On August 5, 2012, Elvira Alexandrovna Grunina, an outstanding turkologist and "teacher-legend", passed away. The editorial office of the magazine "Vostok (Oriens)" had already typed a text about her anniversary in the section "Significant dates" (see below), when it was reported that she would not have to see these lines published again.

Creative achievements, the difficulties of many years of struggle for the preservation of the Department of Turkic Philology in the ISAA at Moscow State University (what T. M. Garipov called" militant modesty " of Elvira Alexandrovna), joy and grief interspersed in her life.

The war ended her joyous adolescence. In the ranks of the generation of 1921-1922, who died on the border in the first weeks of the war, was the brother of Elvira Alexandrovna. There was a heavy wait for news from him in the family; the Grunin family did not leave for the evacuation.

E. A. Grunina graduated from the tenth grade at the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, where she entered and where she finished the first year.

Then there was a completely conscious admission to the Eastern Department of the Faculty of Philology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. At the very first classes, the capable student was noticed by the harsh Turkish grammar teacher E. V. Sevortyan, whom she always considered her teacher.

Elvira Alexandrovna was the niece of Timofey Ivanovich Grunin, a prominent turkologist of rare specialization. Working in Kiev on the assignment of Academician A. E. Krymsky, he studied the acts of the Armenian community of Kamyanets-Podolsk (XVI century), written in the Turkic (Kypchak) language in Armenian graphics; the study was defended in 1944 as a candidate's thesis.

Elvira Alexandrovna recalled: "In the 50s, European Turkology became interested in the Armenian-Kipchak problem, and T. P. Grunin was invited to publish his work. By that time, as a result of an unsuccessful operation, he was blind. So I found myself involved in a new field for me, besides the source texts were given in transcription (the originals were lost in Kiev during the war) and translated into Ukrainian. < ... > The author hardly took any comments; I managed to defend only my own grammatical concept. < ... > The work took a long time (about five years)".

And this most difficult long-term work, editorial and even author's, is never mentioned anywhere! But it was also necessary to keep proofs, no less difficult and painstaking work... T. P. Grunin's obituary in the journal "Soviet Turkology" (1970, No. 5), signed "A group of comrades", was also written by Elvira Alexandrovna.

Already in these years, it became clear that Turkology turned out to be the true vocation of Elvira Alexandrovna. It is in this scientific field that her outstanding ability for analytical research and inexhaustible efficiency are happily combined. This was stated modestly: "I can "dig" to exhaustion"; due to the enormous overload of pedagogical and social activities, Elvira Alexandrovna believed that she had "written few scientific works <!> , mostly during the summer holidays."

While serving as a consulting professor of the Department, she enthusiastically continued (until the spring months of 2012) the study of Turkish dialects in connection with the ethnohistorical conditions of their existence; worked on the second, expanded edition of her textbook "Turkmen Language"; taught the Ottoman language; helped ISAA undergraduates and postgraduates to delve into the theory and practice of the topics they developed; As much as possible, she was engaged in creating the Personalia of her colleagues for various publications, including the magazine " Vostok (Oriens)". And all this was done to overcome the growing ill health...

I bow to the ground to Elvira Alexandrovna for 60 years of selfless, courageous service to the national Turkology and pedagogy.

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