Dmitrii Sergeevich Likhachev

Born Nov. 15 (28), 1906, in St. Petersburg. Soviet literary critic and cultural historian. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1970; corresponding member, 1953).

Likhachev graduated from Leningrad University in 1928. He began his scholarly work at the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) in 1938 and became head of the institute’s sector of ancient Russian literature in 1954. He was a professor at Leningrad State University from 1946 to 1953.

Likhachev’s works are distinguished by great attention to the aesthetic distinctiveness of the culture of ancient Rus’ and, in this connection, to problems of the general theory of art. His works are also characterized by a comprehensive study of social ideology, literature, folk poetry, and the fine arts—for example, his books The National Self-consciousness of Ancient Rus’ (1945), The Origin of Russian Literature (1952), ”The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”: A Historical and Literary Essay (2nd ed., 1955), Man in the Literature of Ancient Rus’ (1958; 2nd ed., 1970), The Culture of Rus’ at the Time of Andrei Rublev and Epifanii Premudryi (1962), and The Poetics of Ancient Russian Literature (1967; 2nd ed., 1971).

In the books The Russian Chronicles and Their Cultural and Historical Significance (1947) and The Russian Primary Chronicle (parts 1–2, 1950), Likhachev first demonstrated the lasting significance of the Russian chronicles’ literary value. A scholarly examination of the history of chronicle writing in 11th- and 12th-century Kiev and Novgorod brought Likhachev to A. A. Shakhmatov’s premise that most textual inconsistencies were the result of deliberate changes by the chroniclers. Likhachev wrote Textology (1962) in order to substantiate the independent significance of textology as a science. Likhachev has also written articles to encourage interest in scholarship and in the protection and study of the landmarks of antiquity.

Likhachev is a foreign member of the Bulgarian (1963), Austrian (1968), Serbian (1972), and Hungarian (1973) academies of sciences. He has received honorary doctorates from Toruń (1964), Oxford (1967), and Edinburgh (1970). Likhachev was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1952 and 1969, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and several medals.