On March 7, 2010, an outstanding Russian orientalist and Kurdish scholar, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Mikhail Semyonovich Lazarev, died at the age of 80.

With his passing, a whole era of Soviet and Russian Kurdish studies of historical and international political science ended, which was personified by three outstanding Kurdish scholars of the second half of the XX century-Professors M. A. Gasratyan, Sh. K. Mgoi and M. S. Lazarev.

Mikhail Semyonovich was born on May 8, 1930 in Moscow. In 1952, he graduated from the Department of Oriental Studies, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he specialized in the Ottoman Empire and studied the Ottoman language. After graduating from the University, he entered postgraduate studies at the Department of History of the Near and Middle East Countries of the Moscow State University Faculty of History and in 1955 defended his thesis for the degree of Candidate of Historical Sciences on the topic "The collapse of Turkish rule in the Arab countries during the First World War". M. S. Lazarev's scientific adviser was the well-known Soviet turkologist and diplomat A. F. Miller.

From 1956 to the end of his life M. S. Lazarev worked at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences/Russian Academy of Sciences.

M. S. Lazarev's first monograph is " The Collapse of Turkish Rule in the Arab East (1914 - 1918)" (1960), prepared on the basis of his PhD thesis. It was highly appreciated as an important contribution to Oriental studies. It also addressed some of the following issues:-

some aspects of the Kurdish problem. However, M. S. Lazarev began a comprehensive study of the Kurdish problem on the instructions of the USSR Foreign Ministry after the events in Iraq in the late 1950s. In 1964, his fundamental work "Kurdistan and the Kurdish problem (90-ies of the XIX century - 1917)" was published in Moscow by the Nauka publishing house. As the author wrote in the introduction, "the study of Kurdistan is an interesting scientific and extremely important current political task, and a task that is grateful for the researcher, since various aspects of this problem abound in white spots." This topic is extremely relevant today.

This was the first fundamental monograph in the world of Kurdish studies, which comprehensively investigated the situation in Kurdistan at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. in the context of international relations. When writing the work, we used numerous archival materials of the Archive of Foreign Policy of Russia, which contains documents of the tsarist Ministry of Foreign Affairs, mainly reports of diplomats in the Ottoman Empire and Iran, as well as a number of other archives. A considerable part of this work is devoted to Turkish-Iranian relations in connection with the Kurdish problem, the intervention of the imperialist powers-Russia, Britain and Germany - in these relations, their struggle for military and political influence in Kurdistan, the activities of imperialist agents among the Kurdish tribes of the Ottoman Empire and Iran, and military operations on the territory of Turkish and Iranian Kurdistan carried out before the First World War by Turkey, and during it by Russia and England. The socio-economic and political life of Kurdistan, especially the liberation movement of Kurdish tribes against the Turkish and Iranian yoke, was not ignored. In 1969, on the basis of this monograph, M. S. Lazarev defended his doctoral dissertation. In 1972, a revised and expanded monograph was published under the title "The Kurdish Question 1891-1917".

The topic of Kurdistan was continued in two subsequent monographs by M. S. Lazarev: "Imperialism and the Kurdish Question (1917-1923)" (1989) and " Kurdistan and the Kurdish Question (1923 - 1945)" (2005). All these works are based on the study of extensive archival materials, as well as almost all the literature that existed at that time.

Analyzing the results of the most important period in the history of the Kurds, which ended with the signing of the Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923, M. S. Lazarev wrote that the several years preceding this treaty were a time of great but unfulfilled expectations for the Kurdish people. It seemed that a favorable prospect had opened up for the Kurds. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the de facto loss of state independence by Iran led to the temporary liberation of Kurdistan from the rule of Istanbul and Tehran. Finally, the leaders of the Entente Powers officially called for the liberation of peoples and their national self-determination. However, the Kurds failed to realize these historic opportunities. This happened for a number of important reasons, which are described in detail in the research of M. S. Lazarev.

Mikhail Semyonovich also devoted dozens of scientific articles to various aspects of Kurdish studies.

The scientist's Oriental studies activity was extremely diverse. Although he is widely known in the world of Oriental studies as a Kurdish scholar-the author of outstanding works on the modern history of the Kurds, the Kurdish question in international relations and Kurdish nationalism, he is also known as a major expert on the problems of nationalism in Asian countries. In the 1960s and 1990s, he published dozens of scientific and theoretical papers on this topic. M. S. Lazarev was a responsible editor of numerous publications. For a number of years, he was an employee of the Department of General Problems and the Department of Complex International Problems of the Institute, which were traditionally considered to be a kind of"think tanks".

M. S. Lazarev was distinguished by a serious fundamental training, received at the Faculty of History of Moscow State University. In this sense, he can be called a representative of the classical Russian historical school. He was well versed in a wide variety of historical topics, and was an interesting conversationalist, which was repeatedly noted by prominent historians and orientalists.

M. S. Lazarev became the head of the Kurdish Studies sector in 1990, having worked in this capacity for 15 years. In recent years, he has been the sector's chief Research Officer.

In recent years, Mikhail Semyonovich developed a methodology for studying the history of Kurdistan, and perhaps only he was able to complete this task.

M. S. Lazarev has done a lot to preserve Kurdish studies in Russia, and has trained students who are now working not only in the sector, but also in different countries.

It should be noted that M. S. Lazarev was already concerned about the future of Kurdish studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s, despite the relative external well - being of Kurdish studies. In 1982, to the All-Union-

at a conference of Kurdologists in Leningrad, he made a report on the problems of studying the history of the Kurds. Mikhail Semyonovich noted that after 1975 (the proclamation of Kurdish autonomy in Iraq), they decided to stop the course, allegedly because of its irrelevance, although it aroused great interest among students. M. S. Lazarev stated that it is necessary to restore this important scientific, organizational and political work, to start systematic teaching of courses where there are opportunities for this - in Leningrad, Moscow, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Baku. However, as you know, the Soviet leadership considered Kurdish studies irrelevant.

Mikhail Semyonovich is no longer with us. But we, his students, colleagues and friends will always remember him not only as a prominent scientist, but also as a benevolent, bright person.

MIDDLE EAST DEPARTMENT, KURDISH STUDIES SECTOR

MAIN SCIENTIFIC WORKS OF M. S. LAZAREV*

Kurdskaya problema kak mezhdunarodnyy vopros [The Kurdish problem as an international issue].

Kurdsky nationalizm v XX veke (osobennosti razvitiya i sovremennoe sostoyanie) [Kurdish Nationalism in the XX century (features of development and current state)]. Moslem countries at the borders of the CIS (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey - current state, History and Prospects). Moscow, 2001, pp. 79-95.

Pravyi totalitarizm po-arabski (Sotsiologicheskiy ocherk) [Right Totalitarianism in Arabic (A sociological essay)]. 14. pp. 176-185.

Iraqi Kurdistan: Waiting for Changes / / Asia and Africa Today. 2001. N 6. pp. 7-11.

Anatoly Filippovich Miller (1901 - 1973) // Portraits of historians: time and fate. Moscow, 2001. Vol. 4. pp. 303 - 311 (together with M. S. Meyer).

Kurdsky vopros na rubezhe millennii [The Kurdish Question at the turn of the millennium]. Moscow, 2004. - Auth.: Kurdsky vopros v novoy geopoliticheskoy situatsii: vozraska voprosa. pp. 3-10; Islamizm v sovremennom Kurdistan. pp. 97-100.

Mustafi Barzani // Asia and Africa today. 2004. N 6. pp. 54-57.

Kurdistan and the Kurdish question (1923-1945). Russian Academy of Sciences, 2005. 310 p.

Kurdsky vopros v Zapadnoy Azii v nachale XXI veka [The Kurdish issue in Western Asia at the beginning of the XXI century]. Moscow, 2006, pp. 25-35.

Is Iraqi Kurdistan the prototype of a Kurdish state? // Asia and Africa today. 2007. N 4. pp. 46-49.

* Comp. by O. A. Tutushin. For lists of major scientific works before 2000, see Peoples of Asia and Africa. 1990. N4. pp. 216-217; Vostok (Oriens) 2000. N4. pp. 211.

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