Dear friends!
For the first time, a bilingual multimedia encyclopedic dictionary of cultural heritage entitled “Chelyabinsk in the life and works of famous people” is offered to the general public on a specially designed website for intellectual tourists.
The idea of creating dictionaries of cultural heritage belongs to Doctor of Philology, Professor Olga Mikhailovna Karpova, head of the Modern Russian and European Lexicography Scientific and Educational Center at Ivanovo State University, Russia [http://www.ivanovo.ac.ru].
An invaluable contribution to the development of this issue was made by the scientific and educational project “Dictionaries Without Borders. Florence in the Works of Outstanding People. The Project of a Dictionary for Guides and Tourists”, conducted under the auspices of the Romualdo del Bianco Foundation (Italy) [http://www.fondazione-delbianco.org] and the scientific lexicographic school of OM Karpova.
The famous Italian foundation Romualdo del Bianco promotes cultural tourism and cultural values in Florence, and supports national and international projects related to the study and development of tourism.
The Foundation also supported the international dictionary project entitled “Florence in the Works of World Famous People”, proposed by Ivanovo State University in 2008.
The goal of the project was to create a dictionary of outstanding people who lived and worked in Florence.
The Dictionary of Florence is a print dictionary; 8 issues from 2008 to the present have seen the light of day and present more than 200 personalities [Karpova 2019, Grigorieva 2021].
Students from Russia, Hungary, Serbia, and Croatia helped create the dictionary. The inspiration and soul of the project came from Olga Mikhailovna Karpova.
The term “dictionary of cultural heritage” was used by O.M. Karpova in 2014 when describing the dictionary dedicated to Florence, “Florence in the Works of World Famous People” [Karpova 2014], which contains encyclopedic information about outstanding creators: writers, artists, musicians, sculptors, etc. who at one time or another lived and worked in Florence, came to study art, or created their masterpieces there, thereby contributing to the development of the cultural life of the city and the whole world.
We believe that this encyclopedic dictionary is the product of a new direction in modern discourse lexicography, marking the transition from individual words, quotes, and proverbs as culturally determined units of discourse to the actual discourse of cultural heritage as a unit of intercultural and intracultural communication.
The “Florence in the Works of World Famous People” dictionary by О.М. Karpova is the first associative encyclopedic multimedia dictionary of cultural heritage.
The development of such dictionaries, in our opinion, shows great promise for the preservation of cultural heritage, its popularization, and the development of intercultural dialogue, the education and upbringing of a new generation, and the development of the theoretical foundations of the encyclopedic discourse of intellectual tourism. A number of dictionaries of cultural heritage have been developed based on Karpova’s work, including such lexicographic reference books as “International Relations of Chelyabinsk and the Chelyabinsk Region” [Khomutova, Yakovlev 2015], “Barcelona in the Life and Works of Famous People” [Khomutova, Kashkhchyan 2013], as well as the encyclopedic dictionary “St. Petersburg in the Work of Outstanding People” [Khomutova, Mamontova 2016].
The idea of creating a dictionary of the cultural heritage of Chelyabinsk was born out of the fact that modern media shows Chelyabinsk as an industrial center drowning in smog, and its people as harsh carriers of an exclusively industrial culture, which does not correspond to the cultural appearance of Chelyabinsk.
Did you know that the founder of Russian nuclear science and technology, I.V. Kurchatov, Olympic champion L.P. Skoblikova, world-renowned astrophysicist N.N. Gorkavy, famous musicians A.O. Kroll and O.G. Mityaev, founder of the Arkaim G.B. Zdanovich, cosmonaut M.V. Suraev, world chess champion A.E. Karpov, head of the KVN movement A.V. Maslyakov, and many other famous people were born in Chelyabinsk?
Did you know that L.P. Orlova, K. D. Balmont, L.B. Pasternak, A.N. Vertinsky, E.A. Yevtushenko, L. Aragon, E. Triolet, J. Hasek and many other figures of Russian and foreign culture visited Chelyabinsk and influenced its life and citizens?
Have the residents of Chelyabinsk ever thought about the historical figures who made huge contributions to the formation of the city, such as K.Ya. Mikhailovsky, V.K. Pokrovsky, A.F. Beyvel?
All Chelyabinsk residents know Beyvel Street, but only a few know who Beyvel is. All residents of Chelyabinsk saw and discussed the famous sculptures of Prometheus and Glory hovering above the main building of the South Ural State University in Chelyabinsk, but few people know that their creator is the talented Chelyabinsk sculptor V.A. Avakyan, our South Ural compatriot. All these figures and many others not mentioned in our brief essay, included and to be included in our multimedia encyclopedic dictionary of cultural heritage “Chelyabinsk in the Life and Works of Famous People” (and their creations and achievements) constitute the cultural heritage of Cheyabinsk and its cultural code that we tried to decipher using the discourse of intellectual tourism. We were assisted in this quest by a grant from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Chelyabinsk region, the financial support of which funded our research in 2021. We express our sincere gratitude for the support provided by the RFBR and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Chelyabinsk Region. One of the important results of this research was the multimedia encyclopedic dictionary “Chelyabinsk in the life and works of famous people.”
People who have become heroes of the dictionary have left their mark on the history and culture of our city and Russia. As the famous American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in A Psalm of Life:
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
We hope that many of you who touch the cultural heritage of Chelyabinsk and get acquainted with our project will leave their “footprints on the sands of time.”
Bon Voyage!
– Project team