Avram Moiseevich Razgon

Avram Moiseevich Razgon (Аврам Моисе́евич Разго́н́; 6 January 1920, Yartsevo – 3 February 1989, Moscow) was a Russian historian and a prominent Soviet theoretician of museology, Doktor nauk (1974), and university professor (1986). A. Razgon graduated from Lomonosov University in 1948. He was a student and later an associate of N. Rubinstein, a renowned Soviet historian and specialist in the historiography of Russian history. He worked as a Senior scientific officer (1952-1962) and later as the Deputy Director for Science (1962-1972) in the Research Institute for Museum Studies in Moscow. Razgon was the head of the Museum Studies sector at the Museum of Revolution from 1972 to 1974. He headed the Department of cartography of the State Historical Museum, Moscow, from 1974 to 1988. In 1984, he founded the Department of Museum Studies at the All-Union Institute of improvement of professional skills of workers of art and culture, and was the head of the Department until 1989. He was also lecturing on Museology in the Faculty of History at Lomonosov University and in the Department of Museum Studies of the Moscow State Historico-Archival Institute. In the USSR, he was the first academic to attain the rank of Professor in the Department of Museum Studies (1986). Razgon was one of the founders of ICOM’s International Committee for museology (ICOFOM) and from 1977 to 1983 was ICOFOM’s Vice President. He participated in the creation of the international Glossary of museum terms Dictionarium museologicum published in 1983 and 1986. Together with museologists from the GDR, Razgon led an international project to write the book “Museum Studies: Historical museums” which was published in 1988 and which was, for many years, the main textbook on museology. In the last decades of his life, Razgon put a lot of energy into the development of the theoretical and methodological foundations of the education of professional museologists.