Mikhail Viatkin

Born Aug. 9 (21), 1895, in Orenburg; died Dec. 7, 1967, in Leningrad. Soviet historian, professor (1946), corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Kirgiz SSR (1954). Joined the CPSU in 1947.

Viatkin graduated from the University of Tomsk in 1921. In 1934 he became a senior scholar and in 1945 chairman of the department of the history of the USSR of the M. N. Pokrovskii Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, and in 1957 he became director of the Leningrad Division of the History Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He studied the history of the nomads (Kazakhs and Kirgiz) and the economic history of Russia (serf-operated manufacture, monopoly capital). In 1948 he received the USSR State Prize for the monograph Batyr Srym. He was awarded two orders and medals.