Arkady Lavrovich Sidorov ( – 11 March 1966) was a Russian Soviet historian. A member of the Communist Party from an early age, he was educated as a political activist and did party work before serving in the Second World War during which he was wounded. He started an academic career in Moscow and received his doctorate from Moscow State University (MSU) where he also taught before joining the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR of which he became director. He campaigned against the MSU professor and Jewish academician

Isaak Mints Isaak Izrailevich Mints (russian: Исаа́к Изра́илевич Минц, uk, Ісак Ізраїльович Мінц) (1896-1991) was the leading Soviet historian in the early and mid-twentieth century. In 1949 he lost most of his academ ...

during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic drive against the "rootless cosmopolitans" as a result of which Mints lost most of his academic positions. The zeal with which Sidorov opposed Mints was remembered when a position became vacant for a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and Sidorov was not elected. He edited ''Istoricheskie zapiski'' and was on the editorial board of the '' Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' and the '' Soviet Historical Encyclopedia''. He was instrumental in the publication of 18 volumes of documents on the 1905–07 Revolution and ten volumes on the October Revolution of 1917. He researched the development of capitalism in Russia which he concluded had developed largely independently of the rest of Europe, and is considered to have been the father of a new direction in Soviet historiography.

Early life and education

Arkady Sidorov was born in Pochinki, Lukoyanovsky district, Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod province, on 27 January (8 February) 1900. He became a member of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union "Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspaper ...

in 1920 and attended institutions of higher education specifically intended to provide a Marxist training, graduating from the Sverdlov Communist University in 1923 and from the

Institute of Red Professors An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

in 1928. He published anti-

Menshevik The Mensheviks (russian: меньшевики́, from меньшинство 'minority') were one of the three dominant factions in the Russian socialist movement, the others being the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. The factions eme ...

and anti- socialist revolutionary views in the press.

Career

Building on his training as an activist at the Sverdlov Communist University, Sidorov worked for the Communist party in Nizhny Novgorod, Vladivostok, and

Khabarovsk Khabarovsk ( rus, Хабaровск, a=Хабаровск.ogg, r=Habárovsk, p=xɐˈbarəfsk) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative centre of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia,Law #109 located from the China ...

from 1929 to 1936. In 1935 he was expelled from the party, but reinstated in 1936 and went to work on the journal '' Istorik-Marksist'' (Marxist Historian). He taught at the

Moscow City Pedagogical Institute Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

, Moscow State University (MSU), and the Military-Political Academy, and worked at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1937 to 1941. In 1941, during the Second World War, Sidorov fought in the Moscow people's militia and was wounded. He was awarded the orders of the

Red Star A red star, five-pointed and filled, is a symbol that has often historically been associated with communist ideology, particularly in combination with the hammer and sickle, but is also used as a purely socialist symbol in the 21st century. I ...

in 1942 and of the Patriotic War in 1944. In 1942 he was sent to work for the Commission on the History of the Great Patriotic War. He acquired his doctorate in history from MSU in 1943 for a thesis titled "The Russian Economy during the First World War of 1914–1917". He was a professor at Moscow State Institute of International Relations from 1945 to 1949 and worked at the Bolshevik party school from 1946. In 1947, Sidorov wrote a column for the Bolshevik newspaper '' Культура и жизнь'' (''Culture and Life'') attacking the lectures of the Jewish MSU professor and academician

who, at that time, was a dominant figure in the teaching of Soviet history. Sidorov's attack on Mints coincided with Joseph Stalin's thinly-veiled anti-Semitic campaign against the " rootless cosmopolitans" who were characterised as lacking in patriotism, holding ideologically incorrect views, and not ethnically Russian. Sidorov's supporters tended to be from a party activist or ex-military background that contrasted with the more traditional academic background of the alleged "cosmopolitans", many of whom were Jewish. In addition to Mints's circle, Sidorov attacked

Édourd Burdzhalov Eduard Nikolaevich Burdzhalov (Russian: Эдуард Николаевич Бурджалов) (1906–1985) was a Soviet historian. Burdzhalov graduated from Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature in 1932. He then taught at variou ...

, whose wife was Jewish, and the Jewish historians Nikolai Rubinshtein and E. N. Gorodetskii."Translator's Introduction"
by Donald J. Raleigh (Ed.) in Following a sustained campaign by Sidorov, Mints lost most of his academic positions by 1949 while Sidorov continued to receive advancement.Tikhonov, V. V.,
Bor'ba za vlast' v sovetskoy istoricheskoy nauke: A.L. Sidorov i I.I. Mints (1949 g.)
(The struggle for power in Soviet historical science: A. L. Sidorov and I. I. Mints (1949)) ''Вестник Липецкого государственного педагогического университета''. Science Magazine. Humanities Series. 2011, No 2, pp. 76–80.Mints, Isaak Izrailevich.
Vera Kaplan, translated from Russian by I. Michael Aronson, Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. Retrieved 31 December 2019. He was vice-rector for humanities at Moscow State University from 1948 to 1952, where he taught a course on Russian imperialism."Athens and Apocalypse: Writing History in Soviet Russia"
by Denis Kozlov in Axel Schneider & Daniel Woolf (Eds.) (2011) '' The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 5: Historical Writing Since 1945''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 375–398 (p. 386). From 1949 to 1959, he became head of the department of Soviet history at MSU. He was deputy director (1952) and then director (1953–59) of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1954 he was the editor of '' Istoricheskie zapiski'' in succession to Boris Grekov''Исторические записки''.
WorldCat. Retrieved 28 December 2019. and he was on the editorial board of the '' Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' and the '' Soviet Historical Encyclopedia''. He was instrumental in the publication of 18 volumes of documents on the 1905–07 Revolution and ten volumes on the October Revolution of 1917."Arkadii Lavrovich Sidorov"
''The Great Soviet Encyclopedia'', 3rd Edition (1970–1979). Gale via The Free Dictionary. Sidorov failed, however, to be elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, despite a space being made available for him, a result that V. V. Tikhonov in 2011 and Isaak Mints in his diary attributed to Sidorov having made too many enemies through his past ideological zeal but that Sidorov blamed on Mints blocking him from the position.

Research

Sidorov's research was into the history of capitalism in Russia which he concluded had developed largely independently of the rest of Europe without the help of foreign investment. As such it included elements native to capitalism, such as monopolies, but also elements of pre-capitalist structures native to Russia. He is considered to have been the father of a new direction in Soviet historiography.

Death and legacy

Sidorov died on 11 March 1966.СИДОРОВ Аркадий Лаврович.
V. V. Tikhonov, Энциклопедия Всемирная история. Retrieved 28 December 2019. He received an obituary from his former student, Pavel Volobuev, in '' Istoriia SSSR'', a journal of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.Volobuev, P. V., "A. L. Sidorov", ''Istoriia SSSR'', 1966, No. 3.

Selected publications

Articles

* "Экономическая программа Октября и дискуссия с «левыми коммунистами»", '' Пролетарская революция''. Vol. 6 (1929), No. 11. * "Nekotorye razmyshleniya o trude i opyte istorika", '' Istoriya SSSR'', 1964, No. 3. * "Последний временщик последнего царя", ''

Вопросы истории ''Voprosy Istorii'' ( Russian: ''Вопросы истории'', translated ''Questions of History'') is a Russian academic journal for historical studies. It is published monthly by the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Scien ...

''. Vol. 10–11 (1965), No. 1-2.

Books

* ''Russko-yaponskaya voyna. Pervaya burzhuazno-demokraticheskaya revolyutsiya v Rossii: 1905—1907 gg''. (Russian-Japanese war. The first bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia: 1905–1907) 1951. * ''Finansovoe polozhenie Rossiiv gody mirovoi voiny (1914–1917)''. (The financial situation of Russia during the First World War (1914–1917)) Moscow, 1960. * ''Istoricheskie predposylki Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii''. (Historical background of the Great October Socialist Revolution) (Moscow, 1970. * ''Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny''. (The economic situation of Russia during the First World War) Moscow, 1973.