Standing on the giants' shoulders: foreign philology at perm university

The article considers the role of specialists in foreign literature and foreign languages in history of Perm State University. It studies activity of some scholars (A. A. Smirnov, B. A. Krzhevskiy, B. L. Bogayevskiy, N. P. Obnorskiy, A. F. Shamray) working in the field from the moment of the university's foundation (1916) to the establishment of the Faculty of Philology with the lead of A. Belskiy. It is emphasized that the university philologists continued the long-standing tradition according to which in philological disciplines study of a foreign language takes place in conjunction with literature written in this language, and vice versa. Special attention is paid to the important role which N. P. Obnorskiy, the founder of the Department of Foreign Languages, played in history of the university: it is stated that due to his activity, tradition of the humanities was not completely abandoned in the 1930s, even despite the total absence of the corresponding faculties.