V. BELYAKOV, Candidate of Historical Sciences

In Soviet times, the current Russian centers of science and culture abroad were simply called"cultural". The meaning of the name change is to expand the scope of the centers ' activities, and to promote not only Russian culture, but also science abroad. This includes humanitarian work, including, of course, research by Russian scientists on the host country. To perform this task, we need qualified specialists in regional studies. Egypt was lucky in this respect. At the beginning of this century, the Russian Center for Science and Culture (RCSC) in Alexandria was headed by Gennady Vasilyevich Goryachkin for four and a half years.

In his younger years, Goryachkin, a graduate of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University, served as a military translator of Arabic in Egypt. Then he devoted both his PhD and doctoral dissertations, books and articles to this country.

As head of the RCSC in Alexandria, G. V. Goryachkin not only organized, as is usually done, evenings dedicated to outstanding figures of Russian science and culture. He also gave lectures on the history of Russian-Egyptian relations, and he had a lot to tell the audience. Gennady Vasilyevich was one of the first to start a systematic study of pre-revolutionary archives devoted to Russian-Egyptian relations. In 1992, he published a collection of documents from the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire.¹ However, this extremely valuable source study turned out to be practically inaccessible to Egyptian researchers due to their ignorance of the Russian language. Therefore, while working in Alexandria, Goryachkin published this collection, significantly expanding it with new documents, in Arabic.² A separate booklet includes documents on the mission to Egypt and Sudan of the Russian mining engineer E. P. Kovalevsky. He was sent there in 1847 at the request of the ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, to teach the Egyptians advanced gold washing techniques.³

On the basis of his speeches at the RCSC, G. V. Goryachkin prepared articles, some of which were published in the local press. As a result, they compiled ^two rather voluminous compilations4. The subject matter of articles is diverse. Some of them are dedicated to the great figures of science and culture - Fyodor Dostoevsky and Yuri Gagarin, Maxim Gorky and Sergey Obraztsov, Sergey Yesenin and Georgy Sviridov. Many Russian cultural figures of the late XIX - early XX centuries visited Egypt, which, by the way, not all Egyptian historians know about. Goryachkin's articles tell about the poet and philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, the artist Ivan Bilibin, the sculptor Boris Fredman-Klusel, the singer Fyodor Chaliapin, the ballerina Anna Pavlova and their acquaintance with the Land of Pyramids. Several articles are devoted to the Russian diaspora in Egypt, including our compatriots who lived in Alexandria. In the second collection, the author included his memoirs of his stay in Egypt in 1969-1971 as a military translator.

Roszarubezhcenter is a member of the MFA system. The Director of the RCSC in Alexandria has the status of a vice-consul and works closely with the Consul General of Russia. Some events are held jointly at the center. Perhaps the most striking of these events in recent years was the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Egypt in August 2003. For this event, N. M. Kholov, Consul General of Russia in Alexandria, and G. V. Goryachkin, Director of the RCSC, prepared and published a small collection in Arabic ⁵. It includes materials on Soviet-Egyptian and Russian-Egyptian relations, as well as on the activities of the RCSC in Alexandria.

The last book that Goryachkin published over the years of his work in Egypt is a purely scientific research6. It is based on his doctoral dissertation on the birth of the labor movement in Egypt. This study has no analogues not only in Russian, but also in Egyptian historiography, as noted in the preface to the book by such authoritative scientists as Professor Rifaat al-Said and Dr. Rauf Abbas.

Six books in Arabic, published in Egypt by G. V. Goryachkin during his work as director of the Russian Center for Oriental Studies in Alexandria, are a serious contribution to the promotion of Russian Oriental studies and to the development of Russian - Egyptian relations.

¹ Egypt through the eyes of Russians in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Politics. Economy. Culture (compilation, preface, comments, notes and translation by G. V. Goryachkin). Moscow, 1992.

^{Goryachkin G.} 2 Rusia wa mysr fi duu al-arshifat ar-rusia (awasit al-qarn 19-bidayat al-qarn 20) (Russia and Egypt in Russian archives. Late 19th - early 20th centuries). Cairo, 2002.

^{Goryachkin G.} 3 Bahsan an al-zahab. Min tarikh al-alaqat al-sikafiyya beina rusia wa mysr fi awasit al-qarn at-tasia ashar (In search of gold. From the history of cultural relations between Russia and Egypt at the end of the XIX century). Alexandria, 2003.

^{Goryachkin G.} 4 Safahat an al-khevar al-sikafi ar-rusi al-mysri (Pages of the Russian-Egyptian cultural dialogue). Alexandria. Issue 1, 2003; Issue 2, 2004.

^{Kholov Nur Mukhammed, Goryachkin G.} 5 Rusia ua mysr. Sadaqa mumtadda (Russia and Egypt. The friendship continues). Alexandria, 2003.

^{Goryachkin G.} 6 Bur Said-mahd al-haraka al-ummaliya al-mysriya (Port Said-the cradle of the Egyptian labor movement). Alexandria, 2005.