Pages: 385-389

The author recollects his clash with Svetlana Pletneva. In 1991 on the occasion of Gordon Childe’s one-hundredth anniversary next year, Klejn decided to publish inEngland the secret Childe’s critical letter to prominent Soviet archaeologists. Many years this letter was classified in the USSR and unknown in England. At first Pletneva has friendly promised to get a Moscow copy of this letter, and the author told thereabout to his English colleagues. Yet then Pletneva, being the Editor of the main Rusian journal, changed her mind and decided to outstrip the English and to publish the document first in Rossiyskaya Archeologiya. A conflict arose. Klejn has found a Petersburg copy of the letter and showed it on Childe’s anniversary in London.

Keywords: history of archaeological science, conflict, secret addressing, sensational publication, Vere Gordon Childe, S. A. Pletneva.

Information about author:

Leo Klejn (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Doctor of Historical Sciences.
E-mail: [email protected]