As shown by many years of practice, folk traditions by themselves are not preserved. With the change of generations, the experience of ancestors is gradually lost, and the grandson no longer knows how his grandfather lived. In museums and archives remain slurred traces of past centuries. But in order to decipher them, one must have certain knowledge and skills. Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachev studied the cultural history of the Russian people throughout his entire conscious life.
Youth of the Patriarch
According to the metric book, Dmitry Likhachev was born on November 28, 1906 in the family of an engineer. Parents lived in St. Petersburg and tried to introduce the child to the treasury of cultural property. According to all signs and rules, Dmitry’s biography should have developed within the framework of class discourse. The boy studied well at the gymnasium and could not fully imagine how his peers live on the outskirts of the capital city. War, and then the ensuing revolution, radically changed the existing way of life.
In 1923, Likhachev entered the University of Petrograd at the Department of Linguistics and Literature. The circle of interests of the young man included the Romance-Germanic and Slavic languages. He paid special attention to the study of ancient literary works. Being a sociable person, Dmitry actively participated in the activities of student sections and circles. One of the amateur structures was called the Space Academy of Sciences. At a meeting of this “academy, " the student prepared and made a presentation on ancient Russian spelling.
Having received a specialized education, Likhachev did not have time to start working in his specialty. In February 1928, he was arrested and charged with counter-revolutionary activities. The basis for the arrest was the very report on the rules of spelling in the Russian language. From the height of the past years, we can say that fate favored the young scientist. A scientific career took shape in places of detention. He showed interest and systematized the card games, which were popular with camp sitters.
