On the 130th Anniversary of M. E. Sergeenko: Doctoral Defense in Besieged Leningrad

During the years of World War II, some scholars defended their doctoral and candidate theses in classical philology and ancient studies, including M. E. Grabar-Passek, F. A. Petrovsky, V. S. Sokolov, S. Ya. Lurie, N. A. Mashkin, A. V. Mishulin, and K. E. Grinevich. Nevertheless, the doctoral defenses of I. M. Tronsky and M. E. Sergeenko in the besieged Leningrad are extraordinary events. Unlike Tronsky, about whose defense little is known, some pieces of information about the doctoral defense of M. E. Sergeenko have been preserved thanks to recently revealed documents in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg Branch. A relatively large piece of M. E. Sergeenko’s doctoral dissertation preserved in the archive and abstract to it provide an idea of the content, scope and structure of her work. It has been determined that the chapter “Fruit Farming in Ancient Italy,” the only one preserved in the typescript of the dissertation, is identical to the essay “Gardening” in Sergeenko’s book Essays on Agriculture in Ancient Italy (1958). The analysis of the thesis’ abstract and the reviews of the opponents allows us to conclude that other chapters, not preserved, of the dissertation were also included in this book. Based on the data collected in the archival “dissertation” file of Sergeenko it is possible to reconstruct the procedure of the doctoral debate, clarify some facts of her biography and determine the date of her defense (June 10, 1942). The opponents of the thesis were I. I. Tolstoy, S. I. Kovalev and A. P. Ilyinsky; the reviews of the first two opponents are published in this article. In 1943, the Higher Attestation Commission of the All-Union Committee for Higher School Affairs awarded M. E. Sergeenko the degree of Doctor in Philology.