Historian A.S. Shofman and His Academic Environment

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of academic environment evolution in which an antiquity historian, A.S. Shofman (1913–1993) conducted his research and taught students in different periods of his life. The author shows that Shofman’s personal qualities, such as determination, ability to work in any external conditions, considerate and, at the same time, demanding attitude to his students and colleagues, sense of humor, irony, self-deprecation, and others played an important role in his development as a scholar. It is also pointed out that fate often brought him to teachers and colleagues who facilitated his success. Different spheres of his scientific communication are studied: prominent scholars of Ancient History and Philology – his teachers at Leningrad State University; international scientific contacts with his colleagues from Macedonia and Serbia, which used to be the part of Yugoslavia, from Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. His relationship with Russian historians and philologists from Moscow, Leningrad, Voronezh, Tomsk and Belorussian scholars from Minsk were also discussed as well as academic environment at Kazan State University, especially at the Department of World History which A.S. Shofman headed for several decades. The article reveals the influence of his scientific surroundings on his development as a scholar and on themes of his research. A.S. Shofman, in his turn, shaped the mode of activity of the Department he headed and set up a scientific school in Kazan State University well-known in the country