Zara Mints

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Zara Mints (Russian: Зары Григорьевны Минц)(July, 24 1927, Pskov - October 25, 1990, Bergamo, Italy) was a Russian-Estonian literary scientist (Slavic philologist), wife of Yuri Lotman.

Zara Mints was born in Pskov, but the family soon moved to Leningrad. Her mother Frida Abramovna Sinderihhina (1889?-1939) was a stomatologist, father Girž Jefremovitš Mints was an administrator of Volgograd Sanitary Inspection facility.

She went to high school 1935-1941 in Leningrad, was evacuated to Yaroslavl Oblast and later to Chelyabinsk during the World War II. She entered Leningrad University in 1944.

Already during her student years, she began to specialize in Aleksandr Blok's works. Although she graduated cum laude, she couldn't start the postgraduate studies due to the anti-semitic campaign of the late 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s. Initially working as a Russian teacher, she went to Tartu with her husband Yuri Lotman (they had married 1951), where she could start her career as a university lecturer. Since 1955, she worked at Tartu University (department of Russian literature, from 1979 professor).

On November 21, 1972 she defended her Doctor's thesis (Aleksandr Blok i russkaja realisticheskaja literatura XIX veka - Aleksandr Blok and Russian Realist Literature of the 19th Century), but the All-Union Higher Assessment Commission didn't give her the degree until five years later. Mints' courses chiefly covered the Russian literature of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Blok, e.g connections between Blok's works and the general cultorological questions).

Mints took actively part in collecting Blok's literary heritage and publishing the Aleksandr Blok: Novye materialy i issledovanija - A.B.: New Materials and studies, 5 Volumes, Moscow 1980-1987.

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[edit] About Zara Mints

  • Лавров А. В. Александр Блок в трудах и днях З. Г. Минц // Минц З. Г. Блок и русский символизм: избранные труды: в трех книгах. [Т. 2], Александр Блок и русские писатели. Санкт-Петербург, 2000. С. 7-20.

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