Vilen Vladimirovich Sikorsky was called a professor long before he officially received this title. And this was facilitated not only by his "professorial appearance", but also by his extensive knowledge of the culture, literature and language of the Nusantara countries. For 55 years of creative activity, the beginning of which coincided with the period of the formation of Soviet Malay studies, he became one of its notable representatives, occupying the niche of the founder of the study of modern Indonesian literature in our country. A class translator and one of the leading teachers of Indonesian and Malay languages, he has also proved himself to be a talented organizer both in our society and beyond.

The hero of the day was born on March 27, 1932 in Odessa. However, Vilen Vladimirovich does not consider himself a true Odessan, since he was still a one-year-old in Moscow among the "children of the Arbat". After graduating from high school in 1951, he entered the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies (MIV). The successor of the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages, founded in 1814, MIV was known among the city's student fraternity not only for its exotic languages, but also for its exotic evenings with local fakirs and "Indian" dancers. The department was called Malay, and the applicant believed that he would have to free the Malays from the yoke of the British imperialists. But it turned out that all the subjects concerned not Malaya, but a completely different, already independent country - Indonesia.

The Malay language was taught by L. A. Mervart, a pioneer of its teaching in the USSR. Some time later, the language became known as Indonesian in accordance with the Youth Oath of 1928 and the Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia. Lyudmila Alexandrovna relied on classical Malay texts and classical (high) Malay, which was unified by the Dutch for use in school education. In addition to her, Semaun, the founder of the Communist Party of Indonesia, a living legend, came twice a week, who was expelled from the country in 1924 for or-

organization of the railway workers ' strike. He taught spoken (low) Malay, the real language of political and social life in the multi-ethnic colony. The main teacher from the second year was Yu. A. Sholmov, who only four years earlier graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, but did not let the students down. He drew on newspaper articles and short stories published there, bringing the audience the true Indonesian language, which included both high and low Malay. History was taught by A. A. Guber, the founder of Russian Indonesian studies. Finally, a special love for Indonesia (its people, animals and plants) was instilled in students of Indonesian groups by the botanist and anthropologist M. M. Mestergazi, who spent several years on the equator together with the animal sculptor V. A. Vatagin even before the revolution.

Still, there was an annoying gap among the courses that were taught. If students of the Persian, Japanese, Chinese and other departments listened to lectures about" their " literature, which helped to understand the relevant countries, customs and customs of the people from the inside, then Indonesian students did not have such lectures. In the young man's understanding, brought up on the Russian and Soviet attitude to literature as the quintessence of truth, this circumstance was absolutely unacceptable. As a result, the enthusiastic first-year student took up the study of modern Indonesian literature on his own. Critical materials available in Moscow libraries in English were used as a support. From the second year, they added a little more numerous works in Indonesian and reading the original works themselves.

However, the first publications of the current hero of the day, which appeared in scientific journals, concerned history and economics, not literature. These were two reviews - for the translated book "Modern Indonesia" ("Soviet Oriental Studies". 1956. No. 2) and D. V. Bekleshov's monograph " Indonesia: Economy and Foreign Trade "(Peoples of Asia and Africa. 1958. № 2). E. I. Gnevusheva, who read the history of Indonesia in her senior years, insisted on writing them and contributed to the publication.She always took motherly care of her students.

V. V. Sikorsky considers the publication of the article "The formation of modern Indonesian literature" in the sixth issue of the academic bi-monthly "Bulletin of the History of World Culture" for 1959 to be the real beginning of his scientific activity. It was the first to analyze and introduce into scientific use works in the" low " Malay language of the late XIX-early XX centuries, discovered by the author in the collection of the Russian State Library. Thus, the initial stage of the formation of modern Indonesian literature was postponed for almost half a century, the origin of which, according to a tradition that has not yet been fully outlived, is associated with the publishing and monitoring activities of the Balei Pustaka (House of Literature) educational institute of the colonial Authorities, founded in 1918.

The new concept was developed and concretized in the dissertation " On the history of the formation of modern Indonesian literature "(1962; opponents A. A. Guber and E. P. Chelyshev) and the essay "History of Indonesian Literature" (1965), in which the literary process was analyzed before the tragic events in the second half of 1965.

V. V. Sikorsky still considers the discovery and introduction of previously ignored works in "low" Malay to be his main scientific achievement, although later he wrote many other works on various aspects of the Indonesian literary process and on the work of a number of writers. Among the latter, he gives a special place to a short essay written in 1977 about Utuy Tatang Sontan (1920-1979), whom he supervised and encouraged in every possible way to continue his creative activity after arriving in Moscow in 1973 from China, where he left in 1963 for medical treatment and where he was "stuck" because of the anti-government coup in his homeland.

Returning to the biography of the hero of the day, we note that in 1954 the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies was abolished (to be revived three years later as the Institute of Oriental Languages at the Lomonosov Moscow State University), and most of the students were transferred to MGIMO. Vilen Vladimirovich graduated from the University in 1957 a year late compared to his fellow students due to a year-long internship at the Embassy in Jakarta. He was the first intern there, and they didn't really know what to do with him, so they gave him relative freedom to travel around the country (at their own expense, of course) and communicate with writers. The latter was greatly supported by letters of recommendation from Professor and poet Intoyo, who had just started teaching at MGIMO.

The beginning of the hero's career is connected with the Military-Political Academy, where he was recruited to teach the Indonesian language. Vilen Vladimirovich was never disappointed in the choice of a teaching profession, because it allows you to manage your own time for studying literature, which has become a kind of hobby. However, at times literature was also a profession. So, in 1957-1964. For the first time in our country, he gave several lectures on Indonesian literature at the Institute of Oriental Languages at Moscow State University. Later, this course was repeated at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, where they also had to master (due to a temporary reduction in the language load) a general course of English literature and even sections on the classics of Japanese and Indian (Sanskrit) literature, which were created in languages that the students do not speak.

A break in teaching work occurred in 1964-1966. in connection with the stay in Indonesia as director of the House of Soviet Culture in Jakarta. Old and new Soviet films were constantly shown there, and many writers and filmmakers of the left and right orientation came to watch them and then have long conversations-and this despite the complexity of the political situation on the eve and during the events of late September and early October 1965. An attempt to somehow help friends from the persecuted left ended with a denunciation, written now a late fellow programmer. After the holiday, it was impossible to return to the country under the equator for another planned third year.

And again, teaching work followed, now at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages. From 1968 to 1972, he also worked part-time in the voluminous, despite the name, "Malaya Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya" as an editor on Oriental literatures. Finally, in 1981, Vilen Vladimirovich headed the Department of Oriental Languages of the Higher Courses of Foreign Languages of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the successor of the oldest special translation educational institution established in 1823 under the Asian Department of the State Board of Foreign Affairs. Currently, the Department of Oriental Languages teaches almost 30 languages spoken or studied by Russian diplomats who are required to regularly improve and confirm their knowledge, skills and abilities.

Vilen Vladimirovich has published about 100 scientific papers in Russian, Indonesian, Malay and English. An important aspect of his work was the popularization of Indonesian poetry in our country, presented in the anthologies "Voices of the Three Thousand Islands" (1963), "Young Poets of Indonesia" (1965), "Flowers of Distant Shores" (1966) with introductory articles, comments and short biographies of 75 poets. Needless to say, these beautifully designed collections are distinguished by careful selection of materials, remarkable translations, including N. Korzhavin, A. Golemba, T. Syryshcheva, the famous translator of Asian poetry S. Severtsev (based on "footnotes") and Vilen Vladimirovich himself. He later translated and published a book of poems by his recently deceased friend, the distinguished poet Rendra (2000). He wrote the forewords to the novels published in Russian by Armain Panet "Fetters "(1964; translated by A. Pavlenko) and Pramudya Ananta Tur "The Human World" (1986; translated by E. Rudenko), in which the creative work of writers is analyzed in detail. His own forewords, but already in Indonesian, precede the translations of Leo Tolstoy's novels Resurrection (2005) and Anna Karenina (2007) by Kusalah Subagio Tur.

Another important activity of the hero of the day is the preparation of material for encyclopedias and reference books, which requires painstaking work, accuracy and concentration of presentation. The vast majority of articles in reference books and encyclopedias published in the 1950s and 1990s on the problems of Indonesian, Malay, Malaysian, Javanese, Sundanese and other literature of the Malay Archipelago, as well as biographies of writers, were written by Vilen Vladimirovich. These publications include the Soviet Historical Encyclopedia, the nine-volume Short Literary Encyclopedia, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, and Indonesia. Handbook "(1983)," Literary Encyclopedia "(1987)," History of World Literature " (volumes VII and VIII, 1991, 1994).

Vilen Vladimirovich made a contribution to the study of not only literature, but also the culture of Nusantara in general, as evidenced, in particular, by his articles on Indonesian theater (1982) and cinema (1983). Such a noble aspect of his activity as familiarizing readers of the Nusantara countries with Russian and Soviet literature is also not spared. His authentic translations into Malay and Indonesian of a number of poems by A. S. Pushkin, A. Blok and A. Akhmatova (with the transmission of not only the meaning, but also the rhythm and rhyme of the originals) were published in the Russian language.-

It was published in the magazines Devan Sastra (1988) and Horison (1991) and provoked a discussion about how to translate poems into other languages.

The activity of Vilen Vladimirovich as an organizer of science is also multifaceted. Along with B. B. Parnikel and N. F. Aliyeva, he initiated the creation in 1967 of a regular seminar "Malay-Indonesian readings" at the Institute of Oriental Languages at Moscow State University, whose monthly meetings were held for a long time under the chairmanship of A. A. Guber. It was this seminar that was transformed in January 1990 into the Nusantara Society, which unites scientists, teachers, postgraduates and students of Moscow and St. Petersburg academic and educational institutions dealing with the problems of this region. And it is quite natural that V. V. Sikorsky agreed to take over the duties of the head of the company after the departure of its first president B. B. Parnikel in 2004.

The fact that the authority of the society is recognized at the international level is also a considerable merit of the scientist. In 1996, on his initiative and with his active participation as chairman of the organizing committee, an international seminar "Nation-building and the cultural/ literary process in Southeast Asia" was held, which was attended by 48 foreign representatives, and in 1999, the XI European Colloquium on Indonesian and Malay Studies (ECIMS) was held in Moscow, the last in the world. history of this organization's existence. Later, this seminar was connected to broader meetings within the framework of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EUROSEAS), of which the Nusantara Society has been a collective member since 1964. Vilsn Vladimirovich represented Russia in this association for two terms, from 1998 to 2004.

The hero of the day found it difficult to answer the question of how many international seminars he participated in abroad. Probably six in Malaysia, four in Indonesia, two in the UK, and one Euroseas each in Hamburg, Paris, and Naples. And what are your fondest memories? There were two of them. The IX European Colloquium on Indonesian and Malay Studies in Hala (Great Britain) is his very first, thanks to a particularly warm atmosphere between colleagues. Another memorable seminar took place at the University of Indonesia in 2006. It dealt with the concept of "world literature", and by the will of circumstances, Vilen Vladimirovich had to speak at the opening with one of the three key reports "On the study of world literature in the USSR and Russia". In it, the speaker introduced the audience to the concept underlying the never-completed multi-volume academic "History of World Literature". Two other co-rapporteurs spoke in English, while Vilen Vladimirovich switched to Indonesian. And the huge audience applauded almost every passage of the report.

In addition to managing Nusantara, Vilen Vladimirovich actively works in the Society for Cooperation and Friendship with Indonesia, where he is listed as the first vice-president. And more. All the few dissertations on literature and culture of the "Nusantara" countries were opposed by Vilen Vladimirovich. N. M. Smurova, M. A. Boldyreva, L. V. Goryaeva, I. N. Solomonik, E. S. Kukushkina and E. Romanova, who recently defended her thesis, are among those who received the required degree of Candidate of Philological or Art history with his benevolent assistance.

Vilen Vladimirovich Sikorsky celebrates his anniversary full of new ideas and creative energy. He is completing the preparation for the reprint of the monograph "Indonesian Literature" with his main articles. As part of the ASEAN-Russia cooperation plan, a bibliographic collection entitled "Credentials of Literature" is being compiled under his leadership on translations of the works of writers from Southeast Asian countries into Russian and from Russian into the languages of these countries, which is planned to be published in Moscow and Singapore.

We wish Vilen Vladimirovich, a purposeful, interesting and simply kind person, good health, implementation of creative ideas, great happiness and prosperity.

V. A. POGADAEV

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