Sidorov, A. L. 1900-1966

Arkady Lavrovich Sidorov (8 February [O.S. 27 January] 1900 – 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 during Joseph Stalin's antisemitic 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 1905–1907 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.