Аннотация:Sergey Fedorovich Oldenburg was an eminent Russian historian of the first third of the 20th century - an orientalist, art historian, philologist, ethnographer; as the Permanent Secretary of Academy of Sciences (Imperial, Russian, Academy of Sciences of the USSR), he actually directed Russian academic science in 1904-1929. Administrative burden did not allow him to publish his main work - “Description of the Caves Chan-fo-dun near Dunghuang”. After S.F. Oldenburg's death, his widow, E.G. Oldenburg, has undertaken selfless work to perpetuate Oldenburg's memory by editing of the “Description of the Caves…” with the help of the colleagues of Oldenburg in the Academy, and by writing his biography. Her correspondence - official with the President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR V.L. Komarov and Permanent secretary N.P. Gorbunov and private - with famous scholars of the first half of the 20th century, I.Yu Krachkovsky and V.I. Vernadsky and his spouse, represents dialogue of the past with the new era, full of deprivations and indifference, in attempt to prolong “The time of Oldenburg”.