Vladimir Borisovich Lutskii

Born June 15 (28), 1906, in Berdiansk; died Dec. 17, 1962, in Moscow. Soviet Arabist historian; candidate of historical sciences (1939).

After graduating from the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies in 1930, Lutskii taught both there and at Moscow State University. He then was senior research associate at the International Agrarian Institute (1932-36), the Institute of History (1932-8), the Institute of Ethnography (1956-60), and the Institute of the Peoples of Africa (appointed 1960), all under the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He wrote on the national liberation movement of the Arab peoples and produced a fundamental work on the modern history of the Arab countries (translated into English in 1966 and into Arabic in 1971). He edited many works on the history and economics of the Arab countries and the ethnography of the Arabs. He created a school of Soviet historians in the field of the modern and contemporary history of the Arab countries.