Leo Klejn
| Leo Klejn | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
1 July 1927 Vitebsk, Belarus |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Fields |
Archaeology Anthropology Philology |
| Institutions |
Leningrad State University European University at Saint Petersburg |
| Alma mater | Leningrad State University |
Lev Samuilovich Klejn (born 1927), better known as Leo Klejn, is a Russian archaeologist, anthropologist and philologist.
Klejn was born on 1 July 1927 in Vitebsk, Belarus, to two Jewish physicians, Polish-born Stanislav Semenovich (originally Samuil Simkhovich) and Asya Moysseevna. Both of Klejn's grandparents were wealthy: one a factory owner, the other a highly ranked merchant. Stanislav Semenovich served as a medical officer in the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army during the Russian Civil War. By the end of the war he had joined the Red Army, but was never a member of the Communist Party.
In 1941 both of Klejn's parents were drafted to serve in the Great Patriotic War, while the rest of the family were evacuated, first to Volokolamsk and then Egoryevsk near Moscow, and then to Yoshkar-Ola in the Mari ASSR. There Klejn worked on a collective farm before leaving school at the age of 16 and being attached to the 3rd Belorussian Front as a civilian. After the war the family settled in Grodno and Klejn studied for a year at a Railway Technical School.
While still in high school Klejn created an underground liberal organisation called 'Prometheus'. This drew the attention of the KGB, but owing to the age of those involved there were no serious consequences.
Upon graduating high school Klejn entered the Grodno Pedagogical Institute in the Faculty of Language and History. In 1947, after a year there, he spoke against the First Secretary of Grodno's Party Committee at a conference and was forced to leave. He transferred to Leningrad State University, first as a corresponding student, and then full-time. At Leningrad he studied both archaeology under Mikhail Artamonov and Russian philology under Vladimir Propp. While there he continued to act contrary to Party dogma by reading a paper criticising the work of Nicholas Marr. Klejn escaped expulsion for this, however, as shortly thereafter Marr's theories were denounced by Stalin himself. Graduating with honours from the Faculty of History in 1951, Klejn worked as a librarian and high school teacher for six years before returning to Leningrad for postgraduate studies in archaeology. He began working in the Department of Archaeology in 1960 and became an Assistant Professor there in 1962. This was unusual as Klejn was a Jew and not a member of the Party, but he was appointed to the position by a special session of the faculty's Party Bureau on the strength of his academic qualifications. He was awarded a Candidate of Sciences degree (equivalent to a PhD) in 1968, defending a thesis on the origins of the Donets Catacomb culture. In 1976 he was made Docent (Associate Professor).
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