Revunenkova, Elena Vladimirovna

In 1961 she graduated from the Department of Indonesian Philology of the Eastern Faculty of Leningrad State University . Her teachers were Indonesian professor Usman Effendi and the famous orientalist G.I. Prokofiev . After graduation, she continued her postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Oriental Studies of Leningrad State University under the guidance of a literary critic-synologist E. A. Serebryakov ^[1] .

After graduating from graduate school in 1965, she began to work as a scientific and technical employee of the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences .

In 1970 she defended her thesis “Sedzhara Melayu ( Malay History ) - a historical and cultural monument of the Malay Middle Ages”. The basis of the dissertation was a commentary translation of the most important monument of Malay traditional literature, representing the historical and mythological epic in its genre. After 40 years, she returned to this monument, a list of which was brought by I.F. Kruzenshtern from a trip to Southeast Asia in the English frigate "Oiseau" in 1799 and is stored in the archive of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg. She published a facsimile of the manuscript and its translation into Russian with commentaries (2008) ^[2] . This was the third book of E.V. Revunenkova. The first two are “The Peoples of Malaysia and Western Indonesia (some aspects of spiritual culture)” (1980, mainly devoted to shamanism in the traditions of the peoples of the named countries) and “Myth-rite-religion (some aspects of the problem on the material of the peoples of Indonesia)” (1992, considered ceremonies and myths associated with rice cultivation, ritual aspects of traditional theater, etc.). On the topic of the second book, E.V. Revunenkova defended her doctoral dissertation. The fourth book, Essays on Batak Culture, was prepared - the result of a long-term study by scientists of the Batak collection of the MAE RAS and field work by bataks in 1999, which were funded by the Dutch G.V.Locher Foundation. She also carried out field work in Altai.

As a researcher, E.V. Revunenkova is characterized by brilliance of thought, wide erudition in the problems of ethnography, medieval literature, theater studies, serious attention to the work of predecessors, accessibility and literary presentation.

For several years, she served as the head of the department of Australia, Oceania and Indonesia at the MAE RAS. She participated in the preparation of a new collected works of N. N. Miklouho-Maclay. On the occasion of the scientist’s 70th birthday, a collection of her articles “Indonesia and Malaysia - the Crossroads of Cultures” (2010) was published ^[3] . In total, she has published more than 180 works in Russian, English, Malay, Chinese.

E.V. Revunenkova developed and taught for many years lecture courses on the history of Malay and Indonesian literature and on the ethnography of Indonesia and Malaysia for students of the Oriental faculty of Leningrad / St. Petersburg University. She constantly acts as an opponent and reviewer of dissertations and student work at the University and the Academy of Sciences, edits and reviews scientific collections of the MAE RAS / Kunstkamera.

E.V. Revunenkova is a member of the Nusantara Society (Moscow), Euroseas, Folklore Fellows. Participant of international conferences and seminars with reports on the traditional culture of Indonesia and Malaysia and the theory of shamanism as a religious phenomenon.

Mother Frida Davydovna Gurevich is an archaeologist. Father Vladimir Georgievich Revunenkov is a researcher in the history of France and Germany. Her husband is Leonard Georgievich Herzenberg (1934-2012), a comparative linguist, and daughters Anna and Ksenia.

• Prime Comexindo Award (1995)

Monographs

• Revunenkova E.V. Peoples of Malaysia and Western Indonesia (some aspects of spiritual culture). M., 1980
• Revunenkova E.V. Myth-rite-religion (some aspects of the problem on the material of the peoples of Indonesia). M., 1992

Articles

• Revunenkova E.V., Reshetov A.M. Sergey Mikhailovich Shirokogorov as a researcher of shamanism // Materials of the international congress “Shamanism and other traditional beliefs and practices. Ethnological research on shamanism and other traditional beliefs and practices. ” - 1999. - T. 5. Part 1 . - S. 23-30 .
• Revunenkova E.V., Reshetov A.M. Sergey Mikhailovich Shirokogorov // Ethnographic Review . - 2003. - No. 3 . - S. 100-119 .
• Shirokogorov, Sergey Mikhailovich / Revunenkova E.V. // Sherwood - Yaya. - M .: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 2017. - P. 41. - ( Great Russian Encyclopedia : [in 35 vols.] / Ch. Ed. Yu. S. Osipov ; 2004—2017, vol. 35). - ISBN 978-5-85270-373-6 .