The message reads, in part:
“Lyudmila Verbitskaya was an outstanding scholar, a talented teacher and mentor, a person of enormous spiritual strength and inner dignity. With her multidimensional research, teaching and public work, with her entire life she manifested a tremendous value of culture, learning, education, Russian literature and language, and made a truly invaluable contribution to the development in our country of humanitarian knowledge, traditions of selfless devotion and service to one’s chosen vocation, people and Fatherland.”
Lyudmila Verbitskaya was a linguist and Rector of St Petersburg State University (1994–2008), President of St Petersburg State University, full member of the Russian Academy of Education (RAE) and its President (2013–2018). She passed away on Sunday, November 24, at the age of 83.