Yuri Alexandrovich Zadneprovskiy
Professor Yuri Alexandrovich Zadneprovsky.
Born in 1924 in Gatchina, Leningrad region.
Participant of the Great Patriotic War. Having volunteered for the front, Yu.A. Zadneprovsky defended Leningrad and then, fighting in the ranks of the advancing Soviet Army, reached Königsberg, where he was severely wounded.
Demobilized due to disability, he enrolled in the first year of Leningrad State University.
Here, the young student fell under the charm of the talented researcher A.N. Bernshtein and became his reliable pupil. He graduated from the university in 1950.
He then followed the traditional path of a Soviet specialist — postgraduate studies at the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of Material Culture of the USSR Academy of Sciences, defending his candidate dissertation "Ancient Fergana" in 1954, and his doctoral dissertation titled "Chust Culture of Fergana and Monuments of the Early Iron Age of Central Asia" in 1974.
He was awarded orders and medals of the USSR. He published more than 170 works, including 100 on the archaeology and ancient history of Kyrgyzstan. Yu.A. Zadneprovsky conducted 30 archaeological expeditions in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
He discovered and studied the main monuments of the ancient agricultural Chust culture of the late Bronze Age, conducted excavations at the Osh settlement. He published monographs: "Archaeological Monuments of the Southern Regions of Osh Oblast," "Ancient Agricultural Culture of Fergana," and others.
In 1974, the Fergana archaeological expedition led by Yu.A. Zadneprovsky uncovered more than 30 cultural monuments of the ancient population in the Osh region, particularly in the city of Osh. He stated that Osh is older than Samarkand itself. In 1979, Yu.A. Zadneprovsky discovered rooms of a fortress from the time of Alexander the Great.
The Leningrad Archaeological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, under the guidance of Professor Yu.A. Zadneprovsky, conclusively proved through archaeological research conducted in the Fergana Valley, particularly in the city of Osh, that the city of Osh is 3000 years old.
Having dedicated 50 years of his life to the study of archaeology in Central Asia, Yuri Alexandrovich Zadneprovsky passed away on August 23, 1999, at the age of 76 after a severe exhausting illness.
A bust has been erected in Osh, and a street has been named in his honor.
Scientists of Kyrgyzstan
