On October 29, 2005, an outstanding Russian sinologist, chief researcher of the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Philology, Professor Lev Nikolayevich Menshikov died.

L. N. Menshikov was born on February 17, 1926 in Leningrad in the family of N. A. Menshikov, a geologist by profession, and R. E. Nihamovskaya-Menynikova, who worked as a teacher of Russian language and literature and director of the 94th school of working youth in the Kuibyshev district of Leningrad. L. N. Menshikov began his career during the war years, working as a collector in geological expeditions of the Main Sea Route. In 1947, after graduating from school with a gold medal, L. N. Menshikov was accepted without exams to the Department of "Chinese Philology" of the Eastern Faculty of Leningrad State University. His teacher was Academician V. M. Alekseev (1881-1951), under whose direct influence Lev Nikolaevich was formed as a unique sinologist. He published his first scientific article "Folk Elements in Chinese Drama" as a student (Sinologist-Philologist, No. 1. Collection of Student scientific papers, L., 1951, pp. 78-116).

After graduating from the University in 1952, L. N. Menshikov was recommended to the postgraduate course of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which he completed in Moscow under the supervision of L. Z. Eidlin (1909 - 1985). In December 1955, Lev Nikolaevich prematurely defended his PhD thesis on "Modern reform of Chinese classical Drama", which received high marks from colleagues, and on December 31 of the same year he was accepted to the staff of the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences, where he worked all his life.

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In 1959, based on the materials of his dissertation, L. N. Menshikov published his first book "The Reform of Chinese Classical Drama" (Moscow, 1959), in which, for the first time in Russian literature, he investigated a number of the most important dramatic plots of traditional Chinese theater and their transformation in various historical periods. Subsequently, L. N. Menshikov devoted most of his scientific works to the study of Chinese classical, Orthodox and vernacular literature, of which he wrote over 200, including 15 monographs and editions of large translations (see: Lev Nikolayevich Menshikov. List of scientific papers. To the 70th anniversary of his birth // St. Petersburg Oriental Studies . Issue 8. St. Petersburg, 1996, pp. 631-638).

Continuing the work of his teacher V. M. Alekseev, L. N. Menshikov played an outstanding role in the study and description of handwritten Chinese collections from the collections of St. Petersburg. L. N. Menshikov's description and study of the Dunhuang Foundation of the St. Petersburg Institute of Physics and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences brought him the highest recognition worldwide. In the world of Dunhuang studies, the name of L. N. Menshikov is on a par with the outstanding scientists Zhen Zhen-do, Pan Cheng-gui, Ren Ji-yu. In 1957, L. N. Menshikov began to lead a group on the description of the Dunhuang LUO YIWAN Foundation. The first result of the work of a large group of Sinologists was the "Description of Chinese manuscripts of the Dunhuang Foundation of the Institute of Asian Peoples" in 2 volumes, covering 2954 units of storage and published under the general editorship and forewords of L. N. Menshikov in 1963 and 1967. In 1999, this description was published in Chinese in Shanghai by the Ancient Book publishing House. In the course of the work, many Buddhist and non-Buddhist works were identified, hundreds of connections were made, and a huge textual, archaeological, and paleographic work was carried out. The Dunhuang group's publications and results have received a wide response abroad. P. Demieville, Kanaoka Shoko, and M. Shiro have written about them. Dolezhelova-Vengerova, J. Dudbridge. The work of the employees of the Dunhuang group was awarded the Prize to them. Stanislas Julien of the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, 1964.

In 1994-2002. Lev Nikolayevich was the executive editor on the Russian side of a large international project for publishing manuscripts of the Dunhuang Foundation, implemented by the Russian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Ancient Book publishing house. As a result, 17 volumes of the "Dun-Huang manuscripts kept in Russia"were published.

One of the first positions in the world of sinology, the name of L. N. Menshikov occupies in the study of bianwen, a genre of medieval Chinese vernacular literature. In 1963, he published the work "Chinese manuscripts from Dunhuang. Monuments of Suwengxue Buddhist literature", Lev Nikolaevich began to introduce into scientific circulation and research unique Dunhuang monuments of Buddhist vernacular literature. He translated, commented on, and researched "Bianwen on Weimojie "(Moscow, 1963), "Bianwen Ten Good Signs" (Moscow, 1963), "Bianwen on the Reward for Mercy" (Part 1. Moscow, 1972), and "Bianwen on the Lotus Sutra" (Moscow, 1984). In 1974, L. N. Menshikov defended his doctoral dissertation on the monograph "Bianwen on retribution for Mercy". Thanks to these and a number of his other works, a clear understanding of the role of colloquial-narrative, song-epic and dramatic-predicate genres in the history of Chinese literature appeared in the world science, their origins were revealed, as well as their significance as the forerunner of the Sung and Yuan drama and their place in the history of Chinese literature.

An important discovery, highly appreciated by the world sinology, was the description of the manuscript "Shi Tou ji" made by L. N. Menshikov together with B. L. Riftin in 1964 from the collection of the St. Petersburg Institute of Physics and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Riftin B. L., Menshikov L. N. Unknown list of the novel "Dream in the Red Tower" / / Peoples of Asia and Africa . 1964. N 5. pp. 121-128).

Lev Nikolayevich devoted a lot of effort to studying Chinese materials from the world-famous Tangut collection of P. K. Kozlov (1863-1935), brought by the 1907-1909 expedition from the dead city of Harahoto in the Gobi Desert. A complete description of the Chinese part of the collection was published by L. N. Menshikov in 1984 (Menshikov L. N. Description of the Chinese part of the collection from Harahoto (P. K. Foundation). Kozlov). L. N. Menshikov also wrote about Chinese manuscripts from other Far Eastern and Central Asian collections of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and his knowledge and advice were often used by colleagues from the Russian National Library and the Eastern Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. The result of many years of practical work by L. M. Menshikov on the description of manuscript collections were his articles on paleography and the history of the Chinese manuscript book. Some of them were included in the last work of Lev Nikolaevich "From the history of the Chinese Book" (2005), which was published just a few days before his death.

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Lev Nikolaevich was distinguished by the highest culture of work, his bibliographic and terminological file cabinets made a stunning impression. He had a brilliant knowledge of Sinological reference literature, both Chinese and Western. Lev Nikolayevich taught more than one generation of Orientalists to use reference books.

L. N. Menshikov was a talented translator of Chinese poetry, who had an outstanding poetic gift. He wrote translations of about 1,000 lines of poetry in the Anthology of Chinese Poetry (1957), 3,500 lines of poetry in the translation of the novel Dream in the Red Chamber (1958), and translations of poems by Lu Xin, the poets Wang Xi-zhi, Wang Ji, Cen Shen, Wang Wei, and Du. Fu, Gao Shi, Wei Ying-wu, Han Yu and many others. Having a true love and a fine taste for poetry, throughout his life he performed poetic translations and published them in separate editions, in anthologies, as well as as part of prose translations of his colleagues, who, meeting intermediate poetic parts in the monuments they studied, turned to Lev Nikolaevich with a request to translate them.

Over many years of translation work, he has developed his own principles of translation. Lev Nikolaevich became the first sinologist in the world to address the most complex problem of the theory of Chinese versification on the example of works of the bianwen genre . Having established the connection and simultaneous difference between the bianwen and the eightfold (liushi), he turned to a detailed study of the features of classical Chinese rhyme.

L. N. Menshikov also performed many translations of fiction, which was a great contribution to the study of Chinese classical drama. In particular, he translated the 14th-century drama The Western Wing by Wang Shih-fu with a preface and commentary (1960) and Gan Bao's Notes on the Search for Spirits (1963, reprints 1994, 1999).

Throughout his life, L. N. Menshikov retained a deep sense of respect and appreciation for his Teacher, V. M. Alekseev, and the best manifestation of this was the active participation of L. N. Menshikov in the publication of works from his archive. In the preparation of V. M. Alekseev's monographs "Chinese Folk Picture" (1966), "Chinese Literature" (1978), "Science of the East" (1982), there is a share of Lev Nikolaevich's work. In the last years of his life, L. N. Menshikov, together with M. V. Bankovskaya and B. L. Riftin, worked on the preparation for the publication of the " Working Bibliography of the Sinologist "and the republication of the" Chinese Poem about the Poet " by V. M. Alekseev.

L. N. Menshikov performed editorial work on the unique "Tang Chronology", a collective work that was created at the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences on his initiative and was two-thirds done by his efforts. This chronology, modeled on the Chinese Niangpu, lists the events of the Tang era in a sequence of years, months, and days.

The scientific significance of Professor L. N. Menshikov's work (since 1991) was confirmed, in particular, by the award of the S. F. Oldenburg Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences for 1991. L. N. Menshikov was a long-term member of the Academic Council of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a member of the Dissertation Council of the Eastern Faculty of St. Petersburg State University, and was a member of the many international scientific societies and editorial boards. Nine of his graduate students defended their PhD theses, and four of them became doctors of science.

During the period of his creative activity, Lev Nikolaevich performed research on a large volume of original and completely unexplored material, which contributed to a radical revision of the ideas that existed in science about the role of Buddhism in traditional China.

Lev Nikolayevich's scientific activity was multifaceted, his knowledge was universal, and the number of people who consider him their teacher was huge. For us, he will always remain a Sinologist with a capital letter, who sincerely loved China and Chinese culture, a scholar with boundless general sinological erudition, encompassing literature, history, textual studies, culture, religion, and epigraphy. Sinologists of many generations have learned and will continue to learn from his works.

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