Fedor Fedorovich Aristov as a Researcher of Rusins

The article tells about the scientific work of Fedor Fedorovich Aristov (1888-1932), a most prominent specialist in history, culture and literature of the Rusins in the 20th century. The authors describe his formation and life in pre-revolutionary Russia. In the 1900s, F.F. Aristov, a student of history and philology at Moscow University, became interested in the culture of Slavic peoples. The interest to the fate of the Slavic peoples who lived in the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires was typical of the Russian society at the turn of 1900-1910 during the Balkan wars and on the eve of the First World War. Analysing the public and publishing activities of F.F. Aristov, the authors focus on Soviet period, which, for objective reasons, was not the most favourable for his studies. A unique source on the history of life and work of F.F. Aristov in the second half of the 1920s - early 1930s is his correspondence with representatives of A.V. Dukhnovych Russian Cultural and Educational Society (Uzhhorod, Czechoslovak Republic), fragments from which were published in V.M. Razgulov's “Aristov and Carpathian Rus”. It outlines the concept of Professor F.F. Aristov's scientific world shortly before his death, conditions he worked in, what new scientific ideas he had and what he managed to fulfill. Having lost a large part of his archive during the Revolution and Civil War, F.F. Aristov had to work in a non-specialised research institution and was banned to travelling abroad. However, he could communicate with the like-minded people, which became his escape and an impetus for his research. Having achieved scientific success at a young age, F.F. Aristiv lost his works and archives during the Civil War, but managed to return to scientific work in the difficult 1920s to leave a significant scientific heritage that has not lost its value so far.

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