Tag #147019 - Interview #92478 (Rebecca Levina)

I graduated from Leningrad State University in 1947. Then they already shouted: ‘Don’t admit Jews to the post graduate studies courses!’ They let me apply accidentally; I was the last Jew, whom they admitted. There was this Maria Alexandrovna Sokolova, a professor, she noticed me in Saratov. She worked with us and gave the dictation, and, in my opinion, I was the only one, who didn’t make any grammar or punctuation mistake. Later, when we went to Leningrad, she treated me right and trained me to specialize in the field of Russian language, not literature. I went to the linguist seminars since the third year, and my diploma was on the base of linguistics. Sokolova recommended me for the post graduated studies, and she did it with great energy. We were six post graduate students, and I was the first one to write the dissertation. That was in 1950, and my topic was ‘Difficult adjectives in the contemporary Russian literature.’ Of course, I had to include the linguistic views of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin and of academician Marr [representative of pro-Stalin philological school]. This dissertation is still somewhere here, in our apartment.