A scholarly courtesy to a French academic cost Kratchkovsky nine months in jail

Evidence

In 1930 he invited Massignon to Russia on a visit of academic goodwill and, as a consequence, was jailed for nine months, as the Soviet authorities decided that Massignon was really a spy. Kratchkovsky, who was frequently prone to depression, tended to take refuge in obscure Oriental books and manuscripts. He was in charge of the Leningrad Academy during the bitter siege of that city in 1941 and 1942, during which he immersed himself in a manuscript of alMaqqari’s Nafh al-Tib (a sixteenth-century account of the past glories of Muslim Spain). — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 414

Categorization

• CANDY: A neat, bleakly ironic anecdote: inviting a French Orientalist got a Russian scholar jailed for spying, yet he slogged through the Leningrad siege buried in a manuscript about Muslim Spain’s glory days.