Vasily Vladimirovich BARTOLD

The luminary of European Oriental studies was the Russian scholar Vasily Vladimirovich BARTOLD (November 3, 1869 — August 19, 1930). He graduated from the Faculty of Eastern Languages at St. Petersburg University (1891). His dissertation "Turkestan in the Era of the Mongol Invasion," prepared for obtaining a master's degree, was recognized as a doctoral thesis (1900). He personally visited various regions of Central Asia, including Kyrgyzstan.

Among the fundamental works of V.V. Bartold, we should mention the famous comprehensive work "Kyrgyz: A Historical Outline," prepared at the request of the government of the Kyrgyz Autonomous Republic of Russia, which became the foundation for further comprehensive and source-based studies on the history of the Kyrgyz and Kyrgyzstan. It was in this work that Academician V.V. Bartold introduced the term "Kyrgyz Great Power" into science for the political history of the Kyrgyz Khaganate in the mid-9th to early 10th centuries AD.

Academician V.V. Bartold, like V.V. Radlov, prepared a solid foundation for the subsequent Russian (and Soviet Kyrgyz) school of Oriental studies and Turkology.

The "invasion" of European scholars into the depths and expanses of Kyrgyzstan and the adjacent regions did not confine itself to the humanitarian branches of science.