Work, Do Not Forget The Old And Learn Something New

MOSCOW. MAY 21, 2022. PIR PRESS. “The main thing, of course, is constant work, and in two directions. On the one hand, you need to constantly hone the skills that you have, especially in our specialty. You should never forget that if you know a language, it will always be at a high level. It needs to be constantly refreshed. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, you need to learn something new all the time. I’m used to the fact that you need to continuously immerse yourself in new things, new topics, new activities. This applies to both research and practical work. The Arab East and the Middle East provide a very wide field of action for self-realization, there is always an opportunity to learn something new, so human life is not enough for this. You need to leave a memory of yourself in the profession. Getting new knowledge, mastering something is very interesting and gives an incentive to life, without which it becomes boring,” – Vitaliy Naumkin, director of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

EDITORIAL: Today, on May 21, the leading Soviet and Russian historian-orientalist, Islamic scholar, director of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences Vitaly V. Naumkin, who is also a great friend of the PIR Center and has been on the Advisory Board of the PIR Center since 2014 and the the Trialogue Club International since 2018, celebrates his birthday. In this issue of Open Collar we conducted an interview with Vitaly Naumkin about his creative childhood in Yekaterinburg, ballet and love of the Arabic language, the features of the modern education system and why young people read less nowadays, how Vitaly Naumkin was almost forced to learn Hindi, who are the “Shanghainese”, the features of the profession of simultaneous interpreters, as well as about his personal approaches to career and self-development.