Dyakonov Igor Mikhailovich - an outstanding historian, linguist and orientalist. Born in St. Petersburg (Petrograd) in January 1915, in a poor family. Father, Mikhail Alekseevich, is a financial employee, and his mother, Maria Pavlovna, is a doctor. In addition to Igor, the family had two more sons - Mikhail and Alexey.
Childhood and youth
Igor Mikhailovich’s childhood was difficult, during the periods of hunger strike, revolution and civil war. The whole family moved to Norway, near the city of Oslo. At that time, he was already fluent in languages ​​such as English, German, and Norwegian. While still a teenager, he was fond of astronomy, hieroglyphs and the history of the ancient East. Igor graduated from school in 1931 in Leningrad, but since it was impossible to get a good education, he was engaged in self-education.
After leaving school, the future linguist and scientist worked hard to somehow help the family financially. In addition, Dyakonov Igor Mikhailovich was engaged in paid translations. Official employment allowed him to enter Leningrad State University. Studying with such famous teachers as Nikolai Marr, Nikolai Yushmanov, talented historians, philologists helped him to get comfortable on his chosen life path.
The war years were rather difficult to expand scientific activity. Many fellow students of Igor Mikhailovich were arrested, others went over to the side of the NKVD and surrendered their friends and comrades. Dyakonov Igor Mikhailovich was also repeatedly called for interrogations. Despite all the difficulties of those years, he continued to study the history of the East, Hebrew, Akkadian, Ancient Greek, Arabic. In 1936, he married his classmate and began working in the Hermitage to support his family. During the war, he participated in the evacuation of valuable museum exhibits to the Urals, was credited with reconnaissance and even participated in the offensive in Norway.
Scientific works
In 1946, Dyakonov returned to the university and got a job as an assistant to the head of the Department of Semitology I.N. Vinnikov. After defending a dissertation on Assyrian subjects, he became a teacher, but after some time he was dismissed along with some other teachers because of the study of the Talmud. Igor Mikhailovich had to return to work in the Hermitage.
Scientific activity affected completely different historical areas. Collaborating with his older brother, Igor Mikhailovich Dyakonov decoded ancient documents and inscriptions, published unique studies and even published history books. In the 70s, translations of Bible books were made, such as the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and the Lamentation of Jeremiah.
Sumerology
The main areas of scientific activity of Igor Mikhailovich were Assyria and Sumerology. He made a considerable contribution to the study of the ancient people and their social history. This was the subject of a dissertation, thanks to which he received a doctorate in historical sciences. However, not all Sumerologist historians liked Dyakonov’s discoveries. He openly rejected the concepts of the famous scientists Struve and Dimel in his writings. Despite the obstacles, the concept was accepted by many American scholars of the Sumerian people.
Dyakonov Igor Mikhailovich, whose biography is full of scientific activity in relation to the study of many ancient languages, made a huge contribution to linguistics. He wrote comparative dictionaries examining the following languages:
- Semitic-Hamitic;
- ancient Asia;
- Afrasian
- East Caucasian;
- African
- Hurrian.
All of these dictionaries were written between 1965 and 1993. Dyakonov was actively involved in deciphering ancient scripts and translating them into Russian.
Memories
After the death of V.V. Struve in 1965, Dyakonov became the main assyriologist, since there were no other doctors of science in this area. In 1988, he received a diploma from the University of Chicago for his studies of the ancient Near East and the revival of science in the Soviet Union. Many of his students still continue to work in the historical field of St. Petersburg University.
The main work of the Russian Orientalist Dyakonov Igor Mikhailovich - "Book of Memoirs." The publication was released in 1995, four years before the death of the author. In his work, he recreates his early memories from life and post-war events. The book describes in detail the events associated with childhood, war and work. He tried not to get personal, not to mention the names of people who participated in his life, except for those who were alive at the time of writing the chapters.
Igor Dyakonov, in his Book of Memoirs, summarizes his stormy biography until 1945 with his poems. This book is also about the life of people born in the First World War.