Given that some archaeologists are often resistant to reading about archaeological theory, this might be a difficult task of persuasion, but here goes. Following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, a unified account of Soviet archaeological thought became less urgent. Trigger’s 2006 revision of his History of Archaeological Thought deleted the chapter on this topic. Into the lacuna (in English) has emerged work by the Russian archaeologist Leo S. Klejn. This book is about him, his writings and actions.
It is divided into three parts, a biographical section, a description of his work and writings and a compendious bibliography. An appendix prints his ‘Commandments’ - dicta and aphorisms he placed in his classroom, which provide both amusement and food for thought.
Stephen Leach, who freely admits to not having fluent Russian, has at least the next best thing, a subject who is fluent in English and more than willing to talk about his life and work. The book is based upon a series of interviews and freely draws on other previously published material. Leach himself teaches Philosophy and is an authority on the archaeologist and philosopher W.G. Collingwood.
Klejn has led an eventful life, to say the least. He is Jewish, with all of the disadvantages that caused in the former Soviet Union. He was imprisoned, on charges of homosexuality – which he neither affirmed nor denied, but rather stated that it was none of the State’s business to know – and at another time was refused access to library materials and collections. He single-mindedly produced a study of the life of the prison, which appears to have been horrific, and he used his own library to produce a new study of the Homeric corpus. Klejn is definitely a polymath. In addition to archaeology, he claims expertise in history, folklore studies and sociology to mention a few. He has also been one of the foremost writers on forensic archaeology, comparing the detective with the archaeologist. All of these are at least alluded to in the meatier second section of the book. The feeling is though that this is merely scratching the surface of his output.
What comes through the writing, which strays occasionally into a hagiographical tone, is that Klejn has enormous self-confidence and an ability to turn unlikely circumstances into opportunities for study.
With its sheer volume of quotations this book feels more like a Reader than a critical study, but perhaps that is no bad thing. The 58 pages of the bibliography of Klejn’s writings sets his work in their contexts, with works by others, both supportive and critical, listed helpfully after each piece of writing. Klejn’s output is doubly colossal, with some monographs running up to over 600 pages each. This all points towards a future evaluation, where the person who tackles it will have to be fluent in Russian, and have considerable time to work through Klejn’s corpus. Before that happens, there is this book to give a flavour of the man and his work.