Guber, Aleksandr Andreevich

Born Mar. 19 (Apr. I), 1902, in the village of Kamenka, in present-day Cherkassy Oblast; died June 16, 1971, in Moscow. Soviet historian. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (AN SSSR, 1966; corresponding member, 1953). Member of the CPSU from 1952.

Guber graduated from the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies in 1925. He was a specialist in the history of the countries of Southeast Asia, primarily Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. He initiated the study in the USSR of the history of these countries and elaborated a number of basic problems of their historical development. (For example, he provided an analysis of the formation of the social structure of colonial Indonesia and first revealed the class character and driving forces of the Philippine Revolution.) Guber is also the author of works on general questions of the national liberation movement of colonial peoples, on the history of international relations, and on the history of Oriental studies.

He worked in the Institute of History of the AN SSSR (1938–45; 1957–68), in the Institute of World History of the AN SSSR (from 1968), and in the Institute of Oriental Studies of the AN SSSR (1950–56; during 1954–56 he was director of the institute). Guber taught at Moscow University (from 1937) and in the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU (from 1946), and he was one of the originators of courses in the history of the countries of the Orient. Guber became chairman of the National Committee of Historians of the Soviet Union in 1957 and a member of the chief editorial office of the Soviet Historical Encyclopedia in 1958. He was editor in chief of the journal Novata i noveishaia istoriia from 1956 to 1962. He was vice-president from 1965 to August 1970, when he became president, of the International Committee of Historical Sciences. In 1958 he became president of the Soviet-Indonesian Friendship Society. He was awarded two orders, as well as medals.