On January 4, 2014, Professor Viktor Grigoryevich Korgun, an outstanding Soviet and Russian orientalist and a talented researcher of Afghanistan, died after a serious and long illness. He was born in Leningrad in 1940. In 1957, he graduated with a gold medal from the Caucasian Suvorov Officer School in Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz). In the same year, he entered the Kiev Higher Radio Engineering School of the Air Defense Forces. From 1959 to 1961 he served in the army. In 1961, he entered the Institute of Oriental Languages at Moscow State University in the Department of Persian Language and Literature. Since 1966, its fate has been closely linked to Afghanistan. Working as a translator for the Soviet Embassy in Kabul, he fell in love with this country and became interested in the history, culture and traditions of the Afghan people. Subsequently, as part of a group of Soviet advisers in the Ministry of Planning of Afghanistan, he took part in solving complex economic problems, participated in negotiations between statesmen of the two countries. In 1968, he graduated from the IVY. In 1968-1971, he taught Persian at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages. In 1971, he entered the postgraduate program of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1975 he defended his PhD thesis and was enrolled in the Institute as a junior researcher. Continuing to study the history of Afghanistan, he wrote a number of scientific articles and monographs. Some of them have become reference books for historians, specialists in the field of international relations, teachers, graduate students and students of humanitarian universities, and anyone interested in the history of Afghanistan. Since 1966, V. G. Korgun has regularly visited Afghanistan in various capacities: from translator, consultant, lecturer - to scientist, political analyst and expert. He was so familiar with Kabul and many of the country's provinces that Afghans themselves often listened wit ... Read more