Russian historian Natalya Basovskaya: biography, books

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:41

Basovskaya Natalia Ivanovna is a name that inspires admiration and respect from those who have listened to at least one of her lectures. But one is usually not limited. I want to know more and more about what Natalya Basovskaya can tell so interesting. She is called jokingly, and perhaps seriously, Scheherazade. This is how A. Venediktov, editor-in-chief of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, speaks of her for her endless “fairy tales.”

Some biographical information

A month before the start of the Second World War, on May 21, 1941, a daughter, Natalia, was born in a family of Russified Polish nobles (by mother). Father, Kurenkov Ivan Fedorovich, went to the front, and how her mother survived, having a baby in her arms, one can only guess. However, Maria Adamovna's he alth was ironclad. Despite all the hardships, she lived for one hundred and two years (1909-2011) and managed to rejoice at her daughter's success and nurse her granddaughter Evgenia, who was born in 1964 in her daughter's first marriage and later became a philologist.

Studying at school and at Moscow University

In 1952-1960. in Moscow schools, a brilliant teacher Ada Anatolyevna Svanidze, who was passionate about the history of the Middle Ages, worked, who would later teach at Moscow State University and the Russian State Humanitarian University. It was her student, who, like a sponge, absorbed knowledge, was Natalya Basovskaya. After school, she entered the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, from which she graduated with honors. Natalya Basovskaya continued her postgraduate studies and defended her Ph. D. thesis in 1969 on English politics in Gascony in the 13th-15th centuries. This work captured the young historian so much that she learned Latin (she knew English perfectly) and read all the documentation without a translator on her own. Natalya Basovskaya turned over mountains of economic documents, and as a result, new information was included in the dissertation. It was she who became aware of how the British, who at that time owned Gascony, profited from the export and import of wines. They taxed the same barrel of wine twice - for export and for import - and clipped coupons in this way.

Teaching activities

Since 1971, Basovskaya Natalia Ivanovna taught at the Department of General History of the Historical and Archival Institute. But the young teacher was already collecting materials for her doctoral dissertation. In parallel with this, she organized a circle in which students held theatrical trials of famous historical characters.

In those same years, Natalia Ivanovna manages to broadcast on the radio about people who are in school textbooks onhistory for the fifth-seventh grade is given one, maximum two lines. The program was called "Radio for a History Lesson". And then there were lectures about Francis Bacon, about Lao Tzu, about Tamerlane, Richelieu and other historical figures. The result was portraits against the backdrop of history.

Dissertation defense

Such a busy life, and besides, family and friends demanded time, which was not enough for the thesis. Nevertheless, in 1988, a doctor of historical sciences appears before us.

Natalia Ivanovna devoted it to the Anglo-French contradictions of the 12th-15th centuries. At that time, the Hundred Years War was going on. The most interesting personalities from both the English and French side, little known to the Russian listener and reader, performed on the historical stage. It was at this time that the disparate people who lived in the territory of present-day France and England began to feel their unity. But the contradictions between them were so great that one of the French historians of those years wrote in all seriousness, they say, they say that the British are not people at all: they have tails under their clothes, similar to those that monkeys have. The Hundred Years' War ended with a turning point made by a little girl from Domremy, Joan of Arc. But the year 1453 is considered to be its final completion, although the peace treaty was never concluded.

Historical program of N. Basovskaya and A. Venediktov

Initially, two enthusiasts created the program “Everything is not right” on the radio “Echo of Moscow”. In it, Natalia Ivanovna introduced the audience to the exciting biographies of the people shestudied deeply when she was engaged in serious works on history: the historiography of the problems of the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages or the problems of the Hundred Years War in modern historiography.

She easily and intelligibly, however, filling her stories with historical facts, talked about the people of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages. Why did eighteen-year-old Alexander the Great need the whole world? Why is the beautiful Eleanor of Aquitaine considered the grandmother of Europe in the Middle Ages? Then, in 2006, the program changed its name, and it began to sound "Everything is like that." But the questions she answered were still interesting. Does the real King Henry V look like a Shakespearean character? Richard the Lionheart and Cicero, Leonardo da Vinci and Robin Hood have attracted attention for centuries, and we can bit by bit recreate their human image. But Natalia Ivanovna draws them convexly and brightly, people of flesh and blood with their passions and mistakes.

Kultura TV Channel

Natalia Basovskaya's lectures on television became a significant event. The whole country was able to see this sorceress of the word with their own eyes. Not only the material presented by Natalia Ivanovna is interesting, but also how she does it. She enters the audience and gladly greets the youth: she is pleased with young faces who are interested in history. And people of all ages froze at the screens. Natalia Ivanovna is always smart, elegantly dressed. She loves and often changes her jewelry. What will we learn? About how the Middle Ages was born in smoke, blood and fire, how it diedgreat Rome and what a tragedy it was for its inhabitants. For them, the end of the world was coming in the truest sense of the word. After all, the Latins called Rome the eternal city, not doubting for a second that their foundations would last for centuries, if not for millennia. Virgil, who created his poetic monument, was sure that Rome would always stand while the virgin ascends the Capitoline Hill and maintains the Eternal Flame on it. At the same time, Natalia Ivanovna quotes this poem in Latin, and then translates each line.

And it's great that we see the lecturer's energetic gestures, which emphasize the significance of this or that phrase. From these lectures we learn about the life of Joan of Arc, about whom Natalia Ivanovna speaks with penetrating admiration. One can only regret that the Kultura TV channel stopped broadcasting with the Academy program and lectures can only be listened to from its archive, and new episodes are not released.

Literary activity

On the basis of lectures that not everyone could hear, Natalia Basovskaya wrote articles. The books they have turned into do not stay on the shelves. These are publications such as "The Hundred Years' War. Leopard vs. Lily", as well as the series "History in stories" and "Man in the mirror of history" and others.

There have already been quite a few of them, and the reader looks forward to each issue, as he learns a lot of new things about what he heard, but somehow forgot. Their heroes are Queen Victoria, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels,Torquemada with his unrequited love, Marie Antoinette, Thomas More and many other figures of history.

Professor N. I. Basovskaya opened the world of history for listeners and readers from a completely different, unusual side. For this, a huge audience of her admirers is grateful to her.