Iosif Amusin
Iosif Davidovich Amusin was a Soviet historian, orientalist, hebraist and papyrologyst, was specialist in the history of the Ancient Near East and Qumran studies.History
Amusin was twice arrested and sentenced for Zionist connections and "anti-Soviet" activity. Graduated from the Historical Faculty of Leningrad University. Served as a medical officer during the Second World War.
After 1945, Amusin taught ancient history at the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute and the Leningrad University until the anti-Semitic campaign against the so-called "cosmopolitanism," when he lost his job and, after a long period of unemployment, began lecturing at the Ulianovsk Pedagogical Institute.
Upon returning in Leningrad in 1954, Amusin became a research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Leningrad. From the late 1950s, he published about 100 works on the Qumran and Dead Sea Scrolls.
