L.N.Gumilyev was born on the 1st of October in 1912. He was a son of XX century’s outstanding poets – Nikolay Gumilyev and Anna Akhmatova. He spent his childhood in Bezhetsk region and was in the charge of his grandmother. From 1917 up to 1929 he lived in Bezhetsk. Since 1930 lived in Leningrad. 1930-1934 worked on the following expeditions: Sayan, Krym and Pamyr. In 1934 he entered Leningrad state university and admitted to the historical faculty. He had to left the university, because of his arrest in 1935. Soon, he was discharged and admitted to the university again in 1937.
In May 1938 L.N.Gumilyev was arrested at the second time for 5 years. He served his sentence with two other students of the university – Nikolay Erekhovich and Theodore Shumovskiy in Norilsk town, working on the copper-nickel mine as a technique-geologist. In 1944 he went to Soviet army and participated in Pomeranian operation and taking Berlin. In 1945 he was demobilized and restored to Leningrad state university. After graduating the university in 1946 L.N.Gumilyev entered the post-graduate study at USSR Institute of oriental studies in Leningrad department. But he was excluded from the institute according to the following motive : “ disparity of philological preparation of a chosen discipline ”.
In 1948 he defended a dissertation in Leningrad state university in order to receive a degree of a candidate of historical sciences. So he was accepted for USSR Museum of people’s ethnography. Since 1956 he worked in Ermitazh as a librarian. In 1961 L.N.Gumilyev defended the thesis concerning with the historical theme “ Ancient Turks”, and in 1974 he defended his second doctor’s dissertation for the theme “Ethnogeny and Earth’s biosphere”. In 1976 he was refused to take the second doctor’s degree. In 1986 before his retire he worked at Leningrad state university in Scientific-research institute of geography. .
In his own researches L.N.Gumilyev had definite ideas that were so close to eurasianism. One of the greatest theoretic P.N.Savitskiy was in correspondence with L.N.Gumilyev for many years.
He died on the 15th of June in 1992 in Saint Petersburg. Concerning with the celebration of Kazan’s millennium and Saint Petersburg’s days in 2005 in Kazan town, there was put a monument in honor to historic-orientalist - L.N.Gumilyev.
