95th Anniversary Of Dmitri Likhachev

November 28 will mark the 95th anniversary of academician Dmitri Likhachev. Likhachev is very well remembered as a prominent historian, and yet even more - as a bright public figure. The patriarch of Soviet science was called national consciousness. The man's stalwart and noble spirit was forged through gulag (where Stalin era cast him in the thirties) and Leningrad World War II blockade. His reflections about the future of Russia and its culture were uttered from rostrums, published in newspapers. An ardent striver for restoration of architectural monuments, protector of libraries, restitutor of forbidden books back to readers, Likhachev firmly believed that "the only meaning of a nation's existence is preservation of the culture it possesses." In 1928 Likhachev graduated from the department of social sciences of the then-Leningrad university. At 21, he was arrested for participating in an "anti-Soviet lodge." He spent four years in Solovetski and Belomoro-Baltiiski hard labour camps. Since 1938, Likhachev worked in the Institute of Russian Literature (the so-called Pushkin house) of the Academy of Sciences. The Academy welcomed him in 1970. He is the author of many fundamental works on the history of Russian literature and culture, of which a research of one of the most ancient items in Russian literature, "The Song of Igor's Campaign" (late 12th century), ea! ! rned the most wide acknowledgement. The scholar was member of Bulgarian, Austrian and Hungarian and some other academies, Honorary Doctor of several universities. He founded the Soviet Cultural Foundation in 1986, to chair it for seven succeeding years. In 1998 Likhachev became the first to be awarded with Russia's highest state reward, the Order of Saint Apostle Andrei the First-Called. Even the map of the Universe features the name of the scientist. An asteroid discovered by Petersburg astronomers was named after Likhachev.