Lev Gumilev: Encyclopedia II - Lev Gumilev - Life

Lev Gumilev - Life

His parents were two prominent poets Nikolay Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova. They divorced when Lev was a baby, and his father was executed when he was just 9. During his mother's persecution in the 1930s, he was expelled from the Leningrad University and deported to gulags, where he would spend most of his youth, from 1938 until 1956. During a brief stint at large, he joined the Red Army and took part in the Battle of Berlin. In order to secure his release, Akhmatova was constrained to publish dithyrambs to Stalin, but this didn't help. Their relations remained strained, as Lev blamed his mother for the misfortunes that had dogged his youth.

After Stalin's death, Gumilev joined the Hermitage Museum, whose director, Mikhail Artamonov, he would come to appreciate as his mentor. Under Artamonov's guidance, he became interested in Khazar studies and steppe peoples in general. In 1960 he started delivering lectures at the Leningrad University. Two years later, he defended his doctor's thesis on ancient Turks. Since 1960s, he worked in the Geography Institute, where he would defend another doctor's thesis, this time in geography.

Although his ideas were rejected by the official Soviet doctrine and most of his monographs banned from publication, Gumilev came to attract much publicity, especially in the Perestroika years. As an indication of his popularity, the Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered the Lev Gumilev Eurasian University to be erected just opposite his own palace on the central square of new Kazakh capital, Astana.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Life", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki