Fyodor Dmitrievich Ashnin is a historian of the Turkic languages of the southern group.

Fyodor Dmitrievich was born on January 19, 1922 in the village of Nizhnyaya Dobrinka, Zhirnovsky district, Volgograd region. In 1939, he graduated from the Rudnyansky pedagogical school, and became a teacher of the Uzbek rural school of the Surkhandarya region. When he first found himself in a Turkic-speaking environment, he became interested in the language and culture of the Turkic peoples.

In 1940, F. D. Ashnin was drafted into the Red Army and from June 22, 1941 to July 1, 1944, he served in the active army on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. In 1944, Fyodor Dmitrievich was seconded to study in Moscow-at the Military Faculty of the Institute of Foreign Languages (later VIIYAKA, VIIYASA), which he graduated in 1949.He continued his service in the army in the border troops of Transcaucasia as a reference translator of the Turkish language.

In 1950, in graduate school under the supervision of E. V. Sevortyan, Fyodor Dmitrievich studied demonstrative pronouns as a system in its formation, respectively using the techniques of both synchronic and diachronic linguistics. In 1958, he defended his PhD thesis "Demonstrative pronouns and their derivatives in Azerbaijani, Turkish and Turkmen languages".

While working on his dissertation, F. D. Ashnin (together with V. I. Tsintsius) translated V. L. Kotvich's monograph on pronouns in Altaic languages "Les pronoms dans les langues altaïques"from French to Russian. Krakow, 1936. The idea of translating M. Kotvich's monograph was crystallized by Fyodor Dmitrievich in the early 1960s. However, this translation was published only in 1978 in the Moscow collection "Studies in Mongolian Philology".

The final work of F. D. Ashnin on the study of pronouns was the section "Personal and personally-demonstrative pronouns" in the fundamental multi-volume work " Comparative historical grammar of the Turkic languages. Morphology". (Moscow, 1988). Earlier, F. D. Ashnin compiled a unique reference book " Altai Linguistics. Bibliographic index of literature on the Altaic (Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungus-Manchu) languages, published in Russia and the USSR in 1925-1970", which was not published, and its file was lost. F. D. Ashnin also participated in the work on the "Etymological Dictionary of Turkic languages" at its initial stages under the guidance of E. V. Sevortyan.

The encyclopedic nature of the historiographer's knowledge and his scientific adherence to principles were shown in the articles of F. D. Ashnin about the figures of domestic and foreign Turkology. Thanks to his numerous reference articles for encyclopedic dictionaries, journal publications, reports, speeches, the reader received information about the life and work of V. V. Radlov, S. V. Yastremsky, A. A. Bobrovnikov, K. K. Yudakhin, E. D. Polivanov, N. V. Yushmanov, N. F. Yakovlev, F. G. Iskhakov, G. Ramstedt, Y. Nemet, M. Ryasyanen, and others. He wrote essays on the half-forgotten pages of the history of Russian Turkology, which are rich in a huge amount of factual material, including archival ones.

Fyodor Dmitrievich became famous for his articles on the first printed scientific grammar of the Altai language "The problem of authorship", "The question of the name" and " From the history of the creation of the grammar of the Altai language "(Moscow, 1978-1981). In these articles, F. D. Ashnin confirmed the leading role of the remarkable linguist-theorist N. I. Ilminsky in the creation of the Altai grammar.

During the "thaw" years, F. D. Ashnin's articles about A. N. Samoilovich (1963, No. 2) and B. V. Chobanzad (1967, No. 1) were the first articles in Turkology published in the journal "Peoples of Asia and Africa". In 1978, he compiled the first scientific biography of the disgraced academician A. N. Samoilovich (1880-1938) and a list of his works (1978). In fact, he restored the great scientific heritage of the academician to Turkology anew. Through the efforts of Fyodor Dmitrievich, a precedent was set for the return to scientific use of the creative heritage of repressed scientists. He also "returned" such forgotten names as A.M. Sukhotin, A. R. Zifeld-Simumyagi to the circle of Turkologists.

A special place in the work of F. D. Ashnin was occupied by the preparation for the publication of the "Linguistic Encyclopedia" (Moscow, 1990). When editing her articles and selecting personalities

he used the rich experience he has accumulated as a recognized chief historiographer of Turkology in our country.

In the late 1980s, due to certain circumstances, he was forced to retire before he could fulfill his long-held dream of writing "A Series of Literary Portraits of Russian Turkologists" (he was attracted, for example, by the relationship between two remarkable scientists - the turkologist N. I. Ilminsky and the Mongolist A. A. Bobrovnikov). Fyodor Dmitrievich also planned to republish the little-known works of N. K. Dmitriev in the form of a collection.

However, soon F. D. Ashnin was invited to the post of senior researcher in the Commission on the History of Linguistics at the Department of Language and Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences. During his time there, Fyodor Dmitrievich, in collaboration with V. M. Alpatov, wrote the books "The Case of the Slavists: the 30s "(Moscow, 1994), as well as" Repressed Turkology" (Moscow, 2002)-together with V. M. Alpatov and D. M. Nasilov. Fyodor Dmitrievich considered it his duty to finish this work. By this time, he was often ill and therefore attracted V. M. Alpatov to help him, and since 1997, D. M. Nasilov. But the motor, according to V. M. Alpatov, was still Fyodor Dmitrievich.

Thanks to the active search activity of F. D. Ashnin, archival material from the investigative cases of A. N. Samoilovich and E. D. Polivanov, professors G. S. Gubaidullin and B. V. Choban-zade, Kazakh enlightener A. Baitursunov and Khalid-Said Khodzhayev and other victims of repression was introduced into scientific use. Six out of ten articles were first published in the journal " Vostok (Oriens)" (1996, № 5; 1997, № 5; 1998, № 5; 2000, № 2; 2001, № 1; 2002, № 3), two - in the edition " Altaica "(II, 1998; III, 1999).

At the limit of his strength, F. D. Ashnin traveled to Azerbaijan, Bashkiria, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. After his last trip to Central Asia (1996-1998), which was particularly difficult due to financial and other circumstances, he returned seriously ill and still continued to work on the archives. Azerbaijani files from the Central Archive of the Ministry of National Security of Azerbaijan were obtained in Moscow, and in 1999 a number of documents were sent from the Central Archive of the Ministry of National Security of Kyrgyzstan.

On October 12, 2000, the heart of Fyodor Dmitrievich Ashnin, a prominent historiographer of Turkology, stopped beating. The book "Repressed Turkology" was published posthumously. F. D. Ashnin's historiographical reports were repeatedly discussed at Turkological conferences in Leningrad and each time received the approval of those present.

In Ankara in the 1990s, the Congress of the Turkish Linguistic Society opened with a report by F. D. Ashnin on repressed Turkologists.

The historiography of Russian Turkology from the 60s of the XIX century up to the end of the 30s of the XX century, developed by F. D. Ashnin, continues to develop at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences: "Turkic Linguistics. Philology. Runika" (Moscow, 2005), " Alexander Nikolaevich Samoilovich: scientific correspondence. Biography" (Moscow, 2008) in the series "Essays on the history of Turkic linguistics in Russia".

G. F. BLAGOVA

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