Tarasyuk Leonid Ilyich

Genus. in 1925 In 1951 graduated from Leningrad State University, Faculty of History. He worked as the chief curator of the weapons department in the Hermitage. Arrested in January 1959. Accused of “anti-Soviet propaganda”, convicted under Art. 58.10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for 3 years. In the spring of 1959, the Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR overturned the verdict, but a few weeks later, upon the protest of the RSFSR prosecutor, the verdict was approved by the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He was kept in Taishet, then in one of the Mordovian camps. At the camp I studied Italian and German. Released in 1962. Returned to Leningrad, began working at the Hermitage again, first as keeper of the collections of oriental weapons, then keeper of the Hermitage Arsenal.
In May 1965 he defended his Ph.D. thesis. In 1972 applied to leave for Israel, and in January 1973 emigrated to Israel with his family. Have worked
at the Museum of Underwater Archeology in Haifa. Due to a discovered eye disease, he left for the USA in November 1975. In 1975, he was accepted into the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and became in charge of the best collection of medieval weapons in the United States. In 1986, he was appointed to the position of senior researcher. He died along with his wife in a car accident on September 11, 1990. in northwestern France.