At the end of the summer of the last year of the outgoing millennium, Grigory Aleksandrovich Tkachenko died suddenly. The scientist, teacher and organizer who personified the brightest hopes of Russian Oriental studies passed away prematurely. We have lost a man who is so well suited to the Chinese symbol of the lotus-a knight flower that grows clean out of the mud.
At first glance, Grigory Alexandrovich's path to science was long. In 1965, he entered the ISAA at Moscow State University, after graduating, he served in the army, worked in the APN, for a very short time in the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences, and then taught Chinese at a military university for quite a long time. His career as an orientalist began only after 1984: YVES AN (PhD) - Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (PhD) - RSUH (Associate Professor, Head of the Department, Organizing Director of the Institute of Cultural Anthropology). In fact, G. A. Tkachenko modestly, selflessly, uncompromisingly and selflessly served science for more than 30 years - all his adult life, starting as a student.
Being introduced to science by one of the most fanatical fighters for Marxism in Oriental studies, L. D. Pozdneeva (fortunately, militant communism in her was miraculously combined with the professionalism of an old-school professor), Grigory Alexandrovich did not inherit a grain of the ideological commitment of his first teacher.
He was simply organically unable to reproduce the ideological attitudes of his supervisor, nor to fight bourgeois Oriental studies, nor to join the ranks of the CPSU. As a result, after writing an excellent thesis on the most complex and poorly studied monument of the III century BC "Liushi Chunqiu", which actually generalized the Chinese humanitarian scientific tradition of the first centuries of its existence, instead of graduate school, he ended up in the ranks of the Armed Forces of the USSR.
A two-year military service was followed by work as an APN editor, and only in 1974 G. A. Tkachenko managed to get a job as a junior researcher in the group of the Large Chinese-Russian Dictionary, where for two years he performed technical work (his last name is the last name of a Sinologist listed in the preface to the dictionary). A job befitting an" unblemished " ISAA graduate, he / she will be able to-
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he was released only in September 1976: he taught Chinese for eight academic years in a military unit. After the death of L. D. Pozdneeva and with the support of L. E. Pomerantseva, who partly took over the functions of a scientific supervisor (Grigory Alexandrovich retained a reverent attitude of a student to her until the end of his life), G. A. Tkachenko brilliantly defended his PhD thesis "Spring and Autumn of Lu Buwei as a literary monument"in 1982.
Nevertheless, he was not sufficiently "rehabilitated" to publish a monograph on his dissertation, although it was conscientiously prepared by him, printed out on a typewriter and distributed to colleagues whom he trusted. I was honored to receive such a copy, as well as the opportunity to teach him a little (he was one of my first students). It is bitter to experience a man who, according to the Eastern custom, considered himself your disciple. It's so unfair that I have to write the obituary not for him, but for him...
In 1991, G. A. Tkachenko's monograph " Cosmos, Music, Ritual. Myth and aesthetics in Liushi Chunqiu". This is a fundamental study based not only on the Liushi Chunqiu, but also on a number of other texts that are fundamental to the Chinese philological tradition. For the first time in sinology, this book, which is harmonious in composition and elegantly written, substantiates a fruitful idea: in a group of texts attributed by Grigory Alexandrovich to the classics and pre-empire, a model of musical vision of the world is reflected, in which each object has a certain number associated with a certain stage of the scale. This is precisely the true foundation of the ancient Chinese theory of resonance. This book also made a significant contribution to the reconstruction of Proto-Chinese mythology. It immediately promoted G. A. Tkachenko to one of the leading sinologists in Russia.
If this monograph of the scientist was, as it were, the result of his work as a researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, then subsequent publications are mostly related to his activities as a university teacher. First of all, this applies to the dictionary-reference book "Chinese Culture", published in 1999, whose articles are carefully selected and cover all the concepts necessary for students of Chinese studies at all levels of study. This solid work is distinguished by an extremely balanced wording, the material in it is presented as objectively and publicly available as possible.
Grigory Alexandrovich has always been extremely conscientious about his obligations. After graduating from the ISAA as a literary critic, he expanded his specialization in linguistics, textology, and cultural studies. He attended purely linguistic events. In particular, I was surprised to see him at Yu. D. Apresyan's seminar at the Institute of Information Transmission Problems, which unites linguists working at the cutting edge of modern linguistics. As the head of the department, G. A. Tkachenko paid a lot of attention to the methodology of teaching Chinese, taking part, in particular, in all conferences organized by the Russian Association of Chinese Language Teachers.
At the same time, Grigory Alexandrovich's main research interests tended towards general philology and cultural studies. These interests were perhaps most fully expressed in a large article (and in fact a small monograph) " The model of man in Chinese Culture (on traditional Chinese anthropology)", included in the collection "Odyssey. A Man in History "(1999).
Actively engaged in extensive administrative work, only part of which was the head of the department, G. A. Tkachenko laid on his shoulders a huge burden that he carried with honor, but this burden crushed him. So we lost an outstanding scientist, teacher and organizer of scientific and methodological work, who left us in the prime of his creative activity.
A. M. KARAPETYAN
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We met Grisha (for me, he was always just Grisha, even when he was my boss) in the distant 1970s on a collective farm, where we, employees and graduate students of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, were driven by our native party and government for labor education almost every autumn. On a warm, starry night, we four relatively young people we barely knew climbed up on a haystack, lay on our backs, and looked up at the sky. From there came the subtle hypnotic melody of the Pythagorean music of the spheres, a melody so mesmerizing that we suddenly decided to read poetry, and not someone else's, but our own. An unprofessional poet in an unfamiliar company can only dare to do this under some special circumstances. Perhaps we felt that each of us knew the natural password that Kipling once put in the mouths of his noble heroes. The poems were very personal. Only now, after thirty years of acquaintance, can I appreciate what must have been going on in the atmosphere for Grisha's stern and silent lips to suddenly open in such a situation and push poems into the ringing ether. And they are easily, harmoniously, without polite efforts on the part of the audience, intertwined in this stellar music.
The next day, he opened up to me from a completely different angle. He and the current honorary president of the Hebrew University A. Militarev started an intellectual duel for knowledge of English-language literature. It lasted about an hour. I have never heard such an academic duet, such lapidary and precise characteristics, either before or after this amazing match in depth and scope. If you consider that Grisha was still a Sinologist...
At that time, he worked in the department of the Big Chinese-Russian Dictionary, treated his work as a Service to the scientific muses, and was not at all burdened by the fact that, as the youngest employee of the department, he mostly had to do technical work. And yet, after a while, he left to teach Chinese, which he knew like a god, at the diplomatic academy: he had to feed his family.
As the head of the Department of Russian Language, Literature, and Applied Linguistics at the Institute of History and Archives, I asked Tkachenko to give lectures on Chinese culture to students I had gathered in a circle after the linguistics Olympiad. Grisha agreed immediately, and I still remember three of his lectures as if they were delivered yesterday. A rare lecturer can talk so voluminously, fully, academically and at the same time simply and fascinatingly interesting in three hours about what he has been doing all his life. It was the Master's story, and the children appreciated it as much as I did.
In the midst of perestroika, the former Institute of History and Archives, and later the Russian State University for the Humanities, decided to create first a department, and then a faculty of theoretical and applied Linguistics, including the Department of Oriental Languages. I knew who to invite to the position of head of the department initially: of course, Grisha.
He accepted the position of head of the department after some hesitation, but made a condition: he would work part-time. Later, I understood the reason for his decision: he did not want to upset his colleagues at the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he was very much appreciated. In addition, as a person of immense responsibility, he was not sure that he could cope with the position, that he would be allowed to do what he saw fit, that he would be adequate to the position (after all, linguistics is not his profile), etc. It was only after several years of hard work in two positions, each of which he worked as if he were on two full-time positions, that he finally decided to leave the Institute of Philosophy and finally settled down with us.
At the department, initially, he did everything for everyone himself. He went around with paperwork, did lab work, and wrote countless reports. It was difficult to find teachers: the demand for Eastern languages was high, specialists were paid a lot on the private market, but we didn't have enough. And yet, he succeeded. It turned out to be a strong large pulpit. Students poured in a torrent of Oriental languages. Some of them were eliminated, but the other part was happy not only with the fact that it was possible to support the dying branch of science, but also with its discoveries, excellent command of the language, and interest in our Work, Grisha's.
Almost immediately after the foundation of the Department of Oriental Languages, Grisha organized an all-Moscow scientific seminar, where he gathered quite a strong group of like-minded scientists. He worked until his untimely death.
He invited to his department a strong programmer, V. I. Lyubchenko, with whom he started working at the Institute of Oriental Studies.-
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work on creating systems for teaching Chinese writing, creating a computer anthology of classical texts of Chinese culture, and creating automatic dictionaries.
Of course, he couldn't be happy with everything that came out. He suffered physically from the fact that teachers receive little, that the higher authorities increasingly restricted us in maneuvering, increasingly turned against our faculty, prevented the creation of commercial structures to make life easier for teachers, forced us to report on a huge number of meaningless documents, but he appreciated his work and was not going to give up positions.
In the mid-1990s, he suffered two serious misfortunes: initially, he was involved in a car accident, received several severe fractures, one of which was open. With a huge effort of will, he got out of the hospital bed in three months, started walking on crutches, and again got hit by a car, again got a fracture, and again went to the hospital.
When I saw him again at the university, I could no longer recognize his gait. For the rest of his life, ot walked carefully and with some difficulty. For a person who has hitherto been in perfect control of his body, the position of a disabled person should be unbearably difficult. But Grisha was a man of the spirit. I've never heard a single complaint from him. Only once did he say that his heart was hurting and he needed to leave urgently. It was angina pectoris.
In the late 1990s, he was offered to head the Institute of Cultural Anthropology, created on the initiative of the RSUH Rector. Overcoming organizational and other difficulties, he managed to establish the work of the institute, which, unfortunately, for a number of reasons soon ceased to exist. A few months later, Grigory Alexandrovich died.
I'm sorry, Grisha. Thank you for being here.
A. N. BARULIN
MAIN SCIENTIFIC WORKS OF G. A. TKACHENKO
At the Temple of the Great Tribulation. Hot cakes. // Lao She. Notes on the Cat City, Moscow, 1969, pp. 168-184, 185-189 (translated from Chinese).
About the composition "Twelve notes" in "Liushi chunqiu" / / Society and State in China. Seventh scientific conference. Doklady [Reports], Moscow, 1976, pp. 50-56.
Figure of the wise man in the "Twelve Notes" / / Collection of articles on linguistics, Moscow, 1977. N 11. pp. 245-254.
Translated from kit. chapters from "Spring and Autumn of Lu Buwei": "The beginning of music", "Fundamentals of music", "About the world order". Comment. / Problemy vostochnoy filologii [Problems of Eastern Philology], Moscow, 1979, pp. 42-50.
Chelovek i priroda v "Liushi chunqiu" [Man and Nature in "Liushi chunqiu"] / / Problema cheloveka v traditsionnykh kitayskikh ucheniyakh, Moscow, 1983, pp. 231-242.
To the "Index on four corners" / / Big Chinese-Russian dictionary. T. I. M., 1983. pp. 185-188.
Translated from kit. from: "Spring and Autumn of Lu Buwei": kn. 4, ch. 2 "On teaching"; kn. 9, ch. 2 "On following the people"; kn. 10, ch. 5 "On different use" / / Literature of the Ancient East. Iran, India, and China, Moscow, 1984, pp. 251-256.
On the principles of comparative typological research of morphemic composition of languages / / Linguistic typology, Moscow, 1985, pp. 81-92.
Taoism and the "school of names" in the tradition of ancient Chinese thought // Metodologicheskie i mirovozrencheskie problemy istorii filosofii stran Vostoka [Methodological and worldview problems of the history of philosophy in the countries of the East].
Yanshina E. M. Formirovanie i razvitie drevnekitayskoi mifologii [Formation and development of Ancient Chinese Mythology], Moscow, 1984. 1986. N 1. pp. 151-158.
Translated from Chinese: From "Liushi chunqiu" / / From the books of the Wise Men. Proza drevnego Kitaya [Prose of ancient China], Moscow, 1987, pp. 255-292.
Translated from Chinese: Tsar-derevoe / / Tsar-derevoe. Modern Chinese Novels, Moscow, 1989, pp. 419-467.
Space, music, and ritual. Myth and aesthetics in "Liushi chunqiu", Moscow: Vostochnaya literatura. 1990. 283 p.
Sur la composition du Shi'er ji dans Ie Lu shi chunqiu (Printemps et automnes de Lu shi) //Extreme-Orient-Extreme-Occident. P., 1991. P. 121-127.
Reflection of traditional ideas about space in the Chinese text of the third century. 1993. N 3. pp. 27-40. The same / / Aesthetics of being and aesthetics of text in the cultures of the Medieval East, Moscow, 1995, pp. 95-104.
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Chaos and cosmos in traditional Chinese cosmology and anthropology / / God-man-society in traditional cultures of the East, Moscow, 1993, pp. 30-38.
Trans., note: Canon of the external representation of the yellow courtyard. Comments. Mysterious qigong / / Magic crystal. Magic through the eyes of scientists and Wizards, Moscow, 1994, pp. 480-508.
K probleme postroeniya yazyka opisaniya kul'tury Vostoka (i Zapada) [On the problem of constructing a language for describing the cultures of the East (and the West)]. Istoriko-filosofskiy yezhdnik 94, Moscow, 1995, pp. 361-364.
Text preparation, comments: Konrad N. I. Ocherki istorii kitayskoy literatury [Essays on the history of Chinese Literature]. Letters, Moscow, 1996, pp. 119-168, 466-467.
Introduction to Cultural Studies: traditions of the East and West (thematic course program for students of the Faculty of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics) / / Social Anthropology at the University. Sbornik uchebno-metodicheskikh materialov [Collection of educational materials], Moscow, 1997, pp. 254-256.
History of Chinese philosophy. Early period. Course program. University of the Russian Academy of Education, Moscow: URAO, 1997.
Zihai-informatsionno poiskovaya sistema po kitayskim ieroglifam [Information search system for Chinese characters]. Materials of the seminar. January 28-31, 1998. Golitsino, Moscow: RSUH, 1998, pp. 121-126 (together with V. I. Lyubchenko).
Archaic representation of "humanity" in the culture of China / / Social Biology of
Ritual and Group Identity. Concepts of Human and Behavior. Patterns in the Cultures of the East and West: interdisciplines Approach. М.: РГГУ. 1998. С. 57-59.
Medieval Chinese Philosophy // Istoriya vostochnoy filosofii [History of Eastern Philosophy], Moscow, 1998, pp. 49-71.
"Zhiznennye mira "i" obraz zhizni " v traditsionnoi kitayskoy antropologii ["Life worlds" and "lifestyle" in traditional Chinese anthropology]. Sotsial'naya antropologiya na poroge XXI veka, Moscow, 1998, pp. 210-215.
"Correcting names" - what didn't Confucius say? // Ancient cultures of Eastern and Southern Asia, Moscow: MSU, 1999, pp. 93-109.
Introduction, transl., comment. Izz "Khroniki Lyuya" [Liushi chunqiu (book 16, chapter 2)] / / Vestnik MSU. Ser. 13. Vostokovedenie. N 3. 1999. pp. 86-95.
Culture of China. Dictionary and reference book, Moscow: Muravey. 1999. 382 p.
The Human Model in the Culture of China (on traditional Chinese Anthropology / / Odyssey. Chelovek v istorii [Man in History], Moscow, 1999, pp. 139-191.
Formirovanie eticheskikh idei v Kitae [Formation of ethical Ideas in China]. Yearbook, Moscow, 2000, pp. 16-31.
Translated, ed., dictionary, author's preface: "Spring and autumn of Lu Buwei" as a monument to ancient Chinese philosophical prose. pp. 5-69 / / Liushi chunqiu. M. "Mysl". 2001. 520 p.
Novaya filosofskaya entsiklopediya [New Philosophical Encyclopedia], Moscow, 2001.
Ethics. Encyclopedic dictionary, Moscow: Gardariki. 2001. - Author of 25 articles.
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