This is in tribute to the memory of a famous historian, historiographer, teacher and organizer of science-one of the first Russian women-academicians M.V. Nechkina (1901 - 1985). She was one of the pioneer students of the Russian revolutionary movement. Her works laid the foundation to studies of the first phase of that movement-the activities of the Decembrists. She analyzed the formation of their ideology, program documents, strategy and tactics, and the causes of the defeat of their revolt of December 14, 1825. She analyzed the problem of this movement in its complex internal inconsistency and unity, tried to analyze the concept the "revolutionary zeal of the nobility". A two-volume work called The Decembrist Movement was the result of her 30 years of research (1955).
It was Nechkina's profound studies of the second phase of our national liberation movement (of the 1860s) that revealed the role of its first organization "Land and Liberty" in the social struggle, and proved the existence of two centers of the Russian revolutionary ideology - in St. Petersburg and London, and other characteristics. The problems outlined by the scholar were the basis for further studies in this field.
At the same time she was absolutely convinced that you cannot study science if you do not know its history. Nechkina worked hard in the field of historiography, its periodization, its subject, objectives, criteria of analysis and assessments of events, classifications, and methods of use of relevant sources.
Prof. Nechkina left us a rich creative heritage including business diaries. Extracts from these diaries she published in the scientific-and-practical magazine Otechestvennye arkhivy (National Archives) with comments by the Candidate of Science (History) Helena Kurapova. This unique "chronicle of interests" allows to retrace the
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process of formation of a young scientist against the social and political background of our country. The first phase, from 1922 to 1923, w ...
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