped Dyakonov defend his doctoral dissertation (Dyakonov, under the leadership of Gafurov, organized the XXV International Oriental Congress Moscow in 1960, and his brother Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyakonov once reviewed Gafurov's book History of Tajikistan) ^[13] . In 1960, Dyakonov managed to successfully defend himself and become a doctor of historical sciences, although Struve refused to act as an opponent at all.

Blame the Epic of Gilgamesh

In 1961, in the series “Literary Monuments”, the translation of Dyakonov's Epic about Gilgamesh ^[57] was published. This work brought Dyakonov both success and widespread fame outside of Oriental studies , and the grumbling of discontent among scholars in connection with the circumstances surrounding this translation. In preparing the translation, Dyakonov worked with manuscripts of the translation of the Assyro-Babylonian Epic, made by the talented orientalist Vladimir Kazimirovich Shileyko in the twenties and thirties. Shileiko’s influence was not denied, but a discussion arose about the extent of use of these manuscripts. In the words of the famous Russian philologist Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov : “a number of places of the specified translation ... almost literally follow Shileyko’s text not only in rhythm, but also in a specific selection of words” ^[58] . Dyakonov, in his “Book of Memoirs,” confirms that he worked with the Shileiko manuscript for a long time, but claims that it was “draft and incomplete sketches, often without beginning and end,” and also that its publication was “impracticable” ^[13] . At the same time, other scholars considered the Assyro-Babylonian epic manuscript finished and ready for publication ^[59] ; moreover, most of it was published without any additional consultation with the Assyriologists in 1987 ^[60] .

In addition, Shileiko’s relatives claim that they were able to take the manuscript from Dyakonov only by resorting to the help of a police officer ^[61] . In his correspondence with Ivanov, Dyakonov pointed out that he was “against exaggerating the dependence of his translation on Shileyko’s” and intended to return to this issue, but within 12 years from the moment Ivanov’s comments were released and until his death in 1999, Dyakonov addressed this issue and did not return ^[62] .

However, the integrity of I. M. Dyakonov’s work with Shileiko’s manuscripts is indicated by the letter to V.K. Andreeva-Shileiko to I. M. Dyakonov discovered in the Shileiko family’s archives dated August 23, 1940 (his draft has been preserved), which says: “In your letter You ask whether the papers of Vladimir Kazimirovich have preserved translations of other Gilgamesh texts (in addition to table VI - V. Ye.). Unfortunately, no, although Vladimir Kazimirovich translated all parts of Gilgamesh in full and he prepared a large study about this epic. But by the will of fate, all the materials on this work of his disappeared in his Leningrad apartment during his stay in Moscow. This loss was a heavy blow to my deceased husband, although he used to say that there was nothing to grieve for, as what others could not complete, others would do it anyway. And he probably would have been glad if he found a successor in your face ” ^[63] . Thus, from the correspondence it follows that the full translation of the epic about Gilgamesh was lost during the life of V.K.Shileiko, and his widow blessed the young scientist I.M.Dyakonov to make a new translation. The point in this discussion of authorship should be made by the academic publication of those Shileiko translations that have survived ^[63] .

Not a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (RAS), Dyakonov was a corresponding member of the British Academy (since 1975), an honorary member of the , the Royal Asian Society of Great Britain and Ireland , the , the American Academy of Arts and the Academy of Natural Sciences of the Russian Federation . ^[5] He was an honorary member of the Italian Institute of the Near and Far East , Honorary Doctor of the University of Chicago . ^[64]