Moscow: Sputnik+ Publishing House, 2011, 344 p.

After graduating from the Mongolian department of the Institute of Oriental Studies in 1950, Klara Nikolaevna Yatskovskaya worked for 10 years in the Mongolian Editorial Office of the USSR Radio and Television Broadcasting Committee. Working as an editor and translator for the Moscow Radio (now Radio of Russia) in the editorial office of broadcasting to Mongolia gave the author the opportunity to master Mongolian written and spoken language perfectly and first visit Mongolia in 1958, in Ulaanbaatar to see the colorful national holiday Nal, and in 1959 to make a trip to Mongolia.

a fascinating trip to the Khuvsugul aimag in the north-west of the country, to see the pearl of Mongolian nature - the purest blue waters of Lake Khuvsugul. These trips opened up Mongolia and the Mongols to K. N. Yatskovskaya and gave rise to her love for this wonderful country and people.

In 1960, on the advice of Yuri Roerich, with whom she studied the Tibetan language, Klara entered the graduate school of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and upon graduation was enrolled as a researcher in the Literature sector of the Far East of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His PhD thesis on the topic " Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj. Life and creativity" she brilliantly defended in 1972 (published in 1974).

It was within the walls of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, working under the guidance and in close cooperation with such famous scientists as Japonists Lev Zalmanovich Eidlin, Anna Gluskina, Mongolists - Georgy Ivanovich Mikhailov, Nina Pavlovna Shastina and others, that Klara Nikolaevna Yatskovskaya was formed as a major scientist, a Mongolian philologist, an expert on Mongolian literature, folk art, especially Author of many scientific works, including the monograph "Literature of Folk Mongolia "(together with G. I. Mikhailov, 1969), " 100 Songs of Darkhat Davaajin "(1978), " Folk Songs of the Mongols "(1988), and the monograph " Poets of Mongolia of the XX century "(2002). etc.

In my opinion, the book under review sums up a certain result of K. N. Yatskovskaya's creative activity, because here, in separate layers and parts, everything that she did is presented, what her scientific life consisted of, with whom she communicated at work and in life. And each part - and there are only five of them - is informative and interesting in its own way.

Thus, the first part, the memorial introduction, briefly tells the story of the author's studies at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, his work on the radio, and his entry into the world of science. Here she pays a deep tribute of gratitude to her teachers Yu. N. Roerich, G. D. Sanzheev, G. M. Murzaev, and tells a fascinating story about her first travels in the expanses of Mongolia, her first acquaintances with the poets D. Senge, B. Yavuukhalan, M. Tsedendorzh, the writer L. Tudev and academician B. Rinchen.

This is followed by part two - mostly a diary that the author kept daily during her participation in the expedition of the Institute of Language and Literature to collect linguistic material for the dialectical atlas of Mongolia. The expedition took place from September 6 to October 21, 1966, and its route ran through the territory of 20 somons of the Khentey, Sukhebator and Eastern aimags for 5,200 km. According to the author, the participants of the expedition studied the peculiarities of everyday life, industrial terminology related to local crafts, names of specific objects of material culture, etc. The composition of the indigenous population was clarified, and the most popular tales, folk songs, praises, and well-wishes were recorded in each of the surveyed somons. Maps of the settlement and migration of individual ethnic groups and the distribution of the dialects they spoke have been compiled.

Klara Nikolaevna was interested in the evolution of Mongolian folklore in modern conditions, finding out the most common genres of it. "With the help of my Mongolian colleagues," she notes, "I think I managed to make valuable recordings of yerools, magtals, and folk ritual songs" (p.78).

Diary entries are generally of the same type: road, road impressions, mainly from the beauty of Mongolian nature, arrival in somon or aimach center, accommodation in a hotel (house or guest yurt), meetings and conversations with local administration, sightseeing, visiting local history museums, and in the aimach centers of Undurkhan, Baruun Urte - libraries, repositories of books and manuscripts, working with them, etc. Well, and most importantly-being, sometimes far from the center of Somon, communicating, working with informants-carriers and keepers of oral folk art, wonderful people with excellent historical memory. The author vividly describes a number of these folk storytellers, in some places reproduces the text of their well-wishes (yerools and magtals) and songs (p.48.74), and gives a translation.

And in this I see a great advantage of her field recordings. Another, no less, if not greater advantage of the diary is its richness in ethnography: sketches of the features of everyday life and labor of rural workers, descriptions of wedding ceremonies, clothing and jewelry of women of the Mongolian dariganga people, everyday items, products of Mongolian craftsmen-darkhans, etc.

It is quite logical that immediately after the diary, K. N. Yatskovskaya pays a tribute of gratitude, an "offering" to Academician B. Rinchen, to whom she owes her participation in the expedition, dedicating a short essay to him in her book (pp. 81-85).

This is followed by rather scattered notes about a tourist flight to the Gobi and-immediately - about the history of the publication of the Bibliophile's Almanac No. 24, Books of Mongolia, in the publication of which in 1988 her letter (the text of which is given in full) to the then head of the Culture Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Tov, played a decisive role. Voronova Yu. P.

A brave woman, Klara Nikolaevna! And lucky!

She was lucky enough to communicate not only with B. Rinchen, but also with another luminary of Mongolian literature and science, Ts Damdinsuren, whose memoirs she titled "Rosary with corals" - according to a gift received from a scientist and sacredly kept in her house (pp. 92-98) (they were first published in the collection "Tsendiin Damdinsuren. To the 100th anniversary of his birth". Moscow, 2008, pp. 533-538).

The second part is completed by K. N. Yatskovskaya's memoirs about the remarkable Mongolian poets M. Tsedendorge and O. Dashbalbar (p. 98-104) and about her colleague, a major scientist who for many years headed Mongolian studies at YVES AN Sanj Danzigovich Dylykov, and most of the latter is a description of their joint participation along with other employees of the Institute in an international conference in Khukh-Khoto-the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China and on a trip from there to the tomb of Genghis Khan in Ordos-Ejen Horo in 1987 (pp. 104-109).

For all the personal nature of these memories, they enrich the idea of the corresponding characters.

In the third part, the author collected, in some places in an updated form, her previously published research works based on field materials about the Mongolian yerool (p. 119-191), traditional singers (p. 132-134), about the famous singer, darkhat Gendengiin Davaajiye and his 100 songs (p. 135-151), about folk songs of Mongolian reindeer herders- Tsaatanov (p. 152-164), songs of Udzumchins (p.165-169), Derbets and other peoples of Northwestern Mongolia (p. 170-193).

This part, as well as the fourth one following it, which contains 9 articles by the author of different years, scattered in different publications and which have already become in many respects a bibliographic rarity, in particular, the most interesting, in my opinion, articles "The Hidden Legend of the Mongols and The Word about Igor's Regiment" (pp. 219-228). and "Pushkin in Mongolia" (pp. 260-280).

In general, these two parts allow readers to imagine firsthand what a great contribution K. N. Yatskovskaya made to the study of Mongolian folk poetry, and how much she did in the field of Mongolian philology.

The "Personally" section concludes with bibliographic essays by the author about Yuri Roerich, Nina Pavlovna Shastina, Anna Gluskina, Lev Zalmanovich Eidlin, Eduard Makarovich Murzaev. In these essays, the author managed to present quite vividly the images of major scientists and amazing personalities with whom fate brought her together, who left unforgettable impressions about themselves.

And from the pages of the entire book, readers can see the image of the author himself - an inquisitive researcher, a great scholar and a brilliant translator, a man passionately, selflessly in love with Mongolia, its people and people in general. Love literally permeates the pages of this book and binds all its parts together.

I have only two technical comments: I think it would be better to indicate where the works included in the collection were first published, and to translate the songs of the tsaatans (pp. 156-164), as is done with all other examples of folk poetry. In general, I would like to congratulate Klara Nikolaevna Yatskovskaya on a good and very useful book.

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