Vilen Vladimirovich Sikorsky was called a professor long before he officially received this title. And this was facilitated not only by his "professorial appearance", but also by his extensive knowledge of the culture, literature and language of the Nusantara countries. For 55 years of creative activity, the beginning of which coincided with the period of the formation of Soviet Malay studies, he became one of its notable representatives, occupying the niche of the founder of the study of modern Indonesian literature in our country. A class translator and one of the leading teachers of Indonesian and Malay languages, he has also proved himself to be a talented organizer both in our society and beyond. The hero of the day was born on March 27, 1932 in Odessa. However, Vilen Vladimirovich does not consider himself a true Odessan, since he was still a one-year-old in Moscow among the "children of the Arbat". After graduating from high school in 1951, he entered the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies (MIV). The successor of the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages, founded in 1814, MIV was known among the city's student fraternity not only for its exotic languages, but also for its exotic evenings with local fakirs and "Indian" dancers. The department was called Malay, and the applicant believed that he would have to free the Malays from the yoke of the British imperialists. But it turned out that all the subjects concerned not Malaya, but a completely different, already independent country - Indonesia. The Malay language was taught by L. A. Mervart, a pioneer of its teaching in the USSR. Some time later, the language became known as Indonesian in accordance with the Youth Oath of 1928 and the Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia. Lyudmila Alexandrovna relied on classical Malay texts and classical (high) Malay, which was unified by the Dutch for use in school education. In addition to her, Semaun, the founder of the Communist Party of Indonesia, a living legen ... Читать далее