On August 20, 2010, Boris Anatolyevich Litvinsky, a world - renowned scientist and the oldest employee of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, passed away. A student of the Central Asian State University, he went to the front at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, participated in military operations as a platoon commander of submachine gunners, and was seriously wounded on the outskirts of Berlin. After recovery, he returned to Tashkent, graduated from the University in the Department of Archeology, and since then he has devoted his entire life to science. In 1951, together with his wife, a major numismatist and orientalist E. A. Davidovich, at the invitation of B. G. Gafurov, he moved to Dushanbe, where he headed the Department of Archeology and numismatics at the A. Donish Institute of History and Archeology, the first Tajik scientific archaeological center. In 1971, the family moved to Moscow, where B. A. Litvinsky became head of the newly created Section of Antiquity and the Middle Ages of the Department of Soviet Oriental Studies, and later head of the Department of Ancient Oriental Studies of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He worked actively at the Institute until the last days of his life. During more than six decades of fruitful scientific activity, B. A. Litvinsky led numerous archaeological expeditions, the results of which turned out to be significant for world science, and the work of their researcher went far beyond the study of material culture. The scientist dealt with issues of ethnogenesis of modern and ancient peoples of Central Asia, ideology, problems of interaction between farmers and nomads, cultural contacts and their significance, migrations and religious movements. B. A. Litvinsky's works are distinguished by the huge scope of the material involved. A scientist of extraordinary erudition, he was able to examine each phenomenon against an extremely broad archaeological ... Читать далее