Isaak Izrailevich Mints

Born Jan. 22 (Feb. 3), 1896, in the village of Krinichki, in present-day Dnepropetrovsk Oblast. Soviet historian. Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1946; corresponding member since 1936. Member of the CPSU since 1917. Son of an office worker.

Mints carried out political work in the Red Army during the Civil War of 1918–20. In 1926 he graduated from the Institute of Red Professors in Moscow. He headed subdepartments of history of the USSR at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History and at Moscow State University (1932–49), and at the Higher Party School under the CPSU Central Committee (1937–49). Mints was a professor at the Academy of Social Sciences (1947–50) and head of the department of history of the USSR at the Lenin Moscow Institute of Pedagogy (1950–72).

Mints has been a senior research associate at the Institute of the History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1954. He has been chairman since 1962 of the scientific council for overall study of the history of the Great October Revolution under the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. His major works have been devoted to the study of the history of the CPSU, the October Revolution, the Civil War of 1918–20, the history of Soviet society, and international relations.

Mints was among the authors of The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1959), and a member of the main editorial board of multivolume history of the CPSU. He was a recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1943 and 1946) for his part in preparation of The History of the Civil War in the USSR and The History of Diplomacy. He won the Lenin Prize in 1974 for his work on The History of the Great October (vols. 1–3, 1967–73). Mints has also been awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, three other orders, and a number of medals.