Boris Marshak

Boris Ilich Marshak (Russian: Борис Ильич Маршак; 9 July 1933 – 28 July 2006) was a Russian archeologist who spent more than fifty years excavating the Sogdian ruins at Panjakent, Tajikistan.

Biography

Boris Ilich Marshak was born in Luga, Leningrad Oblast, Russian SFSR 9 July 1933. He received a specialist degree in archeology from Moscow University in 1956, his Candidate of Sciences degree in archeology from the Institute of Archaeology, Leningrad, in 1965 and a doctorate of historical sciences from Moscow University in 1982.

Marshak began his work at the Sogdian ruins at Panjakent, which date from the 5th-8th century, in 1954. He became director of the archeological expedition in 1978, a position he held until his death. Marshak was a leading authority on the history of Panjakent, the archeology and art history of Central Asia, and medieval eastern silverware. In 1979 he became head of the Department of Central Asia and Caucasus at the Hermitage Museum, in Leningrad.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Marshak's job became significantly more difficult. Funding for fieldwork dried up and he instantly became a foreigner in the new state of Tajikistan at a time when ethnic Russians were fleeing Central Asia en masse. Marshak stayed on as director of the excavation of the Panjakent ruins, even during the years of civil war in Tajikistan from 1992 to 1997, while other archeological sites in the former Soviet Union were plundered by looters.