Linguistic personality of Academician V. M. Alpatov: celebrating his 80th anniversary

The article analyzes the linguistic personality of Academician V. M. Alpatov (born in 1945), a prominent Russian orientalist and linguist. The author uses reliable facts to reconstruct the atmosphere in which the scholar’s views were formed. The article focuses on the specifi c features of his scientifi c methodology, main professional interests, the unique characteristics of his scientifi c style, and the encyclopedic nature of his knowledge, which distinguishes him from the researchers of the XXI century. Alpatov paid particular attention to the complex problems of historiography of linguistics, particularly to the personalities of linguists and orientalists. It is pointed out that he was one of the fi rst researchers to study Marrism and the “Slavists Case” in the context of the tragic events of Soviet science in the 1930s. The article examines Alpatov’s autobiographical book The Life of a Linguist (2023) in terms of genre and stylistics as a specifi c scientifi c text, with a particular focus on factual reliability, attention to dates and events, keen interest in the achievements in linguistics, and polemic nature of individual storylines. The author of the article also refers to his personal reminiscences of his interaction with V. M. Alpatov. Based on this, a conclusion is made about the specifi cs of Alpatov’s scientifi c school and its reception in the philological imagination of the time.