Aristid Ivanovich Dovatur: The Making of a Classical Philologist between the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

This article is devoted to the memory of Aristid Ivanovich Dovatur, an outstanding classical philologist, a representative of the Leningrad School of Antiquity. The paper aims to study some pages of Dovatur’s life in the 1920s–1930s, reflecting his formation as a classical philologist. The author of the article introduces previously unpublished materials from Dovatur’s archival heritage. Archival documents allow the author to reconstruct the main stages of Dovatur’s life before the beginning of the Great Terror in 1937. According to the documents examined, it was his family and school that inspired him to study the Humanities. In Kiev and Saratov universities, where Dovatur studied at the Classical Department, his teachers were S. S. Dłożewski, S. V. Melikovа, S. I. Protasov, and V. Y. Kaplinsky. As for Dovatur’s philological skills, an important role was played by the student circle of translators of Greek novels. He began his career when he was a student. The author identifies all places of his work in libraries and educational institutions. Archival documents help demonstrate Dovatur’s close connection with the School of Classical Philology of Leningrad University, where under the supervision of S. A. Zhebelev, he began to study the political works of Aristotle. He became interested in studying the scholarly and folk style of Herodotus under the influence of academician I. I. Tolstoy. Dovatur’s academic and pedagogical work did not stop during his Saratov exile. It was only his imprisonment in the GULAG that interrupted his scholarly activity.