Boris Dmitrievich Grekov and the “case of the academicians”

Abstract

The so-called ‘Academicians’ Case’ (1929–1931), initiated by the investigating agencies of the OGPU (United State Political Body) involved many outstanding Russian historians of the time (S. F. Platonov, M. K. Liubavskii, Iu.V. Got’e, A. I. Iakovlev, S. V. Bakhrushin, N. P. Likharev, E. V. Tarle, and others). They were convicted and sentenced to various periods of exile. B. D. Grekov, who was also arrested in connection with the ‘Academics’ Case”, escaped the tragic fate of his elder colleagues and actively engaged in academic research, being in the focus of a heated debate about social and economic structures. It was Grekov, who developed the Marxist concept of feudal relations in Kievan Rus’, which for decades remained fundamental in Soviet historical science. At the end of 1934 he became a corresponding member and, in 1935, a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In the late 1930s, he headed the Soviet Institute of History of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the leading organization of Soviet historical science. The article contains the unpublished documents from the B. D. Grekov’s court files and fills the gaps in the biography of the head of the Soviet historical science of the 1930s-1950s, which abounded in obscurities, thus contributing to the creation of a full picture of his life and work. Refs 17.