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[AFGHANISTAN] Afganskiye skazki i legendy [i.e. Afghan Tales and Legends: Tranlated. from Pashto] / Complied, preface and notes by K.A. Lebedev; Typological analysis of plots and motifs of the tales by A.A. Yaskelyain.

Item #2571

Moscow : Nauka, 1972. 280 p. : il. 20,2x13,5 cm.

First edition. The edition came out in the series ‘Tales and Myths of the Nations of the East’, supervised by the Moscow
Institute of Oriental Studies.

Soviet anthology of Aghan tales, it was prepared
from original Pashto editions: the complier gives
the list of 6 books used at the end of the preface,
from 1893 to 1959. The first anthology of afghan
folklore was printed in Russian in Leningrad by
Goslitizdat in 1955, but was two times smaller in
size. That edition, interestingly, was translated to
two republican languages - Chuvash and Kyrgyz,
they came out in 1958.
This one is considered to be the fullest collection of
Afghan folklore, prepared in Soviet Union.
Konstantin Lebedev (1920-2006) was a Soviet
and Russian linguist, specialist in Afghanistan.
Konstantin Aleksandrovich Lebedev graduated
from the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies
(MIO) in 1942 and began teaching Pashto there
in 1943. Then, from 1943 to 1949, Lebedev was
a teacher of the Afghan language (Pashto) and
literature, and from 1949 to 1954, he was the head
of the Pashto language and literature department at
the MIO. After the MIO was merged with MGIMO
in 1954, he continued teaching at the new institute
until 1985, working at the Department of Arabic,
Persian and Afghan Languages (this department
was transformed into the Department of Languages
of the Near and Middle East in 1962). In 1981-1996,
Konstantin Aleksandrovich worked as the head of
the Iranian Philology Department at the Institute
of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State
University named after M. V. Lomonosov, and as
a professor at the same department in 1996-2012.

He is known for his contribution to Russian Afghan
studies (he was an expert in the Pashto language).
He is the author of 110 scientific papers. He is the
author or co-author of many Russian-Pashto and
Pashto-Russian dictionaries and Pashto textbooks.
He was considered the head of the Moscow school
of teaching Pashto. He translated a number of
Afghan folk tales.

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