1 /
26.06.2023
STOU Professor Irina L. Bagration-Mukhraneli Passed Away
On June 25, 2023, after a difficult struggle with a grave illness, Prof. Irina Leonidovna Bagration-Mukhraneli, a literary scholar, expert in 18th-21st Russian literature and Russian-Caucasian literary and cultural relations, and the descendant of a famous princely line, died at the age of 77.

Prof. Bagration-Mukhraneli worked as a researcher, including at the Museum of Georgian Settlements in Russia, taught at both higher and secondary schools, and was engaged in journalism. She taught at the Russian Department of the Faculties of Philology and later History and Philology at STOU from 1994 until the last month of her life.

She taught disciplines related to literature, cultural studies, and journalism. She was a very friendly and bright teacher, sincerely religious, purposeful, strong in spirit. A sociable and optimistic person, she was loved by her colleagues and students. Interacting with her was meaningful to her students, and she was talented in many ways. For example, in 2022, the students of the Russian department under her guidance took second place at the STOU student kitchen competition, for which they cooked Georgian dishes.

Irina Leonidovna Bagration-Mukhraneli was born on December 19, 1945 in Tbilisi. In 1965, she graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, and in 1967, from the Faculty of Journalism of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. In 1971, she defended her candidate of sciences thesis on the topic “Emergence of the Type of the 1920s/early 1930s Soviet Theater Magazine”. In 2018, she defended a doctoral dissertation on “Formation of the Motif Structure of the Myth of Georgia and the Caucasus in 19th/early 20th-century Russian Literature”.

Prof. Bagration-Mukhraneli is the author of many scholarly works, including the books “Introduction to the Poetic Concept. The Life and Creative Biography of A. S. Pushkin” in 2 vols. (2004–2005), “‘Another Life and a Distant Coast…’: The Representation of Georgia and the Caucasus in Russian Classical Literature” (2014), “Georgian Traces in the Comedy of A. S. Pushkin: Griboedov’s Woe from Wit” (2015), “Count Sollogub in Georgia” (2017). She was awarded the medal “In Memory of the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Mikhail Lermontov” by the Russian Lermontov Committee.

The Department of Slavonic Philology and all STOU students and staff who knew Irina Leonidovna mourn her untimely death. We express our sincere condolences to her family. We remember, we grieve, we pray.