Abstract:
The foundations of the theory of analytic sets were laid out in Luzin´s main work – in his book, which was written in French and published in Paris in 1930. The original French text was not widely available to the Soviet audience and the publication of the first Russian edition in 1953 was a welcomed event.
Comparing the two editions, we discover that in the Russian version the original text by Luzin was subjected to significant revisions. The nature of these revisions remained puzzling for a long time; only recently, with the emergence of new documents, it became possible to understand the underlying historical and mathematical reasons. In the current work we analyse the discrepancies in the text of the editions and come to the conclusion that the publication of the Russian version in adulterated form was the culminating point in the campaign aimed at discrediting Luzin´s scientific legacy.
In our work we will also examine the point of view that the revision of the original ideas of Luzin´s was a necessary actualisation. This version of events is enthusiastically supported by many mathematicians, but it does not appear very convincing. We will show that the updated, more “progressive” ideas that were put forward to replace the ideas of Luzin contained a number of internal contradictions and turned out to be worse than the original ones even from a mathematical stand point.
In light of this we suggest to return to the ideas and problems of Luzin that appear to still be relevant and meaningful.
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