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2010 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Anna Stepanovna Tveritinova, a researcher of Ottoman history, an enthusiast of Ottoman studies, who for many years almost single-handedly preserved the traditions of studying the Ottoman Empire, which for almost 300 years were laid down in Russian Oriental studies.

Ottoman studies have long been a traditional discipline of Oriental studies in Russia. Knowledge about Russia's southern neighbor was gradually accumulated. These include embassy reports (and the first embassy to the Ottoman Sultan was sent from Moscow back in 1497), translated literature, and information from various people who visited Turkish territory - merchants, pilgrims, and captives. The Ottoman Empire was of interest to politicians and military personnel, which gave rise to a large publicistic literature about it, but gradually scientific Ottoman studies developed, based on the study of Ottoman sources and interest in the internal problems of this state. In 1692, the first original book on Ottoman history, written by a Russian author, was written. This is A. Lyzlov's "Scythian History", the last edition published in Moscow in 1990 and, despite its name, 2/3 is devoted to the Ottomans and their state-building. By the second half of the 19th century, St. Petersburg had developed its own school of Ottoman studies, the pinnacle of which was V. D. Smirnov (1846-1922).

However, after such heights in post-revolutionary Petrograd, there is a clear decline in Ottoman-Turkological research. The name was changed several times, and the goals and objectives of the Eastern Faculty of Petrograd University were announced in different ways. Emphasis began to be placed on modern (living, as they said then) languages. History receded into the background. The Asian Museum, which provided the main work for Oriental specialists, was mainly engaged in preserving and collecting collections of Oriental books, manuscripts, incunabula and woodcuts that remained unattended (for various reasons). The Turkological Cabinet, created in 1927 on the initiative of V. V. Barthold, aimed at training personnel for the eastern republics and developing new alphabets for the Turkic languages. New scientific cadres of Orientalists were hardly trained. It was only in 1930 that small and scattered Oriental studies groups were united into the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences. Under it, postgraduate and doctoral studies were established. The orientalists of the pre-revolutionary school still continued to work, but the old scientific traditions were interrupted, the development of science received new ideological attitudes from above, which did not always fit the in-depth studies of history that were characteristic of the old Russian Oriental studies, and the emphasis was placed only on what could serve the needs of the new society. It was at this time that A. S. Tveritinova entered the science, choosing for herself an unfashionable and time-consuming field - the study of the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Anna Stepanovna Tveritinova was born on July 14, 1910 in Kuntsevo, where her father, a peasant in the Tambov province, worked on the construction of a highway. In 1911, the father died, and the mother and her four children returned to their homeland in the village of Gusovka, Kirsanovsky district, Tambov region. In the famine-ridden post-revolutionary years, Anna, the youngest of the family, was forced by her mother to be sent to an orphanage. However, in 1922, she was taken away from there, and the family moved to Transcaucasia, where her older brother, a Red Army commander, served. We lived in Kutaisi and then Baku. There Anna Stepanovna graduated from high school and on a business trip of the People's Commissariat of Education of the AzSSR in 1928 went to study at the Eastern Faculty of Leningrad University.

The sincere and multifaceted interest in the East that we, junior colleagues, have observed in Anna Stepanovna throughout her life was clearly born in her from childhood. And this was typical of many Russian Orientalists who grew up among the Russian Eastern peoples.

After graduating from the University as a Turkologist and literary critic, Anna Stepanovna joined the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where she was assigned to put the Turkish language in order

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the book collection, which consisted of about 5 thousand volumes, consisted of alphabetical and subject catalogs, etc. It was a useful activity for a novice researcher, which resulted in her first bibliographic publications.

Simultaneously with her work at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Anna Stepanovna studied at the graduate school of LILI. In 1939, after defending her PhD thesis on the Kara-Yazyji uprising in Turkey (late XVI - early XVII centuries), A. S. Tveritinova became a research associate, becoming a worthy member of the team of Leningrad Turkologists. Academician Samoilovich, in one of the reviews about her, described A. S. Tveritinova as "a person who knows the Turkish literary language well and has serious interests and ability for scientific activity."

All was well in his personal life: a loving husband, E. A. Andrievsky, who worked as an editor of Detgiz, and later as executive secretary of the editorial board of the magazine "Zvezda", two sons - Velemir and Arkady. In 1941, Anna Stepanovna was expecting her third child, but he was born in the autumn of that year, when the war changed the whole life of the country and each of its inhabitants individually. Her husband went to the front and died on the Leningrad Front in 1941. In 1943, the brother who raised Anna Stepanovna died. She had to send her older children, aged 8 and 3, to a boarding school for evacuation. She and her newborn son and mother remained in besieged Leningrad, where she lost them in the famine of 1942. In February of the same year, she was evacuated from Leningrad in a serious condition. With great difficulty, I found older children, about whom I knew nothing before. From March to September 1942, she worked as a history teacher at a secondary school in Tetyusha in the Volga region. In October 1942, she and her children managed to leave for Tashkent, where the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences was evacuated and where she was able to resume her scientific work. At the same time, at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR, she took part in the preparation for publication of "Collections of Oriental Manuscripts of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR" (Tashkent, 1952-1954, vol.I and II). In May 1945, together with the Institute of Oriental Studies, the family of A. S. Tveritinova returned to Leningrad. There, already in 1946, her first book was published, containing a revised version of her dissertation work " The Uprising of Kara-Yazijji-Delhi Hasan "(M.-L., 1946).

Among the publications prepared during the Leningrad period of its activity, several should be noted. First of all, the work " On the history of Russian-Turkish relations in Elizabethan times "(Soviet Oriental Studies, vol. IV. l., 1949). This is the first scientific introduction of the Turkish embassy's report on the visit to St. Petersburg and negotiations with the Russian government. The next work - " The Second Treatise of Kochi Bey "(Scientific Notes of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, vol. VI, 1953) is a translation into Russian of a publicistic treatise of the mid-XVII century on the state and social system of the Ottoman Empire and crisis phenomena in the state. It is significant that the first treatise of this author was published by V. D. Smirnov, i.e. here we see a direct continuation of the traditions of the brilliant period of pre-revolutionary Russian Oriental studies. And, finally, published somewhat later, but identified and prepared for publication in Leningrad, a 2-volume edition of the chronicles of the XVII century. Khusein's " Beda - i ul-wekai (Amazing Events)". (Annotated table of contents and index by Yu. A. Petrosyan. Publication of the text, introduction and general edition by A. S. Tveritinova, Moscow, 1961).

These publications show that Anna Stepanovna is becoming a serious scholar, working with Turkish primary sources, feeling and knowing the Ottoman Middle Ages.

At the same time, the Soviet reality and the revelatory pathos that prevailed in Soviet science, to some extent affected her work. It was considered necessary to emphasize their commitment to Marxism and the methodological inconsistency of everything that was done in the social sciences before or after it. In this spirit, Anna Stepanovna wrote articles: "Falsification of the medieval history of Turkey in Kemalist historiography "(Byzantium Vremennik, 1953, N 8), "Falsified version of the Turkish Caliphate" (Izvestiya of the Department of Social Sciences of TadjAN. Stalinabad, 1954. Vol. V), " On the erroneous concept of the medieval history of Turkey in the work of A. F. Miller "(Scientific Notes of Leningrad State University, 1952, N 128), etc. This was a tribute to the times, and later Anna Stepanovna herself realized the artificiality of many methodological constructions that existed in the Soviet era in historical science, and the value of concepts and scientific searches of other historical schools.

One of the authors of this article (S. F. Oreshkova) recalls how during her postgraduate years in the early 1960s, in response to her remark about the ideological inadequacy of a certain Turkish historical work, Anna Stepanovna very gently said that such expressions should not be used in relation to serious scientific research. For a graduate student who has been brought up

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It served as an impetus for reflection and the development of a more balanced view of historiography and scientific activity in general, which it was then just beginning to join.

It is interesting that the ideological attack that Anna Stepanovna once made against A. F. Miller did not affect their further respectful relations. "Objectivist" ones(!!!) The views that Professor Miller was accused of in the 1950s were later appreciated by his colleagues and students. A. F. Miller understood the origins of A. S. Tveritinova's criticism, but he also saw her sincere scientific research and achievements. Later, together they repeatedly represented Soviet science at various international scientific forums. It even happened that they passed on their students to each other.

The ideological blinkers in which our science was placed in the post-war period also affected to a certain extent Anna Stepanovna's first book about the Kara-Yazyji - Delhi Hasan uprising in Turkey. National liberation movements and popular uprisings were then among the favorite and most encouraged topics of scientific research. Studying the events of the late XVI - early XVII centuries from Ottoman sources, objectively presenting the facts, the author nevertheless focused on the participation of the masses of the people, the peasantry, in the uprising he described. This was typical of the Soviet view of such events. The struggle within the ruling class, which was the main content of the unrest at that time, was presented only as a background, as if not so significant. For the modern reader, A. S. Tveritinova's book continues to be interesting, as it introduces him to materials from Turkish primary sources, allows him to feel the turning point in the history of the Ottoman Empire at that time, but he will obviously draw different conclusions than the author did.

In 1950. The Institute of Oriental Studies was moved to Moscow, where A. S. Tveritinova was one of the first to move part of the Leningrad Oriental Library. She was appointed head of the library of the new Moscow Academic Institute of Oriental Studies, although she continued her research. Her plans then included publishing a collection of "Documents on the agrarian system of the Ottoman Empire" and a monograph "The Agrarian system of the Ottoman Empire". It was necessary to concentrate on scientific work, and at her request and by order of the director of the Institute B. G. Gafurov in 1969, A. S. Tveritinova began working in the sector of publishing monuments of Oriental writing, and since 1973-in the sector of Monuments of Turkic-Mongolian writing of the Department of Monuments of Oriental Writing. These divisions of the Institute were created on her initiative and were headed by her.

As is well known, a new period began for the Institute of Oriental Studies in September 1956. The institution itself is expanding and the previously accepted rigid ideological framework is being expanded. Anna Stepanovna turned out to be receptive to new trends. She headed, for example, the "Seminar on Feudalism", which brought together young employees of the Institute dealing with the Middle Ages and modern history. The participants of the seminar tried to understand the peculiarities of Eastern societies. It became obvious that the Eastern material did not fit into the "Marxist" understanding of the historical process. Young people lived by these discussions, and Anna Stepanovna actively encouraged her search. The ideological inspiration of the seminar was L. B. Alaev, an indologist who was then fascinated by the problems of the Indian community, the material he collected about which clearly went beyond the limits of what was allowed and, moreover, contradicted the statements of Marxist classics. The party bureau could not trust Alaev himself or his other peers (due to their youth and "party inexperience") to conduct such a seminar. But A. S. Tveritinova, a respected person in the institute both in scientific and party circles, took over its leadership, covering up the youth "sedition".

Recall that although there was a time of Khrushchev's "thaw", but the Soviet system remained. Such scientific discussions and gatherings outside the party education network were perceived as completely unsafe. Therefore, it is clear that A. S. Tveritinova, standing at the head of this discussion club, showed some courage, as if squeezing her brainchild into the framework of party education. She was clearly interested in young people. While studying the agricultural system of the Ottoman Empire, she, like these young researchers, understood the need for some other theoretical approaches to its understanding.

Later, due to a certain liberalization of science and society, Oriental seditious material splashed out on the pages of scientific publications. The seminar could no longer be disguised, and it acquired a purely scientific character, its problems expanded, and the discussion began to include not only socio-economic problems (although they are still very important).-

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had), but also problems of philosophy, culture, and political economy theory. In the 1960s and 1980s, orientalists became troublemakers. Their presentations at all general academic and university conferences, even without attempts to theorize deeply, but only with a presentation of specific Eastern material, as a rule, violated all theoretical constructions. Soviet "Marxism" was bursting at the seams. Attempts were made to find in K. Marx and F. Engels did something that would allow us to go beyond the usual schemes, they started talking about the "Asian mode of production", about the non-capitalist path of development, etc.

The Institute of Oriental Studies organized a number of broad discussions on the problems of formation development, general and special in the development of the East and West. The East demanded new historiosophical approaches, which Soviet "Marxism" did not provide. By the end of the Soviet period, ordinary researchers, science leaders, and even those who exercised party control over science began to understand this. A. S. Tveritinova was at the origin of the ideological search of Soviet Orientalists. All theoretical problems led to the fact that A. S. Tveritinova never completed her planned large work on the agrarian structure of Ottoman society. When she was asked about it, she replied-don't rush me, I'm very interested in working. Sometimes she would say something about some of her colleagues ' work: how can people write in the old way when there are so many new approaches and new materials?

In the last years of her life, she worked hard and published a lot. These were mainly works of a source study nature. In 1963, the "Agrarian System of the Ottoman Empire of the XV-XVII centuries" was published. Documents and materials". The collection is provided with a preface, which describes the types of sources, available publications, archives and manuscript collections of Turkey, Turkish documents stored in European archival collections, research in the field of Ottoman paleography and diplomacy. In an effort to acquaint the reader with the most typical documents "reflecting the most important features of the agrarian system and agrarian relations of the Ottoman Empire", the compiler provides translations of the most important legislative acts of national significance, legislative provisions of individual provinces of the empire, provides samples of Sultan's decrees, granted and waqf letters, various censuses conducted in the empire, as well as texts of the most interesting treatises, containing valuable data to characterize the forms of land ownership and agrarian relations. All these documents were translated into Russian for the first time. In 1969. the "Book of Laws of Sultan Selim I" was published, containing a translation of the document and the publication of its Turkish text. This source was first introduced into scientific use. Later, according to another manuscript, this kanun-nameh was published in Turkey.

Not satisfied with these fundamentally important publications, A. S. Tveritinova continued to collect, publish, and translate other documentary materials on Ottoman history concerning waqf agriculture, Qadi sijils, individual Sultan's charters, and other types of documents. A large collection of Turkish sources on agricultural relations in the Ottoman Empire, their diversity and originality was published in Russian. To summarize this material and continue the research of A. S. Tveritinova at the monographic level, so far no one from Russian historians has dared. This material itself, however, raised Russian Ottoman studies to a new level and contributed to the active inclusion of Ottoman material in Russian general historical studies.

Headed by A. S. Tveritinova, the section for publishing Monuments of Oriental writing brought together many outstanding Orientalists and began publishing a series of PPV (Monuments of Oriental Writing), which was not an easy task in the pre-computer era, since complex fonts of many monuments had to be handwritten into layouts. The team has always enjoyed an atmosphere of mutual assistance. Anna Stepanovna undoubtedly contributed to its creation. Employees of other departments of the Institute and colleagues from other cities, especially Anna Stepanovna's fellow Leningraders, were happy to visit Monuments . Young people working in the sector were immediately actively involved in collective work. Thus, D. Vasiliev, A. Garkovets, and E. Razzakova were involved in the compilation of a subject-specific index to the works of V. V. Barthold under the guidance of Yu. E. Bregel and I. N. Umnyakov, the last student of V. V. Barthold, which was an excellent scientific school for young researchers.

In the last decade of her life, A. S. Tveritinova paid great attention to the publication of collections "Eastern Sources on the history of the peoples of South-Eastern Europe". Got it

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three such publications of 30 pp each. Not to mention the interesting content and novelty of the materials that were introduced into scientific circulation, they are fundamentally important because they brought together a large team of scientists from different countries who did a common necessary thing. The historiography of South-Eastern Europe received at its disposal the most interesting Ottoman materials (and they predominated in these publications). After the death of A. S. Tveritinova, there was no authoritative scientist who would continue this work, i.e. here we see a certain loss of achievements.

A. S. Tveritinova passed away at the age of 63. For a historian who has been collecting material for many years, who was independently involved in Ottoman source studies, and who aspired to a historiosophical understanding of the data obtained, this is still a very small age. She left at the peak of scientific growth, not fully realizing her ideas. However, her contribution to Russian Ottoman studies is invaluable. The seriousness of the approach and the source base that it prepares for its main research make subsequent generations of Ottomans be thoughtful and painstaking researchers, and understand the responsibility for the contribution that they are going to make to the treasury of Ottoman studies. There can be no frivolity and superficial attacks, but there must be responsible and conscientious work. Only it will allow us to get into the secrets of the 600-year existence of this state entity.

* * *

After the death of A. S. Tveritinova, her library and archive were transferred by relatives in Tbilisi to our Georgian colleagues. Unfortunately, this was not done quite correctly - even those institute library books that were in Anna Stepanovna's use were taken to Georgia. The archive materials, as our colleagues inform us, have not yet been analyzed. It seems that describing and analyzing them is a matter of honor for Georgian Turkologists.


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