(ABOUT L. N. GUMILYOV'S BOOK "THE SEARCH FOR A FICTIONAL KINGDOM", MOSCOW, 1970, 432 p. The print run is 9,500. Price 1 rub. 64 kopecks.) Another book by Doctor of Historical Sciences L. N. Gumilyov on the history of the Great Steppe was published; this time the author did not focus on the early history of the Turkic tribes, but gave a broad picture of the entire steppe world on the eve and at the time of the formation of the Chingizid Empire. As a literary device to unite the West and the East, L. N. Gumilev used a medieval legend about the kingdom of Prester John, which was supposedly located somewhere in Asia. Judging by the free access to a large number of diverse sources, the book is obviously the result of research, although the process of analysis is not always shown and the author often hides behind his paradoxes. Thus, speaking about the impossibility of reconciling conflicting sources, he writes: "And then I thought: I will take the obviously correct judgment that Genghis Khan was and his empire existed, and the obviously dubious one that Presbyter John reigned in the "Three Indies", and compare them at random. Suddenly, this combination will turn out to be an organic concept by itself, since I will already have positive and negative values. So I did" (p. 10). The author treats his predecessors very haughtily, considering that he is not obliged to give either a description of the sources or a review of the scientific literature of the issue, because "you can't make one horse out of thousands of mice" (p.381). Here "mice" are the works of researchers of previous years, and "horse" is a book by L. N. Gumilyov himself. Elsewhere, the author defines the place of scientific research in a very peculiar way: "The moment of insight does not precede the study of the problem and does not crown it, but lies somewhere in the middle, a little closer to the beginning... And the search in the proper sense of the word begins later, because it is worth searching only when ... Читать далее