Leo Klejn facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Leo Klejn
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| Лев Клейн | |
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| Born | 1 July 1927 |
| Died | 7 November 2019 (aged 92) |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Alma mater | Leningrad State University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Archaeology Anthropology Philology |
| Institutions | Leningrad State University European University at Saint Petersburg |
Lev Samuilovich Kleyn (Russian: Лев Самуилович Клейн; born July 1, 1927 – died November 7, 2019), also known as Leo Klejn, was a Russian archaeologist, anthropologist, and philologist. He was famous for his work in archaeological theory, which is about the ideas and methods used in archaeology.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Leo Klejn was born in Vitebsk, which is now in Belarus. His parents were both doctors. His grandparents were quite wealthy.
In 1941, during World War II, his parents joined the army. Leo and his family had to move to safer places, first near Moscow, then to Yoshkar-Ola. There, young Leo worked on a farm. At 16, he left school and started working with the army as a civilian. After the war, his family settled in Grodno. Leo then studied at a Railway Technical School for a year.
While still in high school, Leo started a secret group called 'Prometheus'. This group caught the attention of the KGB, a government security agency. However, because the people involved were so young, there were no serious problems.
Academic Career
After finishing high school, Leo Klejn went to the Grodno Teacher Training Institute to study language and history. In 1947, he spoke out against a powerful local leader and had to leave. He then moved to Leningrad State University. He first studied from afar, then became a full-time student.
At Leningrad, he studied archaeology and Russian language. He continued to challenge official ideas. He even criticized the work of a well-known scholar, which was against the rules of the time. Luckily, the country's leader, Stalin, later rejected those same ideas, so Klejn avoided being expelled.
In 1951, Leo graduated with top honors in history. For six years, he worked as a librarian and a high school teacher. Then, he returned to Leningrad to study archaeology further. In 1960, he joined the Archaeology Department and became an Assistant Professor in 1962. This was special because he was Jewish and not part of the main political party, but he was chosen because of his strong academic skills. In 1968, he earned his advanced degree (like a PhD) for his work on the origins of the Catacomb culture. In 1976, he became an Associate Professor.
Leo Klejn's first published work came out in 1955. He took part in many archaeological digs in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. For five seasons, he even led these expeditions himself. He helped dig up old towns from early Rus' times and ancient burial mounds from the Bronze Age and Scytho-Sarmatian periods.
Challenges and Later Life
As a teacher, Leo Klejn often disagreed with the official academic views supported by the government. In the 1960s, he held seminars where he discussed different ideas about the origins of the Kievan Rus', which went against the official view. In the 1970s, he started working on new ideas about history and archaeology. This was a topic that had been ignored for a long time. His ideas often went against the official Marxist theory of history. Also, he often published his work in foreign journals, which caused concern.
In the early 1970s, Leo's brother, Boris, lost his job and academic titles for speaking against the Soviet army's actions in Czechoslovakia. Leo's friendship with a writer who was also in trouble added to his difficulties.
In 1981, Leo Klejn himself faced legal trouble. He was arrested. However, many scholars believed this was a way to silence him because of his challenging ideas. They supported him. After some time, his sentence was changed, and he was released. Like his brother, he lost his academic degree and title. He wrote about his experiences in prison in a journal and a book.
After his release, Leo Klejn did not have an academic job for ten years. But after a period of political change in Russia (called perestroika), he started publishing again. In 1994, he earned a new advanced degree. He helped start the European University at St. Petersburg and taught there until he retired in 1997 at age 70.
Even after retiring, he was a visiting scholar at many universities around the world. In 2001, he stopped teaching due to health reasons, but he kept researching and writing. In his later years, he wrote a column for a newspaper.
Leo Klejn passed away on November 7, 2019, in Saint Petersburg at the age of 92.
His Work in Archaeology
Leo Klejn was one of the world's leading experts on archaeological theory, a term he helped create. He believed that archaeological theories are like plans for understanding information, based on a specific idea. These theories then become methods by setting out standard ways to do things.
Klejn's ideas about a special theory for archaeology went against the Soviet view. The official view was that only Marxist historical theory was the right way to understand the past. He also disagreed with the traditional Soviet idea that history included all other studies of the past.
According to Klejn, archaeology is not just a small part of history, or "history with a shovel." Instead, he saw it as a field that studies sources, much like forensic science. Archaeology takes archaeological finds and turns them into historical information. This information is then given to historians to use in their broader historical studies. Klejn believed that archaeology answers questions like "what," "when," "where," "from where," and "how." The historian, on the other hand, asks "why."
Klejn strongly believed in using strict methods for interpreting archaeological finds. This was important to prevent ancient objects from being used for political reasons. His "echeloned archaeology" described three ways of doing research:
- Empirical: Focusing on observations and facts.
- Deductive: Using logic to draw conclusions.
- Problem-setting: Identifying and solving specific research questions.
Each of these had clear steps for investigation, depending on the research goals. His work on classifying and grouping objects in archaeology aimed to create ways of classifying things that were both useful and accurate. This "systemic" approach was very important in Russian archaeology. It showed that you need some basic knowledge about all the materials you want to classify to create a good system. This meant sometimes working "backwards" from whole cultures to their specific features.
See also
In Spanish: Leo Klejn para niños
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