Memorial night of Lev Gumilyov — in the Presidential Library

The Presidential Library organized the commemorative meetings dedicated to the 105th anniversary of the birth and the 25th anniversary of the passing away of the great Russian scientist and writer Lev Nikolayevich Gumilyov (1912—1992). A lot of noteworthy materials were offered owing to the joint project of the Presidential Library with the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan, the Committee on Interethnic Relations and the Implementation of Migration Policy in St. Petersburg, the St. Petersburg House of Nationalities, the Eurasian National University named after L. N. Gumilyov, the “Mekan” Turkmen Culture Society in St. Petersburg and the Tatar national-cultural autonomy of St. Petersburg.

As it was stated at the event opening, a sizeable array of documents and sources related to the Russian science and its leading scientists has been accumulated in the Presidential Library stock, the author’s abstracts of the most significant theses are available online on the library website, one among which is specifically dedicated to Lev Nikolayevich Gumilyov. It is supposed to continue work on studying his creative heritage and his large-scale non-standard personality, capable of thinking across the disciplines.

Anniversary celebrations began with the opening of the “Roads of Life” photography exhibition, consisting of 50 rare photographs from the Gumilyovs’ family archive. “Why the hell have I figured out to born in Russia, in the family of two poets…” — Lev Nikolayevich lamented, altering Pushkin, who has left behind “a school” of four prisoning camp sentences, and bitterly joked that before the war he was doing jail time “for my dad,” and after the war — “for my mom.” Beautiful portraits of his young parents, poets of the Acmeism movement of the Silver Age Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov and Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova along with the pictures depicting their well-deserved ancestors from both sides, became an adornment of the exposition set in the Presidential Library.

And next after there are these awfully institutional “full face” and “profile” shots of crop-haired political prisoner Lev Gumilyov, who was arrested on denunciations first for his father, allegedly leading a counterrevolutionary conspiracy, then for his mother, “a bourgeois bohemian poetically mistaken woman,” but, at the same time, the author of the poem “Requiem,” written in between a queuing with prison packages during the years of mass repressions: “No, neither under an alien sky nor / Under the protection of alien wings —
/ I remained with my own people then, 
/

Where my people, in their misfortune, were.”

Such life events could break anybody, but Lev Gumilyov, who even in prison continued to think out important for him scientific problems, wrote fragments of the thesis. Subsequently, his life path has led him to the head of the Department of Radiobiology and Experimental Genetics of the Institute of Medical Radiology, N. V. Timofeev-Resovsky, nicknamed “Zubr” (lit. bison) in scientific circles — stubborn, focused, “ferae naturae.” The qualities of “a species, almost completely destroyed by man,” helped both scientists establish themselves in the list of Russian world-class researchers.

A continuation of the theme of Lev Gumilyov’s scientific asceticism was the screening of a movie entitled “Rise, Die and Live.” Film director Elena Plugatyryova shared with the audience: “It was so wonderful Perestroika time, when one day they said on TV: everything is possible! I then worked in the “The Fifth Wheel” program, where we feverishly (while it wasn’t banned yet!) began to introduce those people who were known by everyone, but haven’t seen by no one. I have contacted Gumilyov. “No, I do not do interviews,” — was a reply. “Are you afraid?” — I asked him on purpose. And this opened me a way to his house. His fearlessness was provocative, he was a man of tremendous inner freedom.”

Gumilyov’s scientific career cannot be called trivial: Lev Nikolayevich wrote three dissertations, one of which (the second doctoral one) on the theme of “Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of Earth” he was not able to defend during his lifetime. Senior researcher of the Presidential Library Alexei Voronovich, defended his thesis focused on Materials of the private archive of L. N. Gumilyov as a historical source, author’s abstract of which is available on the Presidential Library website, appeared with a review of this — major — work of Gumilyov’s life.

The works of out of favor historian became especially popular in 1990—2000. And he left the extensive legacy: 12 monographs and more than 200 articles dedicated to the issues of nomadic studies, archeology, ethnology, and the history of Russia. He is the creator of the passionary theory of ethnogenesis, which still causes fierce controversy and rejection by academic scientists. Nowadays, Lev Gumilyov’s research on the history of the Turkic peoples are of special interest and the practical importance. Apart from historical science, his ideas have also found application and development in adjacent areas of scientific knowledge.

Alexei Voronovich made a special accent on Gumilyov’s correspondence with his colleagues: it was often no less interesting than one or another scientific brochure. Some serious scientific discussions with the biologists M. E. Lobashev and B. S. Kuzin evolved in these letters, Gumilyov also corresponded with the scientists G. V. Vernadsky, P. N. Savitsky, N. V. Timofeev-Resovsky.

Calling himself “the last Eurasian,” Gumilyov Jr. wrote: “Eurasianism is not just a great future: in the immediate and distant perspective it has no alternative, either theoretically or in practice. Why? Simply because Eurasianism is a path of cooperation (rather than a confrontation), mutual understanding (rather than an infighting), equality of large and small nations (rather than double nationalism and a chauvinism).”