Viktor Mikhailovich Gilensen passed away on November 8, 2001. With his death, we lost a gifted researcher, an experienced teacher, a well-educated interlocutor, a person who infected with his energy, alien to indifference, ready to share the troubles and joys of colleagues and friends with heartfelt participation. Another thread of the memory of the Patriotic War, which V. M. Gilensen passed through the bloody battles at the Kursk Bulge and Koningsberg, ended the war with a heavy feat of a front-line intelligence officer, was cut off. We have lost a deep analyst-political scientist, who managed to understand the secret meaning of Stalin's policy much earlier than many others and at the same time remain loyal to the Motherland, national science and high spiritual values.

Viktor Mikhailovich was born in Moscow on July 5, 1924. In 1941, he graduated from high school. Without inheriting the profession of his parents (his father was a chemist, and his mother was a doctor), he entered the tank building faculty of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University and in July 1942, at the age of 18, he volunteered for the army (he served in the border troops, participated in combat operations). From 1946 to 1952, he served in the central office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which later determined the nature of his research interests. After the war, Viktor Mikhailovich did not continue his military - technical education, and in 1952 he graduated in absentia from the History Department of Moscow State University. He was discharged and taught until 1967, combining school work with scientific research.

Since 1961. Viktor Mikhailovich began to actively publish in the Military History Journal and in Voprosy Istorii. His attention is still focused on the war, but not on the fighting, but on the secret political plans of Nazi Germany and the activities of Western intelligence agencies; he was painfully lacking in archival sources. Over the years, his field of interest expanded and in early 1967 he defended his PhD thesis on the restoration of German military power during the Weimar years. Since the summer of the same year, he was enlisted in the officer cadre of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and until 1984, he remained a leading researcher at the Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. His research interests shift to

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He taught courses in the history of state and law at the N. K. Krupskaya Moscow Regional Pedagogical Institute from 1981 until his death. However, the narrow scope of his research is the problems of crime (including organized crime in Southeast Asia), the organization of the police system in the United States, European countries, and Japan. His fluency in Western languages and knowledge of Slavic languages allowed him to carry out this work in such a broad framework. The state of crime and the organization of the police service in Western countries was the subject of his doctoral dissertation.

The bright rise of Viktor Mikhailovich's creative activity came in the 1990s, when access to information sources was opened and the heavy yoke of censorship disappeared. Viktor Mikhailovich was literally absorbed in working with previously inaccessible archival materials, which allowed him to objectively assess the meaning of the complex turns of the domestic policy of the 1920s, primarily in the East. Perhaps he owes his appeal to the history of Russian politics in the East to his co-author, his constant secretary and editor, an Iranist by training, and his devoted life partner, L. P. Milogradova. Viktor Mikhailovich came to study eastern political subjects with a broad knowledge and experience of studying the secret springs of world politics in the era of complex historical faults. His work was accompanied by unexpected discoveries, almost sensational properties. A sudden death interrupted this work, meanwhile, in the magazine " Vostok "(Oriens) his next article is published.

One of the few researchers who, thanks to his broad outlook, deep knowledge and education, managed to combine in his works the analysis of problems of history, state studies, law and politics of the Fatherland, Western and Eastern countries, has passed away.

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