I once had the opportunity to interview a prominent scientist who, unfortunately, has long since passed away, the author of many books about Russian and world history. After the conversation, my interlocutor kindly allowed me to get acquainted with his huge library: shelves with books - from floor to ceiling-are filled with all four walls of his office, one of the walls is completely devoted to encyclopedias and reference books. Here, of course, were the Large (86 volumes) and Small (3 volumes) encyclopedic dictionaries of Brockhaus and Efron, the Great Soviet, British and many other encyclopedias. Everything was clearly in working order, and it was clear that they were used a lot and often.

But most of all, Brockhaus's 12-volume dictionary, Biographies, looked pretty battered from frequent use. "Why not? I asked the scientist. - Does this seemingly highly specialized dictionary contain more useful information than other, more" strict "and" academic " publications?"

"No, no more," was the reply. - But when I am preparing for lectures or writing books, it is important for me that they-students and readers-are also interested. And what could be more interesting than to perceive history through the destinies of the people who created history?

This long-standing conversation came back to me when I got a weighty (1120 pages!) The volume " The History of Africa in Biographies "(Moscow, 2012), published by the RSUH Publishing Center under the editorship of A. B. Davidson.

Undoubtedly, this work, which included articles by several dozen authors, will make a significant contribution to Russian scientific African studies and will help many people to understand the history of Africa through the fate of 157 political and public figures, whose biographies are included in the book. These biographies are like brushstrokes of various colors, which, in the end, form an amazing and unique portrait of the Black Continent.

The creation of such an impressive volume and scale of the work covered by the fates and problems required three years of hard work from the author's and editorial team. What did it take just to gather three and a half dozen authors under one roof, work thoroughly with each of them, so that all biographical references were written in the same literary vein and not too large, etc.? In the" Introduction " to the book, the head of the author's team, Academician A. B. Davidson, lists the most important questions that had to be answered find it for him and his colleagues.

There are a lot of questions. Which personalities should I include and which ones should I not include in the book? Is it only Africans who should be considered , but what about Europeans and African-Americans who have also contributed to the continent's history? How to arrange biographies - by country? By region? In alphabetical order? How to use and interpret numerous specific "African" terms - "tribe", "chief" and others? How can we region Africa and, accordingly, find a place for biographies of the most famous figures on a particular territory of the continent? There were, as A. B. Davidson admits, more specific issues and difficulties.

On each of these issues, the editors and compilers of the biography compendium, I assume, had some serious arguments. But in the end, we managed to find, apparently, the most optimal solutions. The book has three large sections: biographies of famous Africans who lived, fought and worked in South Africa, West and Central Africa, East Africa and Madagascar. Inside each section, biographies are placed not in order of fame or significance of a particular person, but strictly alphabetically.

This approach may incur certain costs: desya-

A three-page biography of the most famous Angolan leader and poet Antonio Agushtinho Neto (1922-1979) is accompanied by short two - or three - page references about the late 17th-early 18th - century ruler of the Xhosa (Inkosi) tribe Igkika (1775/1779 - 1820) and the founder of the first Christian community in South Africa, Ntsikan (17807 - 1821). But the alphabetical principle of placing biographies dismisses possible accusations of subjectivism and personal preferences of the compilers of the book.

Although the modern reader, opening the book, probably, first of all, will turn to the characters who are well known from the publications of the Russian media, to the biographies of those whom we have long known as fighters for the freedom and independence of the peoples of Africa. Personally, the first thing I read was biographical information about Agushtinho Neto, Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Amilkar Cabral. Biographical articles about each of them were also published in our magazine at different times.

Nevertheless, in almost every one of these essays, I found new, previously unknown points and details that significantly supplemented what I had previously known about these people. So, perhaps for the first time, in the biography of N. Mandela (born 1918)published in the bookHe is described as having traveled to many African countries in the 1960s to raise funds and consolidate allies of the African National Congress. (Maybe this wasn't something that could be reported for the time being?) In a biographical sketch about the founder of independent Guinea and the country's first president, Sekou Ahmed Toure (1922-1984), it is interesting to tell how this political figure, who was almost completely influenced by Moscow, scrupulously - even in detail - sought to repeat the experience of the Soviet Union. Guinean revolutionaries, without thinking about the consequences, issued decrees that were copies of the first Soviet decrees, created collective farms, established a dictatorship of one party, and even created their own GULAG-part of a nationwide system of lawless repression.

The book's contemporary assessments of African leaders, about whom we have been able to read "only good things" for many years, confirm that it is finally "time to collect stones" and look at the political processes taking place on the Black Continent from objectivist, non-ideologized positions. The authors and compilers of the "History of Africa in Biographies" generally succeeded.

Little is known in Russia about the forerunners of the African national liberation movement-those writers, lawyers, and publicists who for many years prepared public opinion to realize the need to liberate peoples from colonial dependence - the book "History of Africa in Biographies" fills this gap. The best representatives of the African intelligentsia instilled in their peoples a love of national culture and respect for their own history. In this book, we will find many biographies of those who laid the foundations of social thought on this continent.

So, there are hardly a dozen people in our country who have heard, for example, about the Ghanaian politician and publicist Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford (1866-1930), who was actually the creator of the national press in this country. He and his young fellow journalists have published hundreds of stories about life in different parts of Africa. It is interesting that he welcomed colonialism, but one that would be good for Africans, and would encourage them to progress. While seemingly utopian, the ideas of" soft colonialism " and the gradual integration of Africans into democracy still seem attractive, since such a path would almost certainly prevent many bloody conflicts in different parts of the continent.

The authors of the book are certainly right in deciding not to limit the set of "African biographies" to the biographies of only political and public figures. A number of articles - although they are relatively few - tell about some of the artists, writers, and cultural figures of the continent. Such, for example, is an essay about the famous Ethiopian artist Afeuorka Tekle (born 1932). Our veteran art historians remember his solo exhibition in Moscow in 1964, as well as Tekle's lecture tour of the Soviet Union. Only the list of prestigious awards awarded to an artist at international exhibitions takes up a whole page of a peer-reviewed book. The master, who turned 80 last year, continues to create, and his residence in Addis Ababa has become one of the attractions of the Ethiopian capital.

The" Introduction "to the book states that" biographical reference books " of African figures have already been published in a number of countries. They were released in the USA, France, especially in South Africa. Most recently, last year, the University of Cambridge published a six - volume Dictionary of African Biography. But all these publications are purely for reference purposes.

The Russian book is, in fact, a completely different literary genre. These are not dry "references" - "then I took part in a partisan war", but "then-

then he was elected to parliament.".. Almost every biography is a short essay, some of them have excellent literary properties and are written with journalistic intensity. At the same time, each author was faced with a difficult task: to tell in detail in the biographies about the main thing and to cut off all secondary things. And most of them coped with this task.

Many readers of the book" The History of Africa in biographies", as I hope, will awaken the desire to learn more about this continent and about the outstanding Africans - our contemporaries. I did this experiment: I approached several visitors to a large book fair held in Moscow in March and asked what the name of John Maxwell Coetzee meant to them. Out of a dozen respondents, only one vaguely recalled that "there seems to be such an African writer..." And yet Coetzee (born 1940) is not just a South African writer, but also the winner of two Bookers and the winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. However, I will admit frankly that I also got most of the information about him from the biography published in the reviewed book.

Unfortunately, we do not know much about African scientists, although there are some very large and significant figures among them. Such, for example, is the Burkina Faso historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo (1922-2006); almost all of his works are devoted to the history of Africa. The list of only the most important and significant of them, given at the end of the biographical sketch, has about 20 (!) titles. His "History of Black Africa" has long remained almost the only scientific work about the historical path of the continent as a whole.

As an employee of the Asia and Africa Today magazine, I was very pleased to read in the book" History of Africa in Biographies " stories about famous Africans, to whom our magazine devoted its pages in recent years. For example, the essays of my colleague in the magazine O. I. Teterin, in particular, about the first president of Zanzibar, Abeid Amani Karum (1905-1972), an ambiguous politician in his views and leadership methods, who tragically died at the hands of conspirators - such a death was prepared, alas, for many well-known African politicians. An objective assessment of the performance of many African leaders like Karuma will probably take some time to come...

But Karume is still an "angel" compared to many African, sharply negative, even sinister characters - they also found a place in the book. One cannot, for example, read without a shudder the biography of the field commander during the civil war in Sierra Leone and Vice-President of the country Foday Seyban Sanko (1937-2003). The Revolutionary United Front (ROF) he created put thousands of teenagers under the gun, who were subjected to sophisticated psychological treatment. Squads of youths - even eight - year - olds among them-killed thousands of opponents of the brutal dictator, whose actions were guided only by the thirst for profit-he sought to maintain control of the diamond-producing areas at all costs and shamelessly plundered the country. Well, the history of Africa is also rich in such sinister characters, and the authors of the book, in their desire to" present " this story to readers from the most objective positions, could not ignore them...

A picky reader will probably find flaws in the book" History of Africa in biographies". The authors of some biographies get lost in "tongue twisters", and do not explain very convincingly, for example, the motivation of decisions and actions of their characters. Editors have not managed to achieve a complete "unity" of biographies, and bright journalistic essays coexist with dry, formal and bureaucratic "references".

However, these disadvantages completely overlap with the advantages. Among them, I note a very high-quality printing performance - excellent paper, thoughtful layout and ease of use - it is not difficult to find the right character in a large volume. Many biographies, especially if we are talking about a writer, journalist, or philosopher, are supplemented with lists of published works, and each biograph has a unique meaning.-

full name - a list of references used by the author. Of course, an extensive "Glossary" (interpretation of special terms and proper names used in the book) and a truly huge "Name Index" - several hundred surnames, 14 pages of text - will help the reader - 6 pages in a small font. Brief information about the authors is also provided.

On behalf of the editorial board of the Asia and Africa Today magazine, I congratulate all the authors on their great scientific, literary, and journalistic success. The work done by them is often referred to as "the work of a lifetime". And believe me, all of us in the editorial office are unanimous - there is not a grain of exaggeration in this.

The publication of the book "The History of Africa in Biographies" is a significant event in Russian African studies.

In front of me, the reviewer, is a large volume, fresh and still smelling of printer's ink. But - I am sure-in a few years, it will become "read" in any library, and it will bear the traces of many people - scientists, graduate students, and students studying Africa and its people-who have applied to it. How the volumes of biographical reference books in the library of an old scientist with whom I had a chance to talk many years ago, in the years of my journalistic youth, were "read" - because of their extremely necessary and scientific value.

* * *

On March 20, the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences hosted a presentation of the book under review. It was attended by prominent scientists-Orientalists and Africanists, diplomats, journalists and employees of scientific publishing houses, university teachers, undergraduates and postgraduates, as well as ambassadors of a number of African countries.

Speakers at the presentation were: A. O. Chubaryan, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of the IVI RAS; A. B. Davidson, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Center for African Studies of the IVI RAS; Ambassadors: Paul K. Kurgat (Kenya), Mandisi B. M. Mpahlwa (South Africa), Gabriel Kochofa (Benin) and Jaka M. Mwambi (Tanzania) . I. Basovskaya-Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of World History of RSUH; Yu. N. Vinokurov - Doctor of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher of the IAfr RAS; A. S. Gorelik - Director of the UN Information Center in Moscow; D. M. Bondarenko - Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Deputy Head of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Director of the IAfr RAS.

All of them noted the exceptional relevance and usefulness of the work and its high scientific, literary and journalistic level.

N. I. PETROV, Editor Asia and Africa Today magazine

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